Two common errors in regard to this formal happiness:
Cannot be had.
Would not give happiness if it were had.
Two obvious difficulties jumped at Aristotle -- and at men ever since. For it seems evident that man cannot see God, and, even if he did, the act, like all his acts of contemplation, would endure for only a short time and could not give him happiness. To these objections St. Thomas had the infallible answers of divine faith. As a matter of fact, men do see God; and in their vision is their supreme happiness.(Ex Constitutions Benedict XII, "Benedictus Deus" H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbobrum (Freiburg, Germany: Herder & Co., ed.; 17, 1928), #530.) It is quite certain that the universal Good, the essence of God, cannot be crowded into a mental concept, nor be abstracted from sensible things; and yet that is the way our intellect works. Yes, the way it works naturally; the way it works at the present time, not because of its intelligence, but because of that crutch which intelligence must use and which we call reasoning. Man can be, and is, lifted above that lowest grade of intelligence; he is enabled to throw away the crutch and come to grips with divinity, not through an image or a concept, but in the way the divinity sees itself -- through the immediate union of that supremely knowable essence to the intellect of man.
Supernatural? Of course it is supernatural. But that fact is no more of an affront to man's self-sufficiency, to the efficacy of nature, than is the fact that man is born without protection and clothes but is given hands and reason to make up for the deficiency. Here he is given a free will by which he can co-operate with the supernatural help infallibly offered him and reach the happiness which hangs over his head. That the contemplation of divinity is unsatisfying in this life, is beyond all question; and if reason could not have discovered that fact, faith would broadcast it to the four winds.(Council of Vienna, condemned propositions of Beghards, 1,4,5. (Denzinger, #471,474,475).
But that dissatisfaction is in this life, seeing that divinity through a glass darkly and while we are sadly pressed by all the necessities of physical existence. Aristotle was right as far as he went; but it had not entered into the mind of man that God would insist on such a perfect image of Himself in the unfolding of the goal of human activity.
Characteristics of formal happiness:
Once gained it can never be lost.
It cannot be had by natural power alone.
It is strictly a personal accomplishment.
Of this ultimate goal, then, it is strictly true that it is supernatural, not to be attained by natural powers. Yet, paradoxically, it is strictly personal attainment. No other creature, neither man nor woman, nor the highest angel in heaven, can get it for us; nor will God force it upon us. We approach it step by step, by onr own human actions, working with the constant help of God; and the last and eternally enduring act by which we grasp God Himself is an act of our intellect, something that can no more be done for us than our thinking here and now can be done by someone else and still be ours. Once had, this supreme good which satisfies all our desires and puts an end to the quest of happiness cannot possibly slip from our fingers. On its part, the beatifying object cannot dry up and blow away, it cannot decrease or cease to be what it essentially is, the universal good; on our part, we cannot get tired of it, there is nothing else that can tempt us from it, that can seem to have something that is not contained in that ultimate goal. Otherwise it would not be the ultimate, the universal good. Just as now we must will everything under the guise and in the name of good, so then we must will everything in the name of the divine good -- what attractiveness there is in other things, comes from this final end.
The perfection of happiness:
The three essentials or happiness: vision, comprehension, joy
Summing this up: a universally good object and its attainment by us is required for our complete happiness. In that attainment of the final goal there is involved the intellectual vision of the beatifying object; not merely a passing glance, but a tenacious grasp, an enduring comprehension of that object, and, finally, the eternally enduring joy (or rest) of our will, our appetite, in the accomplishment of our goal, in the possession of the all satisfying good.
All else that may be involved in our final happiness, however much it may contribute to the perfection of happiness, is secondary and relatively unimportant -- a delicate touch perhaps, like a drop of perfume on the gown of a perfectly dressed woman, but adding nothing substantial.
Role of the body in happiness
In this way, the reunion of body and soul will add to the perfection of the happiness of man. After all, his body belongs to a man, the soul was made for union with that body, and without it, the soul is in a very real sense incomplete; but the addition of the body will not add to the essential joy and glory of the soul, rather the other way around. From the soul will come joy and glory to the body, much as at present a light heart gives buoyancy to our steps.
Role of external goods
This overflow from the soul to the body will carry that body far beyond the limits of natural perfection. Often the body is in command of the situation at present, as the protest of our knees at an overlong prayer will testify; but then, the body will be completely subservient to the soul as it was meant to be. It would seem difficult then to find a place in the perfection of happiness for external goods. At present they are ordained to the needs of physical life; even the most sublime contemplative needs food and clothes. But the question of clothes in heaven would seem to be still very much open to debate.
Role of friends
Friends, of course, there must be, in the same way that we must have our bodies. They are our other selves; something of ourselves would be missing without them. And this is true, even though the principal end of friendship -- the opportunity to help, to sacrifice, to give to others -- will no longer exist; that subtler, infinitely precious joy in the beauty, the triumph, the happiness of friends will give a splendidly human air to the courts of heaven.
Key to present or imperfect happiness -- where and how happiness is to be found here and now
All of this may seem very far away, very unsatisfactory to men and women who are engaged in the actual pursuit of happiness -- as always the tape at the end of a race seems infinitely distant from the starting line. We want happiness now. What can we do about it today? What, if any, is the possibility of some happiness in this life?
Activity and progress as a measure of happiness
All of the answers to questions that might be put about present happiness are contained in what we have already said. Perhaps one of the most important is that no perfect happiness is to be had this side of death. It is an important thing to know. What happiness is possible can be had only by going in the general direction of that final goal, for because of that goal every other good is desirable, every other good has what power it possesses to satisfy the longings of our hearts. And what happiness can be had will be had slowly, trudgingly, little by little, with many an imperfection, distraction, interruption mixed in. The degree of present happiness is in exact proportion to our approach to the final goal of life, as the heat we feel from a fire is in exact proportion to our proximity to the fire. In utterly simple language: happiness, even the imperfect happiness this life can offer, is a matter of approaching God. The closer we get to Him, the greater our share of this imperfect happiness; the farther away we get, the less happiness we can expect to garner. The words of the child's catechism are an adequate summary of all we have said: man was made to know and to love God. The goal of life is the knowledge and love, the vision and enjoyment, of divinity; what happiness we get in this life will be through an imperfect knowledge or love of God, either in Himself, or in one of the mirrorings of divinity which we call creatures.
Answers to the puzzles: of activity, despair and boredom.
The rush of New York life is not necessarily an improvement on the sleepy quiet of a tiny Irish hamlet. Man gains his happiness by activity; but not by every activity, rather by activity that is going somewhere, going to the right place. There is such a thing as being so busy we have no time to live; having our heads so full of knowledge we have no chance to think; or our hearts so crowded that there is no place for love. Activity for activity's sake, bustling for its own sake, may help us to forget, may prevent our thinking, but it will not bring us happiness. Progress is indeed a measure of happiness -- if it is progress towards God. But progress in time saving devices, or labour-saving devices, in wealth, health, strength, beauty, athletic ability, business efficiency -- all of these can easily be synchronizing with flight away from the ultimate goal of human life. At best they are helps; at times they make that true progress easier. There can be no question that a young man of today has made less real progress as a result of fourteen or eighteen years of intensive educational efforts than did the Apostles by rubbing elbows with Christ for three years. A man or woman who starts off in high expectations of grasping full happiness within the span of human life is headed straight for despair; for despair is the fruit of reaching for the impossible. The person today starting life with a denial of life's goal, of the ultimate universal good, has no choice, eventually, but to choke out life or to attempt to choke out reason. The first is despair. The second produces a weariness from trying to pretend that the petty particularities of the universe can be the absorbing explanation of human activity, the goal of human life, the reward for the pursuit of happiness. This is boredom.
CHAPTER XX -- ETERNAL BEGINNINGS
THE one completely certain thing about any hour is that it will come to an end. The next most certain thing is that its end will mark the beginning of still another hour. If the passing moments measure agony, an hour's death-struggle is a long drawn-out affair, the next hour comes too slowly and stays too long; if it is joy that passes under the scrutiny of time, the death of an hour seems like an echo of its birth; the next one comes much too quickly but is welcomed as a reprieve of joy. Welcomed or dreaded, every hour, in common with all passing things, comes to an end and marks a beginning.
Promise of the transient: An end
Men are familiar enough with this truth to mark its occurrence throughout the rough sections life is ordinarily cut up into: infancy, childhood, adolescence, manhood, senescence. Indeed, they find the same truth in every day, and every moment of every day, in the smile that introduces a laugh, the tears that end a pent-up storm, the last hammer blow that completes a work, or the first kiss that begins love's consecration. For this is the mark of all things passing; and there is little man is more familiar with than things that do not last. It would be strange, indeed, if a man, recognizing the inevitability of the end of his life, did not look to what that end begins; for all of his experience rises up in protest against one such exception to the general rule of things that pass.
A beginning
As a matter of fact, no man has been able to resist at least one quick glance; no man has been able to resist the formulation and statement of the beginning that springs from the end of a human life. Sometimes the eyes were blinded, lest they see too much; at others, the glance was taken through a smoke-screen of discouragement, or through a bright fog of unfounded optimism. At no time could men get their hands on evidence that would satisfy their minds beyond the one point of the indestructibility of the soul of a man; all else has to be taken from the mouth of God, and there has always been a great reluctance on the part of many men to take their stories from anyone but other men or the devil.
Some concrete promises. Unchristian beginnings: Their variety
At any rate, the opinions of men on the beginnings introduced by death may be roughly divided into ones framed for comfort and the one framed by truth. Some men like their beds hard, others soft; some will insist on their eggs done one way, some another; a cold shower is heroism to one man, plain common sense to another, and so on. For men's ideas of comfort run a strange gamut. Naturally then, the comfortable beginnings assigned for death are a strange lot to be crowded into one hostelry except for their common and profound aversion to facing the truth.
Their comfort
Perhaps the strangest comfort is offered by the promise of oblivion as the sequel to death. This end of all beginnings, because a beginning of nothingness for the individual, may be reached by the shattering blow of annihilation, or the slow, insidious, dreamlike caresses of absorption that soothes the victim into complacency as pleasantly as the death-stroke dealt by bitter cold. It makes little difference whether the individual is absorbed into a future humanity, a present class, a future race, or a monstrous political ideal; the point is that for him, death begins nothing but nothingness.
Others, particularly those whose feet have dragged through a life that has never seen the sparkle of a star or the threat of a raging storm, find their strange comfort in having death introduce a life pretty much like the one they had been used to: a little vaguer perhaps, a little more befuddled, a little more pointless, but the same dull, hopeless routine. How desperately this petty comfort is desired is testified to by the prospering trade of tricksters and the steady, contemptuous cooperation of the devil in ministering it freely to people dulled enough by monotony to find it satisfying. Still others are by no mean. discouraged, not even by solid facts; they are the cheery ones who banish unpleasant things by refusing to look at them. With the best intentions, they set out to flatter humanity, never realizing that their blundering compliments are really unveiled insults. For them, death is the beginning of a state where all men of all time will gather around and just be happy, like the good, sunny, little children they are at heart; they just know that no man is nearly as bad as he thinks he is or as he tries to be. Mischievous, perhaps, but really bad? Impossible; so unpleasant to think about. Besides, God couldn't punish men forever, He just couldn't; think of our sensibilities!