370. What are the passions?
(Comp 370) The passions are the feelings, the emotions or the movements of the
sensible appetite - natural components of human psychology - which incline a
person to act or not to act in view of what is perceived as good or evil. The
principal passions are love and hatred, desire and fear, joy, sadness, and
anger. The chief passion is love which is drawn by the attraction of the good.
One can only love what is good, real or apparent.
“In brief”
(CCC 1771)
The term "passions" refers to the affections or the feelings. By his
emotions man intuits the good and suspects evil.
To deepen and
explain
(CCC 1762)
The human person is ordered to beatitude by his deliberate acts: the passions
or feelings he experiences can dispose him to it and contribute to it. (CCC 1764)
The passions are natural components of the human psyche; they form the
passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the
life of the mind. Our Lord called man's heart the source from which the
passions spring (Cf. Mk 7:21).
Reflection
(CCC 1765)
There are many passions. The most fundamental passion is love, aroused by the
attraction of the good. Love causes a desire for the absent good and the hope
of obtaining it; this movement finds completion in the pleasure and joy of the
good possessed. The apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion, and fear of
the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at some present evil, or in
the anger that resists it. (CCC 1766) "To
love is to will the good of another" (St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I-II, 26, 4, corp. art.). All other affections have their source in this first
movement of the human heart toward the good. Only the good can be loved (Cf.
St. Augustine, De Trin., 8, 3, 4: PL
42, 949-950). Passions "are evil if love is evil and good if it is
good" (St. Augustine, De civ. Dei
14, 7, 2: PL 41, 410).
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