On this fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, my dear friends, let me ask you a question. Do you want to be happy? I think it’s a bit of a ridiculous question, actually, because every single person in the world wants to be happy. Even the people who are lost want to be happy. Even those who put on the act that they’re happy want real happiness. Those who are wealthy. Those who seek pleasure above everything else. Those who have power and those who seek honour. Every single person in the world seeks happiness.
So where do we find it? What makes us happy? If we were made and created by God, then there ought to be that thing that would most likely be most conducive to the happiness that God wants for us. So let’s look at the readings today.
First reading from the book of the prophet Zephaniah. And we see here that Zephaniah speaks to a wounded, shaken people. And what does God preserve out of this people? Not the powerful, not the arrogant, not the self-reliant, but — and I quote — “a people humble and lowly.”
Their happiness looks almost quiet. Listen to this. They take refuge in the name of the Lord — refuge. They do no wrong and speak no lies. Not very boisterous in their speech. They pasture and rest with none to disturb them. Look — silence. Happiness has less noise in its life.
So this is not the happiness of excitement or success, but the happiness of security, the deep peace of knowing where one belongs. Happiness here is being sheltered by God, living truthfully and no longer having to grasp or defend oneself.
And then, my dear friends, in the second reading, Saint Paul takes this even further, and frankly. He speaks of happiness as something that is uncomfortable to the modern ear. He reminds the Corinthians that God deliberately did not choose people for their wisdom, for their power, or their noble birth. Why? So that happiness could never be confused with self-importance.
Saint Paul is saying, if your joy depends on being impressive, you’re never going to rest. True happiness, he says, comes from knowing — and I quote — “it is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus.” In other words, happiness is received, not achieved.
It flows from realizing that our worth comes from God’s choice, not our résumé. Our Lord who says, “nobody goes to the Father unless the Son first beckons him, and nobody goes to the Son unless the Father allows it.” Joy is no longer fragile when it no longer depends on us, and if it’s rooted in God.
Finally, we get to the Gospel where Jesus speaks of the Beatitudes, a word that we can exchange for the word happiness. And Jesus makes it clear that happiness is found where the world would never look. Jesus climbs the mountain and turns everything upside down.
He makes of the Beatitudes not commands, but revelations. Jesus says, here is where happiness already exists, though you wouldn’t expect it. He calls happy the poor in spirit, the meek, the mourning, the hungry for righteousness, the persecuted, the pure in heart. Why?
Because all of these people have some things in common. They are not full of themselves. They are open to God. And perhaps most of all, they remain untainted by the world and the mentality of the systems of this passing generation. “Blessed are the pure in heart.”
Jesus is teaching that happiness does not necessarily mean absence of suffering, but the presence of God within it. And that’s why the final word is shocking — “rejoice and be glad.” Not because life is easy, but because God is near, faithful, and promises fulfillment beyond what the world can give or take away.
May Almighty God bless you.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Go in peace.
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