(Extract from the book: "The End of the Present World and The Mysteries of The Future Life" By Father Charles Arminjon)
Man will see God face to face, but how will this vision take place? It is certain that we shall not see Him partially and dimly like distant objects, of which we cannot discern all the features, but which we see only imperfectly and on certain sides.
God is not in any place, but all spheres and places are in Him. He does not live in any time , but His eternity consists of an indivisible instant, in which all time is contained. So we shall see Him as He is in His simplicity,in His threefold personality, and in the same way as we see the face of a man in this world.
This vision will operate by an immediate impression of the divine essence in the soul with the aid of a supernatural light called the light of glory: a created quality and a supernatural virtue of the intellect, infused into the soul, which will give it the aptitude and the power to see God. This light of glory will transform man, it will deify him by imprinting in him the seal and likeness of celestial beauty, and make him the image of the Father; it will expand and augment the soul's capacity for knowledge to such an extent that it will become able to apprehend immense and boundless good.
Just as, by means of the light of the sun, the eye can see the variety of tangible things and, so to speak, comprehend the whole extent of the universe; just as, aided by the light of reason, it knows the reason for its own existence, and the intellectual truths, so immersed in the light of glory, it will have infinity as its domain, and in a sense, will comprehend God Himself.
Scripture teaches us that the light of glory is the light of God Himself.By it , our souls will be so immersed in the light of the divine presence that we may say with St Augustine, that in a sense, they will no longer know through their own knowledge, but from the very knowledge of God, and that they will no longer see with their so weak and limited eyes, but with the very eyes of God.
The transports that the divine vision will arouse in the elect will make their hearts super abound in the most unutterable joys, it will be a flood of delight and raptures, life in its inexhaustible richness and the very source of all good and all life. It will be ,as St Augustine goes on to say, like a gift from God of His own Heart, so that we may love and rejoice with all the energy of the love and joys of God Himself.
Eternal life, says St Paul, is like a weight, like being overwhelmed with all delights, all exhilaration and all transports: "an eternal weight of glory", a weight that, by reviving man, rather than annihilating him, will inexhaustibly renew his youth and vigor. It is a source forever fertile, where the soul will drink substance and life in abundance. It is a marriage in which the soul will clasp its Creator in an eternal embrace without ever feeling any diminution of the rapture it felt on that day when, for the first time it was united to Him and pressed Him to its bosom.
Even so, the elect who see God will not comprehend Him. God is incomprehensible to all created things.We shall see God as He is, some more, others less, according to our disposition and merits. God is in infinite, and all that can be said is that the creature sees Him; sees Him as He is, entire, and yet does not see Him, in the sense that what he succeeds in discovering of His perfections is nothing compared with what the eternal Being Himself contemplates, in the splendor of His word and in union with the Holy Spirit.
We would say that,, in comparison with God, the elect are like a traveler standing on the banks of the ocean. The traveler knows that it is the ocean, he sees with his own eyes the ocean, which stretches out and unfolds in the immensity, and he says, " I have seen the ocean". Nevertheless there are reefs and distant island she does not discern, and his gaze has not encompassed all the riverbanks and all the contours of the ocean.
Accordingly, contemplation of the ocean will not mean immobility but above all, activity,an ever ascending progression, where movement and repose will be bound together in ineffable harmony.
But infinity has no limits, no bottom or shore. The happy mariners of that fortunate abode will never cry, like Christopher Columbus: land!land! They will say God, God always. God yet more.... Forever there will be new perfections they will seek to gain: forever more pure and more intoxicating delights aspire to taste. The infinite God has no limits, the desire which He arouses is immeasurable.
Nevertheless, the sight of the divine essence will not absorb the saints so much as to make them forget the external marvels of the visible world, or prevent their relationship with the other elect. The spirits of the elects enter into contact with the world of the spirits, they see the beauty of the blessed souls, illuminated by the divine likeness, adorned with charity and its attendant virtues, as with a nuptial robe.
Heaven is the repose of man's intellect, the repose of his will and affections.Yet what often frightens us in this life, what makes us reject heaven with a sort of repugnance, is that we imagine that in that abode, all the natural attachments of our hearts will be, as it were,annihilated and invisibly extinguished by the conquering exuberance of the love in which we shall be inflamed for the Creator.Oh! The whole of Christianity protests against this error.
What we teach as certain is that in heaven we shall see and recognize each other, and in heaven we shall love one another.
All the objects and causes that captivate our hearts and arouse love in this world will act with an intensity a thousand times greater, and without encountering any obstacle on the hearts of the elect.
In this life, love is still the consequence of gratitude, and our hearts glow at the memory of benefits and services rendered. It is only in heaven that we shall recognize the extent and the cost of the graces of every kind that our benefactors have showered on us.
Then the child will read all the treasures of grace, solicitude and tenderness enclosed in the earth of his mother. He will know that , next to God, it was the tears,prayers and sighs of that mother which brought about his salvation. O mother, now, i love you a thousand times more tenderly because of the eternal life that i have received and without which the first would have been a fatal gift, a source of calamity and torture for me.
Then, Christian fathers your sacrifices courage and heroic constancy in strengthening your sons by profitable examples, and in rearing them by noble, laborious training, will no longer be unknown. We shall redeem the debt of our hearts in eternal thanksgiving.
How much greater will be our fascination, as we sit at the great hearth of our Heavenly Father,listening while our brothers tell us the story of their seductive and manifold temptations and of the assaults waged by hell over which they triumphed. We shall not tire of hearing about those victories won in the sight of God alone, more glorious than those of conquerors; those battles waged in silence against the failings of the flesh and the turmoils of one's own thoughts. We shall admire their efforts and their heroic generosity. We shall know about the twist and turns and uncertainties whereby the grace of the Spirit of God, through a strong but gentle impulse, led them to the harbor of repose, and turned even their deviations and falls to account, in the edification of their incorruptible crowns. Ah! These will be inexhaustible subjects of conversation, which will never loose their interest and charm.
It is true that the glory and happiness of the elect will be apportioned according to their merits, and that they will differ in beauty and greatness as the stars in the sky are themselves different in size and brightness. Nevertheless, union, peace and harmony will not reign any less in this countless array, in which the lesser ranks cooperate with the highest in the repose and harmony of all.
Each will be rich in the richness of all; each will trill in the happiness of all. Just as the creation of a new sun would double the fires that burn the air, so each new sun in the City of God will increase the measure of our own bliss, with all its happiness and glory.
There will no longer be any place for rivalry or envy. Each of the elect will receive the complement of his personal good from the good of his brethren. We shall read their souls as clearly as our own. On this point St Augustine exclaims: " O happy heaven where there will be as many paradises as citizens, where glory will come to us by as many channels as there are hearts to show us their concerns and affection, where we shall possess as many kingdoms as there are monarchs sharing in our rewards.
In heaven , sin is forever excluded. The elect are no longer capable of committing the least shadow of a fault or imperfection.
For this reason the saints felt a kind of anxiety and unease amidst prosperity. They knew that , in this life, the most honourable pleasures and the sweetest and most lawful joys have always something debilitating and corrupting for the Christian soul.
However, in heaven, the bliss of glory, far from rendering souls more human, elevates them and makes them more spiritual.
Surprisingly , heaven is somehow the opposite of earth!Here below, man is restored and bathed anew in dignity and moral value through suffering and sacrifice. In heaven it is the reverse: he is perfected and deified by the flood of delight wherein he is immersed.
In heaven, happiness is stable, since the elect,confirmed in glory, are beyond all fear, the soul says : " Nothing is finished yet; i reign today today i am in possession of my happiness, and i shall possess it as long as God remains God- forever and ever!
Illuminated by infinite clarity of the Word of God, they see the events that will be accomplished in a thousand years as clearly as those that were fulfilled a thousand centuries ago. Every moment, says St Augustine, they experience, as it were , a feeling of infinite joy. Every moment, as far as it is permitted to create beings, they absorb the power of divine virtue. Every moment, eternity makes them feel the accumulated weight of its intoxication, its delights, and its glories.
Ah! We love power and glory; we would like to be present and give orders everywhere. Why , then , turn away from the nobility of our destiny and abandon the immortal empire God prepares for us? We love pleasures and joy; we recognize that life is unbearable if affection and joys do not mitigate its misfortunes and bitterness. Why, then, spurn the only real happiness, and desire that the source of all pleasure and joy dry up along with the present life?
Earthly goods, measured against the bliss above, no longer seem an advantage, but rather a burden and a painful tyranny. Temporal life, in comparison with eternal life, deserves not to be called life but death. On the other had, to live in the heavenly city, mingled with the choirs of angels, to be surrounded by a light that is not itself circumscribed, and to possess a spiritual, incorruptible flesh, is not infirmity, but royalty and abundance of life.
Let us remember that great rewards are acquired by great combats and no one shall be crowned who has not fought the good fight.
Already countless tribes, legions of apostles, prophets, martyrs and virgins, just men of every state and rank, have crossed the court of your domain. How desirable their fate is,,for they are freed from our temptations, our troubles, and our miseries!
Everything that is not Jerusalem is unfit for us. Let us ask only for the goods and peace it contains. Let us think only of heaven, let us seek only heaven, let us store up only for heaven, and let us live only for heaven.
A few moments longer, and all that must end will be no more; a few more efforts, and we shall be at the close; a few more combats, and we shall attain the crown; a few more sacrifices, and we shall be in Jerusalem, where love is always new,and where there will be no other sacrifice but praise and joy. Amen.
