Glancing Thoughts

The Rock of the Church

Does God want us to be happy? How could anyone answer “no”? How could anyone suppose God is good or loving if it is not true that he wants us to be happy?

And yet look at Christ’s line in the Gospel reading. Deny yourself, Jesus tells his faithful followers; take up your cross and follow me.

Denying yourself seems the very opposite of going for happiness, and the cross is an instrument of torture. Why would God want these things for his people? Does God want us to be unhappy?

A man divorcing his unaccomplished, middle-aged, dowdy wife to marry a much younger, prettier, successful woman explained his decision to his devastated wife this way. “God wants me to be happy,” he told her, “and I can’t be happy with you. I will be happy with her.”

It seems never to have crossed the mind of this husband that God might have any care for his wife’s happiness. The husband’s full view of the matter could be put this way: “God wants me to be happy, but God doesn’t care at all about you.”

This little story, common in its selfishness, shows the sickness of the post-fall human condition, so apt to privilege its own power or pleasure over any greater goods. We can’t be happy in this condition, when we are glad enough to crush others to get what we want. What is to be done with us? What will make us happy? What will save us from the evil that infects us and leaves us so willing to afflict others?

This is where Christ’s line comes in. The route to the happiness God does want for us has to go through the cross of Christ. Christ is The Way for us, and the cross is where we meet him, for the road to our true happiness in love and holiness in him.

Eleonore Stump
 

**From Saint Louis University