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Considering all of the things that may have frustrated us this past
week and made us unhappy, it’s
pretty clear from that fact that every one of us wants to be “happy.”
Theologians
have speculated over the past two Christian millennia that, in the
beginning, God “hotwired” us specifically to seek happiness. The
problem this innate desire presents is that God has also endowed
us with the power of free will. We must make choices about what we believe will
bring true happiness. In the end, we will bear personal
responsibility for those choice and their sum will reveal the content of our souls.
Living as we do in a materialistic culture driven by consumerism,
many of us happen to believe that true happiness is found in
possessions. It’s
like water flowing through the gills of fish:
television
commercials and print advertisements catch our eyes and stir up that
innate power of desire to the point that we want so many things,
most of which we quite likely don’t really need. Consider what we
wanted Santa to bring us last Christmas day—how we believed we couldn’t
live without it—and how quickly after Santa gave us exactly what we
wanted and departed from the scene, the gift lost its luster and, now, we desperately
want Santa to bring something else this Christmas day to replace it.
If our desire is to find true happiness, any objective
observer would survey this annual ritual and comment that our desire
to find true happiness in possessions is nothing short of insane.
“Black Friday” is only four weeks away. Do we even recall that last
year a frenzied crowd of people trampled to death a part-time
Wal-Mart employee who was attempting to protect a woman who was
eight months pregnant?
I remember it very well because it was all people were talking about on
the radio as I drove home after spending Thanksgiving Day at my
sister’s
home with all of her kids and grandkids.
Roughly 2,000 people had gathered outside a Long Island Wal-Mart’s
doors in the predawn darkness. Chanting “push the doors in,” the
crowd pressed increasingly harder and harder against the glass doors
as the clock ticked down to store’s
the 5:00 a.m. opening. The doors weren’t even unlocked and open
when frenzied shoppers smashed through the front doors, knocking
several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop
vending machines to avoid the onslaught.
What was it those shoppers desired to the point of frenzy? The
people in the crowd believed their desire for true happiness would be
satiated by being one of few who would purchase a $798 Samsung
50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissell Compact Upright Vacuum for $28, or
Men’s Wrangler Tough Jeans for $8.
Isn’t
there something wrong here?
Is this not insane?
Ironically, no one was held
personally responsible and Wal-Mart was blamed by many in the media for creating the
situation that led to an employee’s death.
“I’d never do that,” we think to ourselves. Well, perhaps we wouldn’t.
But that begs the question Jesus poses to his disciples in today’s
gospel. Just what do we think will deliver the true happiness we
desire?
For the ancient Greeks, true happiness meant “to be like a god” (eudημoνiα),
that is, to be “blessed” (μαkαρios). This state was achieved
by living virtuously, according to the dictates of wisdom. For the
ancient Greeks, true happiness was not found in material possessions
because, after all and as well know all too well from first-hand
experience, they quickly lose
their luster and are easily replaced. Neither did the ancient
Greeks believe that true happiness was found in positions of
influence and power because, after all, first-hand experience taught
them full well that
others who were more influential and powerful always come along and
toss their predecessors under the bus. Nor was true happiness found
in people because, the ancient Greeks knew full well from their
first-hand experience, all of us are
term limited. As the Church reminds us on Ash Wednesday:
“Remember: you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”
(As an aside, I wish many couples understood this concept before
they decided to get married. While many couples believe their
marriage will bring true happiness, this is an impossibility, a
delusion of extraordinary proportions. Even if, in the end, they
have a “good” marriage, one of the spouses surely is going to die
first, leaving the surviving spouse behind to experience great
unhappiness.)
So, then, if true happiness cannot be found in things, power, and
people that can easily be
taken away, as the ancient Greeks knew full well from their
first-hand experience, then where is our
true happiness to be found?
For Jesus’ disciples, true happiness is found in a lifestyle through
which they reveal to the world something of God’s divine life
dwelling within them. Jesus’ disciples are not deceived by the
charm and allure of possessions, but are poor in spirit. Yes, they
have possessions, but Jesus’ disciples are not possessed by them.
They bring comfort to those who mourn. They aren’t
“full of themselves,” but are satisfied with their plot of land,
however big or small. They are joyful when others experience good
fortune. Jesus’ disciples endeavor to do what’s right, they are
merciful when wronged, and they are clean of heart. Where anger and
estrangement prevail, they build bridges. And, when Jesus’
disciples are insulted, persecuted, and called every name in the
book for living this way, they don’t cower in fear. No, they
persist in doing good all the more.
How does this pathway—the pathway of the saints—bring true
happiness? Well, think about it this way: whenever we do what’s
right, just, and good, the interior happiness and satisfaction it
brings is something no one can ever take away. Not only is
this happiness abiding, it also brings great personal satisfaction
and interior peace, something no material possession can give.
This pathway requires both commitment and action because true
happiness cannot be achieved simply by wishing it. Instead, we must
continuously choose to allow the attitudes Jesus spoke about in
today’s gospel to guide us and shape us in all aspects of our lives. Especially
in our highly materialist and consumerist culture, this requires a
radical change in attitude, namely, seeking our true happiness in
God and not in possessions or people.
This achievement may seem impossible, but today we celebrate all of
those people in history who have successfully navigated this pathway
during their lives. Each of the saints—whose
names and lives are all but forgotten, they have “passed away”—in
his or her own way revealed something of God’s life dwelling within
them. For many of the saints, it was “no walk in the park” because
seeking true happiness came at great personal cost, oftentimes
marked by physical and spiritual suffering. Their witness not
only shows us the way to true happiness but also encourages us as we
endeavor to imitate their example.
It’s likely that few of us will have to face torture and death for our faith
as many saints did. However, what does confront us today is a
different but equally difficult kind of test. To be a saint today,
we must desire true happiness and form a good conscience that will
enable us to speak against evil in all of its forms, especially
those attitudes which we take for granted as
“normal” but are extremely dangerous, spiritually speaking.
Take the attitude of materialism. How about the attitude of
consumerism? And what about the prevailing attitude of
secularism which removes God from the center of decision making?
When we see evil or learn about it, we must condemn it and fight
against it for our good and the good of others around us. Without
doubt, there will be those who will seek to silence the voice of
a well-formed conscience, but the greater threat is ourselves: not desiring true
happiness, we merely follow the crowd.
The good news is that sainthood is not a result of being perfect.
No, sainthood is the result of continuously making the freely-willed
choice to seek true happiness,
especially when we fail and fall short of our goal. Many men and
women have been called “Saints”—“raised to the honor of the altar of
sacrifice”—and
been given feast days in the liturgical calendar. But legion is the
number of those saints who have not been honored in this way. Today
belongs to all of those nameless and faceless saints who now enjoy
the eternal reward of having persisted in seeking true happiness, but
go unnoticed in history. Like us, none was perfect, but when push
came to shove, the saints chose to seek true happiness rather than
to fulfillment in passing whims and fancies. In this way, perhaps
slowly and imperceptibly, the essence of the Gospel took root in
their souls and, to those around them, they became a living portrait
of Christ Himself alive and at work in their culture. These are our heroes and heroines, models and
witnesses of faith and virtue that the world of popular culture—like sports, cinema,
science, and music—can never provide. The latter
come and go like the breeze and may make us
feel good momentarily; but, the former show us through the witness of
their lives how to experience true happiness.
What sustained the saints is that Jesus was, for them, the model who
taught what true happiness consists of and where it is to be found.
Just as Jesus could not be dissuaded from seeking his true happiness
in his heavenly Father, so too, the saints are those women and men
in history who were not dissuaded from seeking their true happiness
in God by following in Jesus’
footsteps,
regardless of the personal cost.
The core of the proclamation of the Solemnity of All Saints is hope,
even in the darkest and most bleak moments in history, for it is
through the communion of saints that the light of Christ has shone
brightly in the past and can continue to shine brightly today. Yes,
we are to be this generation’s
saints—the light of Christ shining brightly in
our culture. Today we honor those nameless and faceless saints who sought true happiness
in their generation and continue to offer encouragement for us to do the same
in our generation.
A brief
commercial break...
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HOMILY
