Lec # 134- 25 Sun of OT- Sept
20, 2015- Fr. Bresowar
My brothers and sisters in
Christ, it is good to be here with you once again to celebrate this holy Mass.
This past week I went on retreat with my brother priests in Cullman Alabama. It
was a good time to gather as brothers and be with each other, share in
fraternity, and listen with the words of wisdom from the master of the retreat.
This year the main focus of
the retreat was how to find happiness.
I do not know one person in
the world who does not desire to be happy. Everyone here wishes to be happy.
Happiness is really the goal of the human life.
Everyone desires to be happy!
Not everyone knows how to be happy, or where to find happiness. Young people
especially, often discover the hard way, that happiness, if looked for in the
wrong places, can lead to depression and despair. Many times people get
addicted to drugs because they only have a very low self-esteem, or they have
long patterns of abuse, or because they don’t know how to go deeper to find a
lasting and enduring happiness.
On the retreat, the master,
made four distinctions of happiness. Four different levels which everyone seems
to exist on.
On the first level, where he
says that most young people exist, and young adults, and even some older adults
are, is the level of Immediate Gratification. These are the people who move
from one drug to the next, one video game to the next, they are from one happy
moment to the next. The happiness they get is instant gratification but it only
last momentarily. And once it wares off they try to find the next thing to make
them happy. Often times living only on this level leads to depression, fear of
failure, lack of self-worth and boredom. Young people especially who live in
social media world without going much deeper begin to experience a deep hole of
emptiness on this level.
The master of the retreat
said it is not good to stay on this level. The challenge is to find a deeper,
lasting, more meaningful happiness.
The next level, or level two,
is the level of happiness one receives from personal self-achievement. This is
where many young people start to become competitive and their happiness is
often times related to how they do in comparison with others. If they see
themselves as better than others, they will tend to be happier. The problem
with this stage is that it can lead to jealousy, loneliness, and isolation and
cynicism. The amount of time one can be happy in this stage is longer than in
stage one, but still is very short.
Stage one and stage two is
where many many people are in the world. Happiness is often times short lived
and there is a big experience of depression and frustration because instead of
being happy most of the time, these people often feel only empty.
The challenge for young
people, and older people as well, is to exist not in the first two stages of
happiness, but in the last two stages of happiness.
In stage three, the
individual starts to look beyond him or herself to find happiness. They start
to look for happiness for others. They start to focus on what is good for the
sake of goodness. In this stage, pursuit of things like justice, and goodness,
and truth become more important. Decisions are made for the greater good, and
things like video games, and all the fleeting pleasures of the world become
less important. Also, how one compares with someone else becomes less
important.
Many older adults exist on
this level because they necessarily have to sacrifice for their children and
families. Happiness becomes more of seeing the good in others. Incidentally, if
we can avoid slipping back into level one or level two, this happiness seems to
last a lot longer. This stage is marked more by self-giving, and not so much by
trying to obtain happiness by being selfish.
The final stage, or stage
four, this is the happiness that all of us want. This is the type of happiness
that does not go away, it endures for ever. It is obtainable, but really only
insomuch as we are connected to Eternal Truth, Love and Goodness. The closer we
are to God in this stage, the happier we are. This stage may seem a long way
off to someone who only wants to be happy in the first stage, but this stage
really is the goal for all humans.
It is marked by the highest
truths, justice, beauty, and love. To obtain this level, we must pray and have
relation with God, seek the good of others, and live as Christ lived. Willing
to sacrifice for other even when they refuse to sacrifice for us. To look for
the good in others, and not to focus on the negative. People who seek happiness in this stage
generally stay happy. They see the purpose of their lives and the know where
they are going. They want to bring others to know and love God too.
Our challenge as adults is to
move ourselves out of the first two stages and start to purse stages three and
four. Once we do this, we then need to help our young people find true
happiness. This world doesn’t offer much to young people, and that’s why we must
help them find God, for only God gives lasting happiness.
