Happy New Year!  It is officially here as the calendar has changed and the days begin to roll by.  I have already failed at my major resolution.  I blame it on the head cold I have had for the past week keeping me from doing many of my normal tasks. But that excuse works only so long and it is an excuse using the language from Resisting Happiness which begs the question…why am I resisting doing what I know is good for me?

It is a question that crops up again and again as you read (for me re-read again) the questions of resistance.  “God wants heaven for you even more than you want it for yourself.  When we resist happiness, we resist God and the-very-best-version-of-ourselves.  To resist God is to resist our very truest selves.” (p 17)  So let’s look at the two statements in the first and last sentences of the above quote.

Every parent, everyone who has played or worked on a team, every group exercise has been plagued with the problem that one or more members of the family, team or group has lost the ambition and desire to do the very best.  As a teacher I heard this complaint over and over again from students who in group projects would complain about having to do more work or receiving a lower grade because one member did not do their job.  I have coached teams that have had great potential but because of one or more members loosing focus or giving up have failed to reach their goals.  It is even harder to watch the dedicated player struggle harder and succeed even less the more the try to cover for their teammate.

Which flows into the second statement, the truest best-version of our self, occurs when we are who we are and not someone whom we are not.  As a team player we can only be who we are and play with the gifts and talents we have been given and have honed through time and practice.  When we seek to do more than this, to be other than who we are, we only fail more because we have moved beyond who we are and find ourselves unhappy and miserable around the team we should be celebrating and caring for.  The resistance to our truest best-version of our self occurs as we flail at a mythical and unreal goal of being gods to others.

Of course the other side of the coin is to seek to do less than who we are to be just a version of our selves not caring or seeking the very best in our relationship to God and to others.  Parents often voice this frustration in seeing the potential in their children lay dormant as time slips by…encouraging, prodding, nagging…etc.  In the hope they will light the small fire that will begin the blaze of good works.

This is what God wants for me and for you…that the small fire be lit within our soul that blazes up to do the good works of the Gospel.  Jesus said it and we should believe it, “I came to set fire to the world, and I wish it were already burning!” (Lk 12:49)  It is not the fire of destruction but the fire of passion and desire drawing us forth from our fear into the joy of living fully with one another.

I could list a thousand times when resisting happiness took my life away from union with God and the people whom I love and serve.  We know that prayer is the foundation for the relationship by which the world is set afire in love.  Are we willing to let Jesus light our heart on fire?  If we are then we are reading to stop resisting and begin embracing happiness.

God Bless

Fr. Mark