Choose a topic from Part 2A:
1. The will tends to attain good, and to repose in it with delight or enjoyment when it is attained. This delight or enjoyment of the will in good attained is called fruition.
2. Every cognitional appetite (that is, appetency stirred by knowing) can find fulfillment and fruition. Among earthly creatures, only men and animals have cognitional appetency. Men have sentient appetency and intellectual appetency; animals have sentient appetency. Nonliving things have only natural and nonsentient appetency, that is, a nonknowing tendency to hold on to their being and their proper activities. Natural appetency leads to no fruition or enjoyment.
3. Just as every particular choice of good is made, consciously or not, as an expression of man's necessary quest of his ultimate good, so all human fruition or enjoyment has a reference to the supreme and perfectly enjoyable good. During life on earth a person may have many joys, but none of these can perfectly fill up the appetite for enjoyment. Man wants full enjoyment, endlessly possessed. Only in heaven, in possession of his ultimate good, can man have this fruition.
4. Fruition or enjoyment is found in the good possessed. But even in the intention to lay hold of good, and in the quest for good, there is an imperfect fruition.
"This is the greatest wisdom -- to seek the kingdom of heaven through contempt of the world. "
Thomas á Kempis
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"God gives us some things, as the beginning of faith, even when we do not pray. Other things, such as perseverance, he has only provided for those who pray."
St Augustine
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"If, devout soul, it is your will to please God and live a life of serenity in this world, unite yourself always and in all things to the divine will. Reflect that all the sins of your past wicked life happened because you wandered from the path of God's will. For the future, embrace God's good pleasure and say to him in every happening: "Yea, Father, for so it hath seemed good in thy sight." "
St Alphonsus de Liguori
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