Confession, painted by Pietro Longhi.
The nature of this disinterested pleasure also comes from the fact that we all sense our own weaknesses and infirmities. This, in turn, awakens in us a desire to repose in the contemplation of something perfect and consequently sense a kind of completeness. In this way, rather than pleasure for pleasure’s sake, we sense the metaphysical joy of being linked with an order of being that completes our own.
Coronation of Our Lady by Jacopo di mino Montepulciano.
It is in this sense of completeness that the medieval man constructed his society and also imagined the joy of the Beatific Vision. In the latter, we will sense ourselves ordered according to what our own being asks of us. We will also sense ourselves integrated into the general and perfect order of being, as we proceed to contemplate and repose in that absolute Perfection, which is God Himself.
John Horvat, Return to Order: From a Frenzied Economy to an Organic Christian Society—Where We’ve Been, How We Got Here, and Where We Need to Go (York, Penn.: York Press, 2013), 320-21.
