"The real St. Thomas was a very affective person". lecture The professor of Psychology and Philosophy of the Abad Oliva CEU University, Martín Echavarría, has given a lecture at the School of Theology of the University of Navarra on the occasion of the celebration of his patron saint, St. Thomas Aquinas. The lecture entitled "Spiritual affectivity according to St. Thomas" sought to answer the question of what St. Thomas himself really knew as affectivity.

Professor Echavarría pointed out that "spiritual affectivity is explicit in St. Thomas himself, since he himself affirmed that the will is not directly united with freedom, but that one must have a disposition prior to happiness". He also assured that "the ultimate end is the Good, which orients human life as a whole". For this reason, he affirmed that "a good life is that which is oriented towards the Good, and to achieve it, the intervention of the intelligence and the will is decisive: only by knowing and willing can this end be reached".

In view of the conflict of wills in Christ, Echavarría commented that "this apparent conflict has to do with his will given by nature, with which he loved his body and his life, but with deliberate love he postponed this good to the higher good, the redemption that the Father wanted". This is a freedom conditioned to the love of God, since "the Good of man is a complex knowledge ".

To conclude, Professor Echavarría recalled that "in St. Thomas, natural appetite means two things, a natural inclination towards that which we desire and natural will as everything that the intellect detects as good in man in any of its parts".