Pleasure is Never Enough: Lighting the Way to Joy, by Dr. Jeff Mirus

By Dr. Jeff Mirus, Catholic Culture, Dec 26, 2024

Jeffrey Mirus holds a Ph.D. in intellectual history from Princeton University. A co-founder of Christendom College, he also pioneered Catholic Internet services. He is the founder of Trinity Communications and CatholicCulture.org

Have you ever stopped to consider how closely joy is associated with hope? This is so true that the Latin verb which means “to be without hope” is desparare, from which we get the English word despair. And despair is also what destroys joy. It is the ultimate sadness.

I mention this during the Christmas Season because it is the answer to the riddle of our modern pursuit of pleasure. It is obviously desirable to feel pleasure, but pleasure is a hideous trap without hope. We will pursue pleasure with increasing desperation when we are without hope, to stave off the temptation to suicide. Thus pleasure without hope tends to degenerate into a frenetic attempt to distract ourselves from the emptiness we feel inside….

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