1.-The human being: seeker of
happiness ...
There are many concepts with which
we philosophically seek to define and embrace the entirety of the human being.
One of these concepts describes the human being as a tireless, permanent,
eternal seeker of happiness because in the daily minutia of everything
we do and experience, we want to be happy. Everything we live, then, is
conditioned, has meaning, courage and truth in so much as it makes us happy.
2.- The Christian religious experience is,
then, for the happiness of the human being ...
Particularly, religious experience, as a model
of the mission, vision and values in the lives of human
beings and social institutions, plays an important role in this search for
happiness. The different religious experiences and institutions must help to
make the follower and believer happy. The Christian religious experience,
therefore, must help us, the believers in Christ, to be happy. This must happen
so that the life and mission of Christ has, then, validity for his disciples.
Twenty centuries of the Church’s evangelizing
work in the world has not succeeded in showing and establishing the synonymy
and coincidence between salvation and happiness, between eternal life and
happiness, between the full and abundant life that Christ brings us and the
happiness that every man and woman seeks while they live.
This explains the
inconsistencies, hypocrisies and the permanent divorce between our faith and
our daily life. For, on the one hand and in the margins of our personal, family
and social histories, we seek the salvation that Christian religious faith
offers us and, on the other hand, further away and almost always in contrast
with our religious experience, we seek happiness.
This divorce, these
inconsistencies, and hypocrisies disappear from the lives of Christ’s disciples
when we discover that the health, salvation and eternal life offered
by God through His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, fundamentally coincide with the
ceaseless yearning for happiness that every human being experiences;
when we discover that, as was
beautifully expressed in the Second Vatican Council, "the truth is that only
in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.” (GS22); when we discover that our life is illuminated and interpreted from and in the life of
Christ; when we discover that our search for happiness and humanization finds
in Christ and in his Gospel "the Way, the Truth and the Life" that
makes us happy, that is, that saves us; when we discover that our choices,
works, loves, sacrifices, renunciations, crises and achievements are understood
and acquire meaning from the life, the options, the passion, the cross, the
death and resurrection of this same Christ.
Thus, one can form an understanding of the human and ceaseless search for happiness from this beautiful and wise definition given to us by Saint Augustine: "You have made us, Lord, for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”
3.- The search for
happiness and religious experience is lived in
context ...
But the pursuit of
happiness and Christian religious experience, like all religious experience, is
lived in time and in space, not in a bubble; that is to say, in historical,
social and cultural context. The pursuit of happiness is experienced by each person
in the here and now of their personal, family and social conditionings and
historical-social circumstances. That historical-social context is different
and changing in the history of each human being and of all humanity and,
therefore, produces and introduces nuances, interpretations, changes, and
variations in the notion of happiness.
4.- Our current historical-social context: transition from modernity to postmodernity ...
To those who are here, to the inhabitants of
the planet Earth of this time in which we live in a context that we call: the
transition from modernity to postmodernity, it is a context and a historical
moment with globalized characteristics that make us how we are, think as we
think and act as we act today, unlike how our ancestors lived, felt, thought,
acted and hoped.
We can succinctly say that the man of today seeks happiness by exercising power that tramples, crushes and oppresses. That today, we confuse happiness with the pursuit of the pleasure of the senses as the absolute beginning and end and regardless of the means to achieve it. We achieve this power and pleasure by accumulating material possessions, goods, riches in a network of interpersonal, social and regional relationships in which one’s power and pleasure grow as the money one boasts of, manages, and accumulates increases. All this stands in total and absolute opposition to the principles and values that emanate from the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth who taught us that we are brothers, children of the same Father, who understands power as service, finds pleasure in the generous surrender of one's own existence at the service of our most helpless brothers, and who has the capacity and ability to share whole-heartedly, compassionately, and harmoniously.
We find ourselves
in a historical-social context, moreover, that is characterized and lived in
the middle of conflicts and crises of the following types:
· Personal
(especially, the loss of absolute truths and with it, the meaninglessness of
life),
·
Family (especially
divorces, separations, and new family models),
·
Social
(problems in politics, labor, health, education and housing, injustice and
inequality, administrative corruption in governments and a thousand forms of
violence, inefficiency in public services, etc.)
·
Regional, national and international (clashes between different political, ideological,
governmental and economic models, internal violent conflicts and bellicose
conflicts between nations, migration conflicts, displacements, famines, etc.)
·
Natural (earthquakes,
hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, etc.)
All these circumstances of our current historical-social context push our beliefs, our faith, our hope, our Christian religious experience to begin to be lived less by tradition and more by conviction; less as a set of external rites and displays divorced from our everyday reality and more like a lifestyle - according to the gospel of Jesus Christ - that permeates our personal and family lives and relationships and our social, political, cultural, economic, national, and international institutions.
Our
historical-social context pushes and conditions us, here and now, so that our
search for happiness-salvation through our Christian religious experience is
"like one who is going to construct
a tower or who is marching into battle..." (Lk 14:28ss). That is, a reasoned, reasonable, free, informed and intelligent
Christian religious experience that allows us to "always be ready to give
an explanation to anyone who asks us for a reason for our hope" (1
Pet 3:15). Christian experience that becomes in us a fundamental
option of life for the person, the life and the gospel of Jesus Christ, until
we can shout like Paul of Tarsus. "I live,
no longer I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20).
5.-Christian Happiness-Salvation ...
Throughout these reflections, I have been
showing what forms the notion of happiness for the disciples of Christ: to live
their own life, to live daily the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. To
live each moment of our lives as children of God and brothers of all in order
to establish personal, family and social relationships that enable and build
"abundant happiness and life" (Jn 10:10) for all. ...
6.- An invitation: to live the Christian experience without fear, without apprehensiveness ...
The historical-social context described above,
in which we are pilgrims and live our faith and our Christian hope is, due to those who seek controversy or do not believe
in the Gospels, challenging. For "the
harvest is abundant but the laborers are few" (Lk 10:2).
What do we do as Christians in today's world and before the panorama so briefly described here? Are we to become disheartened, discouraged?
Press on today, listen, one more time, to the
voice of Paul that encourages us, telling us: "We are persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed…
(2 Cor 4:9), because it strengthens our certainty of
happiness-salvation in Christ, who tells us: " Take courage, I have conquered the world” (Jn 16:33).
I invite you to return to our first Christian vocation: that of being a light in the midst of darkness and salt (Mt 5:13) in the midst of our current circumstances made unsavory by inhumanity.
I renew your invitation so recently made to
all of today’s disciples of Christ by Pope Francis in the Apostolic Exhortation
"Evangelli Gaudium”: to live a newly happy, joyful and rejoicing Christian
experience. To be witnesses to the happiness-salvation that Christ gives us in
the daily routines of our personal, professional, family and social lives. To
live without fear of our baptismal commitment. To live with the joyful trust of
the children of God and, consequently, to be able to establish relationships of
compassion and mercy - as God loves us - with all the men and women within our
lives. To live as missionaries of the joyful hope and good news of the gospel
in the world today, as daily witnesses of the happiness-salvation that we find
in Christian life. As men and women who are happy and transformed in Christ,
with vision that - from and through the gospel - allows us to see everything
with the joyful confidence and hope of those who know that "the bridegroom is with them" (Mt 9:15), "always
until the end of the age" (Mt 28:20).
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