Tag Archives: Happiness

The Four Last Things – Heaven

16 Tuesday Dec 2014

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Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent

December 14, 2014

In continuing our Advent reflections on the Four Last Things our topic today is Heaven. And here is the summary of what I have to say about Heaven: unless there is a God, and a Heaven in which to dwell with Him, our lives are absolutely meaningless.

This is a bold claim to make:
-many would scoff at such an idea, saying that it is childish to believe in such things;
-some would call it wishful thinking;
-others, an archaic idea that is only believed by superstitious societies;

-while many others would say they believe in God and Heaven and yet live like this life is all there is.

And yet all of these people, and in fact all of mankind, have something in common which shows the truth of what I have said – unless there is a God and a Heaven, our lives are meaningless. This thing that is common to us all is that we all want to be happy.

Mankind’s desire for happiness is evidenced by the fact that we are always looking for the thing that will make us happy – the thing that will give our lives meaning. We constantly search amongst the finite things of creation to no avail. When we obtain some thing that we desire we eventually come to realize it does not fulfill us. This is because once we have obtained it we see that it is lacking in some way, and then we notice something better that we do not have. And so we pursue it, whatever it is, over and over in a never-ending cycle. But, if every finite thing keeps pointing us to something better, then we must finally come to realize that our need to be happy can be fulfilled by nothing, at least no thing in this world. In this world of finite things you can always go beyond to something better.

Before we go on let me explain what I mean by ‘finite thing’. To all you children, and even the adults, everything that you are hoping to receive for Christmas is a finite thing that cannot bring you the ultimate happiness you truly desire. It is true that the things we receive at Christmas can bring us momentary pleasure but it never lasts, does it? Therefore, we can see that this desire we have within us for happiness cannot be fulfilled through any finite thing, but only through that which is infinite.

This leaves us with two options. The first option is that there is something, or rather some One, that can fulfill this insatiable desire we find within ourselves. If this is true and this desire can be fulfilled, then our lives and the world around us begin to make sense.

The second option is that there is nothing in the universe but finite matter and therefore, nothing that can ever fulfill the infinite desire that we have within us. But if that is the case, then from where does this desire come? If it can never be fulfilled, then this desire within us has no meaning. Our lives would be reduced to a cruel cosmic joke because the universe holds out to us the promise of happiness and yet never fulfills it. The whole universe would then become absurd and unintelligible.

Of these two options the one I choose to believe is the first, obviously. It would be nonsensical to have a Catholic priest – or even a Catholic layman – that did not believe in a God that can fulfill this infinite longing that we find within ourselves. After all, the first option makes the most sense, doesn’t it? And this is where faith comes in – we cannot prove scientifically that God exists, but we can see that without Him nothing makes sense. And it is with God in our lives that we can finally find the fulfillment of the happiness that we desire.

But, there is a problem with our use of the word ‘happy’. Because, when we use this word, it immediately conjures up the idea of something that is only temporary. That is because this word does not define that which we are truly searching for; instead, we are looking for beatitude, or perfect happiness. This is the blessed state for which God created us. That is why we say that the Saints in Heaven have received the Beatific Vision. In seeing God face to face they have received that perfect happiness that mankind constantly tries to find on this earth.

This leads us to our celebration today. Gaudete! Rejoice! This is the first word uttered at the beginning of Mass today. It is joy that we truly desire and not mere happiness. Today’s topic is Heaven and some tend to think of Heaven as the fulfillment of all our desires. But this is not accurate. Instead, Heaven is the fulfillment of the God-given desire that is within you because all of our various ‘desires’ are summed up in that one desire to be with God. But, if we want to receive that beatitude, that perfect happiness that we all desire, then we cannot pursue it as our ultimate goal, because it is not. Our ultimate goal, the reason that we have been created, is to know and love God.

If we would receive the beatitude that He is offering to us, which is nothing less than the fullness of His love, then we must first learn how to fully love Him. How do we do this? The answer is right there: Jesus on the Cross. Our Lord has shown us how to fully love God and others – it is by giving of ourselves completely. This is the path to Heaven and if we walk this path with Christ then our lives will truly have meaning – only then will we have that perfect beatitude that we all desire.

The Finite leads to the Infinite

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Free Will, God's Will, Philosophy, Submission to God

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I am still attempting to finish my series of posts on ‘chance’ – if there is such a thing – but I am still thinking about how to end it. In the meantime, here is something I just read that is very thought provoking. Also, as we have just started Advent, the following can be subject good to consider. We should be at this time asking ourselves whether or not we live our lives according to the Truth or do we remain within a world of illusion and contradiction. If we do not ask ourselves these questions then we will not be ready when our Lord returns.

First a little background: he is here talking about mankind’s search for the infinite. In examining our own lives we can see this desire at work. We desire the infinite, but if we do not know where to find it then we try fulfill that desire with finite things of this world. What happens when we do this? We enjoy the novelty for a while and then tire of it, put it down, and move onto the next thing that catches our interest. But if we step back from this never ending process, instead of moving on to the next thing, we will see that there is no finite thing that will ever fulfill us. Only the infinite can do that. If we are honest then we have to admit the truth of this experience in our lives and can then recognize that it holds true for all mankind. But when we are confronted with the infinite – God – we can feel threatened because we want to be the masters of our own domain. (And this is connected to the fact that we are born into Original Sin.) Therefore, many people reject God because they want to be ‘free’ to pursue their own idea of happiness, thinking of God as nothing but the ‘fun police’ – only there to squash mankind’s happiness. As a result, those who reject God end up living their lives in a contradiction because they deny the very thing that they are seeking. With this result the following question must be asked: if there is no God then why do we have within us this desire for the infinite? If the finite is all there is and at the same time we desire the infinite, then we are find ourselves in an unintelligible universe. To this Fr. Clarke responds in the following manner.

It can be shown…that there is a lived contradiction between affirming theoretically that the universe or myself is unintelligible and continuing to live and use my mind as though it were intelligible–which we cannot help but do. Thus it is finally up to each one of us either to accept his or her infinite-oriented nature as meaningful and revelatory of the real or as an opaque, illusory surd. But what good reason can one have for choosing darkness over light, illusion over meaning, for not choosing the light? Only if the darkness is more intelligible? But this does not make sense! Why not then accept my nature as a meaningful gift, pointing the way to what is, rather than what is not?

The One and the Many, W. Norris Clarke, S.J., p. 228

You cannot have it both ways: either there is a God, which gives sense to our desire for the infinite; or there is not a God, which makes the desire we find within us into non-sense.

On Loving God and Our Neighbor

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in Catholic Obligations, Eternal Life, Forgiveness, Loving our Neighbor, Salvation, Sermons, Theosis

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Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

October 26, 2014

 

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” These words of our Savior, which we have just heard, are repeated at this parish everyday at every Anglican Use Mass. It is very good for us to hear these words at every Mass so that we are constantly reminded of our need to put God first by loving Him above all things; but, when something becomes so familiar to us we can develop a tendency to ignore its true meaning. What does it mean to love God with your entire being? This is a very serious question to which we must have the correct answer so that we can rightly order our lives toward God. But in addition, without the right understanding for the love of God we will not know how to keep the second of our Lord’s commands: to love our neighbor as ourselves. So, what does it mean to love God with all your heart, soul and mind? Before looking for the answer I want to address modern man’s take on this question.

 

In our secular and pluralistic society, modern man asks a similar but altogether different question. Instead of asking how to rightly love God, modern society demands an answer to the question “Why should we love God, if there is one? What has He ever done for us?” And even we as Catholics, and who claim to love God, don’t always prove it. Too often in our speech we say we love God, but in our actions towards Him we show a profound indifference. We let our lives get in the way of loving God by saying to ourselves – I just don’t have time go to Mass this Sunday, or to pray, or go to adoration, or to do some work of mercy. By so doing we functionally become agnostics because through our actions we ask the same question that our modern society constantly asks – why should we love God? Continue reading →

What We All Desire

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, Thought for the Day

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The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose* an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.

The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis

*Note: It seems to me that “oppose” should instead be “pose as”, but I haven't been able to confirm this.

Freedom and Happiness

06 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Eternal Life, Free Will, God's Will, Salvation, Sermons

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Sermon for the Third Sunday after Trinity

July 6, 2014

Two day ago we celebrated the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was on that day 238 years ago that the founders of this country declared their independence from a tyrannical government that tried to choke the air of freedom out of the people of this land. The founders of this country understood that mankind must be free and so they broke away from that oppressive government at the risk of their own lives. But, in considering this freedom that they won for us and that we now enjoy, we come up against a very important question – what does this freedom give us the “freedom” to do?

The reason that we must ask this question is because our country now suffers from a very distorted view of what freedom is. For example, it is the rule of law in this land that women have the “freedom” to abort their children and it is increasingly becoming the law that people have the “freedom” to “marry” someone of the same gender. But are we ever really free to do such immoral acts, even it if is legal? Both of these wrong-headed notions of freedom – and others – come from the fact that the ‘idea of freedom’ in this country has become one of the freedom to do whatever we wish – that there are no universal moral standards by which to measure what we should or should not do. In other words, there is prevalent today a disordered way of thinking, which for many people is subconscious, that says there is no real way to determine right from wrong and that anyone who tries to do so is to be labeled a narrow-minded and archaic hate-monger. And it is this disordered thinking that leads even faithful churchgoers to say things like this, “Well, I do not believe that such and such is right; but if someone else wants to do it then who am I to say that they shouldn’t?” This attitude is – quite simply – wrong and, therefore, we must ask why this type of distorted thinking is so prevalent within our society?

To begin to answer this we must first acknowledge that mankind wants to be happy. And since I have made reference to the 4th of July we can of course remind ourselves that the Declaration of Independence says we have the right to pursue happiness. In addition, we should also remember that God Himself wants us to be happy. But, without a correct understanding of what will and what will not make us happy, many people fall into the trap of chasing this or that ‘thing’ thinking that it is the thing that will make them happy. It starts when we are children when we think to ourselves, “If only I could have that toy or that piece of candy, then I would be happy.” And then throughout the rest of our lives it really does not change that much. There are many adults that still pursue various things they think will make them happy – if only I could have that man or woman to be my spouse, if only I had that job, house, car, boat, home theater, vacation, etc., then I would be really and truly happy. But in the end none of these things can satisfy us because we were not created to pursue them as our ultimate goal. To be sure, God did create good things for us to enjoy but we can only really enjoy them if we are willing to be without them.

But why is it that these good things can make us so unhappy once we have obtained them? It is because we have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, that we have been created by God and for God – He is our ultimate goal – and if we put anything He has created as the center and ultimate goal of our life then we can never be truly happy. To say it another way, we need to understand and live our lives in accordance with the fact that the primary reason for our existence is to know and love God. With this in mind we can now understand how it is that we should use the freedom that we enjoy in this country.

If it is God who has created us, then it is He who knows what is best for us. And He hasn’t left us without guidance in this matter. Our Lord Jesus Christ has revealed to us the Way to happiness with God. We heard Jesus say today, “no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” We, as Catholics, know and believe that Jesus is the revelation of all that we need to know in order to be truly happy. The freedom that God Himself has given to us and that we enjoy in this country can only rightly be used in the pursuit of our ultimate end: to know and to love God. True, God gave us free will and we can, if we wish, choose to do that which is wrong. But if we misuse our freedom in such a way then we will not, and in fact, we cannot be happy. Our freedom and our happiness rests in God alone. And until we – as individuals and as a nation – understand and accept that fact then we can never truly be happy or free.

Freedom – but to do what?

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in Eternal Life, Free Will, God's Will, Thought for the Day

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Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1731-1732

In this time when freedom means to most people the freedom to do whatever they want, we would do well to consider the Church's teaching on the matter. Yes, we have free will to choose between good and evil but we must never forget that there is good and evil to choose between. Many people in our society want to do away with any idea that there is sin – that there is good and evil – in order that they can pursure whatever sinful inclination they may have without remorse. But this is not possible. If we want to be truly free and to be happy then we must use our freedom to live in accordance with the will of God. After all, He made us, He knows and wants what is best for us, and if we follow Him then we will be happy for all of eternity.

Love the Sin – Hate the Sinner?

09 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Forgiveness, Loving our Neighbor

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It is more than likely that we have all heard the phrase, “hate the sin – love the sinner.” This is the example we have received from our Lord Jesus Christ. This morning, though, it occured to me that Satan does just the opposite and “hates the sinner but loves the sin.” It is, therefore, ironic that we so often emulate Satan instead of our Lord. What do we do (unless we are living saints) when someone offends us? If we are honest we would have to admit that our immediate reaction is, to a greater or lesser extent, to hate the person that offended us. We think to ourselves, “How could he do that to me?!” Or, “He thinks he's so great: I'll show him!”

Satan hates us and wants to drag as many of us to hell with him as possible. When we think such evil thoughts in regards to those who offend us then we are effectively doing the same thing: we are sending people to hell with our thoughts. But is that what we really want to do? Do we really want to condemn people to an eternity of despair and pain for a momentary pain they may have caused us? (And any pain in this life is only momentary.) If we really want someone to go to hell then we have probably condemned ourselves to the same fate because we have become just like Satan.

But I think for most of us, if we really thought about the consequences of our evil thoughts toward others, we would see that in the big scheme of things what has been done to offend us pales in comparison to our wrath at the offense. So the next time someone hurts us we should try to remember that that person has an immortal soul created and loved by God every bit as much as He loves our own. And if we desire to be happy for eternity then let us emulate Him when we are hurt. Yes, we should hate the sin because sinfulness can have no place with God. And we should then love the sinner with the realization that the sinner is our very self.

In Regards to God and the Government

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by in C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Salvation, Thought for the Day

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This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. It is so easy to get muddled about that. It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden— that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis