Are We Really Happy In God? - Some Personal Thoughts

Stephen Alexander Beach 

(311 Words) 

This is my final post on this series I have done on happiness and Thomas Aquinas. I have written about  pleasure, money, power, and honor previously, and in my most recent post in this series on happiness, I referenced an article by St. Thomas Aquinas in which he mentioned how supreme human happiness comes from the obtaining of the supreme good, God, in the vision of his divine essence. And yet he says that this is impossible in this life. We cannot have direct knowledge of God's essence, and so it is important to mention that as a Christian there is no complete happiness in this life. This beatific vision of God is only possible on the other side of the veil of death. 

Jesus makes it clear that to be his disciple in this life is not one comparable to the "Prosperity Gospel" preachers of today. Rather, Jesus says that we will be persecuted, hated, betrayed, and killed. And so when it comes to happiness, what is possible in this life is rather something of a glimpse of God received in moments of grace, sacraments, and prayer. There is a long tradition of expressing these glimpses as the pursuit of lovers who "wound" one another but who are not yet able to be fully with one another. To be in the presence of one's beloved is to be infatuated with desire, and yet life presents so many barriers to them being with one another. So too in our relationship with God. We are wounded by his grace and divine love at moments in our life, and yet God withdraws himself so we are drawn to pursue him and find him again. It is only in death that this relationship can be consummated with the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in which God and humanity are wedded together for all eternity. Then we will have happiness in it's fullest sense. 

This notion is present in many aspects of the Bible's and the saint's poetic tradition. Consider the following below: 

Excerpt from “The Spiritual Canticle” by St. John of the Cross 

Where have You hidden, Beloved, and left me moaning?

You fled like the stag

After wounding me;

I went out calling You, and You were gone.

2. Shepherds, you that go

Up through the sheepfolds to the hill, If by chance you see Him I love most,

Tell Him that I sicken, suffer, and die.

3. Seeking my Love

I will head for the mountains and for watersides, I will not gather flowers, Nor fear wild beasts;

I will go beyond strong men and frontiers.

4. O woods and thickets

Planted by the hand of my Beloved!

O green meadow,

Coated, bright, with flowers, Tell me, has He passed by you?

5. Pouring out a thousand graces, He passed these groves in haste;

And having looked at them, With His image alone, Clothed them in beauty.

Ah, who has the power to heal me?

Now wholly surrender Yourself!

Do not send me

Any more messengers,

They cannot tell me what I must hear.

All who are free

Tell me a thousand graceful things of You;

All wound me more And leave me dying

Of, ah, I-don't-know-what behind their stammering.

8. How do you endure

O life, not living where you live?

And being brought near death

By the arrows you receive

From that which you conceive of your Beloved.

9. Why, since You wounded This heart, don't You heal it?

And why, since You stole it from me,

Do You leave it So,

And fail to carry off what You have stolen?

10. Extinguish these miseries,

Since no one else can stamp them out;

And may my eyes behold You, Because You are their light,

And I would open them to You alone.

11. Reveal Your presence,

And may the vision of Your beauty be my death;

For the sickness of love

Is not cured

Except by Your very presence and image.

12. O spring like crystal!

If only, on your silvered-over face, You would suddenly form The eyes I have desired,

Which I bear sketched deep within my heart.

Excerpt from the “Song of Songs” 

8 Listen! My beloved!

    Look! Here he comes,

leaping across the mountains,

    bounding over the hills.

9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.

    Look! There he stands behind our wall,

gazing through the windows,

    peering through the lattice.

10 My beloved spoke and said to me,

    “Arise, my darling,

    my beautiful one, come with me.

11 See! The winter is past;

    the rains are over and gone.

12 Flowers appear on the earth;

    the season of singing has come,

the cooing of doves

    is heard in our land.

13 The fig tree forms its early fruit;

    the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.

Arise, come, my darling;

    my beautiful one, come with me.”

He

14 My dove in the clefts of the rock,

    in the hiding places on the mountainside,

show me your face,

    let me hear your voice;

for your voice is sweet,

    and your face is lovely.

15 Catch for us the foxes,

    the little foxes

that ruin the vineyards,

    our vineyards that are in bloom.

She

16 My beloved is mine and I am his;

    he browses among the lilies.

17 Until the day breaks

    and the shadows flee,

turn, my beloved,

    and be like a gazelle

or like a young stag

    on the rugged hills.[d]

Psalm 42

As the deer longs for running streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When can I enter and see the face of God? My tears have been my bread

day and night,

as they ask me every day, “Where is your God?”

Those times I recall as I pour out my soul, When I would cross over to the shrine of the Mighty One, to the house of God, Amid loud cries of thanksgiving, with the multitude keeping festival. Why are you downcast, my soul; why do you groan within me?

Wait for God, for I shall again praise him, my savior and my God.

My soul is downcast within me; therefore I remember you

From the land of the Jordan and Hermon, from Mount Mizar, Deep calls to deep in the roar of your torrents,

and all your waves and breakers sweep over me.

By day may the LORD send his mercy, and by night may his righteousness

be with me!

I will pray to the God of my life,

I will say to God, my rock:

“Why do you forget me?

Why must I go about mourning with the enemy oppressing me?”

It shatters my bones,

when my adversaries reproach me, when they say to me every day: “Where is your God?”

Why are you downcast, my soul, why do you groan within me?

Wait for God, for I shall again praise him, my savior and my God. 

From St. Augustine’s Confessions

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

….

“Too late have I loved you,

O Beauty so ancient,

O Beauty so new.

Too late have I loved you!

You were within me but I was outside myself,

and there I sought you!

In my weakness I ran after the beauty of the things you have made.

You were with me,

and I was not with you.

The things you have made kept me from you,

the things which would have no being

unless they existed in you!

You have called,

you have cried,

and you have pierced my deafness.

You have radiated forth,

you have shined out brightly,

and you have dispelled my blindness.

You have sent forth your fragrance,

and I have breathed it in,

and I long for you.

I have tasted you,

and I hunger and thirst for you.

You have touched me,

and I ardently desire your peace.”

St. Thomas’ Vision at the end of his life

At the end of his life, St. Thomas Aquinas even confided in his secretary and friend, a man named Reginald, how his mystical visions made him think of his written work.

"The end of my work has come; all that I have written and taught seems to me like a piece of straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me. From now on I hope from the goodness of my God that the end of my life will closely follow that of my works."