A good beyond this world?

Taking up Aristotle's eudaimonism, Thomas grants that every action aims at a final end, happiness; but he shows that no finite good, neither wealth, nor honour, nor pleasure, nor even philosophical contemplation, can satisfy the human being's natural desire, which is stilled only in the universal good. Now God alone is that good without limit: perfect beatitude can therefore consist only in the beatific vision, the contemplation of the divine essence, unreachable in this life and received by grace. Greek eudaimonism is thus preserved yet surpassed, the sovereign good being referred to a perfecting that nature calls for without being able to attain it on its own.

Ultimate and perfect beatitude can lie only in the vision of the divine essence.Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 3, a. 8

Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 1-5

The meaning of life is for Thomas given, inscribed in a providence that orders every being to its end: the human being is created to know and love God, and all his existence finds its direction in this return toward its origin. A slight constructive part remains, since it falls to each one to cooperate freely with this end through his acts, but the fundamental orientation is neither invented nor absurd, it is received from a willed order.

Summa contra Gentiles, III, 25 and 37

God is for Thomas radically transcendent, distinct from the world he creates out of nothing, and his essence surpasses everything we can conceive: by reason we know of him only what he is not (negative theology). Yet transcendence is not sheer separation, for God is also intimately present to every thing as the cause that gives it being at each instant. This articulation is expressed by the analogy of being: the perfections of creatures (goodness, wisdom) are found in God, but in an eminent degree and in a mode that escapes us, neither purely identical (univocity) nor purely alien (equivocity).

Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 3 (divine simplicity); q. 13 (the divine names)