Aquinas on Happiness as an Antidote to Modern Life
/By Christopher J. Thompson, Ph.D., The Saint Paul Seminary, University of St. Thomas, Minnesota
The essay was originally written for the occasion of the Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas according to the new liturgical calendar, January 28, 2023. It is reprinted and edited with the permission of its author.
In a small section of his famous work, the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas provides us with a basic tutorial on human flourishing. This well-known “treatise on human happiness” forms the skeletal outlines of the dominant desire at the core of every human heart: the inescapable need for happiness, fulfillment, bliss. Every human person—regardless of creed, gender or class—is hard wired to seek a fulfilled life, wired not with just as a kind of generic, undifferentiated desire, but a soul-piercing, gut-wrenching, all-consuming passion for overwhelming, rapturous joy!
It’s an unusual vision of human existence. And it challenges the more measured postures of modern living. We are suspicious of claims to human happiness; we think of ourselves as being savvier than our medieval, quainter predecessors. Yet, St. Thomas insists that to aim for something less than total bliss would be to not only compromise our chances of success, but would compromise our very human dignity. To be human, for St. Thomas, is to be driven by an enduring hope for lasting joy.
What an antidote to modern life! An elixir to an age enervated by its own successes! I can only think that the quaint mendicant would laugh heartily if he saw us today. Mired in a bog of endless concerns, constantly updated and informed of every conceivable threat to our perceived well-being, an app to monitor my heart rate, one to check the weather on an hourly basis, one to monitor my investments, one to see how I’m trending among my boundless circle of stranger-friends.
It would indeed be a heart-felt laugh, one born from empathy and love, for he sees in each one of us a companion along the way. He refuses to believe that the desire for lasting love can by snuffed out by the latest preoccupations. Not in power nor prestige, not in luxury nor “likes,” not in your abs nor your apps, will your deepest, most secret love be satisfied. Only God is the answer to the soul’s most absorbing quest. Not even God merely known, but God knowing us. In beholding the face of the one who beholds ours, in dwelling in the company of the one who dwells most intimately in us, there the secret to life’s happiness can still be found.
On the occasion of his feast, let us thank St. Thomas Aquinas for his daring to bring to mind the lasting hope that lies in the center of each of one us. And let us thank the God from whom such hope draws its life.