How we can be truly happy (with God's help)

The following text is the transcript of our Youtube video How we can be truly happy (with God’s help).

This video is part of a series on “Man’s Purpose”. You can find all the videos in the series here.

By our own natural strength it’s impossible to merit the eternal happiness of heaven because this requires supernatural acts of which our nature is incapable. Grace is a supernatural gift of God bestowed on us through the merits of Jesus Christ for our salvation.

Welcome to Catholic Hub. I’m David, and I’m here to talk to you about Catholicism and what it means to be a Catholic in the modern world today. In this video, we’re going to talk about how God helps us to attain our life’s purpose.

Our life’s purpose is to know, love, and serve God in this life so as to be eternally happy with Him forever in heaven. The way in which we attain heaven or eternal happiness by contemplating God is by knowing, loving, and serving Him in this life. But by our own natural strength, it’s impossible to merit the eternal happiness of heaven because this requires supernatural acts of which our nature is incapable.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that since Adam and Eve, human nature has been wounded and corrupted by original sin. The second reason is that because God, the object of our happiness, has a higher nature than our own, it requires supernatural help for us to be united with Him in heaven. We attain happiness by contemplating Him, by knowing this ultimate supreme truth which is God, and by loving Him as the ultimate goodness.

But God is above our nature. He is infinitely above us, just as the nature of a human being is above that of a stone or of a plant or of an animal. Our nature is higher than these things, and in the same way, God’s nature is higher than ours.

Just as something of a lower nature cannot attain something which is of a higher nature, just as a stone cannot move itself or that an animal cannot have intelligent thoughts like a human being can, in the same way, we are unable to know and love God in a supernatural manner and therefore we need the help of God in order to do this. Just like if you want a stone to move - a stone doesn’t move by itself. It’s not part of a stone’s nature to move itself. You have to pick up the stone and move it. In the same way, it is outside and above our nature for our intelligence to know God as He truly is, and so it requires assistance from God to elevate our mind, our intelligence, to know Him as He is.

For instance, we cannot know that God is three persons, any of the truths of the Catholic faith. We cannot know these without God’s help, first of all, to enlighten us as to the nature of these truths but also to move our intellect to assent to these truths, that our mind says yes, this is true. That requires a special help from God. And this special help from God is called grace because it is a favor or a free gift from God. In the Gospel, God tells us:

Without me, you can do nothing.”

And again:

No man can come to me unless it be given him by my Father.

And the Apostle St. Paul says:

It is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish according to his good will.

He also says:

By grace, you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God.

Grace is a supernatural gift of God bestowed on us through the merits of Jesus Christ for our salvation. All grace which comes to us comes by the merits of Jesus Christ. Christ earned this grace for all of us by His life and His passion and death on the cross. This grace or help in our souls comes to us for our salvation but freely given from God.

By grace, God enlightens our mind and strengthens our will so that we may better know and love Him. We cannot love God with a supernatural love. We cannot hope in God with a supernatural hope. And we cannot believe in God with a supernatural faith unless we have God’s grace helping us.

There are two types of grace. The first type of grace is sanctifying or habitual grace. This is the life of God in our souls. It is essentially a life imparted into our soul by God. It is God Himself living within us and making us children of God. The effects of sanctifying grace are four, and the Baltimore Catechism teaches us that these effects of grace are:

1. it makes us holy and pleasing to God
2. it makes us adopted children of God
3. it makes us temples of the Holy Ghost
4. it gives us the right to heaven.

We cannot contemplate God unless God allows us to share in His divine life.

And then the second type of grace is actual grace. And this is not like sanctifying grace. It is not something dwelling in us, but instead, it’s a divine impulse helping us to do acts above our natural powers. Actual grace enlightens our mind and strengthens our will to do good and to avoid evil.

These wonderful gifts can be obtained by all by the means of grace, which are prayer and the sacraments, and especially the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Both types of grace are necessary for our salvation. Both sanctifying grace, because this is the supernatural life which enables us to enjoy the vision of God in heaven, and also actual grace, because without actual grace, we will be unable to lead a life of virtue and to keep sanctifying grace in our souls. And so, with this in mind, our whole life’s pursuit should be to seek after and to obtain grace, sanctifying grace, and actual grace.

We should always be thinking of how we can increase the life of God within our soul. Mortal sin takes away sanctifying grace, and the sacrament of penance restores it within our souls. But the sacrament which gives the most sanctifying grace and which increases the life of God in us to the greatest extent is the Holy Eucharist.

It’s possible for us to resist grace by our own free will. God freely offers us this grace, but He does not force it upon us. So if we refuse it, that is our fault. We have to really, really try to cooperate with grace to save our souls. If we are offered grace by God, if God stretches out His hand to help us, we should say, “Yes, Lord.”

It’s so important for us to cooperate with God’s grace, because only by God’s help can we attain heaven. Only by God’s grace can we be truly happy with Him forever. God wishes all men to be saved, and He does this by giving us actual grace and also by sharing His life with us through sanctifying grace.

Thanks for watching this video about how to attain our life’s purpose and how God helps us to do that. If you have any questions or feedback about the video, please leave a comment below. Otherwise, please do like this video and subscribe to my channel because it will really, really help me to reach more people. Thanks a lot, and I’ll see you in the next one.