31 May 2015
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
More and more psychologists and researchers believe they know how to help one to make a happy family. What is the idea of a happy family? Some say a happy family is that family members stay together for quality time and they are having fun together. Sadly, the rising American divorce rate owed much to expectations of happiness in family life. The happiness surge applied even more clearly to the role of women. Wives and mothers were urged to maintain a cheerful atmosphere in order to reward their hardworking husbands and produce successful children. Once I had a conversation with a man who had been messing around. He led secret lives, as he hides himself from his marriages. I confronted him with a question, why did he get involve in a romantic infidelity that was a stupid thing to do, his answer was “I want to find happiness.”
In this 21st century, people simply equate the happiness with riches, position, honor, fame, and pleasures. But these kinds of happiness are the diversion of the perfect good. St. Augustine in the City of God shows that our happiness cannot be properly located any place else but in contemplation and love of the inner life of God. Here St. Augustine gives an alternative description of the actual content of ultimate Happiness by indicating that the location of this ultimate happiness is found in the perfect good, and that perfect good is the inner life of the God. True happiness, in other words, comes from sharing in God’s divine life, made possible by the work of Jesus Christ as the “Word” of the Father, given in baptism by the power of the Holy Spirit,
In the final words of Matthew’s Gospel today, we heard that Jesus said, “I am with you always, until the end of the age.” ‘I am with you always’ promise is the assurance of happiness that came from Jesus that he is truly ‘Emmanuel’- God with us. Can I believe in Jesus’ promise of happiness? Can I be assured that I will find happiness by declaring my faith in my God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit?