Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

You never really know someone until you know what they want, what they really care about. Jesus wants us to know him. He begins his first homily by telling us what he cares about the most, by telling us exactly what he wants, exactly what he came to earth to give us: blessedness. He wants us to be blessed.

In the Bible, this word refers to something very specific: the kind of happiness that only God can give, the kind he created us for, the kind we yearn for in the depths of our hearts and that we can never seem to find. 

Jesus begins his first sermon in the Gospel of Luke telling us the path to this kind of happiness. This is what he wants for us: happiness, a meaning, a fulfillment that goes deeper than the superficial kind that comes with money or popularity. 

Jesus came to show us how to live like that. That’s what he wants. He wants us to flourish. How easily we forget about this! How easily we fall into the devil’s old trap of seeing our Christian life as a list of obligations, a hindrance to fun, and a limit on our freedom. But we were made by God. And the manufacturer always knows what’s best for the product. Everything Jesus teaches, everything he asks of us, everything the Church teaches about how to live, what to do, what to avoid – these are the manufacturer’s instructions, meant for our benefit, for our blessedness. Jesus doesn’t want us to waste our lives; he wants us to live them to the full.

Love,

Fr. Jason