A reflection by L.J. Milone, Director of Faith Formation
Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle
L.J. shares the following reflection on Sunday's reading from the Gospel according to Luke:
He made it. Trevor sat down in his chair of hand-crafted Corinthian leather, leaned back, and smiled. The CEO had just promoted him to the board. His career had finally paid off. Now he would make triple what he made as an associate, which was already in the six-figure range. Reveling in his new position and dreaming of the money he would be making, Trevor glanced at a photo of his family on his desk. He smiled again. His wife, Patricia, was a gorgeous woman who modeled to put herself through medical school. Currently, she served as the chief surgeon at the city's most prestigious hospital. Their children, Sally and Charlie, were constantly at the top of their classes. He felt tremendously proud of his family. He couldn't wait to tell them he was promoted and that they would be spending three weeks in Monaco to celebrate. Truly, Trevor thought, this is happiness.
Trevor’s idea of happiness is wrong. We all have different ideas of what happiness is. My idea of happiness is drinking an India Pale Ale while watching a Marvel superhero movie. It is just as false as Trevor's idea of a happy life. There are many things in life that give us pleasure and thrills, but Jesus reveals how these things do not come close to true happiness. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus shows us real happiness and the path we must take to discover this happiness. This path involves letting go of everything limiting us, everything blocking out love.
Seeking divine joy
Jesus says, "I have come to set the earth on fire." Jesus has a mission. He is burning to set us on fire with divine joy. For him, happiness is found only in God. God is our happiness here and now. Jesus might refer us to Psalm 16:2: "You are my God. My happiness lies in you alone." This God who is our joy dwells within us. All we have to do is drop our ideas of happiness and connect to this divine joy by the prayer of pure faith. We have to remember, though, that this happiness of the Gospel is not emotional happiness. Rather, it is the delirious joy of knowing the God within on a level deeper than thinking and feeling. Knowing the joy of God within is nothing other than the state of contemplative prayer.
We convince ourselves we need certain things, people, or experiences to be happy. I'll be happy when I get my degree. I'll be happy when I have some alone time. I'll be happy when I save a little more money. These are false. Real joy lies within us. We don't need anyone or anything to be happy. Joy is not based on any external circumstance. Jesus lights the fire of divine joy from within because God dwells within.
Happy and holy people, though, are not always received well. Jesus knows this. He knows his presence and message will provoke resistance. There are people in the world who want things to stay as they are. Those of us who follow Jesus and his way of Gospel joy will see the need for change. Therefore, division is inevitable. Jesus asks his disciples, “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” Happy, holy people threaten us and our programmed world, because we are all invested in ideas of happiness contrary to God and to love. Jesus seems to be saying, “If you want real joy, you will have to let go of some things you may never have thought were attachments, and this is going to upset everything in your life.”
We're all mixed up over what makes life joyful. Some of us think money, power, and fame create a life of bliss. Others think it is found in some particular object or lifestyle. Still, others believe relationships constitute happiness. Every single one of these ideas is an illusion because no thing, no experience, no position, no amount of money, and no relationship lasts forever. None of them can make us truly happy. When we realize this we come close to realizing the incomprehensible joy that abides in us. To realize this mystical bliss, we have to drop our wrong ideas of happiness and sink into Holy Mystery. This requires letting go and surrendering to God. It is, again, the contemplative state. Over the next few Sundays Jesus teaches us the path to happiness is a path of nothingness. He will tell us to be last, to take the lowest place, to humble ourselves, and to let go of both our primary relationships in life and our own identities. All these sayings point to practicing nothingness within and discovering the blissful nothingness of God. This is real joy, Gospel happiness.