St. Thomas of Villanova

Bishop, Confessor (III Class)

St. Thomas, born in Spain, religious of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, Archbishop of Valencia, died having given away to the poor all he possessed in 1555.

It happens that today is also the feast day of the 223 martyrs of Valencia beatified in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. Not that there were only 223 martyrs in the Spanish Civil War (1936) mind you, this is merely the number of those beatified thus far. In honor of whom today we drank some Spanish Sangria with shouts (okay, toasts) of Viva Christo Rey!

This afternoon in my Moral Theology class, we had a nice cordial debate over the merits of St. Thomas's assertion that our eternal and perfect happiness will consist essentially in an act of the intellect rather than of will, i.e. the Beatific Vision is essentially an act of knowing, not of loving.

This one often provokes a reaction, and it is admittedly quite counter-intuitive. The importance of charity is after all stressed emphatically in the Scriptures. But then there are such words as these:

• St Paul, in the very context of his great discourse on love, writes: "For now we see [vision pertains to knowledge] in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood" (I Cor 13:12).
• St John writes: "Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2).
• Our Lord Himself says: "And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3).

St. Thomas explains it in this way in Summa Theologiae, I-II, 3.4:

I answer that, as stated above two things are needed for happiness: one, which is the essence of happiness: the other, that is, as it were, its proper accident, i.e. the delight connected with it. I say, then, that as to the very essence of happiness, it is impossible for it to consist in an act of the will. For it is evident from what has been said that happiness is the attainment of the last end. But the attainment of the end does not consist in the very act of the will. For the will is directed to the end, both absent, when it desires it; and present, when it is delighted by resting therein. Now it is evident that the desire itself of the end is not the attainment of the end, but is a movement towards the end: while delight comes to the will from the end being present; and not conversely, is a thing made present, by the fact that the will delights in it. Therefore, that the end be present to him who desires it, must be due to something else than an act of the will.

This is evidently the case in regard to sensible ends. For if the acquisition of money were through an act of the will, the covetous man would have it from the very moment that he wished for it. But at the moment it is far from him; and he attains it, by grasping it in his hand, or in some like manner; and then he delights in the money got. And so it is with an intelligible end. For at first we desire to attain an intelligible end; we attain it, through its being made present to us by an act of the intellect; and then the delighted will rests in the end when attained.

So, therefore, the essence of happiness consists in an act of the intellect: but the delight that results from happiness pertains to the will. In this sense Augustine says that happiness is "joy in truth," because, to wit, joy itself is the consummation of happiness.