INSIDE america

Happiness Is Assured
It Is Only Because of the Encounter with Christ that We Can Say that Happiness Has Become Human Flesh

Recently, I was able to participate in the presentation of the edition in the Catalan language of Fr Giussani’s The Religious Sense in Barcelona, Spain. I will never forget the first question that followed my presentation. I had tied the book to the theme of the “Happening 2004” sponsored by Communion and Liberation college students at the University of Madrid a few days before: “Happiness is Assured.” It was a bold theme, especially with the memories of the terrorist attack of March 11th still very much vivid. At the end of my talk, a young woman asked me, “Why pursue happiness at all? Everything is based on self-interest. Why does the human being insist on happiness?” What follows are excerpts from my talk at the Madrid Ha pening, which I tried to summarize to that young woman. The right to the pursuit of happiness originates in the vocation of man and woman to an infinite destiny. The “pursuit of happiness” is thus a manifestation of the religious sense. It is a manifestation of the attraction to infinity inscribed in the heart of each human person, that is, in the experience of being a human person, in the experience of being an “I” who is the protagonist of free acts. Happiness is the experience of living and acting in harmony with this vocation to infinity. Creation, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are truly inseparable and define what it means to be a man or a woman, what it means to be a human person. Whoever does not pursue happiness has been wounded in his or her humanity. Whoever limits his or her search for happiness to something less than an infinite destiny has been wounded in his or her humanity. Whoever does not pursue happiness in all the levels of human experience has been hurt in his or her humanity. This wound is manifested in what Father Giussani calls the neglect of the “I.” This is, he argues, the greatest obstacle to living a fully human life. The first thing to notice in our investigation of this phenomenon is that our present confusion about this matter originates in a source external to us. It is not part of humanity as created. We are before an attitude that is learned. Without this external influence, the human person would not have to be motivated or interested in taking care of his or her own “I” by means of the pursuit of happiness. On the contrary, it would be precisely this pursuit of happiness that would define our human personhood as such. The neglect of the “I,” the loss of confidence in the existence of happiness, and thus the reduction or limitation of what is considered possible, the reduction of desire–all of this is the result of an anti-human education. The first inevitable and tragic consequence of the present confusion that “dissolves” the reality of the “I” is, at the same time, the dissolution of the word “you.” The present cultural atmosphere characterized by the neglect of the “I” makes impossible those inter-personal relations that express and strengthen our humanity and which are absolutely essential to the pursuit of happiness. Such is our present condition. In such a situation, how can we ever justify our conviction that happiness is assured? Our conviction is not the result of a logical argument. It is a reasonable judgment based on experience. It is the result of an encounter, of the encounter with Christ crucified and risen. Jesus Christ is that “You” that rescues the human “I,” becoming thus the basis of all our inter-personal relations. It is in this way that He reveals Himself to be the Redeemer of Man. The Divine Person, who is the Eternal Son of the Father, has entered inside the reality of Man, within that material, psychological, spiritual, and social dynamic that defines what it means to be a human being. He has become, so to speak, the decisive part of the process whereby the human “I” awakens to the reality of his or her liberty to pursue the quest for happiness. This is the “method” of our salvation. Everything else leads to abstractions, to a sentimentalism or a moralism that are simply unable to sustain the conviction that the pursuit of happiness is worthwhile. It is only because of the encounter with Christ that we can say that, in spite of all obstacles, of all circumstances, happiness has become human flesh. That is why happiness is assured.