Salesian Literature

Chapter 12:  The eternal union of the saints with God in the vision of the Son’s eternal birth

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Our minds, Theotimus, will see God.  They will see him, I repeat, as he is face to face.  They will gaze on the vision of his very essence through the actuality and reality of his presence.  They will have sight of his infinite perfections; all-powerful, all-good, all-wise, all-just … and so on through that inexhaustible mine.

 

The human mind will then have clear sight of the Father’s infinite knowledge from all eternity of his own beauty, to which he gives expression within himself by uttering the Word – an expression, an utterance, that is unique, infinite.  Since it includes and portrays the complete perfection of the Father, it can but be one identical God with him, in nature numerically single and indivisible.

 

In this way, we shall see the eternal wonderful generation of God’s Word, God’s Son, by which he was eternally begotten as the Father’s image and likeness.  This image is so living, so natural, such an essential, substantial reflection of the Father, that it can but be the same God with no distinction or difference of essence or substance – the only distinction, that of personality.

 

Not only is this distinction of persons necessary, it is all that is required for the Father to utter and for the Son to be the Word uttered, for the Father to speak and the Son to be the Word spoken, for the Father to express himself and the Son to be the image, likeness, radiance expressed – all that is needed, after all, for the Father to be Father, the Son to be Son, two distinct persons, but one single divine nature.

 

How will it be for us in heaven, when eternal light floods our souls, when we shall have sight of that eternal birth by which the Son proceeds “God from God, light from light, true God from true God,” divinely, everlastingly?  There, in union with so delightful an object, our minds will be satiated beyond our present capacity to understand – riveted to God for ever by an attentiveness that knows no distraction.

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