REJOICE AND BE GLAD; GOD’S RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS. (Homily for June 6, 2016. Monday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time.)


Bible Study:  1st Kings 17, 1 to 6 and Matthew 8, 1 to 12.


To be a man of faith is to be a radical in some degree. To believe in something you have never seen before or heard of and be willing to go through with it despite what the world thinks is a form of madness. It is this madness that made the prophet Elijah declare famine on an entire nation, this same madness that took him a place where ordinary birds became his cooks serving him breakfast and dinner on a daily basis. Can you beat that?

According to wildlife research, the raven happens to be the stingiest birds on the planet yet when God told Elijah that these birds would provide for him, he didn’t doubt a single bit. He went to the very place where God told him and waited for the ravens to bring him bread and meat. He did not ask how which bakery the birds would be using neither did he ask if the birds had graduated from catering school. He just went all the way because of his FAITH in the power of God.

How many of us today would be told to go to a desert and wait for birds to bring us food and would not hesitate? To have faith is to believe the impossible, expect the impossible and produce impossible results. Faith does not always make sense! But it works. To have faith in God is to live in manner the world may consider senseless, a manner which the world rejects and still find happiness.

Just take a look at the beatitudes. A careful examination of each of them reveals that they are the direct opposite of the world’s definition of happiness yet they are the very things that God recommends. It takes faith first to believe that within these seemingly senseless beatitudes are the secrets of happiness and even greater faith to actually live them out.

To be poor in spirit or to be meek and merciful in heart for instance is to allow people ride on you. Nobody loves to be taken for granted yet Jesus says this is the key to happiness. To have a merciful heart is to be willing to forgive always and despite whatever one may have done to you. According to the world, this is foolishness because if you keep forgiving, people would keep riding on you. But Jesus says, happy are you when you do so.

To be pure in heart is in the eyes of the world absolute rubbish. In a world that uses the word “meat” to describe the female gender, in a world that provides fashion for ladies to make them appear like barbeque, a world that elevates nudity, obscenity and indecency, one is made to believe that everybody is doing it. And so? Yet, Jesus says, your key to happiness is to have a heart that is pure like that of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Every wondered how Mary managed to treasure so many things in her heart and did not die of depression? The truth is that Mary actually lived a very blissful life. She was a happy woman because she was pure in heart. She was a happy woman because she did not go about trying to seek happiness from fleeting pleasures as the world does today.

To be a peace maker, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to allow oneself to suffer persecution for the sake of the Gospel is the world’s definition for fanaticism but the truth is that that is where true happiness lies.

Virtually everybody you know right now hungers and thirst for money with the belief that the more money I get, the happier I would become but the reverse is the case! To find true happiness, hunger and thirst for righteousness instead!

Be a peacemaker, mend bridges because quarrelling parties, don’t carry past grudges in your heart and your heart would be happy always.

Be prepared to die for the sake of doing the right thing because the joy of heaven is far far greater than anything we can think of imagine. No wonder the martyrs sang for joy when they were led to be fed with lions or hung.

The world is not always right. The fact that everybody is doing a particular thing does not make it the best way of doing it. If the world was right about what brings happiness, then why are so many people unhappy today? Why are millions jumping off to commit suicide day in day out? Why are people hooked on drugs and alcohol just to get by in life? If the world was right about money, sex and happiness, then how come there is still so much pain among the rich, the loosed and the addicts?

Let us Pray:
Lord Jesus, increase my faith to believe in you and trust that I would find happiness by following your beatitudes. Amen.


Good morning. Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you. Happy new week.

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