Was Jesus the Happiest Man to Ever Live?

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Victoria33

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This may sound like one of those “off-the-wall” types of questions but… if one does a websearch, one finds plenty of references. Sometimes with a reference such as to Hebrews 1 for example. So, there is no shortage of such statements. I did see this stated in a Catholic book with an imprimatur. So, it’s an interesting concept one may come across. Yes, definitely, He was a man of sorrows at times too, per the book of Isaiah 53:3. By happy, no, I’m not really thinking of a feeling of “euphoria” but certainly it must be one of content.

I believe Mary is said to have been very happy too. In fact, I couldn’t refind the exact quote I wanted to post here but this seems to be referred to in the “Imitation of Mary”, book 2, chapters 24-26. A book, with of course an imprimatur but I may have seen it explicitly mentioned elsewhere as well. “Imitation of Christ”?

Perhaps, “joyful” is an apt description as well.
 
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Jesus had human emotions, happiness, anger, sadness, frustration. As His emotions were not influenced by sin, I would daresay the experienced happiness of He and Mary would have been the only pure happiness.
 
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Our Lord Jesus Christ is one Divine Person with two natures, Divine and human, in the unity of His Divine Person. That’s infallible Catholic teaching de Fide divina et Catholicam, i.e. all Catholics must believe it under pain of mortal sin.

To add to what @TheLittleLady posted, Jesus in His human nature always had the Beatific Vision so He was and IS perfectly happy. He was like us in all things except sin so yes, He had (and still has) human emotions yet He is perfectly happy.
 
This is a great question. The Gospel tells us Jesus experienced all kinds of human emotions, I do hink Jesus to be the most gentle , kind and loving Man to have lived. Jesus tried to teach is that.
 
Joy is a virtue and it is to remain happy even in hard present circumstances because of hope and trust and confidence in God.

So yeah, I would say Jesus was the happiest person to ever live. Also the most sorrowful.
 
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He was always in union with the Father so He would’ve been continuously at peace as a human. But this life here on earth, being fraught with suffering and sin and sorrows, does not lend itself to full on happiness IMO. He had a mission here-at one point in time-and it was a difficult one.
 
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I am sure that there were times when He was happy, those quit moments with His disciples and friends. But He knew what was ahead and this would have saddened Him. After all He was not happy when entered the temple and money changers.
 
Joy and happiness are two distinct things. Joy is not an emotion
 
Since He experienced the beatific vision His entire life on earth, I would say yes.
 
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Victoria33 said:
Was Jesus the happiest man to ever live?
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No, not in the common sense of the word “happiness” anyway. Jesus carried the greatest possible burden a man could have: to understand Evil, and know that He had to sacrifice Himself completely and totally in order to vanquish it, and suffer terribly in that process.

We shouldn’t reword the truth that Jesus ultimately brings joy (for those who follow Him to the end) into the falsehood that therefore Jesus’ own life was joyful. If we make this mistake, we will end up seeing suffering as a failure to be Jesus-like. But in fact it is precisely when we suffer that we can draw closest to Him.

As concerns Hebrews 1, I suppose you have verse 9 in mind, which describes the Son as being anointed with the oil of joy? Note that this pertains to the Victorious, Resurrected Christ. It does not pertain to Jesus-the-man as He experienced life on earth. The anointing with the oil of joy happened when He had endured and completed His trials on earth. Also, note that in the Gospels there isn’t really any passage that could reasonably be interpreted as describing Jesus Himself as happy, joyful, or cheerful.
 
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Pope St John Paul II (in his apostolic letter “At the Beginning of the New Millennium”) discusses the idea that Jesus had a “paradoxical blending of bliss and pain” during his Passion (at no. 25-27):

A face of sorrow
  1. In contemplating Christ’s face, we confront the most paradoxical aspect of his mystery, as it emerges in his last hour, on the Cross. The mystery within the mystery, before which we cannot but prostrate ourselves in adoration.
The intensity of the episode of the agony in the Garden of Olives passes before our eyes. Oppressed by foreknowledge of the trials that await him, and alone before the Father, Jesus cries out to him in his habitual and affectionate expression of trust: “Abba, Father”. He asks him to take away, if possible, the cup of suffering (cf. Mk 14:36). But the Father seems not to want to heed the Son’s cry. In order to bring man back to the Father’s face, Jesus not only had to take on the face of man, but he had to burden himself with the “face” of sin. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).

We shall never exhaust the depths of this mystery. All the harshness of the paradox can be heard in Jesus’ seemingly desperate cry of pain on the Cross: “‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? ’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mk 15:34). Is it possible to imagine a greater agony, a more impenetrable darkness? In reality, the anguished “why” addressed to the Father in the opening words of the Twenty-second Psalm expresses all the realism of unspeakable pain; but it is also illumined by the meaning of that entire prayer, in which the Psalmist brings together suffering and trust, in a moving blend of emotions. In fact the Psalm continues: “In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you set them free … Do not leave me alone in my distress, come close, there is none else to help” (Ps 22:5,12).

continued….
 
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  1. Jesus’ cry on the Cross, dear Brothers and Sisters, is not the cry of anguish of a man without hope, but the prayer of the Son who offers his life to the Father in love, for the salvation of all. At the very moment when he identifies with our sin, “abandoned” by the Father, he “abandons” himself into the hands of the Father. His eyes remain fixed on the Father. Precisely because of the knowledge and experience of the Father which he alone has, even at this moment of darkness he sees clearly the gravity of sin and suffers because of it. He alone, who sees the Father and rejoices fully in him, can understand completely what it means to resist the Father’s love by sin. More than an experience of physical pain, his Passion is an agonizing suffering of the soul. Theological tradition has not failed to ask how Jesus could possibly experience at one and the same time his profound unity with the Father, by its very nature a source of joy and happiness, and an agony that goes all the way to his final cry of abandonment. The simultaneous presence of these two seemingly irreconcilable aspects is rooted in the fathomless depths of the hypostatic union.
  2. Faced with this mystery, we are greatly helped not only by theological investigation but also by that great heritage which is the “lived theology” of the saints. The saints offer us precious insights which enable us to understand more easily the intuition of faith, thanks to the special enlightenment which some of them have received from the Holy Spirit, or even through their personal experience of those terrible states of trial which the mystical tradition describes as the “dark night”. Not infrequently the saints have undergone something akin to Jesus’ experience on the Cross in the paradoxical blending of bliss and pain. In the Dialogue of Divine Providence, God the Father shows Catherine of Siena how joy and suffering can be present together in holy souls: “Thus the soul is blissful and afflicted: afflicted on account of the sins of its neighbour, blissful on account of the union and the affection of charity which it has inwardly received. These souls imitate the spotless Lamb, my Only-begotten Son, who on the Cross was both blissful and afflicted”.13
continued….
 
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In the same way, Thérèse of Lisieux lived her agony in communion with the agony of Jesus, “experiencing” in herself the very paradox of Jesus’s own bliss and anguish: “In the Garden of Olives our Lord was blessed with all the joys of the Trinity, yet his dying was no less harsh. It is a mystery, but I assure you that, on the basis of what I myself am feeling, I can understand something of it”.14 What an illuminating testimony! Moreover, the accounts given by the Evangelists themselves provide a basis for this intuition on the part of the Church of Christ’s consciousness when they record that, even in the depths of his pain, he died imploring forgiveness for his executioners (cf. Lk 23:34) and expressing to the Father his ultimate filial abandonment: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46).

Notes
(13) Cf. n. 78.
(14) Last Conversations. Yellow Booklet (6 July 1897): Êuvres complètes (Paris, 1996), p. 1025.

http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-p...p-ii_apl_20010106_novo-millennio-ineunte.html

St Francis de Sales (in “Treatise on the Love of God”) also makes a similar observation:

In like manner our divine Saviour was incomparably afflicted in his civil life, being condemned as guilty of treason against God and man; beaten, scourged, reviled, and tormented with extraordinary ignominy; in his natural life, dying in the most cruel and sensible torments that heart could conceive; in his spiritual life enduring sorrows, fears, terrors, anguish, abandonment, interior oppressions, such as never had, nor shall have, their like. For though the supreme portion of his soul did sovereignly enjoy eternal glory, yet love hindered this glory from spreading its delicious influence into the feelings, or the imagination, or the inferior reason, leaving thus his whole heart at the mercy of sorrow and distress.

So in the sea of passions by which Our Lord was overwhelmed, all the faculties of his soul were, so to say, swallowed up and buried in the whirlpool of so many pains, excepting only the point of his spirit, which, exempt from all trouble, remained bright and resplendent with glory and felicity. Oh how blessed is the love which reigns in the heights of the spirit of faithful souls, while they are tossed upon the billows and waves of interior tribulations! (Book 9, chapter 5)

 
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St Alphonsus Liguori (in his “Sunday Sermons”) says Christians should be joyful “at all times” also:

”Whatsoever shall befall the just man, it shall not make him sad." (Prov. xii. 21.) A soul that loves God is not disturbed by any misfortune that may happen to her. Cesarius relates (lib. x., c. vi.), that a certain monk who did not perform greater austerities than his companions, wrought many miracles. Being astonished at this, the abbot asked him one day what were the works of piety which he practised. He answered, that he was more imperfect than the other monks; but that his sole concern was to conform himself to the divine will. Were you displeased, said the abbot, with the person who injured us so grievously a few days ago? No, father, replied the monk; I, on the contrary, thanked God for it; because I know that he does or permits all things for our good. From this answer the abbot perceived the sanctity of the good religious. We should act in a similar manner under all the crosses that come upon us. Let us always say: ”Yea, Father; for so hath it seemed good in thy sight." (Matt. xi. 26.) Lord, this is pleasing to thee, let it be done.

He that acts in this manner enjoys that peace which the angels announced at the birth of Jesus Christ to men of good will that is, to those whose wills are united to the will of God. These, as the Apostle says, enjoy that peace which exceeds all sensual delights. “The peace of God, which surpasseth all understanding." (Phil. iv. 7.) A great and solid peace, which is not liable to change. “A holy man continueth in wisdom like the sun; but a fool is changing like the moon.” (Eccl. xxvii 12.) Fools that is, sinners are changed like the moon, which increases today, and grows less on tomorrow; Today they are seen to laugh through folly, and tomorrow, to weep through despair; Today they are humble and meek, tomorrow, proud and furious. In a word, sinners change with prosperity and adversity; but the just are like the sun, always the same, always serene in whatever happens to them. In the inferior part of the soul they cannot but feel some pain at the misfortunes which befall them; but, as long as the will remains united to the will of God, nothing can deprive them of that spiritual joy which is not subject to the vicissitudes of this life. “Your joy no man shall take from you." (John xvi. 22.)

continued….
 
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He that reposes in the divine will, is like a man placed above the clouds: he sees the lightning, and hears the claps of thunder, and the raging of the tempest below, but he is not injured or disturbed by them. And how can he be ever disturbed, when whatever he desires always happens? He that desires only what pleases God, always obtains whatsoever he wishes, because all that happens to him, happens through the will of God. Salvian says, that Christians who are resigned, if they be in a low condition of life, wish to be in that state; if they be poor, they desire poverty; because they wish whatever God wills, and therefore they are always content. ”Humiles sunt, hoc volunt, pauperes sunt, paupertate delectantur: itaque beati dicendisunt." If cold, or heat, or rain, or wind come on, he that is united to the will of God says: I wish for this cold, this heat, this rain, and this wind, because God wills them. If loss of property, persecution, sickness, or even death come upon him, he says: I wish for this loss, this persecution, this sickness; I even wish for death, when it comes, because God wills it. And how can a person who seeks to please God, enjoy greater happiness than that which arises from cheerfully embracing the cross which God sends him, and from the conviction that, in embracing it, he pleases God in the highest degree? So great was the joy which St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi used to feel at the bare mention of the will of God, that she would fall into an ecstacy.

http://www.catholicapologetics.info/scripture/newtestament/liguori.pdf
 
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Actually, my aunt was converted because of her joyous neighbour. My aunt used to watch her neighbour do her gardening at the front of her house. She couldn’t understand how someone could always be so joyful. So one day my aunt went up and asked her something like “Why are you always so joyful every time I see you doing your gardening?” She replied, “Because I am a Christian”. I forget how the story went, I think my aunt started to go to church with her or began looking into the merits of Christianity, but soon after that conversation my aunt became a Christian, got baptised and started attending Church. (My uncle also became a Christian as a result his wife’s conversion, so they then were able to raise their 4 daughters in a Christian home too). I think there is a lot of wisdom in St Teresa of Avila’s advice on this topic: “Save us from gloomy-faced saints!" Or as Pope Francis put it, “Sometimes these melancholic Christians’ faces have more in common with pickled peppers than the joy of having a beautiful life.”
 
Joy is an interior grace that is never lost if maintained with openness to God’s will. Happiness is more of a transient level that is reached for a short time. Happiness is consumed and satisfied then replenished by some passing gratification or delight in ones current disposition. The passions are like wild horses. They can be in conformity with God’s will or they can be out of control and self destructive.
I think Joy encompasses the passions and lifts them higher making them holy if they are aligned with God’s will. Jesus was always aligned with the Father.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Jesus had human emotions, happiness, anger, sadness, frustration
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I totally agree. I think sometimes people forget this part of Him. Was he ever hungry? No, of course not, He was God. Did he know modern day English at three days old? Did he know advanced chemistry at 4 days old? Did he ever cry when He lost friends?

See what I mean? We correctly remember Him as God, but sometimes I feel like we forget that He was human.
 
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