Happiness Isn't a Warm Puppy: Five Ways to Lead Your Children to Heaven

When teaching baptism classes to parents, I would begin the first class with the question: “What do you desire most for your child?”

Nine times out of ten the response was, “Happiness.”

Parents want the very best for their children. Parents sacrifice a great deal to give their children everything they believe they need to be happy. Parents--- healthy, sane parents--- want their children to be happy today, as children, and tomorrow, as adults.


After we agree that happiness is the goal, I ask another question: “Okay, so what is happiness?”

And then the fun begins. We get to explore what we mean by “happiness.” It is interesting to see how our dream for happiness often falls way short of God’s version of happiness.

There are different degrees, or levels, of happiness. For instance, there is quite a difference between the happiness one experiences when eating an ice cream cone and the happiness one experiences when accepted to a prestigious university, or advanced to an exalted position in a Fortune 500 company.

There is an even higher level of happiness experienced in the satisfaction wrought from saving a fellow person’s life, and yet there is yet a wide difference between that happiness and the ultimate happiness enjoyed in union with God in heaven.

Eating an ice cream cone is, if you’ll excuse the pun, a taste of the lowest level of happiness, while Beatific Vision and eternal union with the Blessed Trinity is the ultimate happiness, the ultimate fulfillment of all desire.

This is the happiness I desire for my children more than any other. I suspect that is true for you, as well. Much of the time, though, we don’t allow ourselves to dream that big. We focus primarily on the lesser levels, not because we don’t want ultimate happiness for our children, but because it seems ethereal, and because we are often, quite frankly, distracted by the goods of this world.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life… (CCC, no. 1)” It continues later, “[t]he desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for (CCC, no. 27, italics mine)”.

Our hope for happiness is to be found in God. God is our happiness. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote: “Man bears within him a thirst for the infinite, a longing for eternity, a quest for beauty, a desire for love, a need for light and for truth which impel him towards the Absolute; man bears within him the desire for God.”

Blessed John Paul II said, “People are made for happiness. Rightly, then, you thirst for happiness. Christ has the answer to this desire of yours.”
Our children were made for happiness! That is a wonderful and astounding truth to grasp.

Often, though, we focus on worldly happiness to the neglect of the true and lasting happiness of heaven. We sacrifice everything for our children’s college tuition, while we neglect to teach our children to know, love, and serve God and fulfill their ultimate purpose.

It is good to save for college, to send our children to good schools, to provide them with opportunities to grow in sports and other extracurricular activities. But much more important is their preparation for heaven, which includes a formation in the ways of Christ today.

If we fail to lead them to ultimate happiness, what they were made for, everything else will mean little.

So, how do we lead our children to happiness (or, stated more precisely, How do we lead our children to heaven?)? We teach them to know, love, and serve the Lord our God, the source of all happiness and fulfillment of all desire for happiness.

In Part Two of this blog, we will explore in depth five ways to lead our children to heaven. They are:

1. Teach your children about God’s love and His plan for their happiness.

2. Teach your children how to pray, which is the way we grow in our relationship with God.

3. Teach your children to love God and His Church, and to cherish the sacraments, through which we encounter Christ and receive grace.

4. Teach your children that there is objective truth and that happiness cannot be attained apart from it.

5. Teach your children that life is not all about them and that the meaning of life lies in being a gift of self for the good of others.

These are some of the essentials. When, in our homes, we build a firm family foundation on Jesus Christ and His Church, we prepare our children for the ultimate happiness that God has dreamt for them.

Copyright 2013 by R. L. Drake