Chapter XXX. The end and purpose of the divine governance

We have said it is the divine governance that presides over the execution of the providential plan, its purpose being to manifest the divine goodness, which bestows upon the just and maintains within them forever a life that is eternal. Concerning this end and purpose, let us see what the Old Testament with its incomplete revelation has to tell us, and then we shall be able to appreciate better the full light given us in the Gospels. This was the method used by St. Augustine, particularly in his work on providence or the divine plan: the City of God, its progressive building up here on earth and its full development in eternal happiness.

The incomplete intimation

In the Old Testament the ultimate purpose of the divine governance was expressed in a manner as yet imperfect, often merely symbolic. The Promised Land, for instance, was the symbol of heaven. The whole system of worship with its sacrifices and varied rites, and in a greater degree the prophecies, proclaimed the coming of the promised Redeemer, who was to bring light and peace and reconciliation with God.

The announcement of the future Redeemer thus contained in a vague way the promise of eternal life, which was to be given us through Him. That in the Old Testament, prior to the fulness of light contained in the Gospels, so little enlightenment should have been given on this matter of eternal beatitude, is easily explained; it was because, until Christ had suffered and died, the souls of the just had to wait in limbo for the gates of heaven to be opened to them by their Savior."

Nevertheless, as we have already seen, the Prophets occasionally contain sublime and most significant passages on the magnificent reward God has in store for the just in the next life, passages that state more clearly what was already said before them.?

Thus the psalmist said: “As for me, I will appear before Thy sight in justice: I shall be satisfied when Thy glory shall appear.” Job spoke in a similar strain.”

Speaking of the New Jerusalem, Isaias said (60: 19): “The Lord shall be unto thee for an everlasting light, and thy God for thy glory. Thy sun shall go down no more. For the Lord shall be unto thee for an everlasting light: and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.”

Daniel wrote (12:3): “But they that are learned [in the things of God, and are faithful to His law] shall shine as the brightness of the firmament: and they that instruct many to justice, as stars for all eternity.” Nor is it a question here of the just who will appear on earth in the years to come; the reference is to those still living or who have already died: the reward promised them is eternal.

More explicit still, as we have seen, is the Second Book of Machabees (7:9), where we are told how with his last breath

2 Gen. 5: 24; 17: 8; 26: 24; 35: 293 47:9; 49: 18, 29-33; Num. 20: 243 27: 133 Deut. 25: 8, 17; 32: 50.

8 Job. 14: 13-25; 19: 25-27; cf. also Ps. 11:7; 15: 10-12; 48:15 ff.; 72:24; Prov. 10: 30; 11: 7; Ecclus. 1:13; 11: 28; 18:24, etc.

one of the martyrs addressed his executioners: “Thou, indeed, O wicked man, destroyest us out of this present life: but the King of the world will raise us up, who die for His laws, in the resurrection of eternal life.”

Again, it is of eternal bliss that the Book of Wisdom speaks when it says:

The souls of the just are in the hands of God: and the torment of death shall not touch them. . . . The just shall shine, and shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds. They shall judge nations, and rule over people: and their Lord shall reign forever . . . for grace and peace is to His elect. . . . The just shall live for evermore: and their reward is with the Lord, and the care of them with the most High (3:1; 5:1 ff.).

Eternal life according to the New Testament

In the fulness of revelation contained in the New Testament, eternal bliss is spoken of in terms within the reach of all. Indeed, Christ has now been given us. Whereas everything that preceded Him pointed to His coming, henceforth He Himself proclaims to all peoples the establishment of the kingdom of God and leads souls to eternal life.

This is expressed again and again in our Savior’s sermons recorded in the first three Gospels. There it is said of the reward in store for the just: “Neither can they die any more: for they are equal to the angels and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection” (Luke 20: 36); “The just shall go into life everlasting” (Matt. 25: 46; Mark ro: 30). It is not merely the future life spoken of by philosophers like Socrates and Plato, but an everlasting life, a life participating in God’s eternity, transcending time, past, present, and future.

Elsewhere, in a passage recalling the prophecy of Daniel (12:13), Jesus exclaims: “Then shall the just shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13: 43). “Then shall the king [the Son of man] say to them that are on His right hand: Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Here we have truly the ultimate purpose of the divine governance. “For I was hungry, and you gave Me to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave Me to drink: I was a stranger, and you tock Me in: naked, and you covered Me: sick, and you visited Me” (Matt. 25: 34).

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had said: “Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. . . . Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven” (Matt. 5:8- 12). Here indeed is the true Promised Land of which the Old Testament scarcely spoke except in symbols. The souls of men were too conscious of their profound need of redemption to be ready for the full enlightenment.

In the Gospel of St. John, Christ speaks of eternal life more frequently still. Thus to the Samaritan woman: “If thou didst know the gift of God. . . . He that shall drink of the water that I will give him shall not thirst forever. But the water that I will give him shall become in him a fountain of living water, springing up into life everlasting” (John 4: 10-14).

Several times in the Fourth Gospel Jesus repeats the phrase: “He that believeth in Me hath everlasting life” (cf. 3: 36; 6: 40, 47). That is, one who believes in Me with living faith combined with the love of God has already within him the beginnings of eternal life. And why? Because, as He tells us later in His sacerdotal prayer, “this is eternal life: that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent” (John 17:3); “Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me: that they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me, because Thou hast loved Me from the creation of the world” (ibid., 17:24). To look upon Christ in His glory we must be there where Christ was even then present in the higher regions of His holy soul: that is, in heaven, as He Himself said: “No man hath ascended into heaven, but He that descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven” (John 3: 11-13).

In the same sense Jesus said: “Amen, amen, I say to you: If any man keep My word, he shall not see death forever” (John 8:51). And again at the tomb of Lazarus He said: “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, although he be dead, shall live: and everyone that liveth and believeth in Me shall not die forever” (John 11: 25-26).

Here is the fulness of that revelation heralded in the distant past by Job and the psalmist, by Isaias, by Daniel, in the Book of Machabees, and again in the Book of Wisdom. Then it was no more than a little stream; now it is a vast river moving onward and losing itself in the infinite ocean of the divine life.

Elsewhere Jesus speaks of the narrow gate and the strait way (of self-abnegation) that leads to life,* that immeasurable way that leads to God. The Lord calls all men to labor in His vineyard, giving them as recompense, even to the laborers of the eleventh hour, His own eternal happiness

(Matt. 20: 1-6). The recompense He gives is Himself, though according to the merits and degree of charity each one has attained, for “in His Father’s house there are many mansions” (John 14: 2).

Our Lord’s teaching is still more clearly expounded in the Epistles of St. Paul and of St. John.

St. Paul refers to eternal happiness when he says (I Cor. 2:9): “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard: neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him. But to us God hath revealed them, by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”

Still more distinctly St. Paul says in another passage of the same Epistle (13: 8):

Charity never falleth away: whether prophecies shall be made void or tongues shall cease or knowledge [imperfect knowledge] shall be destroyed. For we know in part, and prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. . . . We see [God] now through a glass in a dark manner: but then face to face. Now I know in part: but then I shall know [Him] even as I am known [by Him], with a knowledge that is immediate and perfectly distinct; I shall behold Him as He beholds Himself, face to face, and no longer as in a mirror, obscurely, confusedly.

St. John speaks in the same sense in his First Epistle (3: 2): “Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God: and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when He shall appear we shall be like to Him: because we shall see Him as He is.” The Church has defined that this revealed teaching must be understood of an immediate vision of the divine essence with no created thing intervening as medium previously known.’ In other words, through intellectual vision we shall see God more clearly than we see with our bodily cyes the persons with whom we are conversing, for we shall sce Him distinctly as something more intimately present to us than we are to ourselves. Here on earth our knowledge of God is in the main confined to what He is not. We say that He is not material, not subject to change, not limited or confined. Hereafter we shall see Him as He really is, in His Deity, in His infinite essence, in that intimate life of His, common to the three Persons, of which grace, and especially its consummation in glory is a participation, since it is through grace that it will be granted to us to see and love God as He sces and loves Himself, and thus we shall live by Him eternally.

Such is the teaching of revelation on eternal life as the manifestation of the divine goodness and the ultimate purpose of God’s governance. Let us now glance briefly at what theology has to add, haltingly always, in an endeavor to give us a better understanding of the mystery.

The beatific vision and the love for God of which it is the source

Theology throws a certain amount of light on this subject by contrasting a purely natural happiness with that happiness which only grace in its consummation can bring.

5 Bencdict XII (Denzinger, n. 530): “We define... that... even before the resurrection of their bodies and the general judgment . . . the souls of all the saints . . . in whom, when they departed this life, there was nothing to be cleansed . . . behold the divine essence with intuitive vision, face to face, in such wise that nothing created intervenes as object of vision, but the divine essence presents itself to their immediate gaze, unveiled, clearly and openly.” Cf. also the Council of Florence (Denzinger n. 693).

Had God created us in a purely natural state, with a mortal body and an immortal soul but without the supernatural life of grace, our final destiny, our happiness, would still have consisted in knowing God and loving Him above all things, for our intellect was made to know truth and above all the supreme truth, our will was made to love and desire the good and beyond all else the sovereign good.

Had we been created without the supernatural life of grace, the final reward of the just would indeed have been, so to say, from without, through the reflexion of His perfections in creatures, as the great philosophers of antiquity knew Him. This would have been a knowledge more certain than theirs, and without any admixture of error, but still an abstract knowledge, obtained through the medium of things, in the mirror of things created. We should have had a knowledge of God as the first cause of spiritual and corporeal beings, we should have numbered His infinite perfections as they are known analogically from their reflexions in the created order. Our ideas of the divine attributes would still have been like tiny bits of mosaic, incapable of reproducing without hardening the spiritual features of God.

Similarly we should have loved God as the author of our nature, doubtless with a love of admiration, reverence, and gratitude, but without that gentle, simple familiarity which God’s children experience in their hearts. We should have been the servants of God, not His children.

Such a destiny, however, would still have been of a very high order. It could never have palled upon us any more than our eyes can ever tire of beholding the blue skies. It would have been a spiritual destiny, moreover, and unlike material things the spiritual can be enjoyed fully by each one without detriment to the enjoyment of others and the consequent risk of jealousies.

But in this abstract and indirect knowledge of God, many obscurities would have remained, particularly as to the manner in which the divine perfections are reconciled with one another. We should always have been asking how an omnipotent goodness can be reconciled with the divine permission of evil, how infinite mercy can be intimately harmonized with justice.

The human mind would have been forced to exclaim: “Would that I might behold this God, the fount of all truth and of all goodness, whence steals forth the life of creation, the life of intellect and of will!”

But what reason even at its highest cannot discover, has been made known to us through revelation. Here we are told that our final destiny consists in beholding God immediately, face to face, and as He really is, in knowing Him no longer simply from without, but intimately, even as He knows Himself; that it consists also in loving Him even as He loves Himself. It tells us that we are now predestined “to be made conformable to the image of His Son: that He might be the first-born among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29). In creating us, God was not bound to have us partakers with Himself in His intimate life, to invite us to this immediate vision of Him, but it was in His power to do so by making us His adopted sons, and this out of pure loving kindness He has willed to do.

It is our destiny therefore to see God not merely as mirrored in creatures, no matter how perfect, not even in that radiation of Him in the angelic world, but to behold Him immediately, without any creature intervening, and more distinctly than we behold ourselves with the eyes of sense. Being wholly spiritual, God will be intimately present to our intellect, illuminating and invigorating it and so giving it strength to look upon Him. (Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 12, a. 2.)

This exclusion of any intermediary between God and ourselves extends even to the idea. No created idea could ever represent, as it really is, that purely intellectual and eternally subsisting flash which is God. No word of ours, not even an interior word, will be adequate to express what we are contemplating: thus even now when we are absorbed in gazing at some sublime spectacle, we cannot express what we see. Only one word can utter what God really is in Himself— His own eternal, substantial Word.

This vision of God face to face infinitely surpasses the most sublime philosophy. No longer will there be mere concepts of the divine attributes, these concepts reminding us of tiny bits of mosaic. Part of the destiny to which we are called is to behold all the divine perfections intimately reconciled, nay, identified in their common source, the Deity, the intimate life of God; to behold how the tenderest mercy and an absolutely inflexible justice proceed from one and the same infinitely generous and infinitely holy love that possesses a transcendent quality in which these apparently conflicting attributes are in fact identified; to behold how justice and mercy combine in all the works of God. Part of our destiny is to behold how this love, even when the freest good pleasure, is yet identified with pure wisdom, how in this love there is nothing that is not all-wise and in this wisdom nothing that is not transformed into love. Our destiny is to behold how this same love is identified with the sovereign good forever loved from all eternity, how divine wisdom is identified with the supreme truth forever known, and how all these perfections are but one with the essence of Him who is.

Our destiny is to contemplate in God this transcendent simplicity of His, absolute in its purity and holiness; to behold the infinite fecundity of the divine nature flowering in three Persons; to contemplate the eternal generation of the Word, “the brightness of the Father’s glory and the figure of His substance” (Heb. 1:3); to behold the ineffable spiratio of the Holy Ghost, the term of the mutual love between Father and Son, uniting them eternally in this most exhaustive outpouring of themselves. “Goodness is essentially diffusive of itself” in God's interior life, and freely it scatters its riches abroad.

No one can express the joy begotten of such a vision, or the love that will spring from it, a love so mighty, so perfect, that nothing henceforth shall be able to weaken, far less destroy it. It is a love born of admiration and reverence and gratitude, but of friendship most of all, with all the simplicity and holy familiarity that friendship implies. Filled with this love, we shall rejoice first and foremost that God is God, with His infinite holiness, His infinite justice, His infinite mercy; we shall adore every decree of His providence, whose sole purpose is the manifestation of His goodness. And in all things we shall be subject to Him.

Wholly supernatural, such a knowledge and love will be made possible only through grace sublimating our faculties, and there at the very root of them, in the very essence of the soul, remaining a divine engrafting that can nevermore be lost to us. This consummation of grace, which we call glory, will in very truth be an enduring participation in the very nature of God, in His intimate life, since it will enable us to behold Him and to love Him even as He beholds and loves Himself.

Such, though very imperfectly expressed, is eternal life, a life to which we may all aspire, since through baptism we have already received it in germ, in sanctifying grace, which is the semen gloriae.

Herein lies the purpose of the divine governance, to show forth that divine goodness which is one day to bestow an eternal happiness upon us and maintain it forever within us. Then indeed will these words be realized: “God hath predestined us to be made conformable to the image of His Son: that He might be the first-born among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29), that He who is Son by His very nature might be the first-born among many brethren, the children of God by adoption. It will be the perfect fulfilment of these words of Jesus: “Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me: that they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me, because Thou hast loved Me before the creation of the world” (John 17: 24). Christ’s glory is the supreme manifestation of the divine goodness, for Him and for us unending happiness, the measure of which is the measure of God’s own happiness, which is something transcending time, being no less than the unique instant of changeless eternity.

Let us conclude with St. Paul: “For which cause we faint not: but though our outward man is corrupted, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory” (II Cor. 4: 16-17).°

®In times of great affliction not a few interior souls have found peace and even joy, though circumstances continued to give immense pain, when through God's inspiration they have conceived the idea of making a vow of sellabandonment to Providence.

When a soul is prompted by grace to make such a vow and is firmly resolved not to divorce self-abandonment from fidelity to daily duties, the following form may be used. It should be renewed daily during the prayer of thanksgiving:

“Whenever the will of God is expressed in a cross, 1 will yield myself to it entirely and with a note of joy, paying no regard to what was instrumental in bringing it about. In difficulties that in any way distress me I will avoid all selfprobing, introspection, and idle preoccupations; 1 will steep myself more deeply in confidence, and seek to solve my difficulties through the action of grace. I will take up this attitude of mind and heart and plunge myself in God the instant something occurs to wound me. And all this I will do with an exceeding great love.”

This self-abandonment should be accompanied by close fidelity to grace and the illuminations received in prayer.