Neither hath it entered into the heart of man what things are prepared for them that love Him.
The Joy of Our Life
Happiness – an Essential Impulse
Happiness is the possession and enjoyment of good. The pursuit of happiness is the occupation of mankind. We do not perform any act except for good; we do not take a step; we do not move a little finger; we do not so much as lift an eyebrow unless we see at the completion of the act the attainment of some good. Take good out of this world, and every man, woman and child would stop still and do nothing until good came back again. If there was no happy harvest, would the farmer work? If there was no salary, would the laborer work? If there was no profit to be gained, would the railroads run, would the factories smoke or the mills keep their wheels revolving? If there was no honor, no glory, no good for God or man, would writers write, or speakers speak, or statesmen govern? If no charity existed or other virtue, would the Church continue or the schools, or would the Sisters and priests sacrifice home and all to take their places at the altar or in the classroom? No, surely! It is good which keeps the world going. From the infant, whose longing for happiness is hardly known except in its weak, helpless cry, to the old, who totter feebly to the grave with the hope of immortality in their dim eyes, all are tending toward happiness. Even the deluded suicide strives blindly but desperately to reach the same goal by hurling himself to death. Happiness is the motive-power of mankind.
Happiness – an Impulse Towards God
Where does this universal, perpetual, invincible tendency come from and what does it mean? There is only one hand which can implant so deeply and so widely in man, and that is the hand of the Creator, and His purpose in setting the currents of our nature toward happiness was to start us toward Himself. The search for happiness is the search for God. “Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?” The longing for happiness fits wings to the soul of the Psalmist, and when he does fly to be at rest, what does he find? “If I take my wings early in the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall Thy hands lead me and Thy right hand shall hold me.” The truly, the only happy heart is the one which rests in the hand of God. It is that final goal of the happy heart which Saint Paul describes in the words of Isaias: “Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things are prepared for them that love Him.”
Happiness from Knowledge
What paradises have entered into the heart of man by the portals of the eye and ear and other senses of man! Nature has spread before his enraptured eyes its fairest scenes. The flowering plants, the falling water, the fields white to the harvest, the mountains lifting from green woods through dark forests to snow-white peaks, the ocean rolling off to the golden glories of the setting sun or breaking in silver spray on the beach, the arching vault of the sky with the bewildering succession of charms by day and by night, in storm and calm, these are the sources of happy thoughts which enter into the heart of man. And what is true of the eye is true of ear, and touch, and smell, and taste. Through every nerve there goes tingling the joy of life, in feel and savor, in sight and fragrance and sound, and all these joyous things gather in the imagination before they reach the heart and are made more attractive and enhanced a hundredfold.
Happiness from Lower Good
Eye and ear and imagination give happiness to the heart by the knowledge they bring, and that knowledge prepares the way for a more thrilling happiness. The charm of what is true goes not to the heart like the charm of what is good. God has given to man the necessary but dangerous gift of the passions. Without food and drink, and the marriage bond, and the home, the human race would cease to exist. To keep the world going, God made happiness attend upon the exercise of bodily appetites. Sin abuses God’s gift by perverting God’s purpose and making the gratification of passion the end of life. The virtuous use, however, of the passions has helped to make man’s heart happy. The swift couriers of the blood are forever bringing messages of joy and registering them in the heart in its increased warmth and activity, as day by day one after another of man’s desires finds rest in the lawful enjoyment of its proper good.
Happiness from Higher Good
The happiness of sense and the happiness of passion are intense and overwhelming, and yet there are truer and more lasting joys for the heart of man. The arts and sciences, professional life, successful commerce and skilled craftsmanship, the state and country with their high offices and praises of men, the delights of friendship and interchange of hospitalities, home and father and mother, God’s house of prayer and the sweet peace of conscience, are they not all fountain-heads of happiness? Does not every heart thrill at the mere enumeration of them and the memories they excite? Thence flows the steady stream of man’s purest and unalloyed joy.
Happiness from Highest Good
But after all that has been said the heart has still greater capacities for happiness. The eye is satisfied with the joy of seeing and longs not for the sweetness of harmony. The eye is made for one act and finds its delight in the successful completion of that act. The heart has larger capacities and a wider horizon. It tends, it is true, toward what it knows upon earth by sense and mind, but it also over-leaps in its flight the sky-line of time and creation, sending its desires to eternity and God. Like the panting bird which struggles convulsively in your hand and beats head, and breast, and wings against your imprisoning fingers in a wild effort to be abroad in the limitless sky, our hearts throb against the barriers of flesh and mortality and know they will find their perfect fruition in Heaven alone. “Thou hast made us for Thyself,” says Saint Augustine, “and restless is our heart until it rest in Thee.”
The Life of Our Joy
Christ Blessing Our Happiness
Early traditions say that our Lord was never known to smile, and His features have always received in paint and stone a solemn and deep seriousness, bordering upon melancholy. It is hard for the human heart to think that the Heart of Jesus could be happy when it always bore the weight of the Cross and was always overshadowed by the sad hill of Calvary. We cannot forget the dark vision of Isaias who saw our Saviour “despised and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, struck by God and afflicted.” However, of this fact we are certain, whether He felt happiness or not, at least He sympathized with it. There is not a joy which can enter the life of man from his coming into the world until his going out of it, which Jesus did not know and bless. He sanctified motherhood; He gathered the happy children around Him; by miracles He made happy His toiling Apostles, restored content to a marriage feast, filled countless hearts with consolation of new health and strength, and even opened the grave and woke the dead to life for the sake of sorrowing homes.
Christ Glad for Our True Happiness
But the Heart of Jesus was as sensitive to happiness as our hearts are, indeed more sensitive, because He denied Himself the constant experience of it which we feel or try to feel. His Heart not only sympathized with joy, it throbbed with it, at least in its most unselfish form. He came to save souls, and whenever He knew His mission was successful, His Heart was happy. The three parables, in which He gave to the Pharisees a picture of His merciful Heart, all end with joy at the conversion of the sinner. He was the original of these parables, and as His lost sheep, lost coins and lost children were found, He must have been happy at heart. When His disciples returned to Him rejoicing in the success of their first mission, He is said to have exulted in the Holy Ghost, crying out, “I give thanks to Thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth.” On one occasion the conversion of a soul filled Him with such joy that He would have none of the food His disciples, offered Him. “I have meat to eat which you know not,” He said, and pointed out to them countries white already to the harvest; There was joy for them all, for, as He went on to say, “He that reaps receives wages and gathered fruit into life everlasting that both lie that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together.” Again, it was that Same joy in the fact that souls were to abide in Him which made Him say at the Last Supper: “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you and your joy may be filled.” Finally, it is that same unselfish jay Which makes the Heart of Jesus rejoice daily even now with the angels when we and other prodigals come back to God.
Christ Winning Our Happiness
Yet, despite all that Jesus knew of man’s happiness and despite all He made happy, His Heart was usually unhappy. He took a Heart not because it was capable of joy, but because it was sensitive to pain. God gave us hearts that they might be happy; He gave Jesus His Heart that it might be sad. Indeed, the sadness of His Heart is the price of our gladness. Our thirst for infinite truth and infinite good would have been forever unslaked, had not the Heart of Christ shed its Blood •for us. He paid for every joy, and though one ransom would have done for all, He seemed to have wished to pay for every joy its corresponding ransom. The joy of all the senses of Christ suffered that we might have that happiness in our risen bodies. Honor and esteem delight us and will forever do so in Heaven because Christ suffered dishonor and insult. Home and friendship and love of parents, all that gives us the truest content in life and eternity, have drawn their power of consolation from the abandonment, desertion and dereliction of Christ’s crucified Heart.
Christ Sad for Our Happiness
What is most touching in the sadness of Christ’s Heart is the swiftness and ease with which it might have been removed. Christ enjoyed the vision of His Father all His life. He was in Heaven while still on earth. The full flood-tide of eternal joy might have at any moment inundated His whole body and made His blood-red Heart white as snow. What happened on Thabor could have happened even on the Cross, had He so willed it. The torment of dying by thirst is increased if water is near the lips, but cannot be touched. Such was the torment devised to punish sin in the fables of the old poets. The Passion of Christ in like manner was all the more intense because the horrors of His sufferings and death were a short distance from paradise, a distance which His generous love refused to lessen in the least. The Heart that might have been in Heaven, had He so willed it, was filled with pain and sorrow and laid open in death by a spear. And why all this? That our hearts might be happy, Saint John, describing the blessed, says: “The lamb which is in the midst of them shall rule them and shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life.” It is the Lamb of God which shall bring our thirsting hearts to the sources of unending joy where we shall drink and drink, and without satiety long to drink forever. There shall all hearts be happy because of the Heart of Christ. Such is His promise; such the foundation of our hope. “You now, indeed, have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice; and your joy no man shall take from you.”