Where do you look for your happiness?  Where do you look for your fulfillment?  We often look for these things in this life….

We look for happiness and fulfillment in the stuff of the world:  money, cars, houses, power, position, wealth, etc etc etc.  But all that stuff fades away, doesn’t fill us, and we can’t take any of it to the next life (thank God)

We look for happiness and fulfillment in the people in our lives…..which is better than the stuff of this world, but as our first reading reminds us, everybody will let us down at some point. Sometimes, they let us down big time.

Paul reminds us in our second reading: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.”  That means, if all our hope, all our trust, all our searches for happiness and fulfillment are things of this world….we’re the most pitiable, miserable of all

That truth is what Jesus says at the Sermon on the Mount, as we heard in our Gospel. Jesus pronounces BLESSED (another word: happy) precisely the people who everyone thought WEREN’T blessed…..the poor, the hungry, the mourning, the persecuted…..

But those are the happinest of all!  Because those whose wealth is in the LORD — those are the folks who are really rich, no matter how poor they are in the eyes of the world.  Those who are hungry, they have space for God and a thirst for him….  those who mourn, they care enough to cry …..  those who are persecuted, they care enough about God to live by Him, come what may

There’s a great tune out there called NEVER ENOUGH. It’s from the Greatest Showman.  The words….

All the shine of a thousand spotlights,
all the stars we steal from the night sky
will never be enough,
never be enough
Towers of gold are still to little,
these hands can hold the world,
but it will never be enough
never be enough
for me

And that’s how it is with us, too.  You know what is enough??  JESUS!  In him is our beatitude, our happiness, our fulfillment