“Good Afternoon, my name is Fr. Bala from India and I will be your third associate in the parish. I was supposed to be back last month and I was asked to go help out in Paola, KS for about a month, so I’m back now to help you out in this parish and also at St. Agnes during the weekends.
Of all creatures we are most grateful for Mother Mary. Mother Mary points to her son Jesus, the one way to the happiness that lasts. As we celebrate today the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary I would like to speak a little bit about four levels of happiness. Buddha begins his teaching by recognizing the tragic nature of life. The Buddhists, the first noble truth states that the suffering of the birth, old age, sickness and death is inevitable. In the Bible also, in the book of Ecclesiastes we see something similar to this, ‘Vanity, O vanity, all is vanity.’ One of our Catholic prayers, the Hail Holy Queen, recognizes the inevitable suffering of human life. Hail Holy Queen, to you we cry poor banished children of Eve. On account of sin, we have been banished from paradise. In spite of our clever schemes we cannot create heaven on the earth. The Soviets tried and they failed miserably. We dream about some perfect day in the future when day arrives it usually disappoints. Once I was talking to a bride on the morning of her wedding day and they spent all year planning for this event and she said, ‘I can hardly wait for all this to be over.’ Sudden silent, I looked at her, touched her shoulder and said, ‘big smile.’ Even in the best moments a puzzling sadness can come over us. When we pray the Hail Holy Queen we acknowledge that we are mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. No matter how you cut it, this world is the valley of tears. The people we love, they die. The projects we work on, they often go wrong and fail. We live in the valley of tears, but some happiness is possible and let’s quickly review the four levels of happiness.
Level one is sensual pleasure. The steaming bowl of linguine is great, but it lasts only a few moments. Level two is the ego gratification, some achievement that distinguishes the person. Level three, this one is better than the ego gratification. This happiness comes from the service to others which is an excellent and noble one. Even that happiness disappoints us. For example, Charles Mayo the founder of the Mayo Clinic treated hundreds and hundreds of children and people, their patients, saving the lives of many. Eventually however, they all died. Service to others brings a deep genuine happiness yet at the end it disappoints us. We are humans. We are weak, fragile and flawed and thanks be to God there is a fourth level of happiness that transcends this world, namely the truth, beauty and goodness. Jesus said, ‘I am the way the truth and the life.’ He enables us to have a good relationship with God which is a perfect truth, beauty and goodness. We can see the level four happiness in our Blessed Mother Mary. She is God’s most perfect creature. In the Hail Holy Queen prayer we call her Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. This does not take anything away from God. In fact, it glorifies God. A young man might say to his beloved, ‘I adore you. You are the most beautiful. You are my life.’ We don’t say stop you are idol worshipping. No, we are seeing, we know he is seeing a glimpse of the divine and soon enough he will know that she is a fellow human being not a goddess. Their relationship will last if they come to God together. That’s why Mary wants all of us so that we can say, ‘Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.’ Despite being weak, simple person we are, God has given us grace to find happiness in this life on the Earth. So dear friends, we cannot create a paradise on the Earth. We mourn and we weep in this valley of tears. Of all creatures we are most grateful of Mother Mary. She points out to her son, Jesus, the one way of happiness that lasts forever, so we pray ‘after this exile show to us the blessed fruit of your womb Jesus. Amen.’”