Jesus’ Teaching on Living the Good Life!

Aristotle speaks often of “the good life.” He saw the good life as open to everyone who seeks it. The good life’s characteristic is it contains only one essential component which isn’t really a mystery, i.e., Aristotle’s basic element of the good life is goodness itself.

With that fact in mind, I remembered this familiar question: Why did God make me?  And easily thought of the answer I learned from the Baltimore Catechism: God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world and to be happy with him in the next.

What an easy answer to such a profound question! Certainly, I believe that God made me because God first loved me. What I am not certain about was the rest of the response.   How was my knowing God and serving God coming along?

I know that God created me in his image and likeness and this fact made me take this definition more seriously. If God made me in his image and likeness, then God had some long-term plans for me. I thought of Aristotle’s “the good life.” God has his own “Good Life Plan” for me and you!

If we resemble God, then we should behave like God, always finding ways to share his abundant goodness with others. Could that be how we are to serve him in this world? Thus, generating the happiness to enter heaven.

When Adam and Eve didn’t get it, God sent Jesus, his son, to show us how our behavior should reflect God for others. Jesus became the way, the truth, and the life. God affirmed this at Jesus’ baptism when he spoke: This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased listen to him.

Jesus would show creation ways to mirror God’s goodness to others. Jesus’ preaching and actions would be the means to discover how to know and serve God in this world and be happy with him in the next.

God’s love caused God to want to share his life with us. Now, if we wish to live the good life Jesus offers, perhaps these actions can be the way: spread plenty of kindness, love all others, be gentle, show compassion and forgiveness. In sum, celebrate goodness in every opportunity given, big or small. 

Nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing so gentle as real strength.

                                                                                                            St. Francis de Sales