FR: GABRIEL ANTONIO I.

REYES
TO: REV. FR. JEFFREY B. ABEL
RE: REFLECTION ON ETHICS FOR THE MONTH OF OCTOBER
DT: OCTOBER 18, 2023

Hope to Find Happiness

“We all want to be happy somehow. For the sake of happiness, we are ready to do

everything just to have it.” In this month’s reflection, I would like to focus on “Happiness” as an

end, a vital factor affecting the philosophy of the present time, and a reason for our lives. With

this, I would like to raise the question: What’s with happiness? Why do we long for it? Is

happiness a necessity?

While having the lectures about the “ends of human acts,” it made me realize that most of

our actions are done because of a goal that is often to please, and satisfy ourselves, or in simple

words, to make us happy. We are driven to do actions that will help us to attain this. It makes us

unstoppable just to do and get what we want. Nowadays, more and more people are being

careless, thinking only that they are free to do everything they want. Sometimes they don’t think

of the consequences, and just live and seize the present moment. This is mainly the very reason

for the suffering and misery of a lot of people. They are rejecting the ugly consequences of their

actions because they want to live to the fullest. This is what the modern world teaches to people.

I saw the result of this kind of mindset from different social media platforms and the people

around me. After the happiness, comes the consequences and some are irrevocable, changing

their whole lives forever.

The very happiness that we call and consider good for us causes us to do wrong because

we always tend to be subjective on what is happiness. In our present time, relativism has become
more prominent to people, where there is no absolute truth, only what the individual or a

particular culture makes is only the truth. The only truth that matters. This prompts many people

to make perverted values and principles: justifying their wrong actions, excusing themselves that

it is “okay” because it makes them happy, and this is the truth in them. They don’t care about the

objective and ultimate truth. Instead, they make their reality, where they have their truth, good,

and happiness. But this is not what happiness means. There is something more and bigger than

this relativism, than this apparent and temporal happiness that people make and want.

The Church of God Himself offers us the greatest happiness, i.e., the greatest good, the

absolute, illimitable, perfect good which is God. If I think of this knowledge about God, I can

say to myself that I am truly one of those blessed people who can access such great happiness.

Billions of people are lost because of a wrong concept of happiness that they have made, and

here I am, possessing the right and perfect one. If only I could grasp and accept God, and what

He gives, I think my whole being would burst because of such great happiness.

Now, in the question “Is happiness a necessity?” My answer is yes. Every human needs it,

at least a little bit of it because I think this is what God wants. This is His original plan: to share

His divine life, and with His love. But the disobedience of our first parents distorted and

hindered us from fulfilling the plan of God. Thanks to God Himself, He gave us His son,

enabling us to taste and feel what God has for us. For as what the Catechism of the Catholic

Church tells us: “The desire for God is written in the human heart… and God never ceases to

draw man to Himself. Only God will he find the happiness he never stops searching for.” (CCC,

paragraph #27) And so, I believe that if we have God in our lives, all our actions will always be

directed to Him and for Him, hoping that someday we will enjoy the Happiness He gives.