Happiness

Do you want to be happy? I certainly do. Yet so often I find myself making choices that are far from what fulfills me. I eat too much; I pray too little; I complain too often. And at the moment I'm choosing any of these, I choose them because I want to be happy, whether consciously or subconsciously. What a paradox: In seeking happiness, I choose the very things that are obstacles to my happiness. Today I was reading Archbishop Sheen's book "The World's First Love," his thoughts on Mary. In it he writes, "The humble are necessarily the joyful, for where there is no pride, there is no self-centeredness, which makes joy impossible." Christianity seems to be the religion of paradoxes! So to be joyful we must not be concerned with our own happiness at all. Joy* is one of those things you can't try to grasp. It's like a butterfly. You can chase it for hours and never catch it, but then it lands on you when you aren't even looking. You see, we experience joy when we find fulfillment. We find fulfillment when we meet our end (as in purpose). Our end, our fulfillment, our joy is God. God is Love. And love is sacrifice.


*I'm using joy and happiness interchangeably, even though joy and happiness aren't the exact same thing.Beatitudo, perfect happiness, complete well-being, is to be attained not in this life, but in the next.