This past Sunday I spoke a little about Happiness.
Fill in the blank: I will be happy if_____.
What does that blank consist of in your life. I suspect that if we have to put something extra in to our life or take something out of our life in order to be happy then we will never be happy.
Why do we put conditions on our happiness?
In large part we have bought in to the lie of secular society that has told us from early on that we need to add this or that in to our life for happiness. Secular society has fed us the garbage for years. ANd we have equated happiness with things outside of us.
What is the greatest obstacle to happiness? A mentor of mind, bishop, once said that he thinks the greatest obstacle to happiness is the fact we try to control what will make us happy.
As long as we try to control what will make us happy then we will always be dissatisfied.
We need leave ourselves open to surprises. Pope Francis often speaks about God being a God of surprises and we are too closed in on ourselves to realize the beauty of those surprises.
We have to stop manipulating our life and the lives of those around us.
God invites us to leave ourselves open to the unexpected, unimagined, inconvenient. If we can do this we can begin to experience happiness.
Like Peter in the gospel we cannot get in front of JEsus but we must stay behind and learn to pick up our cross daily. The cross is about opening ourselves up to the unexpected, unimagined, inconvenient.
Does we can think like God not like man. Man consumes himself with himself. We all want to be at the center of our lives: self preservation self-serving.
God always thinks of the other first regardless of the conditions. The cross of Christ reveals that God is self-giving, seeks the good of the other, he is one of service.
If we can flip our mind set, have a true renewal of the mind, happiness will be no longer at our finger tips but in full grasp.
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