Video Transcript
Emily: What’s the happiest you’ve ever been, in your entire life?
Edmund: Hmm. I can think of a lot of moments. The best ones that pop in my head are all with other people. But honestly, my son just entered middle school so what comes to mind is when he was a baby. I loved holding him and making him laugh and giggle. He’s growing up now, which is great. But I could have held him as a baby forever.
Emily: That’s interesting because every experience of happiness I can think of has this same fleeting quality. Being with family, spending time with my friends, a beautiful sunset, or an amazing concert… All the happiest moments never last. Or at least we never seem fully satisfied. As humans, we never seem to say “That’s it. I’ve had all the happiness I’ll ever need!”
Edmund: We can understand this better by recognizing what’s called the dignity of the human person. We are unique from the rest of God’s creation because God made us in His image and likeness.
Emily: This means that each one of us is a reflection of God. We are created with an immortal soul and with the powers of our intellect and will. With our intellect, we can know things and know God. With our will, we can choose how we act. Since we have an intellect and a will, we have freedom. Since we have freedom, and an immortal soul, we can experience love, truth, beauty, and goodness. Through these, we also experience happiness.
Edmund: By creating us in His image and likeness, God created in our hearts a desire for infinite happiness. Because God is infinite happiness itself.
Emily: God planned for us to share in his life of infinite happiness. This plan is what we call our divine vocation — or the fulfillment of the dignity of the human person.
Remember, the three persons of the Trinity are divine persons in a dynamic relationship of knowledge and love.
Edmund: God freely creates purely out of goodness and creates creatures like us who can share this knowledge and love in communion with him.
Emily: This is how we were created originally, in the Garden of Eden. God wants us to freely choose to be with Him, forever. In the garden, Adam and Eve chose to step out of the direct light of God’s happiness.
Edmund: This stepping out of the light of God’s happiness is the original sin. And through original sin, the image of God created in us was, in a way, disfigured. Our soul, our powers of the intellect and the will, were damaged and weakened. We lost our ability to choose to be in this full and unending experience of God’s happiness. This is why we need God’s grace. God’s grace is supernatural help that God gives us to choose to be with Him.
Emily: God is reflected in all of His creation. Imagine now that the light from God’s happiness is reflecting off all the things and people around us. Through his creation, we can experience some happiness here on earth.
With our intellect, we can see this goodness shining on and through creation, and know that God exists. With our will, we can choose to walk toward the light of God.
But this indirect, reflected light never lasts here on Earth. It’s not the full and unending experience of God’s happiness.
Edmund: Jesus is fully God, but also fully man. So in Jesus, we see the same dignity of the human person we have. He has an immortal soul, and powers of the intellect and will. Jesus has freedom and can freely choose between good and evil. But Jesus is also God Himself. Jesus enjoys the happiness of God. And Jesus, as the perfect image of God, is also not disfigured or weakened by sin.
Emily: Through Jesus, we are invited back to the happiness we were created for. Jesus offers us His life and grace, which helps us respond to God. By accepting life in Jesus we receive the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus lives in and through us. We still have freedom. But now, with the help of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the gift of grace, we can choose to step back into the light.
Edmund: Jesus gives us the ability to experience what we were created for. This life in Jesus allows us to fulfill our divine vocation, or how we were created to experience the happiness of God. This happiness of God is called beatitude.
Emily: The Catechism says in paragraph 1719, “God calls us to his own beatitude.”
We can begin to experience this beatitude here on earth. But we are meant for heaven, where we will experience the divine happiness, or the beatitude of God, forever. Life in Christ fulfills our divine vocation to beatitude. And this is the way we fulfill the unending desire created in our hearts for God’s own happiness.
