Finding true peace and happiness

finishing Paragraph 27 of the Catechism:

“. . . only in God will he find the truth and happiness that he never stops searching for.”

I remember a quote from somewhere about a man who worked to climb to ladder of success only to find that when he reached the top he discovered that the ladder had been put up against the wrong wall.

We all do that at times. Don’t take my word for it: check out your life. Have there been times when you have been in pursuit of something that you thought would make you happy, only to discover that once you got what is was your happiness was either short-lived or even nonexistent? The same thing is true for peace. How many times, how may remedies do we try that are designed to give us peace of mind, only to discover that the peace we sought so desperately eluded us?

Only in God. That’s the answer in all its simplicity and in all its complexity. Only In God.

Cistercian monk Fr.Thomas Keating teaches that we have a number of “instinctual needs” that we are continually searching for: “survival and security, affection and esteem and approval, and power and control.” How do we try to get these things? How often are we thwarted in our quest? How many false solutions do we seek?

What is the remedy: Well, when we are searching for God, we discover that we have an “enormous capacity” for “growth, love, freedom, peace, service of others, and reaching out to those in need.” Those are the things that bring us what we have been searching for all along! And how do we learn to devote our lives to those things? Well, back to paragraph 27.

By the way, Fr. Keating also points out that when we push these things aside and search for false remedies, we often get ourselves into a great deal of trouble. This is how obsessions develop, or even addictions. Again, there is a remedy: back to paragraph 27.

Have a nice day.

Advance notice: I will be away next week and will not have access to a computer. I intend to post (with God’s help) tomorrow and Sunday. The next reflection after that will be on October 9. Please keep me in your prayers. Thank you.