it could not bear the happiness of heaven for one moment. Now I cannot look at the sun for an instant with my bodily eyes without being blinded; much less should I be able to see my God with the eyes of the soul; they are too, weak to bear the infinite splendor of His light and glory. Now it is, naturally speaking, impossible to put the vast ocean into a sack; much less could my soul contain even for a moment the immense joy that comes from the sight of God. Because there is an infinite distance between the divine majesty and the human intellect, and if the latter were not somehow raised and strengthened it would not be capable of seeing God, or of bearing the great happiness of that sight, but in the very first moment would faint and die. This is what God meant in the answer He made to Moses when the latter said to Him: “If therefore I have found favor in Thy sight, show me Thy face, that I may know Thee, and may find grace before Thy eyes.” Ah, Moses, replied the Lord, that is a vain desire of yours! “I will show thee all good,” but not yet; hereafter in heaven you shall behold Me; but not now. “Thou canst not see My face: for man shall not see Me and live.”[1] Thus giving us to understand not only that man must die before being admitted into the glory of heaven, but also that he would be overwhelmed and lose his life through excess of happiness on seeing God.
If he were not strengthened by a supernatural light. Human soul, what art thou then to do? How will it be with thee in heaven? Will it help to thy happiness to get there and at once to be annihilated at the sight of God? No; be comforted; thou shalt live; the same God who is to be thy eternal joy will also find the means to enable thee to support for all eternity the brightness of His beauty and the love and joy that spring from it. And that, my dear brethren, as theologians tell us, He will do by the light of glory, a supernatural illumination, a communication of that uncreated light by which God sees and knows Himself. St. John speaks of this in the Apocalypse in his description of the heavenly Jerusalem: “The city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God hath enlightened it.”[2] And the Prophet David says: “With Thee is the fountain of life, and in Thy light we shall see
- ↑ Si enro inveni gratiam in conspectu tuo, ostende mihi faciem tuam, ut sciam te, et inveniam gratiam ante oculos tuos. Ego ostendam omne bonum tibi. Non poteris videre faciem meam; non enim videbit me homo, et vivet.—Exod. xxxiii. 13, 19, 20.
- ↑ Civitas non eget sole, neque luna, ut luceant in ea; nam claritas Dei illuminavit eam.—Apoc. xxi. 23.
