IT’S GOOD TO BELIEVE
It’s thought that faith is something that at the least has to do with the eternal salvation of the human being, but not with the concrete happiness of every day, which is what interests us right now. Even more. There are those who suspect that without God and without religion we’d be happier. That’s why it’s healthy to remember some Christian convictions that have been able to be forgotten or be covered over by a wrong or insufficient presentation of the faith. I have a few here.
God has created us only for love, not for God’s own profit or thinking about God’s own interest but seeking our happiness. To God the only thing that’s interesting is our good.
God wants our happiness not just starting at death, in what we call «eternal life», but right now, in this life. That’s why God is present in our existence developing our good, never our destruction.
God respects the laws of nature and the freedom of the human being. God forces neither human liberty nor creation. But God is next to us supporting our struggle for a more human life and drawing our liberty toward the good. That’s why, at each moment, we can count on God’s grace so we can be the happiest possible.
Morality doesn’t consist in fulfilling some laws arbitrarily imposed by God. If God wants us to listen to the moral demands that we carry within our heart, it’s because their fulfillment is good for us. God doesn’t forbid what’s good for the human being or oblige us to what could be damaging. God only wants our good.
Being converted to God doesn’t signify deciding for a more unhappy and tedious life but orienting our proper liberty toward an existence that’s more human, more healthy, and definitely happier, though it demands sacrifices and renunciation. To be happy always has its demands.
To be Christian is to learn to «live well» following the path opened by Jesus. The Beatitudes are the most meaningful and «scandalous» nucleus of that path. One walks toward happiness with a simple and transparent heart, with hunger and thirst for justice, working for peace with bowels of mercy, supporting the weight of the path with humility. This path mapped out in the Beatitudes brings us to know now on the earth the happiness lived out and experienced by Jesus himself.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
