Where will I find happiness?

We are all searching after happiness. But where will we find it, where do we search for it? In this Sunday’s Gospel Jesus is warning us not to go searching in the wrong places.

Jesus is using very strong words, he tells us to cut our hands and our feet off if they cause us to sin and to pluck our eyes out if they cause us to sin. What is Our Blessed Lord playing at?

What have the hand, the foot and the eye in common? They all give us the capacity to go out of ourselves towards something else.  The hand can grab at something, the foot can walk towards something and the eye sees something. They all have the ability to get us to try for happiness outside of ourselves.

During the years of the celtic trigger we used our feet, our hands and our eyes to try and gain happiness. We spent millions and millions of euro trying to buy happiness. We travelled all over the world to arrive at it. We looked for it everywhere but in the one place we can truly find it. If we have not happiness in our hearts then all the grabbing, the running and the looking will be of no avail. If we think we can buy it, run after it or search anywhere else for true happiness than in our own hearts then indeed we will be in a hell and from this hell there is no exit.

Jesus wants us to be spared of this useless search for happiness anywhere but in our relationship with him in the interiority of our own hearts. It is the silence of loving adoration, of an open friendship with him in the secret of our own hearts that we find true happiness. If we look for it anywhere else we are on a fool’s errand.