Finding Happiness

Even when human nature has been restored in Christ it finds within itself a difficulty in tending towards God. The action of grace is gravely hampered by the triple concupiscence remaining in the soul after original sin has been purged away in baptism. Fallen man tends to be ego-centric, not theo-centric. The Christian struggle consists in a constant endeavor to reverse this tendency. It is a warfare against the concupiscences. Christ's life on earth was a plan of campaign which was meant to show the Christian how success in the spiritual warfare against the evil in himself was to be sucured. To the three concupisences Jesus opposes the appeal of His Poverty, Chastity, and Humble Obedience to God. To believe in Christ is to accept that the practice of these constitutes the good life. Christ's philosophy of existence is that God is the unique source of happiness, being essentially happy. He concludes, therefore, that man can be happy only in the measure in which he captures God's happiness. The way to this, He points out, lies through the conquest of self-indulgence, self-exaltation, and self-worship. Christ's sojourn on earth was a practical exposition of His philosophy of life.


- Fr. Edward Leen, Why the Cross?, pg. 181