Happiness. It’s what we’re all looking for. It’s what drives our every action. It’s what keeps us going each day. The desire for happiness. We all agree that happiness is what we’re after, but where in the world is it to be found? We look for it in so many of the wrong places. We look for it in fame or worldly honors, the affection of others, bodily pleasures, money, power, self-improvement… The list goes on and on. We will try anything to fill that void within us. That void where happiness is supposed to be.
But that’s just the problem. We’ll try anything…except God. Men will buy all of the newest gadgets with money they don’t have, they’ll engage in all of the most unnatural forms of human “love”, they’ll travel the world to get a few more “likes” on their social media, they’ll get addicted to anything and everything…except God. In our search for happiness, we eventually learn, though it’s a lesson we hate to admit, that none of these things mentioned above can actually satisfy us. None of them can give us that lasting and deeply rooted sense of meaning and fulfillment in life. None of them can fill the void. And yet…we still pursue them. For whatever crazy reasons, we won’t even give God a chance. We know that living a good life — a selfless and virtuous life, a life for God — would almost certainly give us the peace and joy we’re looking for each day. But is it worth the price? That’s the big question. Is it worth giving up my petty little attachments to this pleasure or to that gratification? How often have we answered that question with a ‘no’…
Yes, giving God a chance means giving up those things which are giving us the little “happiness” that we do have right now. That can be scary. That can terrify us. But let’s be honest. These things don’t really make us happy. Sure, they can give a few seconds of pleasure, a few tidbits of gratification, a few moments where the emptiness seems gone. But ultimately…they still leave us empty. They have left us empty in the past, they leave us empty now, and they will always leave us empty. It doesn’t matter how much of them we get…they can’t satisfy us. Sometimes they even leave in their path disgust and depression, or even despair. Look at the celebrity world if you ever doubt that.
Give God a chance. Give the way of virtue a chance. Give a life of selflessness a chance. We’ve been down the other paths. We’ve thoroughly seen and experienced what they can offer. It’s time to leave them behind and try the other road. The road that leads not towards self, but towards Christ on Calvary. The more that we truly live our life for God — by following His commands, by prayer and sacrifice, by striving to acquire the spirit of Our Lord Jesus Christ — the more we do these things, and continue and persevere in them, the more it is inevitable that we will begin to find the peace and happiness that we long for…even in this life. It’s only by forgetting ourself that we will find the happiness which self is looking for. “He that shall lose his life for me, shall find it” (Mt. 10:39). But be warned! God won’t give the sensible or surface gratification and pleasure that we may have associated with “happiness” in the past. He will give something much more — a deep and profound peace and joy, which the world cannot take from us. This peace and joy — because they are of God — will fill, and will continue to fill, that infinite void of our soul. We won’t regret having left behind these other things and their emptiness, even if our fallen nature will certainly cry out for them until the day we die. So take courage! God won’t fail us. He can’t. But don’t go to your grave without having given Him a chance…