Choose a topic from Part 2A:
1. One of the effects of pleasure is a certain expansion of feeling; thus a person may say that his heart swells with delight. We read in scripture (Isa. 40:5): "Thou shalt see and abound, and thy heart shall wonder and be enlarged."
2. Another effect of pleasure is the thirst or desire for its continuance or its recurrence. Yet sometimes, when a pleasure has been enjoyed too completely, there is no immediate pleasure in the thought of it, and no actual desire for continuance. Thus a person who has eaten overmuch is displeased rather than pleased at the thought of food which recently gave him pleasure. Pleasures of the intellectual order are less likely to cloy than those of the sentient order. Spiritual pleasure is always enjoyed with a thirst for more.
3. In the realm of reason, pleasure lends impetus to the mind. The enjoyment of study or thinking keeps us at the work and makes us do the work better. But bodily pleasures hinder the use of the mind by distracting it, occasionally conflicting with it, and sometimes (as in the pleasure of drinking intoxicants) by fettering it.
4. In general, orderly pleasure within the proper field of an operation gives some perfection to the operation itself. What is done with pleasure is usually done with care and attention.
"The one thing necessary which Jesus spoke of to Martha and Mary consists in hearing the word of God and living by it."
R. Garrigou-Lagrange, OP
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"The essence of perfection is to embrace the will of God in all things, prosperous or adverse. In prosperity, even sinners find it easy to unite themselves to the divine will; but it takes saints to unite themselves to God's will when things go wrong and are painful to self-love. Our conduct in such instances is the measure of our love of God."
St Alphonsus de Liguori
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"The supreme perfection of man in this life is to be so united to God that all his soul with all its faculties and powers are so gathered into the Lord God that he becomes one spirit with him, and remembers nothing except God, is aware of and recognises nothing but God, but with all his desires unified by the joy of love, he rests contentedly in the enjoyment of his Maker alone."
St Albert the Great
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