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II
THE BEATIFIC VISION AND ITS NORMAL
PRELUDE At the beginning of this work, (1) we stated that the life
of grace is the beginning of eternal life, according to the
traditional formula: "Grace is the seed of glory." It is
essentially the same life in its basis, in spite of two differences:
here on earth we know God only in the obscurity of faith, not in the
evidence of vision, and although we hope to possess Him inamissibly
some day, we can while on earth lose Him by mortal sin. In spite of
these two differences relating to faith and hope, it is the same essentially supernatural
life: sanctifying grace, received in the very essence of the soul,
and infused charity, received in the will, should last forever, and
with them the infused moral virtues and the seven gifts of the Holy
Ghost. The summit of the normal development of the life of grace is,
therefore, the beatific vision received after death. By way of
conclusion, we shall briefly discuss this vision of heaven and its
normal prelude on earth in the truly purified soul. THE ABSOLUTELY IMMEDIATE VISION OF THE DIVINE ESSENCE We shall sum up here what St. Thomas teaches on this point in
the Summa. (2) If God had created us in a purely natural state with a mortal body
and an immortal soul, but without the supernatural life of grace,
even then our last end, our beatitude, would have consisted in
knowing God and loving Him above all else, for our intellect is made
to know the truth, and especially the supreme Truth, and our will is
made to love and will good, and especially the sovereign Good. If we had been created without the supernatural life of grace, the
final reward of the just would have been to know God and to love
Him, but they would have known Him only from without, so to
speak, by the reflection of His perfections in creatures, as the
greatest philosophers of antiquity knew Him. Without a doubt, we
would have known Him in a more certain manner without admixture of
errors, but by abstract knowledge, through the intermediary of
things and of limited concepts in the mirror of creatures. We would
have known God as the first cause of spirits and bodies, and we
would have enumerated His infinite perfections known analogically
by their reflection in the created order. Our ideas of the divine
attributes would have remained, we have said, like squares of mosaic
incapable of reproducing perfectly the spiritual physiognomy of God
without hardening it. This abstract and mediate knowledge would have
let many obscurities subsist, in particular in regard to the
intimate harmonizing of the divine perfections. We would always have
asked ourselves how infinite goodness and the divine permission of
evil are able to harmonize, how infinite justice and infinite mercy
can accord intimately. The human intellect would not have been able to forbear saying: If I could only see
this God, who is the source of all truth and goodness, of the life
of creatures, and of intellects and wills! This desire would have
remained conditional and inefficacious if we had been created in a
purely natural state. But, in reality, the infinite mercy of God has raised us
to supernatural life, whose full flowering is called not only the future
life, but eternal life, because it is measured by the single instant
of immobile eternity. Preaching the beatitudes at the very beginning
of His ministry, our Lord tells us: "Be glad and rejoice, for your
reward is very great in heaven." (3) To the Samaritan woman He says: "He
that shall drink of the water that I will give him, shall not thirst
forever; but the water that I will give him, shall become in him a
fountain of water springing up into life everlasting." (4) In His
sacerdotal prayer, Christ says: "Now this is eternal life: that they
may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
Thou hast sent." (5) St. Paul explains this statement to us by
saying: "We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face
to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am
known." (6)And St. John adds: "We shall be like to Him, because we shall see
Him as He is." (7) The Church has defined that this revealed doctrine means an
immediate vision of the divine essence without the intermediary of
any creature previously known.(8) In other words, by the gaze of our
intellect supernaturally strengthened by the light of glory, we
shall see God better than we see with our eyes of flesh the persons
with whom we speak, for we shall see Him clearly as an object closer
to us than we are to ourselves. Here on earth we know especially
what God is not: we know that He is not material, changing, limited;
we shall then see Him as He is in His Deity, in His infinite essence, in His intimate life common to the three Persons. Grace is
a participation of this essence and life since it will give us to
see Him thus immediately as He sees Himself, to love Him as He loves
Himself, to live eternally by Him. St. Thomas explains this revealed doctrine by stating (9) that
between God and us there will not be even the intermediary of an
idea, for no created idea can represent such as it is in itself, the
pure, intellectual, eternally subsistent being that is God and His
infinite truth, or His limitless love. We shall not be able to
express our contemplation by any word, even by any interior word,
just as a man is rendered incapable of speech when absorbed by the
sight of a sublime and indescribable spectacle. This immediate vision of the divine essence immensely surpasses all
the created concepts of the divine perfections that we can have here
on earth. We are called to see all the divine perfections intimately
harmonized, identified in the eminence of the Deity, or the inner
life of God; to see how the tenderest mercy and the most inflexible
justice proceed from one and the same infinitely generous and
infinitely holy love, from an eternal love of the supreme Good,
which is, to be sure, intimately diffusive of self (the principle of
mercy), but which also has a right to be loved above all (the
principle of justice). We shall see how mercy and justice are
united in all the works of God, how eternal love is identical with
the sovereign good always loved, how divine wisdom is identical
with the
first truth always known, and how all these perfections harmonize
and are but one in the very essence of Him who is. We shall also see the infinite fecundity of the divine nature in the
three divine Persons; the eternal generation of the Word, "splendor
of the Father and figure of His substance." We shall gaze upon the
ineffable procession of the Holy Ghost, term of the common love of
the Father and of the Son, the bond uniting Them eternally in the
most absolute diffusion of Themselves. The supreme Being is
essentially diffusive of Itself in the intimate life of God, and
freely bestows Its riches by means of creation and by our gratuitous
elevation to the life of grace. Thus will be verified St. Paul's words:
"Whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be made conformable to
the image of His Son; that He might be the first-born amongst many
brothers." (10) From all eternity God has an only Son to whom He
communicates all His divine nature; He gives Him to be "God of God,
light of light." He has willed to have other sons, adopted sons, to
whom He communicates a participation in His nature, sanctifying
grace in the essence of their souls, and from this grace proceed in
their higher faculties the light of glory and inamissible charity.
Thus, St. Thomas says, "by the incarnation of the Son we
receive adoptive sonship in the likeness of His natural sonship."
(11) We shall also contemplate immediately the intimate and indissoluble
union of the person of the Word and of the humanity of the Savior.
We shall see thereby all the splendor of the divine maternity of
Mary, of her mediation, the price of the salvation of souls, and the
unlimited riches of these words so quickly uttered: "The eternal
life of the elect." No one can tell the joy that will be born in us of this
absolutely immediate vision, which will be like a spiritual fusion
of our soul, of our intellect, and of the divine essence, an
uninterrupted transforming union, an intimate and perfect communion that nothing will
ever be able to lessen. The love which will result from this vision
will be so pure and strong a love of God that nothing will ever be
able to diminish it. This love will be sovereignly spontaneous, but
no longer free; it will be superior to liberty, ravished by the
sovereign Good. By this love we shall rejoice especially that God
is God,
infinitely holy, just, and merciful; we shall adore all the decrees
of His providence in view of the manifestation of His goodness, and
we shall subordinate ourselves completely to Him. We shall enter
into His beatitude, according to the words of our Savior in the
parable of the talents: "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
(12) We can form some idea of the activity of the saints in heaven by the
radiation of their lives on earth, such as it appears, for example,
in our day in the numerous graces obtained through the intercession
of Mary in the sanctuary at Lourdes, or through the prayer of a St.
Teresa of Lisieux. THE NORMAL AND IMMEDIATE PRELUDE OF THE BEATIFIC VISION If sanctifying grace is the seed of eternal life in us, what follows
as a result? First of all, that sanctifying grace, called "the grace
of the virtues and the gifts," is "much more excellent," as St.
Thomas says,(13) than the graces gratis datae, like the gift of
miracles, that of tongues, or prophecy which announces a contingent
event. These graces are, so to speak, exterior; they give us signs
of the divine life, but they are not themselves the divine life
shared in us. Now, it is from the grace of the virtues and the gifts received by
all at baptism, and not from graces gratis datae and extraordinary
graces that, as we have seen, the infused contemplation of the
mysteries of faith proceeds. This contemplation is an act of living
faith, illumined by the gifts of understanding and wisdom. It is
not, therefore, an essentially extraordinary favor like prophecy or
the gift of tongues, but is found in the normal way of sanctity. The truth of this conclusion becomes even more apparent if we
observe that sanctifying grace, being essentially ordained to
eternal life, is likewise ordained to the normal and immediate
prelude of the beatific vision. Is not this prelude precisely the
eminent exercise of infused faith illumined by the gifts of wisdom
and understanding, that is, the infused contemplation of the divine
goodness and its radiation, together with perfect charity and the
ardent desire for the beatific vision? On earth this ardent desire
is found in its
full perfection only in the transforming union. Therefore this union
does not appear to be outside the normal way of sanctity, especially
if one considers, not so much a given individual soul, but the human
soul and, in it, sanctifying grace considered in itself, as the seed
of glory. The ardent desire for God is only too rare on earth, even in
consecrated souls; and yet if there is a good to which the
Christian should ardently aspire, evidently it is the eternal possession of God. To attain it, he should desire an ever deeper
faith, a firmer confidence, a purer and stronger love of God,
virtues which are found precisely in the transforming union. Thus
this union appears, in profoundly humble and fully purified souls,
as the immediate prelude of the beatific vision. There must, in
fact, be some proportion between the intensity of the desire and the
value of the good desired; in this case the value of the good being
infinite, it could not be too greatly desired. Consequently it is
not fitting that this infinite good should be granted to a soul that
does not yet desire it ardently. The more purified the soul is, the
more it aspires to the possession of God, and if at death the soul's
desire is not as ardent as it should be, this is a sign that it
needs additional purification, that of purgatory. The dogma of purgatory, then, throws a new light on the present
question. Purgatory is a punishment which supposes a sin that could
have been avoided and an insufficient satisfaction that could have
been complete if we had better accepted the trials of the present
life. It is certain that no one will be detained in purgatory except
for sins he could have avoided or for negligence in making
reparation for them. Therefore normally we should, like the saints,
undergo our purgatory in this life while meriting, while growing in
love, instead of after death without meriting. Therefore sanctifying grace, which is of itself ordained to eternal
life, is also ordained to such perfection that the soul may receive
the light of glory immediately after death without passing through
purgatory. This disposition to enter heaven immediately after death
supposes a complete purification, analogous at least to that of
souls that are about to leave purgatory and have a very ardent
desire for God. According to St. John of the Cross, this complete
purification is normally found on earth only in those who have
courageously endured the passive purifications of the senses and
the spirit,
which prepare the soul for intimate union with God.(14) This reason
confirms all that we have said and shows that the passive
purifications are indeed in the normal way of sanctity, like the
close union with God for which they prepare. Evident also is the
degree of sanctity in question in the expression "the normal way of
sanctity"; that sanctity is meant which permits the soul to enter
heaven immediately after death. Such is, we believe, the teaching of St. John of the Cross, which
admirably preserves and explains the traditional doctrine on this
point, in particular that of the great spiritual writers who
preceded him. To grasp the meaning and import of this teaching,
souls must doubtless be considered not only as they are, but as they
should be. Now, it is the work proper to spirituality to remind
souls incessantly of what they should be that they may go beyond
what they are. This lofty doctrine also conforms perfectly to what St. Thomas tells
us not only about the nature of grace, the seed of glory, but also
about the beatitudes and the imitation of Jesus Christ,(15) the
virtues of the purified soul,(16) the higher degree of humility,(17)
patience,(18) the spirit of faith,(19) confidence in God, and
charity.(20) St. Thomas, St. Albert the Great, St. Bonaventure, and after them
St. John of the Cross and St. Francis de Sales (21) found this
teaching in the fathers who spoke of the relations of contemplation
and perfect love, in St. Paul himself, and in the Gospel. St. Paul
delights in saying: "That which is at present momentary and light
of our tribulation [if it is well borne], worketh for us above
measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory." (22) He gives us the
ardent
desire for it by reminding us that we have received the "pledge of
the Spirit," (23) or the pledge and foretaste of eternal life. And our
Lord Himself says to us: "If any man thirst, let him come to Me, and
drink. . . . Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."
(24)
"He that hath My commandments and keepeth them; he it is that loveth
Me. And he that loveth Me, shall be loved of My Father; and I will
love him, and will manifest Myself to him." (25) This secret
manifestation of Christ to the faithful soul is truly the prelude of
eternal life; it is found especially in the highest of the eight
beatitudes: "Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers. . . . Blessed are they that suffer
persecution for justice' sake." (26) These beatitudes are, says St.
Thomas, the highest acts of the virtues and the gifts; there is in
them "a kind of imperfect inchoation of future happiness."
(27) Even
here on earth, the fruits of these merits begin to appear, and they
contain a savor of eternal life, or a foretaste of the joy of the
elect. |
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1.
Vol. I, chap. I, pp. 29 f. 2. Cf. Ia, q. 12, a.1-13.
3. Matt. 5: 12.
4. John 4: 13 f.
5. John 17: 3.
6. Cf. I Cor. 13: 12.
7. Cf. I John 3:2.
8. Denzinger, nos. 530, 693.
9. Cf. Ila, q. 12, a.2.
10. Rom. 8:29.
11. St. Thomas, IIIa, q. 3, a.5 ad 2um.
12. Matt. 25:23.
13. Ia IIae, q. III, a.5.
14. In The Dark Night of the Soul (Bk. II, chap. 20), St. John of the
Cross says: "'Love works in such souls - they are few, and perfectly
purified in this
life - that which purgatory works in others in the next."
15. Cf. Ia IIae, q.69; In Matt. 5:3-13.
16. Cf. Ia IIae, q.61, a.5.
17. Cf. IIa IIae, q.161, a.6 ad 3um: "The appetite may even go as far
as lovingly to embrace external abasement."
18. Cf. IIIa, q.46, a.4: "It was most fitting that Christ should
suffer the death of the cross, first of all, as an example of
virtue. For Augustine thus writes: . . . In order, then, that no
kind of death should trouble an upright
man."
19. Comm. in Ep. ad Hebraeos, 10: 1-40, "per totum."
20. Ibid.; also IIa IIae, q. 27; q.184, a. 3; Commn. in lib. Job,
chaps. 1,7,21: "On
the patience of the just in great tribulations."
21. Treatise on the Love of God, Bk. VI, chaps. 3-15; Bk. IX, chaps.
12-15.
22. See II Cor. 4: 17.
23. Ibid., 5:5.
24. John 7:37f.
25. John 14:21.
26. Matt. 5:8-10. 27. Summa, Ia IIae, q.69, a.2: "The hope of future happiness may be
in us
for two reasons: first, by reason of our having a preparation for,
or a disposition to, future happiness; and this is by way of merit;
secondly, by a kind of imperfect inchoation of future happiness in
holy men, even in this life. For it is one thing to hope that the
tree will bear fruit, when the leaves begin to appear, and another,
when we see the first signs of the fruit." |
