Certain questions were inevitable. When any right must be declared, it is because someone, at some point, has transgressed it. So, how is this right violated? Who could possibly be opposed to someone seeking happiness? When I researched the matter, I realized that it actually refers to the right to economic freedom — that is, the right for individuals to work and pursue whatever vocation they choose, to receive a wage for doing so, and to spend that money how they please.

The British government violated the American colonists’ right by severely regulating economic activity and levying heavy taxes on the inhabitants. As we all know, this was one of the primary causes of the struggle for independence. If economic freedom is the true rationale behind this right, why not be a bit more precise with our terminology and say “operational autonomy” instead of the “pursuit of happiness”?

I ask this because, if the underlying premise is simply that every citizen has the right to do as they please with their time and property, that does not necessarily imply that an individual is actively seeking happiness, much less that they are actually finding it. It raised another question for me: Is it truly possible to find happiness or is it merely an endless quest? To address these doubts, I consulted the Catechism of the Catholic Church to look up the term “happiness.” To my surprise, I found more than one answer, for Christian morality is grounded in the eternal vocation that God has bestowed upon every human being: beatitude.

In other words, we all possess a desire for happiness inscribed within our hearts, and embedded within that desire is a call to conversion, a call to encounter and intimacy with God. As the Catechism states: “The Beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness. This desire is of divine origin: God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the One who alone can fulfill it” (1718). 

Let us remember that the Beatitudes serve as an X-ray of the heart of Jesus, because they describe his infinite charity. Moreover, they illuminate our actions and detail the characteristics of the Christian life. They are the promises that sustain our hope during times of tribulation. They proclaim the blessings and rewards that have already begun to be realized by the saints.

Thus, it can be said that the pursuit of happiness — rather than merely a right — is an intrinsic characteristic of the human being. We have been designed with a yearning for well-being that can only be satisfied by the eternal. One might even say that this pursuit lies at the very root of our being religious by nature, because it responds to a thirst of the soul that cannot be quenched by anything less than the infinite. It’s as if God has inscribed within every heart a yearning for transcendence, and happiness serves as the compass that enables us to find that, or more accurately, to find the One who can satisfy it.

This brings to mind a key question: Who is seeking whom? Are we seeking happiness, or is happiness seeking us? For it is happiness that directs the yearning our soul will forever harbor for God. “The 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” (CIC 27).

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of a nation that enshrines the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right, let us celebrate the fact that we have already found it — or, rather, that it has found us. Happiness has a name: Christ Jesus. Let’s rejoice as our hearts rest in the peace of the Beatitudes — our map, guide and path to attaining unending bliss.