Happiness Repentance
On the morning of Ash Wednesday, I opened my prayer book and read this invocation:
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
I was immediately struck. The word repent is such a strong word. It means change directions by 180 degrees. Implied is a sense that you’re going in the wrong direction, so it’s not uncommon to feel bad or even shame when we hear the word. But more recently, Thomas Keating’s definition strikes me as more inviting. He defines the call to repent as an invitation to change the place we are looking for happiness.
This is just as striking but it fits better with the subsequent phrase, “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This phrase gets at the purpose of repentance. Jesus is imploring us to stop giving our energy to all the things that are making us miserable and awaken to the gracious immanence of God’s kingdom. Heaven is arriving, Jesus says — it’s just not found in the places we typically look.
The Beatitudes similarly challenge us to change the place we are looking for happiness. The opening of each Beatitude is often translated as “blessed are those,” but the phrase can also be rendered “happy are those.” Jesus is inviting us to notice that we can be happy exactly when we aren’t getting what we typically think we need to be happy:
“Happy are the poor” highlights how often I look for happiness in money.
“Happy are those who mourn” reminds me that I often search for happiness by avoiding negative feelings.
“Happy are those who are persecuted” reminds me that I often strive for happiness in the approval of those around me.
This reinforces the understanding that the call to repentance is an invitation to look for happiness in a totally different spot. The strong religious language is meant to grab our attention. It’s like Jesus is putting his hands on our shoulders and looking us straight in the eye. He says, “Wake up. Stop looking for happiness in money, good feelings, and applause. Change the place you’re looking for happiness.”
The place where we find happiness is in God himself. Entering God’s kingdom happens as we dwell in God’s presence and do his will. This isn’t limited by circumstances. Happiness is something that blossoms deep in our soul through faith and consent. As we notice God’s presence and yield our will to his, a stable and secure contentment emerges.
This is not an invitation to disembodied, aloof spirituality. The repentance Jesus invites you and me to make is lived out in the everyday acts of our mundane lives. We choose to believe that God is with us and loves us deeply even when our circumstances look like unhappiness to the outside world. And we choose to surrender our wills to our Father in heaven in a moment-by-moment unceasing act of prayerfulness. Through the good and the bad, we are repeatedly choosing the way of consent to love.
This means that the invitation to repent is not a call to beat yourself up. It’s an invitation to deeper noticing. This may include disciplines of self-denial that intentionally form our hearts away from habitually seeking happiness in all the wrong places, but the core purpose of these practices of self-denial is to help us enter and receive God’s kingdom, which is at hand. The fruit isn’t supposed to be shame and self-loathing. The whole point of repentance is joy.
This Lent, I’m repenting of my proclivity to strive to control the future. I repeatedly fall into the misguided belief that I need to have a greater handle on my future than is possible. It happens in work projects, personal relationships, and especially with my kids. When I succumb to this temptation, I find myself unhappy. I struggle to pray because all I want to talk about with God is this future thing that I want him to fix or take care of. The opening invocation reminds me in strong, jarring language to stop doing this, because it makes me unhappy. Instead, I’m choosing to turn towards God by enjoying his presence and consenting to his will. No matter what is going on in my life, if I’m aware of God’s presence and I’m yielding my will to his, I feel great joy.
What does repentance look like for you this Lent? How might you look for happiness in a different place than usual?