Salesian Literature

Chapter 11:  The union of saints with God in the beatific vision

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If our gaze falls upon a thing, we do not have to take that thing into our eyes in order to be aware of it.  The object produces a reflection, a picture of itself, called its sensitive likeness; through this we can see it.  So, when we study or understand a thing, the subject understood reaches our minds only by means of a further symbol – a picture extremely subtle and spiritual – called its intellectual likeness.  This likeness reaches the mind by a complicated process.  It has to pass from the threshold of the external senses to the internal, then to the imagination, from there to the active (causative) intellect, and so eventually to the passive (receptive) intellect.  So thoroughly sifted, so carefully polished, the things we know are purified, rendered subtle and spiritual – sensitive things transformed into spiritual.

 

Only in this way, Theotimus, do we see and understand things in this world – even things of faith.  Just as a mirror contains, not what we are looking at, but only a reflection, a likeness of it – caught by the mirror and productive of a further likeness in the eye of the beholder; so the formulae of faith do not contain the things which they convey, but only symbolize them.  This image produces another, which the mind (by the help of God’s grace) takes for a symbol of sacred truth, and which the will grasps as a truth deserving of respect, a truth that is helpful, lovable and extremely good.  The truths conveyed by God’s word, therefore, are shown to the intellect in this way – the way in which mirrors show a reflected image to the eye.  So that faith, says St. Paul, is like looking in a mirror (1 Cor. 13:12).

 

In heaven, however, God will unite himself to the mind without aid of likeness or image of any kind.  The blessing of it! – this intimate presence of his will take the place of any symbol or likeness.  What bliss for the human intellect, to be for ever united to supreme truth – not by some symbol, but by the reality; not by any image or likeness, but by the very essence of God’s truth and majesty!  God’s favoured children – that’s how it will be with us – privileged to share his nature, fostered on his very substance … like children suckled at the breast, strangers to a bottle-feed.

 

Not satisfied with opening our minds to his very self, affording us the vision of his godhead, our Father in heaven will himself introduce his substance to our minds.  No longer shall we grasp him through the medium of a likeness of symbol, but in and through himself – the eternal substance of the Father at once symbol and reality to our understanding.

 

Unlimited happiness! – and not merely held out to us in the future; we have an earnest of it in the blessed sacrament of the eucharist, the life-long banquet of God’s grace.  There we receive the Saviour’s body and blood: his blood given us through his flesh; his substance offered to us substantially in a physical way, to teach us that he is to share his essence with us in this way at the eternal wedding-feast of glory.

 

Undoubtedly this gift of himself now is a reality, though hidden under the appearance and likeness of bread; but in heaven God will give himself to us unveiled – we shall see him, then, face to face, as he is (1 Cor. 13:12; 1 Jn. 3:2).

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