God Created Us for Happiness
God created humans out of love to share in His divine life, making eternal happiness with Him in Heaven the ultimate purpose of life. This desire for happiness is divinely placed in the human heart, finding its true fulfillment not in worldly riches or power, but in God alone.
Our first parents were created in a state of original holiness and justice, and they lived in a paradise of communion with God, but they abused their freedom by choosing sin over obedience. All of salvation history involves God’s plan to redeem humanity and to beckon us back into that communion of happiness with him. Incredibly, the fruit of redemption is that God draws us into an even greater state of being: He calls us to share in is own beatitude, his own perfect happiness, his divine life.
CCC 1719: “The Beatitudes reveal the goal of human existence, the ultimate end of human acts: God calls us to his own beatitude. This vocation is addressed to each individual personally, but also to the Church as a whole, the new people made up of those who have accepted the promise and live from it in faith.”
This is the essence of God’s desire for us. He desires us to choose perfect union with him, so that we may be eternally happy. True Happiness is not merely fleeting pleasure but a "beatitude"—a profound, lasting joy found in knowing, loving, and serving God. The Source is God because God is goodness and love, he desires to share that goodness with us. We are created to live in communion with God, which brings true fulfillment.
Since we are created for eternal happiness, it is fair and accurate to say that eternal happiness – eternal life in heaven – is our proper destiny. It is the purpose for which we were brought into existence. To fall short of eternal life through free will would constitute a failure to fulfill our destiny. The Church emphasizes that our primary goal is to be sanctified, which leads to the eternal happiness God intended. Through the grace of the sacraments, we are enabled to live this life of joy. Authentic happiness is found through a relationship with Jesus, following His commandments, and embracing a life of self-giving love rather than selfishness.
God also placed in our hearts a natural desire for happiness. In fact, He tells us to be happy more times in scripture than any other command. Everyone wants to be happy; we all prefer pleasure over pain, comfort over dissatisfaction, a sense of well-being over misery. Even the poor and sinful choices we sometimes make involve the pursuit of objects or experiences that we believe will bring some degree of pleasure or contentment. Since God himself is perfect happiness, all our desire for happiness is a desire for God himself – whether we realize it or not – because God alone can grant us perfect happiness.
The things in our lives that lead to misery are all things that happen outside of God’s will — pride, selfishness, unforgiveness, lifelong patterns of specific sins. However, the things that lead to happiness are all part of following and obeying God. Inside His will we find loving relationships, healthy community, unselfishness, a sense of wonder and awe, and gratitude.
God’s desire that we share his divine life means that he desires our ultimate and perfect happiness. The gift of redemption makes it possible for us to fulfill our destiny by offering us a way to eternal life so as to live in everlasting happiness in the Kingdom of God. We can accept that gift only by responding freely in choosing to live as God wants us to live. The call to eternal life, then, comprises an invitation to seek holiness and perfection, to imitate the example of Christ by living lives of virtue. (See Mt 5-7: Sermon on the Mount – Beatitudes)
CCC 1694: “ Incorporated into Christ by Baptism, Christians are "dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" and so participate in the life of the Risen Lord. Following Christ and united with him, Christians can strive to be "imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love" by conforming their thoughts, words and actions to the "mind ... which is yours in Christ Jesus," and by following his example.”
Deacon Gerry Flamm
“Dear children! Today I call you to become missionaries of my messages, which I give here through a place dear to me. God has allowed me to stay with you for this long and therefore, little children, I call you to live with love the messages that I give you and to transmit them to the whole world, so that the river of love may flow into a people full of hatred and unrest. I call you, little children, to become peace where there is unrest and light where there is darkness, so that every heart may accept the light and the path of salvation. Thank you for having responded to my call!”