Commissioned: Real Love: Discovering God's Heart for YouSample

Abundant Life

In his book, I Want You to Be Happy: Finding Peace and Abundance in Everyday Life, Pope Francis writes, “We are not alive by mistake. God desired life for us. He created us because he wants us to be happy. He is our Father, and if our lives in the here and now are not what he wanted for us, Jesus assures us that God is working to redeem us.” What a wonderful thought: God wants to redeem us from unhappiness! In his book, Pope Francis challenges us to think of the things that bring us happiness: love, forgiveness, beauty, big dreams, the freedom to take risks, the friendship of others, hope for the future, the knowledge that we are destined for great things. These are all holy things. Holiness and happiness are made for each other.

"God created us to be happy, and whatever he does in our lives is designed to make us happy!" This is not how we usually think of religion. We often think that religion is designed to make us miserable, to take from us the things that will make us happy. This is because there is a “thief,” a liar, who comes to steal, slaughter, and destroy. This thief—the devil—tells us that we cannot be holy and happy at the same time. But in fact, only those who are holy are truly happy.

Jesus said, “I am the gate.” Jesus’s teachings are the way to life. Obeying Jesus brings us happiness. The thief tells us that freedom from God’s rules will make us happy. But it never does. It is obeying God’s rules that make us happy. Saint Paul said, “I am a slave of Jesus Christ.” He also said, “It is for freedom that Christ has set you free.” This seems like a contradiction. How can slavery make us free? Bishop Robert Barron explains that Paul is not speaking of the freedom to do whatever we choose to do, but the freedom to live with excellence:

The more I surrender to Christ Jesus, who is himself the greatest possible good, the very Incarnation of God, the freer I am to be who I am supposed to be. The more Christ becomes the master of my life, the more I internalize his moral demands and the freer I am to be a child of God and to respond promptly to the call of the Father. Finally, human beings are not hungry to choose; they are hungry to choose the good. They don’t want the freedom of the libertine; they want the freedom of the saint.

We want the freedom of the saint! Abundant life begins now, not in heaven. Heaven will be even more wonderful, but God intends that our lives on earth be abundantly happy. Let’s not allow the thief to rob us of the happiness that God has for us. Jesus promises that we will have life and have it more abundantly. We can “just barely” have life, or we can have more abundant life. The process of becoming holy is the process of having more and more life. Saint Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” God glorifies himself through us by giving us more and more life—by making us happier and happier! Let’s be fully alive!

Stop, think and pray:

Let’s thank God for his desire to make us happy and ask for his wisdom about how to be happier. Let’s think about the things in our lives that truly make us happy—good relationships with those close to us, bold plans for righting wrongs, good dreams for our future, etc.. How can we increase our happiness today by giving our energy to these things? What are the things in our lives that are draining our happiness? How can we get rid of them?