Sunday, February 16th, 2025 – VI Sunday in Ordinary Time- Cycle C Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-8, Psalm 1 “ Blessed are they who hope in the Lord”, Luke 6:17, 20-26

                                                HAPPY FOREVER
 
God wants all men to be saved, which is why He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to bring us this good news. Deep within our being, we all carry an insatiable hunger for fulfillment. We seek health, satisfaction, intelligence, love, friendship, joy, perfection, and happiness.
 
Sisters and brothers:
 
1. It seems that people today only aspire to two things: "efficiency and profit". Jesus came to revolutionize these criteria by changing the hierarchy of values. If we wanted to translate the concept of “beatitude” into a modern term today, we could perhaps refer to the “complete realization of man.”
 
Jesus’s discourse has its central focus on human happiness. Happiness lies in constant growth, in developing freedom, justice, and love—yet through a process of struggle, dying to selfishness, perpetual inner change, and continual self-examination.
 
2. "Happiness!", that magical word we are all searching for, is at the heart of Jesus’s message. The Sermon on the Mount is stated in striking contrasts: “Blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who weep!” That is, behind the beatitudes there is a hidden moral revolution that involves moving from having to being, from being to giving, from having for oneself to being for others. His code of happiness is tremendously paradoxical, and he, in person, will be the exponent of that paradoxical happiness: through death on the cross, he finds his new life in the resurrection.
 
By discovering the dynamic of this passage, man discovers God’s secret, which also becomes man’s secret: to be for others, to give oneself to one’s neighbor. Those who have taken this message seriously—namely, the saints—have achieved happiness. We must pay attention to these words because they are the “heart” of his message.
 
3. True happiness is found by taking paths completely different from those that our current society offers us; according to Jesus, it is better to give than to receive; it is better to serve than to dominate, to share than to hoard, to forgive than to seek revenge, to create life rather than exploit. Jesus’s message decisively breaks with the world’s ideas of happiness: Happiness does not lie in power, wealth, or money, but in a way of life whose essence is service to the community.
 
God wants us to be happy. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice!”   (Phil. 4:4). Jesus himself is presented as the source of happiness for those who listen to his word, for those who believe in him, for those who follow him, and await his day. God wants us to be happy forever!

Source: ePriest.com / Best Practices and Homily Resources for Catholic Priests