Gilbert Tunney's million dollar question.

We spend the better part of our lives trying to buy happiness, but we know in the depths of our hearts that only God can give us the peace that lasts.

I REMEMBER ONCE GETTING INTO A HEATED ARGUMENT WITH one of my next-door neighbors when I was a teenager. It all started innocently. Gilbert Tunney, two years my junior, and I were shooting a game of pool at the billiards hall on Castro Valley Boulevard, mixing it up with bikers and leather-skinned women with tattoos and old men whittling away their Social Security checks with bottles of beer and friendly wagers on eight ball. After hitting an impressive bank shot, I was chalking up my cue just the way Mom taught me, when Gilbert, who was sucking down his third Coca-Cola, became philosophical as the Irish are wont to do in pool halls and pubs and funeral parlors. The conversation turned from the relative merits of the designated-hitter rule in baseball to the topic of happiness and what was required to achieve it.

Being 16 and recently employed at McDonald's and thus much wiser and more worldly than Gilbert who was still plying his trade as a newspaper boy, I struck a professorial pose and suggested that no amount of money could buy happiness. Happiness is something that cannot be purchased at any price, I said, impressed with how learned I sounded.

Gilbert, not well-versed at all in the ways of civil discourse, told me I was full of it and that a million dollars would make him incredibly happy. And he thanked God that I had not as yet been given any great responsibility in life because I was thick in the head and probably couldn't think my way out of a paper bag if my life depended on it.

I shook my head and cast a condescending glance Gilbert's way that said in so many words: "Oh, Gilbert, my young and inexperienced friend, there are some things that 14-year-old children are just too young to know. In time, with a little more experience and a little bit of luck, you will come to see what my 16 years have taught me." It was at that point that Gilbert stepped onto the pool table and, taking the cue ball, banged it against his glass of Coca-Cola a few times, silenced the 25 or 30 patrons, and drew their quizzical faces our way.

"Excuse me, but may I have your attention!" Gilbert yelled in his still thick Irish brogue, a lilt that lent the situation high drama. "My friend Patrick and I have a disagreement. He says that you cannot buy happiness. And I say that you can. All those who say $1 million can buy happiness say aye!" Well, the dusty light fixtures suspended over each of the pool tables swayed back and forth from the force of sound that echoed through the hall. Smiling down at me like a matador who is about to thrust the last sword into the heart of a helpless bull, Gilbert then asked, "And those who say it can't, say nay." You could have heard a pin drop.

Jumping down from the table, Gilbert chalked up his cue and looked at me with only the slightest hint of pity and said, "Your shot, Patrick." I didn't speak for the rest of the game.

NOW MORE THAN 20 YEARS LATER I MUST CONFESS THAT GILBERT, though wrong, was at least more honest than I was. I have been spending the better part of my life trying to purchase peace and happiness in all the wrong places. The years have taught me that most, if not all, of us, by virtue of our skin and bones, are tethered to a life spent trying to purchase happiness, and certainly we all are tempted into believing that $1 million dollars would go a long way in making us feel secure and happy. I have won the lottery and spent the loot so many times in the other world I Sometimes live in it borders on the pathetic.

My happiness, as a teenager, was predicated on a well thought out plan: I would go to college, get my degree in political science, go to law school, become a lawyer, marry my high-school sweetheart, move into a nice home with a swimming pool, have, with my wife's approval and cooperation, six or seven children, and make just enough money to afford a few nice things and a cabin at Lake Tahoe. I would retire early and spend the rest of my life spoiling my grandchildren. Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the altar. My life--as I imagine most of yours--didn't turn out the way I had planned.

Try as we might to engineer a happy, secure, and peaceful existence, we know in the depths of our hearts that only God can give us the peace that lasts. Saint Augustine was right when he said, referring to God, "My heart will always be restless until it rests in thee." And truth be told, any joy that has come my way has never been purchased. It has always come as a gift, unexpected and unearned.

And that is the scandal of Jesus and why even still his gospel causes most of us to shake and shudder when the implications of his radical call to trust sink in. That is why so many turned their back on him and found his message too difficult to bear. He preached absolute surrender to God to a tribe of humanity not unlike our own. His disciples, like us, were not tickled at all to hear that the way to victory is through surrender to God.

In our world, success is measured most often by how much one acquires. In the kingdom of God which we are all desperately trying to get to because we know we will finally experience peace and mercy and acceptance and love--those things we hunger for--success is measured by how much we have given up.

Jesus said, "You want life, then lose it. If you want to be first, get in the back of the line. Love your enemies and pray for those who would spit in your face. If someone asks for your coat, give him your shirt as well. If you want peace, then go to the person who has hurt you the most and embrace her with a love drenched in tears and forgive her."

We believe that Jesus is the Way to God. To travel on that road requires hard work, sweat, even tears. But it is the hard work of surrender, of letting go.

Time and time again we will go off on our own and try to find a less demanding god to worship, one who will not require much of us at all, one who will give us the control, the power. Those gods tell us that if we just work at it hard enough we can purchase the peace and happiness we so desire. But in the end, our hearts will still be restless.

And we will return, holding onto nothing but our hunger, to a God who is delighted at our return, thankful that we have once again chosen him and that we didn't run away from home for very long. And in the tender embrace of that God, we will discover a peace this world simply cannot give.

Pool halls and pubs and funeral parlors--bricks slapped together with mortar and roofs thatched with shingles to keep the rain out--keep so that the human tribe can gather within their dark and dusty walls and ponder the deep questions of life and maybe even fancy the fleeting notion that peace can be purchased.

Maybe that is why we come to Eucharist so often, to feast on the bread of life and so be reminded that it is God alone and nothing else that satisfies our hunger. It is to such love we surrender our very hearts.

By FATHER PATRICK HANNON, C.S.C., associate pastor at St. Felicitas Parish in San Leandro, California.