Choose a topic from Part 2A:

11. Fruition or Enjoyment

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.

"God speaks to us without ceasing by his good inspirations."
The Cure D'Ars

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"Whom do you seek, friend, if you seek not God? Seek him, find him, cleave to him; bind your will to his with bands of steel and you will live always at peace in this life and in the next."
St Alphonsus de Liguori

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"Lord, take from me everything that hinders me from going to You. give me all that will lead me to You. Take me from myself and give me to Yourself."
St Nicholas Flue

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