Maybe success?
Way too many people, even priests, think that success will bring them happiness. Like the seminarian who tells himself that he will finally be happy once he is ordained a Deacon. Then the Deacon, who will finally be happy once he’s ordained a Priest. Then the Priest who believes he will finally be happy if he is just made a Monsignor. Then the Monsignor who will never be happy until he is made a Bishop. Then the Bishop who wants to be an Archbishop. And the Archbishop will finally be happy when he is named a Cardinal. Then the Cardinal who will only be happy when he attends a conclave to elect a Pope. And then he hits 80 and retires and asks himself, in the immortal words of Peggy Lee, “Is that all there is?”
The road to success may be satisfying for brief moments, but it’s not the key to happiness.
Well how about money? Will money make me happy? There’s a friend of mine who likes to say that if money can't buy happiness, at least it can rent it for a little while.
What if I won a million bucks; would that be enough to make me happy? Would it? Maybe not. One study shows that most young people who win the lottery or inherit a windfall will, after just five years, lose half of the money through poor spending and bad investments.
Another study tells us that 10 years after winning the lottery, the average winner has only saved 16 cents of every dollar originally won. Even worse, around 70 percent of people who win the lottery or get a big windfall eventually end up in bankruptcy. 70% of the time!
So neither money nor success will make me happy. But something else, or rather, someone else, will.
Did you hear Jesus instructing his disciples on how to preach the Kingdom of God, a few moments ago? Go from town to town, he tells them, and proclaim at the top of your lungs: “the Kingdom fo God is at hand!” But then he says something strange: “take nothing for the journey but a walking stick—no food, no sack, no money in your belts.” Don’t even bring a change of clothes.
Because none of those things are necessary. None of those things will bring happiness. The only thing we need, and the only thing that will make us happy is the love of God.
The Psalmist says as much: “The LORD himself will give his benefits; [in him] our land shall yield its increase.”
So, you wanna be happy? Just listen to Saint Paul: “be holy and without blemish before him.” Love God and love everyone he sends your way. It’s that simple.
Saint Francis of Assisi understood how to be happy. One cold winter’s day he was walking with Brother Leo, coming down from the Carcere, the winter retreat where he would pray for weeks at a time (even in the wind and the snow). Brother Leo turned to him and asked, “tell me, Father Francis, how to be happy? What is perfect joy?”
That’s a good one! Francis replied. For if we could perform all sorts of miracles, cure the lame, exorcise demons, make the blind see and bring speech to the dumb, and even raise people from the dead, if we could preach sermons that would convert the world…if we were successful enough to do all these things, we would still not have perfect joy.”
Then how do we find perfect joy, the puzzled Leo asked him.
Trudging through the snow, the shivering monks could see smoke coming from the chimney of a farm house in the distance, and as they got closer they could see a family gathered around a table before a roaring fire, each with a big dish of pasta in front if them, laughing and singing.
Ahhhh, brother Leo shouted. Now I understand, for soon these folks will invite us to sit by the fire and warm our frozen fingers and feed us a big bowl of pasta and sing with us and laugh. That is, assuredly perfect joy!
No, Father Francis said. That is not perfect joy. So they trudged on toward the monastery, where from a distance, Brother Leo could smell supper and knew that after the prayers the brothers would gather around the fire and sing together as brothers do and eat and be merry. That, he turned to Francis again, now I know what perfect joy is, Father Francis.
No, Father Francis replied. Now would not be perfect joy.
So the puzzled companion approached the big door at the front of the monastery with the the equally frozen Saint Francis. It seems that the door was manned by the youngest and newest of the monks, who had not yet met Francis or Leo, both of whom now looked like two scruffy and smelly bums, half frozen by the wind.
So when they knocked on the door, the young porter answered, and thinking them ne’r do wells, grabbed them both by the scruff of the neck and threw them into the snowbank, slamming the door behind them.
Brother Leo dusted himself off and ran to Father Francis, who smiling, looked up from the snowbank and said, There Brother Leo is perfect joy. To share in the suffering of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the most rejected of men. That, brother, is perfect joy.
Not in money. Not in success. But in littleness, joined to the cross of Christ. That’s the way to be happy. The only way.
