WHO MAKES US HAPPY?
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
October 09, 2021
How often does it occur to us that
our God wishes for us to be happy? Not
in the sense of being giddy or amused, but in the sense of being enduringly
confident that we are loved
and we are safe from everything that seems to threaten us most; disease,
loneliness, poverty, exclusion, physical pain, rejection, and ultimately death. God did not
create us to be miserable and sad and disappointed. God created us in order to be in communion
with him and with one another in community.
There is no denying that all those
other difficult things happen to us all the time; suffering, loss, grief,
anger, chaos…But none of those things is stronger than the faithful love of
God. We are right to be working hard to make our world, our communities, our families, and ourselves as satisfying
and healthy as they can be, but none of them can be mistaken for the salvation
that only God can give us. And the
moment we forget that, we have set ourselves up for discouragement, because
every pleasure that this world has to offer is capable of being destroyed in a
moment.
I will never forget visiting
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada about 20 years ago. Just across the Red and (aSINaboyne) Assiniboine Rivers is the Catholic Cathedral
Basilica of St. Boniface
in the city’s French Quarter. It
is an immense Romanesque building, erected in 1908, similar in size and age to
our own cathedral here in St. Paul. It
was gutted by fire in 1968, leaving only its stone exterior walls intact. If you Google it up online the visual images
are haunting. As you approach the
church, the space where there was once a gigantic stained-glass circular rose window is now a gigantic gaping open hole, which
was deliberately never restored. Something old is obviously missing there.
What they did instead was to build
an entirely new, contemporary church inside the walls of the old one. It is a brilliant testimony to what was once an architectural
jewel, which was destroyed in a day, but which now enfolds a new space where
Christians gather. They could have tried
to re-create the past, beautiful as it was, but they did not choose to do that.
To me that cathedral is a parable
in stone about how to understand today’s gospel of Mark. When we put our faith in anything that is merely human,
however impressive and seemingly secure it may be, we are in danger. For all
human things pass away. It is good to
savor their beauty and pleasure while they and we are here together, but it is
foolish to place ultimate
trust in them.
And perhaps the most cunning and
tempting passing thing in this world is money. How automatic it can be for us
to believe that we’d be happier if we only had more money. As the Book of Wisdom says it today, more gold and silver. And as Jesus in
the gospel says it, more wealth and riches, houses, and land. Even family and siblings. None of them bad things; many of them
blessings. But when they disappear--sometimes suddenly
– then what? In what or whom is our
ultimate faith?
God wishes us to be happy. And a
big part of that happiness comes from not putting ultimate trust in things that
will never satisfy us, and may well lead us into anxiety and depression and anger when they disappear, and
they will. Jesus seems to believe that
this is a particular danger this way when it comes to money and material
possessions. I happen to like both of
these things, but the risk comes in placing enduring faith in them – the faith
that belongs to God alone.
This is where today’s Book of
Wisdom can help us. It encourages us to value good judgment more than power or status. It encourages us
to be desirous of clear vision more than of more stuff; and to put our final
hope in God, who alone endures. Not easy. Not easy to be wise rather than merely filled up with passing
pleasures. But in the end, when those
pleasures fade and fail, true happiness can endure.
To return to Winnipeg, the
community there obviously understood that when their precious building was
ruined, their faith remained. And while
they grieved, they would find a new way ahead because their final end was not
in a piece of real estate
or anything else made of merely human origin, however grand and
beautiful it was.
This weekend we here at Pax
Christi are inviting all of us to continue, or to begin, supporting our daily efforts for the sake
of making that one reliable thing – God’s reign – known and experienced among
those who look to our community to see an example of justice, peace, welcome,
compassion, growth, and self-giving. This is our stewardship
season, which invites us to remember what really matters and what really
endures, and what is worthy of our lasting trust.
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