Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas

Click on Catholic Culture for more information about good St. Thomas. Here are St. Thomas’ words on the Goodness of God.

It is written (Lam. 3:25): “The Lord is good to them that hope in Him, to the soul that seeketh Him.”

I answer that, To be good belongs pre-eminently to God. For a thing is good according to its desirableness. Now everything seeks after its own perfection; and the perfection and form of an effect consist in a certain likeness to the agent, since every agent makes its like; and hence the agent itself is desirable and has the nature of good. For the very thing which is desirable in it is the participation of its likeness. Therefore, since God is the first effective cause of all things, it is manifest that the aspect of good and of desirableness belong to Him; and hence Dionysius (Div. Nom. iv) attributes good to God as to the first efficient cause, saying that, God is called good “as by Whom all things subsist.”

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