happiness 2.0

Homily
4th Sunday of Ordinary Time
30 January 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
Daily Readings

Almost every scientist and philosopher agrees now that our universe has a beginning. The universe is neither necessary nor eternal. The universe is not God. It can be measured and a date can be given to its beginning. So far all efforts to show that the universe always existed or always will exist have failed. The most interesting debate currently, is between those smart people who postulate that the something of our universe arose out of the nothing of possibilities. Such agnostics point to the theoretical possibilites of billions of parallel universes to explain how such a statistically improbable universe like ours came from nothing. Theists instead say that it is takes less faith and is more reasonable actually to conclude that given the immense improbability of something coming from nothing, the beginning of the universe points to the action of a supernatural metaphysical intelligence that is the ground of all being.

Smart people likewise disagree on the moral universe. There are some who think the universe proposes a morality, a natural law, that can be agreed upon by human minds without reference to metaphysical universals or supernatural revelations. There are others who say that matter and energy while obeying physical laws have no capability of defining good and evil; as such, natural law must be grounded in divine law, a law that supersedes nature. Because of this we have a divergence between smart people who think that human actions while appearing to be free are ultimately determined by broader evolutionary laws, and those who find a radical spiritual freedom in man that is irreducible by nature.

Finally, there are smart people who argue that religion is the greatest problem in the world, for it distracts people from a real humanism that solves real problems in this real world, and those who while admitting that religions will always be filled with sinners, find in the contemplation of God's revelation of Himself, and obedience to God's commands, the most enduring hope for man understanding his deepest dignity, actualizing his greatest happiness, and realizing his greatest destiny.

Smart people will continue to debate these questions at the highest level. We should join them as much as we can, for such questions are always worth considering, and they pay great dividends for those who pursue better answers. The world will continue to be changed by smart people engaging such questions as well as they can, just as the world is changed by the honest debate between liberalism and conservatism, between capitalism and other economic systems, between democracy and others forms of government, between Christianity and other kinds of religion. The list can and does go on and on. The discussion goes on and on and on, like the rivalry between Mizzou and K-State and KU. Most of us have taken sides on many of these questions, and perhaps we're pretty sure of our position, and pretty sure we'll never understand how the other side thinks, just as we'll never fully understand how smart and good-hearted people can root for the Wildcats and the Tigers. Still, we know the discussions and the rivalries and the questions will persist, and human history will be written by how these questions play out.

The smartest people among us continue to make amazing discoveries and human knowledge grows at an exponential rate, so much so that college freshman today are the most anxious of any group of freshman in history, for you are going into debt so that one day you might find a way to be successful in a world that is changing faster than anyone can predict. Yet as much as human knowledge is progressing, an argument can be made that we are forgetting as much as we are learning. The great promise of progress gives way to discouragement when we see that we are not becoming better people. The science that can save lives can also be used to destroy lives. We have as much war, famine and persecution as ever. The same religions that produce saints are used as cover by suicide bombers. We have moved past the age of Enlightenment into the age of postmodernism, an age that desperately wants to hope but is devoid of new ideas on how to define and secure human happiness.

Happiness. This is Jesus' theme for tonight. What is happiness? Who is happy? Jesus on the surface in his beatitudes seems to try to trick his disciples, convincing them that misery now will pay off with happiness later. Yet contemplation of the beatitudes produces another payoff that goes beyond making an exclusive backroom bet or trade with our Lord. Jesus in pointing us toward heaven offers a transcendent happiness that can be lived from the inside out even as we try to realize a happiness that is delivered to man by the world from the outside in. In departing from the natural definition of happiness in such a radical way in the beatitudes, Jesus is proposing a transcendent happiness that begins not merely in a heaven far away from here, but a happiness that begins precisely where heaven and earth meet in the human heart.
So even as the fire rages on in the world, and the world is changed by human debates and struggles, between the smartest and the most powerful, and even as those of us with courage go into the world as Jesus taught us to redeem it by the bold proclamation of the Gospel to all people and nations, today's contemplation of the beatitudes command us to pay greater attention to how God desires to redeem the world from the inside out. Jesus chose to begin his mission with the weak of the world, with those who were sick in body and in spirit, and he never deviated from this mission until He had given His life like a lamb led to slaughter. Jesus never tried to win over the smartest, the most powerful or the most religious. He served the poor and defenseless, and gave his life like a lamb as a ransom for many, and in this He has changed the world more than any human person ever has. So St. Paul reminds us Jesus' disciples, that God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being may boast before God.

As much as the world is changed by exchanges between the richest, the most powerful, and the smartest, Jesus tells his disciples that the most enduring human progress is not achieved by these people, for too often we forget more than we learn, and too often we repeat the same mistakes, but man progresses most of all by those saints and heroes who pass over from earth to heaven in their hearts. Humankind only makes progress when that progess begins first in the human heart, in those who are not proud, who can weep for their friends, who want little for themselves, who work for justice, who know how to forgive and bring people together, who are single-hearted, and who offer their sufferings, and allow their blood to be shed, so that others may have life. This is where human happiness begins, deep within the heart of a human person who is capable of responding to Jesus' command to love others just as He first loves us.

In this week, we KU basketball fanatics will be changed more by praying for Thomas Robinson and his family, by mourning with him, and by supporting him as he moves through the grief and uncertainty of his situation to continue to sacrifice and to love and to become his greatest self despite having reasons not to. We will watch closely as Gabrielle Giffords in the coming months perhaps miraculously survives an unthinkably evil and senseless shooting, and pray God one day returns to the House floor to serve our country. More than any weather forecast or stock market report or debate about the origins of the universe, these stories and others like them, will continue to change the lives of real people like us as we watch people walk that line between earth and heaven drawn in the human heart, and we too seek the happiness that comes to those who are invited by Jesus tonight to cross over.