likeness to God. other advantage: the blest soul who enjoys it is more like to God in beauty and knowledge. So great, my dear brethren, is the power of the Sovereign Good that it absorbs and, as it were, transforms into itself him who beholds it in glory. So speaks St. Paul: “But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face are transformed into the same image.”[1] “We know,” says St. John, “that when He shall appear we shall be like to Him: because we shall see Him as He is.”[2] Now if that transformation and likeness to God takes place even in the least of the elect because he sees God, how much more perfect will it not be in one of the greater saints who see Him much clearer, and have His likeness more deeply impressed on them? And if even the least of the saints, illumined with even one degree of the light of glory, is made so beautiful by the mere vision of God that he far surpasses in splendor all created beauties, and shines seven times brighter than the sun, as St. Augustine says: “The lowest in the kingdom of heaven shall shine like the sun, which will then be seven times brighter than it now is,”[3] then a hundred thousand times more brilliant must be the beauty of the soul that is a hundred thousand degrees higher in glory. Who can grasp the immensity of the brightness and beauty of the principal inhabitants of the kingdom of God, of the apostles, the martyrs, and especially of the great Queen of heaven, Mary? O mortal! who art sometimes so bewitched by a perishable beauty that thy whole heart is ensnared by it, ah, raise the eyes of thy mind to the beauties of heaven, and rejoice that thou art furnished with ways and means of attaining even to their utmost perfection, if thou only wilt!
In a higher rank among the saints. Or perhaps thou art ambitious and strivest for a high place among men? Then again raise up thy eyes and thy honor-craving heart to the kingdom of heaven, and behold there the third advantage, the indescribable honor to which he shall be raised in the city of. God, before the whole court of heaven, who by the greater amount of merit accumulated in this life has prepared for himself a higher degree of glory, and a place so much nearer to the throne of the divine majesty. “I will give to
- ↑ Nos vero omnes, revelata facie gloriam Domini specnlantes, in eandem imaginem transformamur.—II. Cor. iii. 18.
- ↑ Scimus, quoniam cum apparuerit, similes ei erimus; quoniam videbimus eum sicuti est.—I. John iii. 2.
- ↑ Ultimus In regno ccelorum, ut sol fulgeblt, qui tunc septles clarior, quam nunc erit.—S. Aug. Tract. de cognit. veræ vitæ.
