"FOX: Now I am beginning to realize the power of what you said earlier, when you declared that 'God's love for things is better than ours.' You seem to be saying that we are to be joyful and delightful from our very spiritual roots, for the simple reason that God is that way and we are about imitating God.
"AQUINAS: One walks before God not with steps taken by the feet, but by the desires of the mind. God is most joyful and is therefore supremely conscious. It is unique to God that the divine joy is identical with the divine being. The divine joy gathers up within itself and consummates all joys. I maintain that whatever is joyful in any joy whatsoever preexists wholly and supremely in the divine joy. Regarding contemplative joy, God has the continuous and most certain contemplation of Divinity and all else; regarding active joy, God has the operation of the entire universe. Regarding earthly joys, which lie in pleasure, riches, power, dignity, or fame, God possesses joy in Godself and in all other things through the divine delight. In place of earthly riches, God possesses complete self-sufficiency that is desired in riches; in place of power God is omnipotence; in place of dignity God has sovereignty over all. And in place of fame, God has the wonder of creation.
"FOX: If creation is good enough for God it ought to be good enough for us! The wonder of creation moves God and so it ought to move us.
"AQUINAS: God loves all things with a single and simple act that does not vary and does not cease. God cannot hate anything—no hatred of anything can be ascribed to God. God wills things because of their likeness to divine goodness, and this assimilation constitutes the good that is in each and every thing. God did not make things except on account of good, for which reason it says in Genesis I: 'God saw that it was good.' Thus it is clear that a good thing is pleasing to God. The Holy Spirit, who is the lover whereby the Father loves the son, is also the love whereby God loves creatures and imparts to them the divine goodness.
"FOX: It would seem to follow from what you are saying that God, so steeped in joy and delight, must also be a great source of joy and delight.
"AQUINAS: God's lovableness is infinite. God knows this, you might say, because God perfectly delights in the Godhead since it perfectly knows and totally loves itself in as much as it is knowable and lovable. Furthermore, since the supreme good is desired in every good, it follows that any likeness or promise of joy, however meager, has its perfect origin and fulfillment in God.
"FOX: God, then, is our enjoyment and our delight?
"AQUINAS: Delight is not best just because it is delight, but because it is repose in the best. The very sight of God causes delight. At the sight of God the mind can do nothing but delight. Human salvation consists in the enjoyment of God, who gives bliss to human beings. How appropriate, then, that Jesus took delight in God, for the originator of a process should be its master. Our ultimate and principal good is to enjoy God. Eternal life consists in enjoying God. Joy is a human being's noblest act, and this happens when we enjoy the sublime, not when we achieve moral perfections or particular arrangements."
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