Choosing Happiness

This past week my niece and nephew started their school year in Nebraska where my sister’s family lives. My niece is beginning kindergarten, and my nephew who is 3 is in pre-school. My sister sent me a picture from their first day where they each are holding a sign with the name of their teacher, their grade, and what they want to be when they grow up. My niece wants to be a veterinarian; she loves animals. My nephew wants to be a garbage truck driver. He loves all things mechanical, and his favorite part of the week is when the garbage man comes to pick up the trash. And there’s nothing wrong with that job – it’s honest work, and we’re all grateful to those that do it. Whether my nephew will still want to be a garbage truck driver in ten or twenty years, who knows? But for now, it’s what he thinks will make him happy.

We all want to be happy, and we all want to do whatever will make us happy. That may sound like a truism – something so obvious it need not be said. But it’s actually an important truth about human action: whatever we do – whether it’s get out of bed in the morning, go to school or work, strive to be a veterinarian or a garbage truck driver or whatever else – we do so because we think it will make us happy. This is the way God has created us: that, day by day, action by action, choice by choice, we make decisions directed toward our own happiness. And we do so not willy-nilly, but according to our reason. We think it’s better to get an education than to not get one. We think it’s better to find a job that is meaningful, that pays well, than to not have a job. We want to meet someone special and marry and have a family, because we think we will be happier than without them — unless we think God might be asking us to be a priest or a religious, in which case, we will be happier doing that than even having a family. We do all of these things because we want to be happy, and God wants us to be happy too, even more than we do.

James Tissot, Get Thee Behind Me, Satan (c. 1896)

But if that’s the case, then how are we to make sense of the Gospel today? Jesus says that he must go to Jerusalem to suffer and die, and what’s more, his followers also must pick up their cross and follow him. How does the Cross correspond with being happy? Can self-denial, suffering, even death lead us to happiness?

The answer is yes: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Each of us has only one life to live, and so we have to use it well. We don’t want to spend it frivolously searching after momentary or fleeting ways of being happy; no, we want to “save” our life – we want to protect it, make it secure, find a happiness that is true and lasting. But here’s the thing. Even those things that we set our sights on and strive for – success in a job or a career, financial security, even the blessings of love and family – they are fleeting as well. One day they too will pass away. No, there’s nothing earthly that we can take with us.

True happiness, then, must be found in something else – something that stretches beyond this world. I think if we look deeply into our hearts, we also recognize this to be true. How many times have we heard of someone – a celebrity, or even someone we know – who seems to have all that they could want and more, materially speaking, but who is fundamentally unhappy, even desperately so? The truth is that God has created us to be happy, but not for a happiness that can be found in anything earthly, but only in him. As St. Augustine says, God created us so that our hearts are restless until they rest in him. When we seek happiness, when we make our choices day by day to be happy, we should do so aiming not just for the fleeting moments of happiness, not even the blessings of home and family, but aiming for that ultimate goal of a happiness that will not pass away.

That is the happiness that Jesus gives, and it was to give us that happiness that he went to his own death on Calvary. Now perhaps we can see why Jesus rebukes Peter so strongly in the Gospel. Peter is thinking of happiness in the way we often do: as avoidance of suffering and securing one’s own well-being. He can’t understand how something like crucifixion and death could actually lead to happiness. But Jesus sees beyond – he sees the blessed life of heaven, human beings in eternal happiness with God, and he knows that it is only through the Cross that that happiness could be possible. And so, he sets his sights on that, and commands us to do the same. The joys of this world are fine – if they do not distract us or become obstacles to or replacements for the ultimate happiness of heaven. As soon as they do, though, we must say to them, “Get behind me!” and then set our sights again on the life of heaven.

So does God want us to be happy? Yes, most assuredly, even more than we do – but not by the happiness that comes from being a garbage truck driver, or a veterinarian, or any other job; not by the happiness that comes from pleasure or fame, or power, or wealth; not by the joy of having a good education, or a successful career, or even a blessed marriage and a happy family; not in fact by *any* kind of earthly happiness, as great as they may be. No, God desires ultimately to give us the happiness that comes from eternal life – that is, if we will have it, if we will not forsake it by becoming satisfied by or distracted by earthly joys. It is the happiness of the Resurrection alone that we are made for, but to reach it we must accept the mystery of the Cross. That is the deal we accept when we become disciples of Jesus: to use the reasoning that comes from faith to be ready to give up the fleeting joys of life, all of our earthly happiness, if necessary, and even our life itself, in order to secure the life to come.

Friends, I hope I am not teaching you anything new. But the Gospel today gives us a chance to be reminded, as we need to be at times, about exactly what we have undertaken. Each time we come to participate at this Eucharistic table, we gain new strength from this Sacrament in seeking the blessed life of heaven, in not becoming distracted by the fleeting joys but rather embracing the Cross wherever it is found. The Lord Jesus himself helps us to shoulder it, so that day by day, action by action, choice by choice, we may strive for the lasting happiness of the kingdom where he awaits us.