In a previous column, I quoted Bishop Robert Barron: “To worship is to order the whole of your life toward the living God, and, in doing so, to become interiorly and exteriorly rightly ordered.” Through the next columns, we are going to go through the First Part of the Second Part of St. Thomas’ Summa Theologiae, which deals with man.
We are going to touch on Man’s Last End, Human Acts such as the Will, Good and Evil, Passions, Habits, Vice and Sin, and ending with Grace. Our goal is to recognize aspects of our lives that help us love God and love our neighbor so as to be most happy in this life and be best prepared for the next life.
Man’s Last End. Few people start a journey, or even start their day, not knowing where they are going or what they are going to do. Even if they don’t know where they are going, they know they don’t want to be where they are now. When they get there or have completed a task (an end), sooner or later, there is someplace else they want to go or something else to do.
If we take note of all the things we’ve done in our lives, we find that none of those things satisfied us so completely that we wanted to stop. Even if we did, or we could point back to wishing for the “good ol’ days,” we would find it an illusion.
St. Thomas writes, “That in which man rests as in his last end is master of his affections, since he takes therefrom his entire rule of life … (for) according to Matthew 6:24, No man can serve two masters. It is therefore necessary for the last end so to fill man’s appetite that nothing is left besides it for man to desire … (T)he will of an individual man must be fixed on one last end.” (I-II, 1, 5)
Peter Kreeft, in Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from St. Thomas Aquinas, sums it up this way, “Therefore everything you do every day is for God, for union with God, for your last end, for your Heavenly perfection – from the first movement of your arm in shutting off the alarm clock to the closing of your eyes as you fall asleep; from the first thought of your day in offering it all up to God (let that be your first thought every day: it takes only seconds!) to the last thought of your day, asking God to send your guardian angel to guard your sleep – and from the miracle of your soul entering your body at the moment of your conception to the moment of your soul leaving your body at death. Everything is connected by the Last End.”
For the Christian, our Last End is what St. Augustine says, “for rest in (God).”
Naturally, there would be objections to St. Thomas’ argument. An example that he addresses is the objection, “It would seem that man does not will whatsoever he wills for the last end. For … man does not always think of the last end in all that he desires or does.”
To which he answers, “One need not always be thinking of the last end whenever one desires or does something, but the virtue (effective power) of the first intention, which was in respect of the last end, remains in every desire directed to any object whatever, even though one’s thoughts be not actually directed to the last end. Thus while walking along the road one needs not to be thinking of the end at every step (I-II, 1, 7).
It is for us in our action, as having free will and control of our actions, that we strive to make it as natural (second nature) to keep our eyes fixed on the prize as it is to walk down a road not thinking of the end at every step.
Richard Arnold, a parishioner at Chillicothe St. Mary, holds an MA in Catechetics and Evangelization from Franciscan University of Steubenville and is a husband and a father to two children.