Salesian Literature

Chapter 6:  We cannot achieve perfect union with God in this life

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“God”, cries St. Augustine[1], “for yourself you fashioned my heart; only with you will it ever find rest!”  What else does heaven hold for me, but thyself? Yes, Lord, you are the God who is my heart’s stronghold, eternally my inheritance (Ps. 72:25, 26).  For all that, union with God on which our hearts are set cannot be perfectly achieved in this life.  Our love for God awakens here; it is consummated only in heaven.

 

This is the idea suggested by the mystic bride in the Song of Songs.  At last I found him,  she says, so tenderly loved; and now that he is mind I will never leave him, never let him go, till I have brought him into my own mother’s house, into the room that saw my birth (Cant. 3:4).  She finds the beloved: his many consolations betray his presence.  She clings to him: the deep affection aroused by his presence leads her to clasp, to embrace him.  She declares that she will never leave him: here affection has grown into an eternal resolve.  For all that, no marriage-kiss for her, until they are together in her mother’s house (Cant. 8:1,2); and that, St. Paul tells us, is the heavenly Jerusalem (Gal. 4:26).

 

Such perfect union of soul with God, then, is reserved for heaven; there, as the Apocalypse (19:7,9) tells us, the Lamb’s wedding-feast is to be held.  Here, in this failing life, the soul is truly betrothed to the lamb … ever so pure (1 Pet. 1:19), but not yet entirely wedded to him.  The troth is plighted, the promises exchanged, but the fulfilment of the marriage postponed.  That is why we can always go back on our word, though we never have cause for so doing; our royal bridegroom never forsakes us until we compel him to it by our own unfaithfulness, our own treachery.  In heaven, however, after the wedding-feast to celebrate this union, the bond between our hearts and their supreme source will be indissoluble for ever.

 

Of course, as we await this supreme kiss of indissoluble union from the bridegroom in glory above, he gives us a few lesser ones now in the form of a thousand impressions of his gracious presence.  No kisses would mean no attractions – and therefore no hastening after him, by the very fragrance of those perfumes allured (Cant. 1:1,3).

 

 

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[1]  Confessions, 1,1.

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