“What are you looking for?” John 1:38
We are all looking for something in this life. We wake up each day searching for it. We often think that people or things can bring it to us. The Declaration of Independence affirms that all people are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” and the thing we are all looking for is one of them. Do you know what it is yet? 🙂 The thing that we’re all looking for is happiness.
Today’s Gospel is about Jesus’s first disciples. Two of John the Baptist’s disciples followed Jesus after they heard John declare Him to be the “Lamb of God.” Jesus turned to them and asked, “What are you looking for?” (John 1: 36-38). They were looking for the Messiah, and they succeeded: “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41). But why were they looking for Him? When you take out all the steps in the middle, they were really looking for happiness. The disciples were onto something before they had ever met Jesus: happiness can be found in God alone. They were looking for happiness, and they found it in Christ.
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “God alone can satisfy the will of man, according to the words of the Psalms (102:5): ‘Who alone satisfies your desire with good things.’ Therefore, God alone constitutes man’s happiness” (Summa Theologica II. q.1. a8). We can ask ourselves if we are searching for happiness in the wrong places: in money, power, esteem of others, and so on. If our quest for happiness is in a created thing, then we will never be satisfied. Our true happiness lies in Christ alone.
Discipleship—following Christ—is the path to lasting happiness. Our first reading from Samuel and the Psalm give us a hint at how we should follow Christ: by listening to the voice of God and then responding, “Here I am. You called me. I come to do your will” (1 Samuel 3:5 and Psalm 40:9).
Dear Jesus, help me to follow You and do Your will. Help me to seek my happiness and place my trust in You alone.