The Secret to Real Happiness
The struggle to a good Lent is not to do more, it’s to do less. As you free up space in your heart from the things you’re attached to, God and his love for you can get in and fill the voids you’re filling with everything else.
Have you gotten tired of fighting the world? Struggling to get that amazing job, that big promotion, the house, the fancy car, that perfect trip with Instagrams to make everyone jealous? Grown tired of news that has nothing but doom and outrage? The job/coworker/boss that gets you down? The family member or relationship that just doesn’t seem to be working or has gone sour? Yet it never seems enough. We know that just like the last big thing we got – we’ll soon be looking for the next thing. The slog just sort of…keeps going but we’re not any more happy.
I was in adoration and thinking about what I was going to do for Lent – and things I had done in past Lent times.
When I was very young, I did things because my parents told me too. I certainly didn’t see any value in giving something up or having to have fasting days. I did it out of obedience. It felt like dragging big buckets of water up a hill. It wasn’t fun and I didn’t think I learned much more out of it than sacrifice, like going to the gym, was hard work. It certainly wasn’t something I wanted to dedicate my life too. Those saints were masochists.
As I got older, I saw my religious practices very much like going to the gym. I knew I needed to do it to stay healthy and in shape, but it sure wasn’t fun. I was still dragging each bucket of water up the hill – huffing and puffing all the way. All trying to do it with my own strength and willpower. Like a lot of gym memberships in February, I wasn’t very successful some years.
After experiencing a great spiritual awakening during my opening years of adulthood, I embraced spiritual growth much more fervently. I had fallen in love with the Spirt and Jesus – but was pretty misguided at times. I spent large amounts of my energy doing lots of activities. Some of them, especially the ones where I connected with others, were very rewarding. Prayer was exceptionally rewarding – I discovered (as Teresa of Ávila said) I could just sit with Jesus wordlessly and experience his deep, abiding love. But I was still very focused on the ‘doing’ part of my faith life. It lead me to always questioning if I was doing what I should be doing and wasting a lot of time on things I thought I should be doing (volunteering for things, speaking out for things, getting involved in projects, etc). It’s not like these weren’t good things – they certainly were. But like before (and the gift of hindsight), many times I ended up pursuing my goals, my ideas, and again, doing them with my strength.
This Lent a visiting priest said something very powerful that finally opened a new door of insight. As I sat reflecting on it in adoration; a wisdom swept over my understanding. His statement was simply this:
The key to a happy marriage, happy priesthood, or whatever our vocation – is to always be making more and more room for Jesus so he can fill the gaps we open up with his kind of love, understanding, and way of life. That is what picking up our cross every day and following Jesus means.
Taking up your cross/Lenten penances are not willfully deciding that you’re going to do a bunch of good deeds that day, deny yourself everything but bread and water, or found a new religious order. That’s more dragging heavy buckets up the hill.
It’s flipped, reverse it. Instead of trying to lift heavy burdens and fighting a behavior, you must simply name that part inside yourself at each moment and invite Jesus, who can heal every disease, in to each area of your heart as you go through your day. You are not fighting against the injustice/disappointments/expectations out there in the world, you are quietly and constantly living with your friend Jesus in your heart more and more. Listening to his quiet voice in each encounter – walking with Jesus every moment of our day.
It’s astounding. It’s so obvious. Anyone who has tried will find they usually cannot change the world around us – all we can certainly change is ourselves. We don’t have to figure out how to beat our impatience – Jesus, who can cure every illness and heal any heart – already knows how with a word. We have the simple part. All we need to do is hold it out there and make it a moment of encounter with Jesus. This is why the man in the temple who simply said, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner” left justified, and the Pharisee who was doing it through his own willpower actually wasn’t connecting with God at all. He didn’t need God.
If you are impatient, it’s not about trying to make yourself be more patient. It’s about recognizing when it’s lacking and using that moment to step back, prayerfully connect to Jesus, and make it a moment the two of you can laugh together at the absurdity of our lives. It’s not a slog of fighting against the frustration of an old lady counting out each coin one at a time at the checkout, it’s inviting your deepest lover into that new corner of your heart. Until there is nothing left but intimate love that fills every part of you.
You can walk through the day and do this constantly. In this way, we walk through every moment of the day and each and every moment can be an encounter with our lover. This is why saints saw struggles as moments to be treasured. This is why they sought out great penances at times – because it helped them find the corners of their hearts that were still troubling them from being at peace.
In the 1500s St. Charles Borromeo was the Archbishop of Milan. He and couple of other priests were playing a game of billiards. While the game was going on, one of the priests said: “What should we do if we knew that the last judgment would take place in an hour?“
One said: “I would kneel down immediately and pray for the next hour, until the end of time came.“ The next one said: “I would go to one of you for confession and confess everything I did wrong in my entire life to have a clear conscience.”
They waited to see what the Archbishop would say… after a moment of silence he bent over and stuck the ball with his stick and said: “I should quietly continue to play the game, because I began it with the intention of honoring God.“
The archbishop was simply going about his day trying to bring Jesus love into that part of his heart. It’s in this way, when we’re walking through even the most mundane things, we can be always be making more space and making that space an encounter with Jesus. It’s not fighting things ‘out there’, it’s about inviting and loving ‘in here’. When we change ‘in here’ to be Jesus – we now live and love as Jesus did. We can get ourselves and our egos – the things always seeking more and are never satisfied – out of the way and simply live in the radiant love of Jesus more and more. We become Jesus for others. We find peace because we’re living in it – constantly.
This is real freedom and real happiness. It means we never even fear our own end – because we have been living each moment with Jesus. We simply move from imperfect vision to perfect vision. From being with our lover imperfectly – to being with Him perfectly. The only sadness is that we wouldn’t have more time to learn to love Jesus better and become an even greater saint in heaven.
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