What does the Church consider "truth and happiness man never stops searching for?"

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I’ve been reflecting over paragraph 27 of the Catechism the past couple of days:
**The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.
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The bolded part is what I’m curious about.

What does the Church consider “truth and happiness he never stops searching for” in relation to God?

Is it the mere knowledge of God and trust in his providence? That can’t be though. No one on Earth was closer and more in communion with God than Jesus. Even Jesus still went through anguish, sadness, and all kinds of suffering…Those aren’t things that I’m sure he or any of us search for.

What truth and happiness that we never stop searching for is the Church talking about?
 
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God is the Truth.
We are oriented as humans towards the Truth. We are happy (an act of the will, not an emotion) when we strive for God.
 
Can one be happy in God without realizing they’re in God?
 
MikeInVA said:
God is the Truth.
We are oriented as humans towards the Truth. We are happy (an act of the will, not an emotion) when we strive for God.
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But Jesus perfectly strived for God and still went through immense suffering.
 
God poured his whole being into us, each, in Love [Agape] to give us our actual being; we each are the beloved who is loved by God pouring himself into us so that we have him wholly (until we turned and headed off on our own holding on to our being alone).

The yearning we have is to return to the Lover who Loved us with the gift of himself giving us being, life. It is, as it were, an almost instinctual yearning to return to the Lover and give our life to Him so that He has us wholly within himself.

What kind of gift am I for God? That is not the question - He gave the gift of Himself to Me, and it is an invitation to friendship, to Love, where I find fulfillment in giving myself into Him so that He might have Me.

The Beloved has the Lover within by the Lover giving himself into the being of the Beloved.
The Lover has the Beloved within by the Beloved returning himself into the being of the Lover.
And due to the Gift of Christ, it becomes an eternal reciprocation of Love, of pouring ourselves into God and He into us, since we are one with the Son, in his Body, and his Spirit.

John Martin
 
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CatholicHere_Hi said:
What truth and happiness that we never stop searching for is the Church talking about?
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This experience isn’t fully consummated until the next life; it’s known as the “Beatific Vision” in that case. But either way the Catechism is speaking of the immediate knowledge of God. To know Him, directly, is to experience happiness that cannot be imagined or described. Here, in this life, we can begin to know Him directly via the gift known as “faith”. This is a dim foretaste of the BV but it’s already to know Him directly, rather than to merely know about Him as when we’re taught about Him. Some saints and others have been blessed with a “glimpse” of the Beatific Vision, said to produce sheer elation, peace, well-being-nothing left to want or desire.

It’s said that virtually any way that we pursue happiness in this life is sort of a detour from the real thing. It’s to look for it in all the wrong places so to speak. We can’t help but want it; it’s what we’re made for, but only God can actually grant it. “God, alone, satisfies”, as Aquinas put it. We’re here to learn of that fact, to learn that nothing in creation is enough; we need to keep seeking until we “find” God, or He finds us. We must come to learn of our need for Him. As we learn of his existence, first of all, and then of His trustworthiness and boundless goodness, we begin to experience and cultivate the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. In the end the “knowledge of God” is what its all about. The more we know Him, the more we love him; it cannot be helped. In this way man’s justice is also fulfilled as the Greatest Commandments are fulfilled, the right and only way. This is both a gift and a process that we must cooperate in.

"Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." John 17:3

In any case happiness, the happiness we all truly desire, can only be partially known at best in this life-but it is God’s plan for us.
 
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We are both flesh and spirit. Our spirit wants to transcend the world, to join its Creator. Only in union with God can we achieve true happiness.
 
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