My dear students, in each one of us there is a desire for happiness, a happiness that can never be taken away. And that is what we are made for. That desire was placed in our hearts by the God who made us because he wants to satisfy that desire. He made us to be his friends. It’s not that he was lonely and needed friends: the three persons of the Holy Trinity enjoy each other’s company for all eternity and need no one else for their joy. But God’s love brims over and he wants to share it with other persons whom he then creates for that purpose. Our happiness is to be friends with God for all eternity.
But where do we find God? He remains invisible to us, and sometimes all we are aware of are the creatures of this world and our need to find a place among them. Especially today we can be distracted by huge amounts of information about the world that are digitally available to us. We can become engrossed in the world and forget that place in our heart that says you were made for more than this; you were made for the infinite. The good things of this world are yours to enjoy but they are only pointers to a more wonderful good that alone will satisfy your deepest hunger.
So how do we find this hidden God? Well one way is by doing what we’re doing now. We’ve come to the place where he tells us about himself in his word and then gives himself to us bodily so that we can live by his strength. Knowing how hard it is for us to find him left to ourselves, God opened up communication with man. He called a people to himself and revealed himself to them by saving them from captivity and giving them their own land. He gave them a law by which they could find him and the life he wanted for them. We heard a part of that story in the first reading where the people of Israel ask Samuel for a king. God is at first unwilling to give them a king, who might be seen as a replacement for him, their real king. But then God gives in, and eventually gives them David to be their shepherd. Descendants of David reigned for 400 years, but that all came to an end when the people were exiled to Babylon for their sins. But the line of David went on underground, so to speak, and eventually the perfect king was born of his descendants, Jesus who, as he shows in today’s Gospel, is not only a human being but has the divine powers of forgiving sins and healing.
This Jesus is the full revelation of who God is. God is no longer hidden as he was before. Looking on the face of Jesus Christ, now risen from the dead, we see the love of God himself. Jesus brings us to the happiness we were made for.
So how do you get in touch with him? How do you hook up with him so that he can bring you with him to his kingdom? There’s only one thing you have to do and that is let yourself be won over by him. Recognize his beauty, the beauty of God made man for you. Recognize as the apostles did the amazing power of this man, his ability to give divine life and friendship. Let him draw you to himself. And how do you do that? It’s impossible unless you spend time with him daily. What kind of friend is it whom you never spend time with? Speaking to young people in Madrid this summer Pope Benedict said, “I come to exhort young people to know Christ personally as a friend. Listen regularly every day [to his Word] as if he were the one friend who does not deceive.…Faith is an intimate relationship with Christ, who enables us to open our hearts to this mystery of love and to live as men and women conscious of being loved by God.”
The Holy Father knows that during your teen years you are trying to discover what to do with your life, what will lead to your happiness and that of others. Here is the Pope’s advice: “Dear young people, if you wish to discover and to live faithfully the form of life to which the Lord is calling each of you, you must remain in his love as his friends. And how do we preserve friendship except through frequent contact, conversation, being together in good times and bad? St. Teresa of Jesus used to say that prayer is just such ‘friendly contact, often spending time alone with the one who we know loves us.’”
Take time out daily to be with the Lord, the friend of friends. Share your life with him so that he can share his with you. Together you will be an unbeatable combination. Together you will pass through the temptations of this world, those voices that offer happiness but are really dead-ends. Not only will you find the happiness you were made for, the happiness of union with your Maker, but you will become a light for the world, one who can show others the face of the one who loves them and whom they are seeking without knowing it.
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