by Father Mark Goldasich
When we wish one another a happy new year, what do we mean? In other words, how do we see happiness?
Many people in our world seem to believe that happiness consists in wealth, health, power and fame. Sadly, those who have many or all those things rarely appear genuinely happy. In fact, rather than being satisfied, they instead spend their life in a quest for “even more.” All that they possess is never enough.
So, what constitutes real happiness? I found one answer to that in a meditation last Aug. 21 in Christopher Books’ “Three Minutes a Day.” The entry focused on “The Gift of Aging,” a book written by Marcy Cottrell Houle. The author interviewed 97-year-old Rabbi Josh Stampfer who was in a wheelchair, accompanied by a caregiver. Houle expected the rabbi’s handshake to be frail but was surprised by his grip and “a personality that conveyed ‘dynamism.’”
He served at Congregation Neveh Shalom in Portland, Oregon, helped Jewish people in China and Russia, and continued to teach and give sermons on the radio long after his retirement. When asked how he could do all this at 97, Rabbi Stampfer responded:
“In all of us, there is an innate need for happiness, but happiness is not just based on good health. Not everyone has that. . . . What I have found — and suggest to others — [is that] the way to be happy is to be good. When people do a good deed for others, they enjoy life more.
“It’s nice to have wonderful thoughts, but it’s also important to translate those thoughts either into deeds or into words. Bringing happiness to others is the quickest way to have it yourself.”
With that in mind, Jesus had to be the happiest person who ever lived. His entire life was directed outward, toward satisfying the needs of those around him. The Gospels never specifically mention something about Jesus — maybe because the evangelists thought it should be obvious to anyone hearing the Gospels — and that is: Jesus must have smiled and laughed a lot.
It’s so easy to picture Jesus as solemn and “above it all.” But I can’t imagine him being other than deliriously happy at feeding thousands of hungry people with a few fish and loaves of bread and catching the shocked facial expressions of his apostles. And how he must have smiled at bringing sight to the blind, healing to lepers, hearing and speech to the deaf and mute. He must have laughed, too, when he told the apostles to let the children come to him so he could share in their joy and playfulness.
Jesus’ face must have glowed with happiness after raising people from the dead, especially his friend Lazarus. And like every good teacher, Jesus probably felt a sense of satisfaction when the deeper point of his teachings — often using common images like shepherds and sowers or vines and lost coins — dawned on the faces of his listeners.
True happiness comes in shifting the center of our universe from ourselves and our desires outward to the needs of those around us. Jesus understood and lived this reality, as did the saints — and Rabbi Stampfer, who died in 2019.
How can you make 2026 a happy new year? Look outward. Generously use your time, treasure and talents to heal a world so often broken by the darkness of greed, indifference, injustice, violence and division.
And start with your own heart, keeping in mind these words of philosopher John Stuart Mill: “I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather in attempting to satisfy them.”
May your 2026 be truly happy!
