One question I hear fairly often around this time is “how’s your summer going?” Honestly, I think I have waaaaaay too much free time! And I must confess that I end up spending more time playing videogames than I should… Now if you’ve played a bunch of Action/Adventure/RPG videogames (or if you ask your kids about it haha), you may have noticed how in most games, there’s a “main quest,” which is the primary thing you have to accomplish to beat the game, and then there’s “side quests,” which are other things you could do but are not essential. The game developers of course know that different players have different attitudes toward quests, so they design the game such that players have the freedom to play it the way they like. Some players want to finish the game as quickly as possible, so they focus solely on the main quest. Other players like to explore every single side quest, collecting every possible item, trophy, etc., since they feel it gives them a fuller experience of the game. Ok Carlo, why all the videogame talk?
Well, this Sunday’s liturgy deals with focusing on the things that are truly important to God. My friends know how I tend to think (and overthink!) about things a lot, and I’m thankful to have been able to talk through some of those things with our wonderful Pastor, Fr. Bryan. Among other things, we talked about distinguishing between “wants” and “needs,” how the word “deserve” is used in common parlance, and how one reconciles self-care with Christianity’s emphasis on self-denial. Underlying all of this was a question I had been wanting to ask different Priests for a while now: Assuming God wants us all to be happy with Him for all eternity in Heaven (our ultimate goal), and that God wants us to live good moral lives while on earth, does God also want us to be happy on earth? I think it’s a fair question, especially if we consider that there are a lot of people out there who live very good and moral lives yet seem… honestly… very unhappy. To phrase my question in videogame language: Assuming our main quest is to find eternal happiness with God in Heaven, and to live a good and moral life on earth, is happiness on earth also part of the main quest, or is it just a side quest?
As you can imagine, our conversation went on for quite a bit! I mean, just the word happiness itself has been the subject of much disagreement among philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and life coaches. Fr. Bryan noted how the original Greek word for blessed as it appears in the Beatitudes could also be translated as happy, and we acknowledged the paradoxicality of it—the types of people described in the Beatitudes, after all, would seem kinda… unhappy. I won’t go too much into the details of our conversation (and despite what I’ve shared here, I’d still prefer to keep most of it private), suffice it to say that it was very fruitful, and I’m privileged to be able to serve under a pastor like Fr. Bryan.
Speaking of the Beatitudes, sometime back in February, Mateo Sevigny from our Youth Choir played piano at Mass for the very first time. The song was Blessed and Beloved/Bienaventurados, hymn #726 in the current edition of our hymnal. If you missed the Family Mass on that day (it was a very snowy day!), click here to see Mateo singing and playing at Mass!
With my peace,
Carlo Serrano, Music Director
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