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The saints in heaven, seeing God face to face, love
Him above all things, because they see with the most
perfect evidence that God is better than all
creatures combined. This love will never pass away.
Faith will give place to vision; hope will be
replaced by possession: but "charity never falleth
away. [575]
By charity, already on earth we love God, not only as
a good supremely desirable, the object of hope, but
because of His infinite goodness in itself, a
goodness far higher than any of His gifts. Charity
wills He should be known, loved, and glorified; that
His imprescriptible rights be recognized, His name be
sanctified, His will be done. This is the love of
friendship, whereby we will unto God all that belongs
to Him, wishing His happiness as He wills our
happiness. Thus, even here on earth, we share in
God's intimate life, have our life in common with
Him, have spiritual communion between Him and
ourselves. [576]
This charity will last forever. It would be an error,
even a heresy, to think that our love of God in
heaven is merely the consummation of our hope, which
makes us desire God as our supreme Good. Even here on
earth, the act of hope, which can exist in a soul in
the state of mortal sin, is notably inferior to the
act of charity, and love of God in heaven is nothing
but the perfect act of charity, whereby the soul
transcends itself, whereby without cessation it loves
God more than itself, whereby it passes out beyond
itself, and enters into a state of uninterrupted
ecstasy. [577]
This love implies admiration, reverence, recognition.
It implies, above all, friendship, with all its
simplicity and intimacy. It is love with all its
tenderness and all its power, the love of a child
that throws itself into the tenderness of its Father,
and wills unto that Father all that belongs to Him,
just as the Father takes the soul into His own
beatitude. God says to us: "Enter thou into the joy
of thy Lord." [578] Christ says: "Come, ye blessed of
My Father." [579] We shall not indeed love God as He
loves us, but the Holy Spirit will inspire a love
worthy of Him.
This transforming union, now in a state of
consummation, fuses our life with the intimate life
of the Most High. We rejoice that God is God,
infinitely holy, just, and merciful. We adore all the
decrees of His providence, all manifestations of His
glorious goodness. We subordinate ourselves
completely to Him, saying to Him: "Not to us, O Lord,
not to us, but to Thy name give glory." [580] This
supreme act of the highest of the theological virtues
is the only one that is meant to last eternally. God
alone, it is true, can love Himself infinitely, love
Himself as far as He is lovable, but each blessed
soul will love Him with all its power, with a love
that no longer knows obstacles. [581]
The Satiety of the Blessed
This state of satiety is always new and never passes
away. St. Augustine writes: "All our life will be one
Amen, one Alleluia. Sadden not yourselves by
considering this truth in a carnal manner, as if in
heaven, just as on earth, we could become weary by
repeating the words: Amen, Alleluia. This heavenly
Amen, this Alleluia, will not be expressed by sound
which passes away, but by the emotions of love, the
emotions of the soul embraced by love. "Amen" means
"It is true." "Alleluia" means "praise God." God is
the immovable truth, who knows neither defect nor
progress, neither decline nor growth. He is truth,
eternal and stable: truth forever incorruptible.
"We shall sing our Amen forever but with a satiety
that is insatiable. With satiety, because we live in
perfect abundance, but with an insatiable satiety,
because this good, while it satisfies completely,
produces also a pleasure ever new. Insatiably
satiated by this truth, we shall repeat forever:
Amen. Rest and gaze: that is our eternal Sabbath."
[582]
Greek philosophers discussed the question whether
pleasure in movement is superior to pleasure in
repose. Aristotle [583] shows clearly that the
highest joy is that which completes achievement, is
the terminus of perfect, normal activity, which is no
longer in motion toward the end, but possesses the
end and rests therein. This truth is realized in the
highest way in celestial beatitude.
Heavenly joy has a newness which cannot pass away.
The first instant of the beatific vision lasts
forever, like eternal morning, eternal spring,
eternal youth. It resembles the eternal beatitude of
God. God's life is one unique instant of immutable
eternity. He cannot grow old. He is not past or
future, but eternally present. He contains eminently
all successive events, as the summit of a pyramid
contains all points at its base, as the view of a man
placed on a mountain embraces the entire valley.
Simultaneous totality: that is the definition of
eternity.
As illustration, we may point to Mozart, who heard
instantaneously and completely the melody he set out
to compose. Similarly, great minds embrace their
entire science with one sole glance.
The beatific vision of the saints is measured by the
unique instant of immovable eternity. The joy of that
instant will never pass away. Its newness, its
freshness, will be eternally present. As the vision
will be always new, so likewise the joy which flows
from the vision.
We can get some ideas of this truth by the joy we
experience when we begin to relish the word of God.
This joy, far from passing away, grows ceaselessly.
The contrary is seen in sense goods. Avidly desired
at first, they give us an ever decreasing joy.
Continuance of friendship, ten years, twenty years,
and more, is a sign that this friendship has a divine
origin. Divine friendship, relish for God's word, is
a lasting joy, which lifts us above embarrassed
affairs, domestic needs, and useless pastimes. That
which nourishes the soul is divine truth and the
supreme goodness revealed therein. Bossuet says: "If
this divine truth pleases us when it is expressed by
sounds that pass away, how will it ravish us when it
speaks in its own proper voice which never passes
away! God does not use many words: He speaks one
eternal word, His Word, His Verbum, and thereby says
everything. In this Word we, too, see everything."
"Taste and see that the Lord is sweet." This
sweetness is the prelude of heaven's joy: repose in
an action which never ceases, in an unmediated vision
which floods the soul with a joy forever new.
St. Thomas, [584] following St. Augustine, speaks
thus: "We grow weary of sense goods when we possess
them. Not so of spiritual goods. They do not
diminish, they cannot be harmed, they give us a joy
that is ever new." This joy we sometimes have in
prayer. "My Lord and my God, take from me all that
impedes me on the road to Thee, give to me all that
leads to Thee. Take me from myself and give me to
Thee, that I may belong entirely to Thee." God
penetrates the depths of our will. God seizes and
wounds the soul, that it may possess Him fully.
This doctrine finds admirable expression in The
Imitation of Christ: "Repose in God, O my soul. He is
the eternal repose of the saints. Beloved Jesus, let
me find repose in Thee, not in creatures: not in
health, in beauty, in honors, in glory. Not in power
and dignity. Not in riches, honors, and knowledge.
Not in merit and aspiration. Not even in Thy own
gifts and rewards. Not even in the transports of
spiritual gladness; not in the angels and archangels
and the whole host of heaven: not in anything visible
or invisible, not in anything which is not Thyself, O
my God. All Thou canst give me outside of Thyself,
all that Thou dost discover of Thyself to me, is too
little. It does not suffice me if I do not see Thee,
if I do not possess Thee fully, if I do not rest in
Thee alone." Such is the joy of heaven, always new.
We speak of heaven as the future life. A better term
is "everlasting." [585]
Love beyond Liberty
In heaven charity takes on new modalities. It becomes
a love higher than liberty itself, a love we can
never lose.
Here on earth our love of God is free because we do
not see God face to face. God is seen by us as good
under one aspect and severe under another aspect. His
commandments can displease that which is still to be
found in us of egoism and pride. Hence our love for
Him remains free and therefore meritorious.
In the fatherland, on the contrary, we shall see
infinite Goodness as He is in Himself. We cannot find
in Him the least aspect which can displease, nothing
to drive us away, not the least pretext for
preferring to Him anything whatsoever. Our eternal
act of love will never suffer the least shadow of
weariness. Infinite Goodness, seen without medium,
fills so perfectly our capacity of love that it
attracts us irresistibly more than any ecstasy that
can be had on earth, where love is still free and
meritorious. In heaven there will be a happy
necessity of love. [586]
Here especially we see the measureless depth of the
soul, in particular of our will, of our capacity for
spiritual love, which God alone, seen face to face,
can satisfy. [587]
But this love, though it is not free, is still not
forced and compelled. Nor is this something lower
than liberty and merit, as are the involuntary acts
of our sense nature here below. Rather, it is
something higher than liberty and merit, like that
spontaneous love which God has for Himself, that love
which is common to all three divine persons. As God
necessarily loves His own infinite goodness, so our
love, arising from the beatific vision, can never be
interrupted or lose aught of its fervor.
In a manuscript written by one who lacked human
culture but who was far advanced in the ways of
prayer, I recently read these words: "In heaven the
soul receives God into itself. Received thus by Him
and in Him, it loses in Him its liberty. Entirely
drawn to God, it surrenders to joy in God. It
possesses God, and is possessed by Him. It knows and
feels that this joy is its eternal state." Heaven's
joy is an everlasting morning.
Impeccability
The blessed in heaven cannot sin. Their state is a
state of sinlessness, not only because God preserves
them from sin, as here below He preserves from sin
saints who are confirmed in grace, but because one
who has the beatific vision cannot turn away from it
by sin, cannot feel the least pretext to love Him
less for a single moment. [588]
Here on earth no one ceases to will happiness,
although he may often search for happiness there
where it is not, even perhaps in suicide. The saints
in heaven, too, cannot cease to love God, seen face
to face, but they cannot be tempted to turn
elsewhere. They are indeed free to love this or that
finite good, this or that soul, to prefer one soul to
another, to pray for it, to follow the commands of
God to assist us. But this liberty never deviates
toward evil. It resembles the liberty of God Himself,
which is at the same time free and impeccable. Again
it resembles the human liberty of Christ, who enjoyed
the beatific vision from the first instant of His
conception. But in Jesus these free acts were still
meritorious, because He was still a viator, a
traveler, whereas the free acts of the blessed are no
longer meritorious, because they have arrived at the
terminus of their meritorious voyage. The soul
confirmed in grace has no longer need to merit.
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| 575. |
I Cor. 13:8. |
| 576. |
IIa IIae, q.3, a.1. Charity is identified with
friendship. |
| 577. |
Ia IIae, q.28, a.3. "Extasis" is an effect of
love:
"In the love of friendship affection, simply
speaking,
goes outside itself, because it wills and does good
for
a friend." |
| 578. |
Matt. 25:21. |
| 579. |
Ibid., 25:34. |
| 580. |
Ps. 113:11. |
| 581. |
IIa IIae, q. 184, a. 2. |
| 582. |
Sermon 362, no. 29. Cf. also Bossuet, Sermon 4,
on
All Saints. |
| 583. |
Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. X, chaps. 4, 5, 8.
"Pleasure follows acts as maturity follows youth."
Further above he had said that the highest joy is the
joy that results from the most elevated act of the
most
elevated faculty, that is, the intellectual knowledge
of God united to the love of the supreme Good. |
| 584. |
Ia IIae, q. 2, a. 1 ad 3; IIa IIae, q. 20, a.4. |
| 585. |
Imitation of Christ, Bk. III chap. 21. |
| 586. |
There will no longer be indifference. This
indifference exist in regard to any object which
seems
good under one aspect, but not good or insufficiently
good under another aspect. Cf. Ia IIae, q. 10, a. 2. |
| 587. |
Ia, q. 105, a.4. "The will can be moved by any
good
object, but cannot be sufficiently and efficaciously
moved except by God. God alone is universal good.
Hence
He alone can fill the will and sufficiently move it
as
object." Cf. Ia IIae, q.4, a.4. "Ultimate beatitude
consists in the vision of the divine essence, and
thus
the will of him who sees God loves of necessity
whatever he does love in relation to God, just as the
will of him who does not see can love necessarily
only
under the common viewpoint of the good which it
knows."
Thomists thus comment on this passage: "Upon the
beatific vision there follows the happy necessity of
loving its object, a necessity also as regards
exercise. The will of the blessed is completely
filled,
is adequated, conquered by the supreme Good now
clearly
seen."
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| 588. |
Ia IIae, q.4, a.4. Commentaries of Cajetan, John
of
St. Thomas, Gonet, Billuart. |
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