Happiness

“Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.” (Luke 17:26).

Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta

I have been thinking about happiness.

So many times, I pray for things that are like the demands I would make of a vending machine.  I make a request and want to be delivered of something that is so fleeting.

I ask for happiness, when in fact I should be praying for joy.

Joy is a strange thing.  To experience joy a soul can experience terrible suffering and the weight of a heavy cross, but also understand the profound benefit to their immortal soul that such a sacrifice can merit.

“Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding together; one will be taken and the other left.’” (Luke 17:26-37).

Christ told us that what we seek to preserve we will lose and what we allow ourselves to lose we will gain.  He was telling us that we were created for JOY and not happiness.  Happiness is in the physical world.  I am happy when I eat a good meal or spend time socialising with friends.  But joy is something spiritual.  When a soul is joyful they are able to experience a closeness to God even despite terrible suffering.  Saint Bernadette Soubirous who experienced visions of the Blessed Virgin, remarked that she experienced great joy in her life, despite the austerity of her life and her illness with tuberculosis.

Saint Teresa of Calcutta while writing to her spiritual advisor about her experience of spiritual dryness, also commented on her joy at being able to make herself available to God.  And I have been reflecting on this today.  That Saint was known internationally for her smile and her joy.  She saw the worst of human poverty and sacrifice, and while seeing this, she experienced all the aches and pains of old age and also had the problem of spiritual dryness, where she felt unloved by God.  And even despite all of this, the Saint managed to remain joyful.

And this is only possible if we can see this with a spiritual lens.

You see, if I stopped treating God as a vending machine to supply to me all the things that I want that will ease my life in this world and instead saw Him as the Creator of the Universe, who wishes to provide for me a world where I can receive Grace to enter into eternal life with Him, then perhaps I would have a chance at joy.  But to gain such a blessing, I would first have to sacrifice my happiness.  For I cannot chase the things of this world and the next one simultaneously.  And it is only possible to merit Heaven through the Grace of the Eternal Father!

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.