Ad Jesum per Mariam

Our Lord Outlines How to Achieve Happiness and Holiness Within Today’s Gospel.

Our Lord Outlines How to Achieve Happiness and Holiness Within Today’s Gospel The one desire which gives all humans unity and meaning, force and decision to all desires is happiness. It is the goal of all human activity, the perfect good which satisfies all human desires. The search for happiness is the common ground on which all human yearnings, all human ambitions meet. The child building sand castles at the seashore, the great banker computing his fortune, are all searching for happiness. Christians Have Two Goals As a Christian, we have two goals in life. The first is to be happy. The second is to be holy. Today’s Gospel gives us the means to achieve these goals: happiness and holiness. Listen to this Meditation Media to understand how to achieve these two goals. Listen to: Our Lord Outlines How to Achieve Happiness and Holiness Within Today’s Gospel. ---------------------------------------- Image: The Lord’s Prayer: French Painter: James Tissot: 1886-1896 This painting resides at The Brooklyn Museum. Other Tissot paintings appear on this site here and here.

Broadcast on:: 28 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: other

The Lord be with you, a reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together and one of them a scholar of the law tested him by asking. "Teacher, which commandment of the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. The Gospel of the Lord. When I was young, I grew up wanting to become a priest. But after finishing form four, I had to make this decision concrete by following the way. That, yes, I have grown up wanting to become a priest, now I want to take this path of becoming a priest. So it wasn't that easy, because my mom did not want me to become a priest. We are four, in our family, I'm the firstborn, and the only boy. So she was saying, "Who is going to keep the name if you are to become a priest?" So I had difficulties in making this crucial decision of starting the formation. I tried to consult a number of people to help me in this. The common statement that I was getting from the people that I was encountering, where? Bernard, we can't tell you what to do, but we would want to ask you that, "Whatever you are going to choose, choose something that is going to bring happiness to you." This was the common statement that I was getting. You may choose to start formation and become a priest. All, as I had wanted, I wanted to do medicine. You may even go and do medicine. But as you are making this choice, choose something that is going to bring happiness to you. This confused me more because I was wondering how I know that the choice that I'm going to make now is going to bring happiness, let our own in my life. With prayer, I chose to continue to become a priest. Which, as I said, at the very beginning, my mom did not like it. But during the day of audition, she was the happiest woman I saw, dancing and all that. And I said, "I think I made the right choice." As human beings, we want to be happy in life. I think everyone here would want to be happy. And every day, we pursue this happiness. Aristotle said the greatest good in life is eudemonia, which can be translated as happiness. As Christians, we are not only wanting to be happy, but we also want to be holy. So basically, there are two goals in life. Happiness and holiness. To be happy and to be holy. And our gospel today gives us the means of attaining these two. Happiness and holiness. Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us, if we want to be happy, if we want to be holy, we face and foremost have to love God with everything. If we want to be holy, we have to love God with everything. If we want to be happy, we have to love God with everything. With our minds, with our soul, with our bodies. But to love God with everything, to love God with whatever we have, we must learn how we should do that. And learning how to love God starts with accepting that God loves us. Welcoming that God loves us. And it is from here that we can give back this very same love that we have received from God to him. So what matters is not just to love God, but to love God as God wants it. To love God as he himself wants us to love him. To love God as he loves us. The first thing is receiving this love. I normally give the example of a light. Unfortunately, it's not lighting. For this candle, if it were lighting, for it to give light, it has first and foremost to receive. Light. It is only when it has received light that it gives light. It would be a surprise just to see a candle burning without it receiving light. We can't love God as he wants us to love him if we do not receive the love that he gives us. The first thing is to receive the love, to know that I am loved. And it is this love that we reciprocate in loving him back. And then the gospel continues and tells us, if we want to be happy, if we want to be holy, we also have to put this love that we have received from God by loving others as we love ourselves. The love of God that we have which can be expressed in prayer, which can be expressed in different ways, comes down when we love our neighbor. As we love ourselves. And today, as we celebrate the memory of Saint Rose of Lima, we are given a perfect example of this Saint. We loved God with everything and loved her neighbors with everything. She had wanted to become a nun, but her father did not accept that. But her love for God was so strong that although the father did not accept it, she still went wrong and became a third order Dominican. She lived her life, not for herself, but for God and for others. As she saved others, as she saved God. And in the long run, she attains these two greatest goals in life. Happiness and holiness. May God help us that in our daily endeavors, as we pursue these two greatest goals, happiness and holiness. We may be committed and give ourselves totally in loving Him and loving our neighbors. Amen.