The problem with happy is that it is linked with happenstance—it depends on what is happening to you. If you want to feel happy for a lifetime, become a Gardner, if you want to feel happy for a moment, eat a carb!
Perfect happiness is “blessed” as is the Beatific Vision, and that is where the Beatitudes lead us. There the soul sees God and eternal rest is given, all striving and hoping ceases, there is pure joy.
“Whoever sees God has obtained all the goods of which he can conceive,” Saint Gregory of Nyssa says.
The Beatitudes only make sense when you have the two prerequisites:
1. One is living a moral, virtuous life. St. Thomas Aquinas says happiness is living the moral law that does not constrain human living but allows for human flourishing. It’s about following a correct conscience, to seek and love the true and the good and avoid evil.
2. The second is that one must be in the state of grace, living one’s baptism “in Christ”—our moral life is enveloped by him, so we can do acts meritorious of Heaven. The Catechism says the Beatitudes are a description of living like Christ, and the word Blessed, from the Greek ma-karios, means the person who is in a condition of grace, who progresses in the grace of God.
Only then we can see that although the Beatitudes all seem like accepting a limitation, they are actually a way to being blessed from the practice of virtue and Christ within us.
For example:
1.The poor are blessed even now because beyond the lack, hardship, and exploitation, because the poor in spirit recognize every day that they are not self-sufficient and rely totally on God.
They are blessed because God is recognized in new manner and the kingdom of heaven becomes present to them. God is near to the brokenhearted and saves those crushed in spirit, Psalm 34:18.
Another reason for the pronouncement of blessedness on them is also because of their future in heaven; they have the interior confidence that earthly conditions and roles will be reversed in the next life.
A resolution for us is to be poor in spirit- to be silent to ourselves in difficult moments and depend on God, and come to know divine alleviation interiorly and exteriorly.
2.Next, The Lord reverses ordinary human thinking. E.g. Purity bestows contemplation, so we hear “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.”
There was once a monk who lived in a small cell with a single, small window. Every day, he spent some time cleaning the glass. A traveler passed by and asked, "Brother, why do you obsess over that one small pane of glass? Is it not enough that you are inside, safe and praying?"
The monk replied, "I do not clean the glass because I love the glass. I clean it because I love the sun. If the window is smudged with even a little bit of dust, the light that enters is distorted. If I let the grime build up, I might eventually forget that the sun is even there. I would begin to think the gray, dim light inside my room is all the light there is."
Our hearts are like this window. An 'inordinate attraction' is simply a smudge on the glass —it might just be a preoccupation with my own reputation, a lingering resentment, or an unhealthy attachment to comfort or a person or thing. But when my heart is 'clean,' it is transparent. I don't look at my heart; I look through it to see God."
A resolution for us—Purity is Transparency: To be clean of heart is to be "see-through." It means our motives aren't hidden or layered. We do what we do for the love of God, and nothing else.
3.Next, Father Jacque Philippe says that the seventh beatitude, Blessed are the peacemakers-- to be at peace with God and his peace in our hearts—must come first before we can live the eighth beatitude, which is seeing persecution as a grace. Being persecuted for the sake of righteousness bestows heaven because it strips away false dependencies, leaving only that one the one thing that matters.
A resolution is not asking God to remove all trials but that we have an undivided heart.
I want to close with Peacemakers being Blessed.
In a 2015 study, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University found that there is a stress-alleviating effect of hugging to protect one better from infection.”
That reminds me of the phrase "we have touched him" from 1 John 1:1, where the apostle emphasizes a physical, firsthand encounter with the incarnate Word of Life. While 1 John 1:1 refers to the Incarnation, this "touching" is extended to the Eucharist in Catholic tradition—as noted by St. John Chrysostom—where believers spiritually and sacramentally touch and receive the real presence of Jesus.
To receive Jesus with the proper dispositions in Holy Communion is to enter into a lifelong friendship with him, Pope Benedict XVI wrote.
Friendship with Jesus is interior; that is, it comes from within the mind and the heart, in union with him in your everyday work, even after Mass.
A woman said, “Years ago, after a bad day in court I asked Jesus for a hug. Then a lady, a kind stranger, came over and hugged me. Once I got outside the building a butterfly came over and brushed my cheek. I'd like to think that was a kiss to go along with my hug,
anchored in his eternal love.
In short, I think the task before us is to tell a more truthful story, one that reminds us again and again of our true happiness, our beginning and end in God.
