The Two Interconnected Mounts
Two mounts are related as the first and second acts in a two-act drama: the Mount of Beatitudes and the Mount of Calvary. He who climbed the first to preach the Beatitudes must necessarily climb the second to practice what He preached. The unthinking often say the Sermon on the Mount constitutes the “essence of Christianity.” But let any man put these Beatitudes into practice in his own life and he too will draw down upon himself the wrath of the world.
So wrote Bishop Sheen in his 1958 Life of Christ. Sheen continued:
The Sermon on the Mount cannot be separated from Christ’s Crucifixion, any more than day can be separated from night. The day Our Lord taught the Beatitudes, he signed his own death warrant. The sound of nails and hammers digging through human flesh were the echoes thrown back from the mountainside where He told men how to be happy or blessed. Everybody wants to be happy; but His ways were the very opposite of the ways of the world.
Why were Christ’s ways not like the ways of the world? Why did He not give us a nice, easy religion, the kind that evolves and changes with the times, to keep us from the world’s wrath and make everyone happy?
Our Pursuit of Happiness
“I just want to be happy,” depressed people tell their therapists all the time. Why are so many people unhappy? We now have a world of pleasure and entertainment right at our fingertips. Listen to St. Ignatius of Loyola, who, before founding the Jesuit religious order, was quite the pleasure seeker:
In the case of those who go from one mortal sin to another, the enemy is ordinarily accustomed to propose apparent pleasures. He fills their imagination with sensual pleasure and gratifications, the more readily to keep them in their vices and increase the number of their sins.
What sound moral theology from St. Ignatius. And sound science too, for theology is a science. And not just any science, but the highest of sciences, for it is the study of God.
What about other sciences? Can they help us find God and happiness?
What about statistics, which is the study of raw data?
The Industry and Outcome of Pleasure Seeking
According to a brilliant, modern-day Jesuit, a Jewish convert, Fr. Robert Spitzer, statistics show that pornography, erotic images that incite sexual excitement, is the fastest-growing addiction in the United States. The effects of the addiction show a significant increase in job loss, financial loss, divorce rates, legal problems, and depression.
Statistics show that pornography (from the Greek pornē meaning “prostitute” and graphein meaning “to write or record”—together meaning literally “a recording of prostitution”) is now a $100-billion-dollar-a-year industry…and growing. It makes more money than most countries. Its income is larger than all the sports industries combined. That kind of money buys off politicians and regulators who understand that they will get crucified for trying to combat this dark, ugly, evil business.
In 2023, a financial group called Ethical Capital Partners bought control of the largest pornography sites, which 100 million people a day watch. According to the Israeli magazine The Forward, a Jerusalem-trained rabbi (who is also a lawyer) was the principal player in this consolidation, this merger of smut. The Forward magazine suggests this rabbi is going to make pornography “ethical.” The September 2024 Forward article is titled, “A rabbi is overseeing Pornhub. That’s actually not so weird.”
Can you imagine if a Catholic bishop, priest, or deacon oversaw pornography sites? Would that not be weird? What do you think Moses would have to say about a rabbi profiting from the recording of prostitution? No doubt he would have said the filling of the imagination with sensual pleasure and gratification to keep people in their vices and sins does not come from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He’d have said it comes from somewhere else. He’d say it is a whole different religion.
Pleasure Seeking in Religion
Something new and different has been sold to us here in modern times. And most of us, unwittingly or not, have started practicing a different religion—one based not on the adoration of God but on the adoration of ourselves, a religion based not on sound moral theology but on emotions and feelings.
Where has this gotten us? What do the statistics show? A recent Pew Research Survey found that less than 10% of young Catholics and only 21% of adult Catholics now turn to the Church for moral guidance. It found that the majority of young Catholics not only disagree with the Church’s moral teachings on sexuality, but also that they are embarrassed by them. They feel the teachings are discriminatory and hateful. Catholic instructors are at a loss at how to present the teachings as “non-scandalous and partially positive.”
The Faithful Remnant
God shared some “future statistics” through the prophet Zephaniah:
But I will leave as a remnant in your midst a people humble and lowly, who shall take refuge in the name of the LORD: the remnant of Israel.
Look around. Those of us still practicing our Faith are the remnant. We have become a scandal to others in a pornographic world, one out to destroy marriage and the family. History shows that families, those who share the same name and blood, fight for and protect each other. Unlike family-filled cultures, fragmented societies—filled with isolated individuals with nothing to fight for—are easily controlled and enslaved by the power-wielding elites.
Are you easily controlled? Are you enslaved? The early Christians, many of whom were actual slaves, became slaves to Christ. That made them truly free, even if they lived in chains.
And when they shared the truth about Christ with others, and about finding true happiness, what do you think happened? Did people gush and say, “Oh, thank you for giving me the truth on the human body and sexual morality”? A small remnant did. The majority no doubt resented the attack on their lifestyle. Feeling judged, they said, “Who are you to tell me what to do with my body? People get fed to lions for talking like that.” The early Christians eventually were charged with “hatred of the human race” (odium humani generis), a hate crime, and they became criminals, for their ways were not the ways of the world.
What about you? Are you going to be part of the remnant of Israel? Or are you going to run with the ways of the world? The way things are going, to be part of the remnant might have you end up a criminal, being charged with hate crimes. How does that make you feel? Well, it should make you feel happy. And that is actually not so weird. It should make you happy because Christ said so:
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.
We must understand: the world hates Christians. It always has, because it hated Christ first. It listened and dialogued with Him and then hung Him on a cross. You see, at the Sermon on the Mount, Christ did not rattle off platitudes. He gave us the Beatitudes. He gave us an eight-point plan for true happiness that the world cannot accept.
Confirming Christ’s Method to Happiness
The science, the raw data, validates Christ’s moral teaching. It shows that, if one lives an authentically sacramental life, then he will be authentically happy. We shouldn’t be embarrassed about any of this. The science is on our side.
Everyone wants to be happy. So, be happy, truly happy. Climb the mount and preach the Beatitudes, and then climb the second mount to practice what you preach. Die to the world and live for Christ. Do that, and then:
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.
