Our ultimate goal is glory. The glory I am referring to is not earthly fame or honor; it is the beatific vision of the saints, who see God face to face and share in God’s own joy. This is the goal of the spiritual life. Why do we practice the faith? Why have we been given faith? For the sake of glory. Christian life is not fundamentally about rules and prohibitions and what we can get away with. Christian life is about living supernaturally for the sake of glory.
What is the beatific vision? Scripture tells us that we will see God face to face, that “we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). If we die in a state of grace, our souls will receive an immediate and intimate vision of God in his essence. We will be amazed at God’s simplicity and perfection, at his wisdom and mercy, at how everything interesting and attractive in this world has its unlimited source and fullness in him. We will see clearly the Triune inner life of God: our minds will be captivated by the Father’s eternal speaking-forth of the Word and their eternal breathing-forth of the Spirit.
This immediate vision of God will inflame our wills with superabundant joy. The beatific vision is not a bland and bored staring but a fully-actualized love-gazing at God, a radiant and fiery adoration that fulfills our deepest desires and fully activates our capacities to know and to love. Our hearts will be so surpassingly stimulated by this all-fulfilling look of love that we will be incapable of desiring anything else—anything less.
A puzzle emerges: this immediate contemplation of the Trinity is completely beyond our natural capacity. Our minds are naturally calibrated to know created things. No creature—not even an angel—can contemplate the inner life of the Trinity by his own ability. How is this possible for the saints in glory?
To make them capable of supernatural love-gazing, God elevates the souls of the saints to share in his nature, illuminates their intellects to share in his knowledge, and inflames their wills to share in his love. The saints in glory remain human, but their souls are truly divinized so that they can live and act on a supernatural plane.
This divine elevation of the soul begins in this life. Through the life of grace, we are already given the life of glory in embryonic form. Sanctifying grace already re-proportions our soul so that we can know and love God intimately, if at first without perfect clarity. If you are living in a state of grace—you have been baptized and you have been absolved of any mortal sins committed since your baptism—the same life of glory exists in you and in the saints, even if in you it is only in infancy. Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange compares the supernatural life to an acorn that grows into an oak tree. As the life of the acorn is the life of the oak tree at an earlier stage, so too the life of grace is the life of glory in its early development (Knowing the Love of God, 10). The life of grace is like a mustard seed that, when full-grown, will be the largest of plants in glory (cf. Matt 13:31–32).
The life of grace is more precious than all other possessions. It is more precious than anything merely natural, because it is already a share in divine life. It is the treasure buried in a field: when a man finds it, he joyfully “goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matt 13:44). It is the pearl of great price: when a merchant finds it, “he goes and sells all that he has and buys it” (Matt 13:45–46). When God alerts us to the real seed of glory in us, he changes our priorities. He purifies our thoughts and affections to suit the high elevation he has already raised us to. He kindles us to live wholeheartedly for our supernatural goal.
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Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)
