How Holiness Leads to Happiness

How Holiness Leads to Happiness January 8, 2025

How Holiness Leads to Happiness
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Have you ever felt afraid that once you strive for holiness, you will eventually risk losing your happiness? Holiness is not a word that our culture today seems to be fond of. It’s a word that seems to take away all the fun and pleasure from life. We associate it with suffering, difficulty and pain.

Perhaps this is the reason many people can’t understand why someone would choose to be a priest or a nun. Why choose to live such a harsh and joyless life? This seems to be the prevailing thought about the religious life.

Even when it comes to holiness for those not called to the religious vocation, a holy life is often equated to a bland and boring life. It’s a life where you are forbidden to do all the things that the world considers exciting and delightful.

In truth, however, it is by being holy that we can achieve true happiness.

If you are searching for happiness, here’s how holiness can help you find it:

1. Happiness in God

Holiness leads you to God. And only in God can we find true and lasting happiness.

Material things and excitement in earthly activities and pleasures can give us fleeting delight. But this kind of feeling always fades away.

To be truly happy, we must draw near to Him who is the Source of true happiness. Those who find Him find peace, contentment and joy, the kind of joy that lasts forever.

“You see God created you and I to be happy in this life and the next… He cares for you. He watches your every move. There’s no one that loves you (who) can do that.” – Mother Angelica

2. Healthy relationships

We often strive to have a good relationship with the people we love. Despite that, however, we find even our best efforts fail. We hurt the ones we love the most. And we ruin even the best relationships we thought we had.

This is where striving for holiness helps. When we strive for holiness, we enter a transformation that changes us for the better. It makes us more patient and gentle. It enables us to endure difficult times.

Holiness equips us to love others, extending our limited capacities and healing the inner wounds that keep us from loving and being loved.

3. Freedom from the burden of sin

Have you ever thought about the weight of the sins in your life? They burden your heart, mind and soul. You may not have realized it, but they give you stress and take away your peace.

Think about the sin of envy. Envying others weighs heavily upon your heart and keeps you from enjoying the life you have.

Or think about wrath and the desire for revenge. It imprisons you and makes your heart heavy with anger.

Holiness helps you to forgive. It frees you from the sins that cling heavily upon your soul.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” – Lewis B. Smedes

4. A life of meaning and purpose

Holy people may not be exempt from life’s difficulties, but they are never without purpose.

A life of holiness is a life that is meaningful. It is a life dedicated to the highest ideals and aims for the greatest good.

Through holiness, one finds meaning and fulfillment in life.

5. Strength in trials

Happiness need not disappear when challenging times come. For those who seek to be holy, they find strength even in the most difficult times.

With this strength comes hope and courage. With it comes also the kind of happiness borne out of peace.

Seeking Happiness

“How is it, then, that I seek you, Lord? Since in seeking you, my God, I seek a happy life, let me seek you so that my soul may live, for my body draws life from my soul and my soul draws life from you.” – St. Augustine

To seek for happiness is to seek for God. And the road that leads us to Him is the road of holiness. Let us not be afraid therefore of being holy.

True holiness is not something aimed to take away all that is good and beautiful in this life. It is in fact the very thing that will lead us to true happiness and peace.

“Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return.” – Pope Benedict XVI


Jocelyn Soriano is the author of To Love an Invisible God.Is it really possible to love a God we cannot even see?”

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You may also want to read “Can You Imagine the Ecstasy of the Holy Saints?”

About Jocelyn Soriano
Jocelyn Soriano is an author, poet, and book reviewer. She is an introvert who enjoys a cup of coffee and listening to the cello ****** while working.

She wrote the books To Love an Invisible God, Defending My Catholic Faith and Mend My Broken Heart. She also wrote books on poetry including Poems of Love and Letting Go and Of Waves and Butterflies: Poems on Grief. She has published more than 15 books and developed her own Android applications including God’s Promises and Catholic Answers and Apologetics.

She writes about relationships and common questions about God and the Catholic faith at Single Catholic Writer. She is currently single and happy and she would like everyone to know how happy we can be by drawing close to the love of God!

You can read more about the author here.

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