The Beatitudes, The Jesus Way of Happiness, Jesus way of Life, Happiness

1. Want to be Happy?
Lesson #2

2. WANT TO BE HAPPY?
 Have you ever wanted something so
badly that you cannot think about anything
else?
◦ Have you ever look forward to your birthday or
Christmas, so much that you cannot sleep at
night?
 We all know what is like to be burst with
exited about something good we want to
happen.
◦ You maybe looking for saying your friends about
your new game
◦ And maybe others are just waiting for their next
change to play basketball
 Each and everyone of us, even though we
want different things, we want the same
thing
 You, I, others, and all of us want to be
happy!

3. Happiness
 One of the greatest thinkers of all time said:
 That Happiness is that, everyone desires.
 In this lesson we are talking about HAPPINESS.
1. We are going to find, what happiness is?
2. How to find good happiness that last forever?

4. Happiness
 Jesus actually thought us all about this
◦ by his example,
◦ and also by his teachings
 We going to learn what he thought about
happiness
 But before let me introduce you a good
hunter,
◦ He was not in a hunt for animals,
◦ he was a hunt for happiness.
 It took him a long time to finding it
◦ He make many mistakes along the way
◦ But once he found it,
◦ he told everyone who will listen about true
happiness.

5. Saint Augustine
 Many year ago was a man, named
Augustine; he was from North Africa
◦ For long time his mother Monica pray and
pray for him
◦ She wanted him to be a Catholic as she
was, and to become a good man.
 God was listening to her prayers even
though
◦ Saint Augustine did not seem changing his
ways.
 Augustine used his smart mind and kept
thinking
 and try to find what was TRUE and GOOD

6. Saint Augustine and the Truth
 For a while he will put all his energy in thinking
about and doing about,
◦ what one group of people thought it was Truth.
◦ Then he will change and began following another group
 Nothing seems to make him fully happy
 And then one day it happened.
◦ He walk into a church and
◦ he hear someone preaching about the WORD of God: The
Bible
 The preacher’s name was AMBRONSE; He was a
brilliant man who spoke so well of God
 That Augustine was convinced, and at last he had
found the Truth.

7. GOD WAS THE TRUTH
 God was the TRUTH
◦ Later Augustine will write his life story in a
book called: THE CONFESSIONS
◦ In it he called God by beautiful names he
wrote:
◦ Oh! Eternal Truth, the True Love and Beloved
Eternity!
 He came to see that God is Truth, and He
had away with words write this:
◦ Our hearts are restless,
◦ until they rest in you O Lord my God”
 That means that we are not happy until we
are living with God.
 This was a very Great discovering for saint
Augustine.

8. GOD WAS THE TRUTH
 God works in Augustine life in a
very powerful way.
◦ Augustine gave up a life a terrible sin,
even though this was hard to do.
 He was baptized and later he
became a priest and a Bishop.
◦ And he is one of the greatest
thinkers that had ever lived.
◦ Even people who are not Christian
know about him
 Today he is not only a Saint, but
also a Doctor of the Church.
 This means that he thought and
wrote very well about God.

9. Only God Can Satisfy our Longing
Eternal Happiness
 Saint Augustine discovered that we
are made for God
 Therefore only God can satisfy our
longing for Eternal Happiness
 He has helped many people on their
way to Holiness.
 His mother is also a saint: Saint
Monica,
 and the Preacher he heard that day:
St. Ambronse.

10. Only God Can Satisfy our Longing
Eternal Happiness
 St. Monica & St. Ambronse lived
their life for love —For love God— in
such a way,
that someone else (St. Augustine)
was able to find out about Jesus, and
it come to love Him.
 The Holiness of these 2 people
helped Saint Augustine to become
holy, too.
 We can do the same for others by
the way we live our lives.

11. Our Heart and Souls Want God
 Our heart and souls want God,
even though, we may not realized it
 St. Augustine tells us this too, and
he wrote:
◦ Our hearts are restless until we
rest in You O Lord my God.

13. God Made us to be Happy in Him
 In the last episode we learned that God created us
◦ We learned he gave us the power to think and to
choose
◦ So that we could choose God, who fulfills us with
True Happiness.
 God made us to live with Him forever
◦ Although God created the trees, rocks, animals (dogs & cats)
◦ The only creatures on earth that it is made to live with God
for all eternity is Man, (that is Human Beings: you & me)
 St. Augustine wrote a prayer to God:
That ,True Happiness… is to be joyful in you,
and for you, and because of you.
 That’s it!
 God made us to be happy in Him. For him and because
of Him.
 The absolutely only way, we will be truly happy is by
living with God.

14. Jesus Tells us
How Can we Find this Happiness
 When God became man, into earth in the
person of Jesus
 He told us, just how we can find this
happiness.
 To find out what Jesus said, we going to use
one of the Gospels:
◦ There are 4 writers of the Gospels of the
Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
◦ Matthew was one of the 12 men, chosen by
Jesus to follow him.
◦ Matthew was is one of the 12 apostles, who
follow Jesus

16. The Evangelist Matthew and Jesus
 He met Jesus when he walked on earth;
Matthew had been a tax collector,
◦ But when Jesus called him and says follow
me,
◦ Matthew rose and followed him, right away.
◦ He was one of Jesus closer friends; and he
wrote about
◦ what he saw, and heard about Jesus.
 In the Gospel according to Matthew we
read that Jesus said:
◦ “Come to me, take my yoke upon you, and
learn from me”
◦ For I am gentle and humble of heart, and you
will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:28-29)

17. Jesus Teaches
How to Be Like Him
 Jesus is a greater teacher,
he teaches us how to be like
him.
a) So, Do you want to know
how to be like Jesus?
b) How can we learn from
Him?
c) How can we be meek and
humble of heart?
 In the Gospel according to
Matthew Jesus is very clear
about:
1) how we can be like him
2) And about how you and I
can be happy?

18. The Sermon of the Mount
 Almost everyone had heard of
the Sermon of the Mount
◦ Up there, Jesus was speaking to
a huge crowd people
◦ And it was then, that He gave
them the Keys to happiness
 We called them: THE
BEATITUDES
 BEATITUDE means “Happiness”
 In the Gospel of Matthew we find
8 Beatitudes: 8 Keys To
Happiness

19. You will be Blessed
 Jesus used the word BLESSED to
describe his followers
 You will be Blessed or Happy, if you live
like I do.

20. THE BEATITUDES
1) Blessed are the poor in
Spirit, for there is the
kingdom of heaven
2) Blessed are those who
mourn, for they shall be
comforted
3) Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the
earth.
4) Blessed are those who
hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they
shall be satisfy.
5) Blessed are the
Merciful, for they shall
obtain mercy
6) Blessed are the pure of
heart, for they shall see
God.
7) Blessed are the peace
makers, for they shall be
called sons of God.
8) Blessed are those who
are persecuted, for
righteousness sake, for
theirs is the kingdom of
Heaven.

21. The Beatitudes
 And Jesus continues:
◦ “Blessed are you, when they revile and
persecute you, and say all kinds of evil
against you falsely for My sake.
Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for
great is your reward in heaven,
for so they persecuted the prophets who
were before you.
 Wow! Jesus tells us that this is the
way to Happiness
 This is his way! This is His Mystery to
Happiness.

22. The Beatitudes
 Pope Benedict wrote a book called “Jesus of Nazareth”
◦ In it, he tell us that the beatitudes are kind of a portrait or
pictures of Jesus.
 The Beatitudes tells us
1) what Jesus is like,
2) and how we can be like Him.
 John Paul II called Saint Pier Giorgio Frassaty, the
man of the Beatitutes
a) He was a young Italian who lived in the 1900’s
b) Like Jesus, he was poor in spirit, and he had a heart full
of Love, for those who were poor.
c) Some times he gave money to buy medicine, to those
who were sick, and could not afford to buy it.
d) He was always thinking about others
e) He was pure and always found time to look upon
God in the Holy Eucharist, and to receive Him in Holy
Communion.

23.  Even if he going to a hiking trip with
his friends on the weekends, he make
sure to go to Sunday Mass
 He loved God and he also loved his
friends loving him too.
◦ He wanted his friends to become Holy
◦ Always bear with a smile or act of kindness
 He show them the True Happiness of the
follower of Jesus.

24. Pier Giorgio Frassatti
Man of the Beatitudes
 He also had great reasons to
mourn, or be sad
◦ He had a very difficult family life,
and was hard to get along with his
parents
◦ He learned to take his sorrow to
Jesus and be happy in the joy of
God.
 When he died at the young age
of 24, thousands of people,
◦ specially the very poor, filled the
streets to honor the boy,
◦ who have loved them, with the
heart of Jesus.
 When we follow the way of
Jesus,
◦ we too, can become boy and girls,
◦ Or man and woman of the
Beatitudes.

25. THE BEATITUDES
 The Beatitudes tell us, what Jesus is like
 They also tells us how we can be like
Christ
 The way of Christ, the way of us is the
way of happiness
 In fact, it is the True Way To Happiness
after all, the word:
 BLESSED means “Happy!”
 Jesus tells us that we are blessed, or
Happy when we do certain difficult things

27. THE BEATITUDES
His Way to Happiness
 Although Jesus promise happiness…
 He doesn’t promise that we always feel
happiness, right here and Now..
 We know that Jesus always tells the True,
because He Is The Truth.
 And if he tells us that we will be happy, when
we suffer things,
 …Well, then that’s True!
 It makes sense too. If we think about God’s life,
◦ He suffered and died a horrible death,
◦ And then he rose again
 He Triumph over death, and Now he lives
victoriously forever… but first he suffered.

28. Becoming more & more like Jesus
 Followers of Christ can expect suffering, too.
◦ Jesus tell us that the disciple is not above his
teacher.
 Our life as Catholics, is a life in which we
should becoming more and more like Jesus.
◦ If we want to follow Jesus, and share his joy
forever, we too may suffered.
 He told us that if any man come after me
◦ If any man come after me, Let him deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt 16:24)
 Taking our cross means that we all will have
our own kind of suffering in our lives, here on
earth.

29. Everyone Suffer
 We suffer little things, like
a) having to do our homework we when we don’t feel like
b) Or maybe in getting in trouble when it was not our fault.
 We suffer big things, too
a) Like fights in our families,
b) Or the dying of someone we love
 If we want to follow Jesus, we will suffer; actually
everyone suffer
 But we Christians, we know that we can united our
suffering to Jesus suffering on the cross
 Then if we are united to Jesus, what he has, becomes
ours.
a) He suffers, so we do
b) If He rise, so do we
c) If He is joyful forever in Heaven, so shall we be.

30. United to Jesus
 In our daily life, we can always be united
ourselves to Jesus.
 Not only in suffering, but in joy, too.
 We can enjoy things for love of Jesus
 And think what a nice gifts give you
a) When you play with friends
b) when you see the sun set
c) When you enjoy the waves in the ocean
d) When you eat ice-cream
e) When you love your pets,
f) When you talk with your family etc.
 You can say Thank You Lord for Everything in
our lives

31. Offer It Up To Jesus
 There are things that we don’t like though
 Maybe somebody is doing something that really
annoys us
a) We suppose to say the person: your bugging me,
when you do that; could you please stop.
b) It may be right if we say nicely
 But it might also be a good idea, once in a
while, offer it up to Jesus.
Some personal example:
 Maybe I have a head ache,
◦ I can go around complaining about how badly I feel
◦ Or even better I can try to live with it,
◦ and still be nice to the people I see, even though I
don’t feel well.
 I can offer it up to Jesus.

32. Offering our Suffering to God
 By offering our suffering to God,
◦ we are taking all the unpleasant things, we
experience everyday,
◦ and bring them to Jesus on the Cross
 We united our suffering to Jesus’ suffering,
◦ which is, or it is so much worst, that anything we
are experience.
 If we form a habit of offering things up to Jesus,
we are taking a important step:
to become more and more like Jesus, and to stay
close to him on the cross.
 Although our life here on earth is wonderful in
many ways,
and the more we live for God, more wonderful
it is,
even thought, it also means, that we have a
lots of suffering alone the way.

33. Suffering has Meaning united to Jesus
 Saint Catherine of Sienna once said that
all the way to Heaven is heaven.
◦ That means that whole life can be a life of
Joy, even if we also suffering
◦ Although we have many deep joy, down
here on earth, there will still be trouble and
suffering.
 Suffering comes, but the beautiful thing of
being a Christian is that
◦ we know that suffering has meaning if we are
united to Jesus.
◦ And we may become more like him, through
our suffering.

34. The Beatitudes
 So, when we hear the Beatitudes that said:
Blessed are those who mourned
 That means blessed are those who are sad
because they should be comforted.
 We are remained that our suffering is for a
little while
 Saint Peter and Saint Paul, both tells us that
we can rejoice and be glad, when we suffer.
 Saint Peter tells us no to be surprise when
suffering comes in his 1st letter, Peter said:
◦ Rejoice as so far as you share Christ’s
sufferings
◦ That you may also rejoice and be glad, when
his glory is revealed: (1Peter 4:13)

35. Suffering is Not Worth Comparing With
the Glory to Be Reveal
 St. Paul also remains us and said that even the hard
things we suffer, do not measure up all the joy that wait
for us in heaven
 When he wrote to the Romans, he said:
I can certain, that the sufferings of this present time, are not
worth comparing with the glory that is going to be reveal to us.
Just you wait
 You can even imagine how wonderful life, with God
in heaven would be.
 Finally St. Peter remains us that we are not alone,
◦ all Christians all over the world who live in the past, who live
now, and who live in the future, suffered
◦ We all are united to Jesus and to each other.
 We can pray for each other and help each other
through our prayers and sufferings.

36. Keep your Eyes in Heaven
 St. Peter on his letter said that
◦ we shall stand firm, knowing that the
same experience of suffering, is require
of your brotherhood throughout the world.
 Members of the body of Christ, we
all have part to play by suffering like
Jesus
 But let keep our eyes in heaven
 Our reward will be greater, and we
will in heaven with God himself and
enjoy the never end.

37. The Beatitudes
His Way to Happiness
 I hope you learn that the Christian
way of life is one of happiness
 Even though it also includes suffering,
 The way of Jesus;
◦ It is the way of Beatitudes
◦ It is a way of joy.
 We can live the Beatitudes, so we
can be happy forever.