Our Happiness Depends on Our Attitudes

A few years ago, I was in a jam-packed bus in the scorching noon-time Manila heat. The man sitting on my right complained endlessly about the stifling heat while the woman on my left had her eyes closed as she silently thumbed through rosary beads. Talk about two completely different attitudes to the simmering heat and congestion! One person chose to complain endlessly into my ears (as if I needed to be reminded of the heat) while the other person decided to be in silent communion with God.

Above all things, our attitudes in life determine our happiness. Our conditions or experiences alone do not guarantee our happiness. Some persons can have the most beautiful experiences in life and still not be happy while others can maintain their happiness even in the direst of circumstances. It all depends on our habitual ways of thinking, acting, and reacting.

It is very interesting to note that Jesus addressed the Beatitudes to His disciples in the sixth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, and not to all who were following Him: “And raising His eyes towards His disciples He said, ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours.’” He seems to be reminding them that following Him was not enough. They also had to share in His own attitudes if they were going to share in His happiness.

The Beatitudes are rightly called “supernaturally blessed attitudes” because they are the attitudes that Jesus embraced in His earthly life that brought Him to true happiness. In addition, Jesus alone communicates these beatitudes to us through His Spirit. Jesus calls us to accept the privations we cannot remedy because He freely chose poverty for our salvation: “Though He was rich, yet for our sake He became poor that by His poverty we might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9); He calls us to bear hunger now because He chose to be hungry in the desert for our sake: “He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and after that He was hungry” (Mt. 4:2); He calls us to weep now for our sins and those who remain obstinate in their sins because He wept for us in His journey to Jerusalem: “He wept over the city, saying, ‘Would that even today you knew the things that would make for peace’” (Lk. 19:42); Jesus calls us to embrace our own insults and rejection because He is the Holy One who was “reckoned with the transgressors” (Lk. 22:36).

As Jesus’ disciples today, we also must cultivate the attitudes of Jesus if we are going to share in His happiness. His attitudes are the only ones that are divinely guaranteed to bring us true happiness in this life and in the next. The more that we share in these Christ-like attitudes and cultivate them, the more that we can maintain our happiness in all conditions and experiences of life.

There are three ways that we can begin to possess and grow in these beatitudes of Jesus.

First, we must have a trusting and constant friendship with Jesus Christ.

My late dad often told me, “Show me your friend, and I will tell you the type of person that you are.” He was trying to teach me that I would inevitably imbibe the attitudes of the persons whom I considered my closest friends. Nothing communicates attitude like friendships.

Jesus declared us His friends because He communicates to us all that He has from His Father: “I have called you friends because I have revealed to you all that I have heard from my Father” (Jn. 15:15). Our friendship with Him will impact our attitudes in this life.

How trusting are we in our friendship with Christ? Do we trust Him enough to be with us in all circumstances and conditions of our lives? Do we trust Him to constantly train us in His attitude, mold us into His own likeness, and forgive us when we fail? Do we trust in the power of His grace to bring us to act like Him? Do we trust Him enough to reward us for the slightest good attitude that we cultivate out of love for Him?

How constant is our friendship with Christ? Are we friends with Him in the favorable and unfavorable events and experiences of our lives? Are we holding onto His friendship when all seems lost and useless? Are we still friends with Him when we fall short of His standard of behavior and attitude?

The Lord cannot communicate and train us in His attitudes unless we are constant and trusting in His loving friendship.  

Secondly, we must renounce and reject our bad attitudes.

If our friendship with Jesus is authentic, it should also bring us to face our attitudes that are contrary to His own attitudes. Authentic friendships serve to make the friends similar. We will either abandon our friendship with Jesus or labor to imbibe His attitude. We will not find peace in our friendship with Him while holding onto attitudes that do not align with His own.

We can face our bad attitudes in life and bring them to Him in confident prayer. We must not pretend that our bad attitudes are no big deal. It is foolish for us to justify our bad attitudes by saying, “I was born like this,” or “This is how I was raised.” Jesus will slowly communicate His attitudes to us if we humbly offer our bad attitudes to Him and beg Him to infuse and train us in His.

Thirdly, we must think about eternity in all our choices and attitudes.

The beatitudes are dispositions of the present moment that seek a future, hoped-for result. Jesus possessed these beatitudes because He did not live for the present moment alone—“For the sake of the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2). Blessed attitudes are possible when we are focused on eternity while engaged in the present moment.

We too must not live for the present moment alone, seeking only to resolve present problems or gain temporal gains without thinking about eternity. This is why St. Paul warned us, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all” (1 Cor. 15:19). This means that we have no hope of sharing in Christ’s happiness if we are only focused on the gains of the present moment.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, our God is a communion of perfect happiness who longs to communicate this happiness to us through His Son, Jesus Christ. God desires our happiness more than we do. This is why He made us and redeemed us by the blood of His Son. We are not just meant to share in the life of Jesus Christ and His saving mission. We are also to share in His own happiness, His own blessed attitudes now, and in His perfect happiness in heaven.

No matter what our attitudes in the past have been, this is a good time to start begging for, receiving, and cultivating the supernatural blessed attitudes—the attitudes of Jesus—so that we can be truly happy in this life and in the life to come.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash