How to Be Truly Happy: Beatitude vs Worldly Happiness - Fr. Andrew Reckers

Everyone wants to be happy. This is a fact of life with which no sane person would disagree. However, there is a related issue that causes much disagreement: Not everyone knows how to be truly happy. Every deliberate decision we make is for the sake of making us happy (or, at least, what we think will make us happy at the moment). Unfortunately, some of our decisions result in false, merely apparent happiness—a shallow form of happiness that lasts for only a short time in exchange for deeper sorrow in the long run. This leads us to ask important questions about happiness: What is the source of true and lasting happiness, and how do we find it? Obviously, this is a broad topic which would require several books to adequately address. The purpose of this Vicar’s Corner article is more modest: To provide some introductory reflections on the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) with respect to true happiness.

The word “beatitude” means happiness. Thus, the Beatitudes in the Gospels are Jesus’ teachings on how to be truly happy. For many people, though, the Beatitudes come across as a roadmap to pain and suffering rather than to the happiness they want. For example, how can we understand the paradoxical Beatitude, “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted,” as a way that leads to happiness? One good way to start is to better understand the meaning of the term “beatitude” and contrast it with other understandings of happiness.

The word “happiness” has more than one meaning, and an unclear understanding of happiness tragically leads to confusion for so many people. In fact, the world teaches us that the happiness comes from trusting in the false gods of pleasure, wealth, and power for personal benefit. However, we know from experience that these false gods do not satisfy the infinite desires of the human heart. We are familiar with so many famous people who have walked the path of seeking happiness by accumulating as much pleasure, wealth, and power as possible only to find misery at the end of that blind alley.

Here's the good news: Jesus teaches us how to be happy in truly meaningful and fulfilling ways which differ from the world’s paths to shallow and disappointing false happiness. How? He does this by giving us what will truly fulfill us: Truly loving relationships that are rightly and virtuously ordered in our lives. For this to happen, we need to be in friendship with Jesus Christ, our Lord and God. From this core relationship in which we come into union with Love itself, the infinite desires of our hearts are satisfied. Moreover, through this relationship, all of our other relationships have true meaning and purpose. Jesus alone has the infinite power to transform our hearts through our relationship with Him. He transforms human nature to be elevated above its natural state wounded by sin, allowing us to love in a way that is impossible by human nature alone.

In this process of transformation, a truly wonderful thing happens: Jesus gives meaning to our suffering if we unite it to His work of redemption by giving it over to Him as a gift of love. By offering our suffering to Jesus, He uses that gift of love as a way to expand our hearts, giving it greater capacity to love and receive love. This is what allows us to experience joy and peace even in the midst of the suffering we experience in our lives. The beatitude of being in union with God runs deeper than any natural human emotion. This is because all natural human emotions are finite and therefore limited; God is infinite Goodness and Love.

Perhaps all this may sound too good to be true. It certainly might seem this way if we only trust in what we can see and experience in our ordinary daily lives. However, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).” The happiness that God gives is not of this world—it is other worldly. By being in union with God and experiencing relationships that are built on His Love, we can experience beatitude which nothing in this world can satisfy.