--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "feste37" <feste37@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> Let's take a guess: it's that jolly old medieval saint, Aquinas!
Congratulations you are our winner! You have correctly identified the author of
the piece.
Your prize is: 1.one gallon Lourdes Water
2. 1943 Missal
3. stone fragment of Monte Cassino
4. signed copy of Brideshead Revisited
5. Original copy of Anselm's Proof for the existence of
God
6. Recording of Italian women saying the Rosary before
1943
7. Secret photograph of The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima
October 13, 1917
8. St Therese of Lisieux's Joan of Arc costume
9. The Summa Theologica signed by Thomas
10. King Louis IX's sword taken from him by the Saracens
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Robin Carlsen" <maskedzebra@> wrote:
> >
> > If anyone asks me I will name the author and the text. It is not lifted
> > from my SCI notes.
> >
> > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Robin Carlsen" <maskedzebra@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Happiness is another name for God. God is happy by nature; he does not
> > > attain happiness or receive it from another. But men become happy by
> > > receiving a share in God's happiness, something God creates in them. And
> > > this created happiness is a life of human activity in which their human
> > > powers are ultimately fulfilled: for the goal of anything is fulfilment
> > > in activity.
> > >
> > > True, to exist is already to live, but to exist is not yet to be happy,
> > > except in God's case. When we speak of leading a life of action or
> > > contemplation or pleasure, we mean by life an exercise of our existent
> > > powers in some form of fulfilling activity; and this is also the way in
> > > which our ultimate goal is said to be eternal life.
> > >
> > > Now *this is eternal life: to know you, the only true god*. There are two
> > > sorts of activity: one is exercised outside the doer, like cutting down
> > > and burning, and realizes and fulfils the thing it is done to rather than
> > > the doer; so happiness cannot be that sort of activity. The other sort of
> > > activity, like sensing and understanding and willing, is exercised within
> > > the doer and fulfils and realizes him; and such activity can be happiness.
> > >
> > > God's happiness is God: for him his very existence is an activity by
> > > which he is fulfilled from within and not from without; but man's
> > > ultimate fulfilment comes by cleaving to God. In our present life we
> > > cannot do this by a single continuous activity but only by many
> > > interrupted acts; God however has promised us perfect happiness in
> > > heaven, and in that happy state man's spirit will be joined to God in one
> > > unbroken everlasting activity.
> > >
> > > The more we approach such unbroken activity in this life the more we can
> > > call ourselves happy, and so a life of action, occupied by many things,
> > > offers less happiness than a life of contemplation, engaged in the one
> > > activity of gazing at the truth. And if at times a man is not actually so
> > > engaged, nevertheless because he is ever open and ready and turns his
> > > very breaks in contemplation, due to sleep or natural business, to its
> > > service, his contemplation seems as if it were unbroken.
> > >
> > > Happiness, because it cleaves to the uncreated good who cannot be seen or
> > > touched, is not activity of our senses. But sense-activity, since it is a
> > > pre-condition of understanding, is also a pre-condition of whatever
> > > partial happiness we can achieve in our present life. In the perfect
> > > happiness we hope for in heaven after the resurrection, happiness will
> > > redound from our soul into our body and fulfil our bodily senses; so that
> > > sense-activity will follow from happiness, even though the activity by
> > > which we cleave to God will not require it as a pre-condition.
> > >
> > > The activity of happiness is an exercise of understanding, not of
> > > willing. For willing a goal is not the same as achieving it: the will can
> > > desire absent goals just as much as it can enjoy achieved ones. Something
> > > else than an act of will is needed to make the goal present. This is
> > > obvious in the case of tangible goals�if money could be got by willing,
> > > the needy man would straightway have as much as he wanted�and it is
> > > also true of spiritual goals.
> > >
> > > From the start the will wants to achieve it; but to be achieved it must
> > > become present to us in an act of understanding, after which the will can
> > > rest and rejoice in the goal already achieved.
> > >
> > > Happiness, then�*joy in truth*, as Augustine calls it�is essentially
> > > an activity of our understanding, with consequent joy of will. Put
> > > another way, willing is not the primary thing we will, just as seeing is
> > > not the primary thing we see but has its own seen object; and so the very
> > > fact that happiness is the will's primary object guarantees that it is
> > > not the will's own activity. Goals are first apprehended as such by the
> > > mind, not the will; but tending to the goal starts in the will; and that
> > > is why the final consequences of achieving the goal, namely our pleasure
> > > and enjoyment, is attributed to the will.
> > >
> > > So although love outranks knowledge on route to the goal, love
> > > presupposes knowledge on arrival.
> > >
> > > Man's highest activity engages his highest power with its highest object.
> > > Man's intelligence is his highest power, and its highest object the good
> > > that is God, an object of contemplative not practical intelligence. So
> > > happiness is above all the activity of contemplating the things of God.
> > > The practical mind pursues knowledge not for its own but for action's
> > > sake, and actions in turn pursues goals. So practical knowledge and the
> > > life of action with which it is concerned cannot be our ultimate goal.
> > > Nevertheless, though the complete happiness to which we look forward in
> > > the life to come is entirely a life of contemplation, and the incomplete
> > > happiness we can have here is first and foremost contemplation, this
> > > latter happiness consists secondarily in knowing how to order our actions
> > > and our passions in practice.
> > >
> > > Contemplative of God is not achieved by way of the speculative sciences.
> > > The first premises of speculative science are based on sense-experience,
> > > and so all speculative science is restricted to truth derivable from
> > > experience of the sensible world. But the ultimate happiness which is to
> > > fulfil man cannot be knowledge of the sensible world. Nothing can be
> > > fulfilled by what is inferior to it unless that too shares in something
> > > higher, and then what is derivative must be traced back to what is
> > > original. Man must find his final fulfilment in knowledge of something
> > > higher than his own mind.
> > >
> > > Speculative science is but an anticipation of true and complete
> > > happiness. The complete happiness of man then lies in what will
> > > essentially fulfil his mind; and the complete fulfilment of any power
> > > comes form achieving something which fully realizes the nature of its
> > > object.
> > >
> > > Now the proper object of mind is truth, and God alone is essentially true
> > > (things are true in the same way in which they exist); so it is
> > > contemplation of God [the source of all being and light], that makes us
> > > completely happy. To know something with the mind is to understand what
> > > it is; so the mind is fulfilled to the degree to which it knows what
> > > things are. If from the understanding of some effect we deduce only that
> > > it has a cause without understanding exactly what that cause is, then we
> > > are left with a natural desire to know more.
> > >
> > > We call it wonder and it drives us to investigate until we are satisfied
> > > with our understanding of what that cause is. For complete happiness then
> > > the mind wants to know the nature of the first cause of everything.
> > > Happiness is cleaving to God as the mind's all-fulfilling object.
> > >
> >
>
