Everybody seeks happiness in life. But not everybody seeks happiness in the same way.
Some feel that they will find happiness through wealth or power or fame or pleasure.
The truth is that happiness is only found by becoming who we were meant to be by living out the human nature that God created us to be. This is the Gospel message of Jesus today.
Last week we heard Jesus proclaiming that the kingdom of God is close at hand, he calls his first followers and heals the sick. Today Jesus begins his teaching ministry.
Matthew’s Gospel is always comparing Jesus with Moses. Like Moses, when Jesus was born, children were killed. Like Moses, Jesus comes from Egypt. Like Moses, Jesus goes up to the mountain now to bring God’s law. But Jesus now comes to perfect that law in us that God gave through Moses.
And so today, Jesus gives us a new way of being with God, a new relationship with God.
Jesus presents us with the key to peace and happiness in our lives in the well-known ‘Sermon on the Mount’.
The Beatitudes forms the essence of Christian discipleship. It is a new way of living and loving. It is the way to holiness and wholeness, of being a total human person created in the image of God. The Beatitudes are in fact a contradiction with the worldly attitude of what success and happiness is.
Here, Jesus teaches us that it is by having a right relationship with God, others and self that we will find peace and happiness, now and in the future.
The poor in spirit are those who recognise our need of God and the gift of God in others.
The gentle are those who always put others before self.
Those who mourn are those who suffer because out of love they feel in their heart the suffering of others.
Those who hunger and thirst for what is right seeks right relationship with God and others.
Mercy is the fruit of love that seeks to heal and to reconcile.
The pure in heart are those who can see the goodness in others and respect their dignity.
The peacemakers are those who are at peace with self and others because they know that God is with them.
Those who seek justice, seek God’s kingdom because in God’s Kingdom is perfect justice and peace.
There are many roads we can take in search of happiness. Many of them like power, wealth, fame and pleasure end up in dead ends, and they are covered with human wreckage, the injuries we inflict on others. We will feel empty at the end of the day.
And it is also not what we do that brings happiness no matter how good that can seem to be. For instance we can give to charity and yet not be happy if we give grudgingly or reluctantly.
The Beatitudes reveal that happiness is found in WHO WE ARE when seen in us the living Grace of God. For then we become truly human created in the image of God, we are One with God.
Merredin Catholic Parish 