THE PARADISE by Fr. Pierre-Joseph Pession (FULL TEXT)

© Copyright 2019 - The Foundation for a Christian Civilization, Inc. Translated by Jose A. Schelini

PARADISE Fr. Pierre-Joseph Pession

Book One

French edition published in Aosta, Italy, in 1899, by the Imprimerie Catholique.

Translated from the French by José Aloísio Aranha Schelini 2019

AOSTE IMPRIMERIE CATHOLIQUE 1899

THEOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS EXPOUNDED IN THE FORM OF MEDITATIONS ON

THE PARADISE CONSIDERED MAINLY AS A PLACE, its relations with the rest of the universe, connections with the life of trial of rational creatures, and on happiness, especially accidental, of Jesus Christ, Mary, the Angels, and the other elect Work Drawn from Sacred Scripture, Popes, Scholastic Theology and Especially St. Thomas, and from Analogies and Data of Human Sciences by

Fr. Pierre-Joseph Pession DOCTOR IN THEOLOGY AT THE GREGORIAN UNIVERSITY, THEOLOGICAL CANON, SYNODAL JUDGE, FORMER PROFESSOR OF SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY AND PHYSICS, PROFESSOR OF HOLY SCRIPTURE AND DOGMA AT THE SEMINARY OF AOSTA (ITALY).

Now reason, does indeed when it seeks persistently, piously and soberly, achieve by God’s gift some understanding, and that most profitable, of the mysteries, whether by analogy from what it knows naturally or from the connection of these mysteries with one another and with the ultimate end of humanity.

First Vatican Council, Chap. IV, On Faith.

Semper cor nostrum promissa coelestia meditetur, omnia terrena quae possidemus in futuras coelestis regni mansiones transferamus: ut cum ibi provecti fuerimus, fruamur bonis coelestibus.

(S. AUG. Lib.de Salut. docum. CAP. 40).

Gaudebunt itaque (Sancti) de bonis Domini interius et exterius, supra se, et infra se, in circuitu et undique.

(St. Anselm of Aosta, Elucidar. Lib. III, Chap.

20).

AOSTE IMPRIMERIE CATHOLIQUE 1899

Imprimatur Aosta, October 24, 1899.

Fr. Beuchod, Vic. Gen.

DECLARATION (1899)  

The author reserves all rights that he may enjoy under the laws or regulations in force on the press and literary property.

2021 translator’s addendum: The original French edition is now in the public domain. This translation is the intellectual property of the Foundation for a Christian Civilization, Inc.

CONTENTS Assessment of This Work Letters of Dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Anselm Special Prayer to Mary to ask, through Her Intercession, the Grace of Attaining our Ultimate end: Paradise Preface I. Reasons that Led to This Writing 1. Importance of the Subject 2. The Possibility of Better Knowing Paradise 3. A Homage to Christ the Redeemer and, Consequently, to His Divine Mother II. Difficulties of Our Undertaking a) Observations on the Characteristics of This Work, b) On the Pace We Followed and the Length Given Certain Subjects c) Total Submission to the Judgment of the Church III. Subjects We Are Presently Covering, and Are Intended to Form another Volume.

BOOK ONE General Considerations on the Empyrean, Its Inhabitants and Relations with the Lower Universe Chapter One True praise the Saints give to Mary; Invocation of the Virgin. General view of the heavens, of which Mary is the Queen; The heavens are made for the rational creature, which is greater than they are; We are destined to reign upon the heavens. Prayer to Mary.

1st Meditation.The Church and the Saints Do Not Exaggerate at All When Speaking of Mary. Invoking the Virgin.

2nd Meditation. An Overview of the Heavens 3rd Meditation. The Heavens Are Made for Us. We Must Reign Over Them Chapter Two Mary Is the Queen of Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell; Paradise

Considered as a Place; Its Unimaginable Extent; It Encompasses All Places That Serve to the Trials, as Well as Limbo, Purgatory and Hell.

1st Meditation. Mary, as Beautiful as Paradise, Is Herself a Paradise. She Exercises Her Power over the Heavens, Hell, and Purgatory. Invoking Her Lights to Know the Great Supernatural Realities over which She Presides 2nd Meditation. Paradise is not only a happy state of rewarded creatures but also a special and most joyful place; a region also made for spirits.

3rd Meditation. Identity of Paradise, Empyrean, and Third Heaven.

Paradise encompasses the entire created universe.

4th Meditation.The Place that Hell, Purgatory, and Limbo Occupy in the Universe Chapter Three Perfection of Paradise Considered as Heaven, and the Incomparable Perfection of Mary, Who Is Called ‘Heaven’ for Many Reasons 1st Meditation.The Three Divine Masterpieces; a First Look at the Corporeal Perfection of Paradise; Mary is a Heaven Herself.

2nd Meditation.Richness of the Empyrean in Diverse Systems and Worlds 3rd Meditation.General Arrangement of the Empyrean and the Universe Chapter Four The Beauty of Mary and the Beauty of Paradise 1st Meditation. Beautiful Mary Is like an Incarnate Divine Archetype—a Heaven More Beautiful than all Heavens 2nd Meditation.The Beauties of Paradise According to Father Segneri 3rd Meditation. Beauties of Paradise from the Standpoint of Its Material 4th Meditation.Beauties of Paradise Judged by Its Forms Chapter Five Chart of Heavenly Residences 1st Meditation. Meaning of Mary’s Heavenly Dwelling 2nd Meditation. Overview of Celestial Residences Under Mary’s 3rd Meditation.The Provinces of the Empyrean and the Residences of the Apostles 4th Meditation. Reflections

Chapter Six The World Accessible to our Observations Gives Us an Idea of the Disposition of the Celestial Residences because of the Unity of the Divine Plan 1st Meditation. Physical-world, Human Society, Visible Supernatural; the Scripture Teaches Us about Paradise, and Especially about the Diversity and Subordination of its Mansions 2nd Meditation. Jewish Jerusalem Gravitates Toward the Church as the Church Gravitates toward Heaven. The Church is the Laboratory where the Dwellings of the Church Triumphant are Outlined and Take Shape 3rd Meditation.How the Church Militant Gives Us an Idea of the Variety of Celestial Mansions. The Role Mary plays on Earth Gives Us an Idea of Her Heavenly Abode Chapter Seven Configuration of the Heavenly Jerusalem 1st Meditation. Expounding the Opinion of Scholastics; the Holy City’s Concept Is Very Different from That of Ordinary Cities 2nd Meditation. Saint John Saw a Sample of the Empyrean, which Is a Perfect Cube 3rd Meditation. Isn’t Paradise Thus Conceived Too Big? 4th Meditation. According to Saints and Doctors, Mary Is Also a City of God, a Perfect Divine City Chapter Eight Despite the Immensity of the Empyrean, Jesus Christ and Mary Are Very Visible from All Points of Paradise and Exert Their Beatific Influence Everywhere. Need for Mary’s Intercession According to the Divine Plan.

1st Meditation. Jesus Christ and Mary Are Clearly Visible Throughout the Empyrean Because of Their Beatific Excellence 2nd Meditation. Jesus and Mary Are Very Visible from the Whole Empyrean Because of the Place They Occupy and the Role They Play in the Hierarchy of Beings 3rd Meditation. The Need for Devotion to Mary Deduced from the Principles set out in the First two Meditations Chapter Nine

God, the Holy Humanity of Christ, and Mary Are the Temples and Principal Lights of the Empyrean 1st Meditation. Commentary on This Text – Part One 2nd Meditation. Commentary on This Text – Part Two 3rd Meditation. After God and Jesus Christ, Mary Is the Temple and Light of the Empyrean Chapter Ten The Throne and Thrones of God, Christ, Mary, and the Other Blessed 1st Meditation. General View of These Thrones 2nd Meditation.The Thrones as per This Chapter 3rd Meditation. More Specific Considerations on the Thrones of Christ and Mary 4th Meditation. Regardless of Their Particular Purposes and Applications, St. John’s Revelations are General and Contain Valuable Views of the Definitive Celestial Thrones Chapter Eleven Intrinsic Reasons for the Universal Role of Jesus and Mary Concerning the Universe and the Empyrean 1st Meditation. Everything Predestined in any way was Predestined in Jesus Christ for the Glory of God and the Good of all Beings 2nd Meditation. How all Beings Gravitate to Christ and Mary; Everything was Predestined also in Mary, Albeit Secondarily 3rd Meditation. Like all Created Persons, Things and Times, all Distances and Spaces are Subject to Christ and Mary Chapter Twelve Since Everything was Predestined for Existence in Jesus Christ, Mary, and the Elect, Mobile Nature Speaks a Language Consistent with Its Destiny and Searches for the Empyrean, which, in Turn, Vivifies It with Its Influences 1st Meditation. The Holy Ghost with Formal Exhortations, and all Beings of Nature by Their Present Condition, Urge Us to Seek the Things from Above 2nd Meditation. With two Great Movements, Al Nature Preaches the Empyrean to Us. Doctrine of St. Thomas, St. Augustine, and Suarez. The Empyrean Is the Noblest Part of the Material Reign of Mary

3rd Meditation. How the Empyrean Influences Mobile Nature Chapter Thirteen Christian Teaching Splendidly Confirms and Completes the Language of Physical Nature Concerning the Places of Supreme Happiness and Supreme Unhappiness 1st Meditation. Teachings from the Main Mysteries of Christ 2nd Meditation. Teaching from the Examples of Christ and His Work in General 3rd Meditation. Teachings from the Doctrine of Christ and the Operations of His Grace; Doctrine of the Church; Conviction and Practice of the Faithful

BOOK TWO Creation of the Empyrean; Angels and the Early Age. Chapter One Creation and Primary Condition of the Empyrean. The Angels Considered in General 1st Meditation. Creation of the Empyrean. Its primary condition. How Mary is a higher Heaven.

2nd Meditation. The Angels, Their Creation, Number, Hierarchies and their Hierarchies’ Reasons for Being 3rd Meditation. Differences in Angelic Hierarchies. Offices of the Various Angelic Choirs 4th Meditation. In Heaven, the Saints of the Human Species are the Equals of the Angels 5th Meditation. The Relative Number of Angels. The Various Angelic Natures. All Angels, Even The Assistants, Play Some Role in the Direct Government of the World or Men. Chapter Two The Known Seraphs 1st Meditation. Michael, Gabriel and Raphael are Seraphim 2nd Meditation. We Believe St. Gabriel Is the First of the Seraphim Chapter Three

Angels and Places about Saint Gabriel 1st Meditation. Angels and Places According to Various Authorities 1. Confirmation of the Previous Doctrine 2. The Angels Know Every Place 3. Angels Move Locally and Can Influence Remote Places without Accessing Intermediate Ones 2nd Meditation. Angels Act as Glorified Beings 1. This Doctrine Is Common Teaching 2. Angels Act as Glorified Children of God Chapter Four Guardian Angels According to St. Augustine and St. Thomas; The Accidental Happiness they Experience Fulfilling Their Ministries 1st Meditation.The Guardian Angels of the Material Universe 2nd Meditation.The Guardian Angels of Wayfaring Humanity 3rd Meditation. The Accidental Happiness of the Guardian Angels of the Universe and that of Men Fulfilling Their Duties Chapter Five How Good Angels Deserve Their Happiness: The Test of Angels and Directly Related Subjects 1st Meditation. Nature of Chaos. How it Serves in the Trial of Angels and Is Instructive for us 2nd Meditation. What the Angels Knew during Their Test 3rd Meditation. Faith in the Incarnation was the Main Object of the Angels’ Test. Consequences from the Standpoint of the Accidental Happiness of the Elect 4th Meditation. rChrist as Redeemer and Mary as Coredemptrix Were Predestined before all Else and Are the Perfect Types of Angels, Men, and all Things Subject to Trial 5th Meditation. The Evil Angels’ Opposition to the Supernatural Coming of the Redeemer and Coredemptrix. Their Naturalism and Misfortune as Opposed to the Holy Angels’ Conduct and Happiness 6th Meditation. The Good Angels also Deserved Accidental Happiness

by Fulfilling Their Social Duties and Governing Matter. The Evil Angels Did the Opposite

7th Meditation. Duration of the Angelic Trial 8th Meditation.The Good Angels’ Combat False Science Opposed to the Holy Ghost. Corresponding Rewards BOOK THREE Infinite heaven and its relationships. Overview of created intelligent heavens, their relationships, and the higher material heavens Chapter One Infinite Heaven and Its Relationships with Created Beings and Possible Beings.

1st Meditation. Infinite, Supreme Heaven, and Creatures’ Main Relationships with it According to Sacred Scripture 2nd Meditation. Continuing the Same Subject According to Sacred Scripture 3rd Meditation. God Is Everywhere in the Universe. His Continual Action on His Creatures I. First Look at God’s Ubiquity II. The Triple Way in which God is Everywhere III. The Scriptures’ Magnificent Language on This Subject 4th Meditation. Holy Trinity’s Heaven – Its Immensity and Visibility for the Blessed, and Essential Vitality 5th Meditation. Influences of the Holy Trinity Heaven on Creatures 6th Meditation. Infinite Heaven or God’s Immensity According to St. Augustine 7th Meditation. The Infinite Heaven or God’s Immensity According to St. Thomas Aquinas I. St. Thomas’s Formal Teaching II. St. Thomas’s ‘Controversial’ Teaching 8th Meditation. Remarkable Language of Several Church Fathers; Observations on Some Theological Opinions 9th Meditation. Examining Father Knoll’s Personal Opinion Chapter Two Quick Glance at all Created Heavens and Their Influences 1st Meditation. By Its Radiance, the Glorious Humanity of the Word

Forms the first Heaven After that of the Divine Persons l. This Holy Humanity Is Above All Heights and Created Spirits to Fill All Things with Its Gifts II. The Presence of Christ’s Glorious Humanity Somehow Extends to All Times and Places 2nd Meditation. A Synthetic Glance on Mary’s Heaven and Those of the Leading Blessed I. These Heavens Considered Mainly from the Doctrine of St. Thomas II. The Same Heavens Considered from Other Data 3rd Meditation. Summary Table of Influences Exerted by the Heaven of the Incarnate Word l. As the First Predestined Heaven II. As a Principle of Existence, Life, Light III. As the Cause of All Adoptive Divine Filiation 4th Meditation. More Manifest Influences of the Same Heaven According to Great Principles and Early Prophecies 5th Meditation. Ancient Theophanies Were Manifestations of the Heaven of the Incarnate Word l. Ancient Theophanies According to St. Augustine Il. The Same Theophanies Seen by Other Fathers and Authors III. How We See These Theophanies Based on the Principles Expounded in this Book IV. Several Other Cases Where it Seems that God, or Rather the Word, Appeared Himself 6th Meditation. Last Glance at the Heavenly Influences of the Incarnate Word I. Other Influences Exerted by this Heaven before the Temporal Birth of Jesus Christ Into the People of God II. Influences the Same Heaven Exerted on All Peoples before the Coming of Christ Ill. Brief Considerations on this Heaven’s Influences since the Savior’s Birth 7th Meditation. Summary and Confirmation of the Main Ideas Expressed in This Work l. Overview of All Heavens

II. The Whole Universe Is a Temple of God, Who Has Worshippers Everywhere. We Form a Society with the Entire Universe, All of which Is Christian III. Christian Friends of God Are the Future Kings of the Universe.

Special Relationships between Higher and Lower Heavens lV. The Place of Hell and the Influences It Exerts By Its Envoys. The Need and Way to Overcome these Influences. Prayer to Mary.

Assessment of This Work By the Rev. Fr. Beuchod Provost of the Cathedral of Aosta and Vicar General 

This very interesting subject will present new insights even to persons versed in the study of religion and especially nourish their piety by stirring up affections naturally drawn from philosophical-theological considerations expounded in the form of meditations. It would be desirable for a celebrated theologian to examine this work, as his judgment could only be very advantageous and would certainly contribute to its diffusion. This work’s vigorous reasoning and countless proofs from writings of the Doctors, Church teaching, and Holy Scripture impart to seemingly novel ideas such a strength that a judicious mind will not fail to admire a doctrine which, like God, is always ancient and ever new.

Aosta, October 11, 1899.

F. BEUCHOD.

Letters of Dedicatin to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Anselm 

To The Blessed Virgin Virgin Mother of God, Queen of the Universe, Who am I, fallen creature, to address you with my verses?

The ocean of your glory floods the empyrean.

The choirs of the blessed, on the ethereal vault, Unite their concerts, thoughts, and ardor, To forever sing your kindness and grandeur; And from this puny point of the mobile universe I will raise my sinful and weak voice, To make it resound beyond our skies, Offering your ears a harmonious sound!

Yes, I come despite everything; forgive my daring.

To you, I dedicate the fruit of my leisure.

Your reign is maternal in heaven and everywhere.

As the Mother of God, of what are you not the mother?

The most learned doctors, the purest mouths Preach you as Mother of creatures.

The mortals here below, the elect in heaven, All created beings, in your maternal heart Seek their greatest good after the Supreme Good; Could I, your child, not do the same?

19

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

Writing about you alone: that was my plan.

Alas! Your magnitudes, extending without limit or end, Have confused me. You have thrown me off, Adding weight to my excessively heavy load.

Mary, where are you not? Seeking with a loving eye To follow the shine of your radiance, I found it everywhere! The Supreme Word Still had done nothing, and you already played your role!

The ideal masterpiece of the Creator Spirit With the humanity of the Divine Redeemer, As an archetype you presided the dawn of things; In relation to you were made the measurements Of nature, greatness, the divine, the beautiful, And everything was measured from atop your level.

Chaos and time, the empyrean and the angels, Creatures and various phalanges, And the varied fate of each being, Everything, O Mary, is to your lot associated, As you are to Christ, supreme cause and reason Of everything that God did outside of Himself.

But what proportion is there, alas, between such a horizon And the feeble efforts of my poor intellect?

Why cast my ship into waters so deep, And attempt to comprehend countless worlds?

You know it, O Virgin.

Your maternal advice furnished the design of my work.

I certainly cannot claim a miracle Nor dress up your influence with the brilliance of an oracle; But your heart to my heart has spoken so many times

20

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

That to me, it sounds with the accents of your voice.

During the blessed days of your month, o Mary, Oasis in the middle of our sad lives, While to your children I preached your magnitudes, Of the glorified heavens, I glimpsed the splendors.

And to me, within this glory, the moving universe seemed to complete its transitory race.

And the whole created order, as I understood it, swam in the ocean of celestial spirits.

And in the brilliant iris of your immense clarity I saw the frolics of these intellects.

And in the distance, your iris was getting confused With the immensity of a sky so transcendent That the Almighty alone dominated it as Master.

It is the heaven of your Son, which you made known to me.

And I see that our heavens, springing toward happiness, Constantly rose from height to height.

And I tell myself: the good is in the higher spheres, And all that travels, incessantly aspires and directs its steps to these places of lights.

The lower regions are those of death.

Lift up your hearts! Up is where our Homeland is!

There, Christ and Mary gloriously reign.

And to celebrate you, O Virgin, I tell myself: Hesitate no more, and speak of Paradise!

But what does prudence dictate that we say?

Should we reveal it, or keep silent?

It has played such a great role in my undertaking,

21

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

That it is like its soul and point of departure.

So, if for my sails it was a favorable wind, Why hide this driving force?

I know, the worldly can laugh at me, And say with pity, what a robust faith!

But of the supernatural, they only see the bark, Ignoring its presence and despising its strength.

O Virgin, are not you Queen of the universe?

Work, rest, the most diverse facts, Everything that lives, exists or can happen, All are subject, O Queen, to your immense empire; And when a child of yours invokes you with love Will not you give him a maternal response?

If your light happens to descend upon him, And he promptly obtains the object of his request, Fulfilling the desires of his heart, Can he not proclaim you as the author?

But all things considered, the story of that grace cannot be told here at this moment.

It was one of the greatest benefits granted by your heart, And I strongly feel its price and effects.

Thank you, Mother of God! I now beg you, O Mary, Bless this writing from the highest heaven.

Oh! May it make you loved!

May it turn to Paradise the wizened minds of humans!

May it tear hearts away from the thousand trifles of the world, Perverse and shifting like a wave!

22

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

Son of Adam, your empire is the whole universe, For are you not the happy co-heir of Christ?

Yet, of your immense glory, it will only be The weakest ray, an accessory shine; For you, this universe will be glorified and as if enlivened by your splendor; At that, despite its divine wealth, It will never be able to match your nobility.

One day the Almighty will proclaim you god, And what will, then, the contents of the place mean to you?

Infinity is your good, the Immense your space, Eternity your time, and God, your reward.

Your paradise is God! And then, everything else as a surplus!

O divine Mary, oh Mother of Jesus, Through this book, please make shine before our eyes The ravishing end that we must pursue; and Impart to our hearts, Mother of grace, The generous élan that forms winners.

To Saint Anselm Holy Father and Doctor, a great devotee of Mary, Illustrious Valdostan, whose powerful genius Of vast knowledge dominated the heights, To you, I also dedicate this fruit of my labors.

It addresses subjects hardly dealt with; Please lead it to a propitious outcome.

23

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

Mary and her Son, heaven and its beauty, Salvific grace and immortality, Angels and saints, their fights and glory, And the final victory of good upon evil, Often fed your meditations, And of your heart moved the aspirations.

Now that in heaven your soul, illuminated By the divine Word, the Incarnate Wisdom, Contemplates without any cloud almighty God And the delightful stay of His elect, Make us aware of the lures of this world, Make us aspire to heavenly homes.

Your soul overflowed with science and love: Operate, with Mary, a great sursum corda In this down-to-earth humanity Wandering miserably astray from beautiful heaven So that, deeply loving our ultimate end, And for all fleeting goods having only contempt, Living every moment from Christian hope, We may taste the blessed joys of heaven.

Favorably shall we look upon this writing which, in this exile Of the celestial city shows us the profile.

And of this divine subject admiring the nobility, We shall forgive this writing’s extreme weakness.

O great compatriot, O master of doctors, Bless from heaven this book, and its readers.

24

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

Special Prayer to Mary TO ASK THROUGH HER INTERCESSION, THE GRACE OF ATTAINING OUR ULTIMATE END: PARADISE. 1

We offer you our greetings, Virgin full of grace; You earned the eternal favor of the Most High.

Before you, all mortal glory is effaced.

Be blessed forever, O Mother of the Savior!

Yes, let men and angels Celebrate you in their concerts; May the echoes of your praises Resonate throughout the universe!

O sweet and tender Mother, Of our humble prayer Listen to the sounds.

With your protective hand Guide your fragile children To their last end.

The blessed proclaim you their Queen; Are you not the honor and hope of humanity?

The hatred of hell lashes against your feet; All things feel the effects of your vast power.

But, much more than your grandeur, The stanzas that follow are extracted, with few changes, from our booklet titled, Petits chants religieux et patriotiques, à l’usage des élèves du Petit-Séminaire d’Aoste.

1

25

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

The grace of your smile Exerts upon us an empire of which Nothing matches the sweetness.

O sweet and tender mother, Of our humble prayer Listen to the sounds.

With your protective hand Guide your fragile children To their last end.

Upon the heart of Jesus, your power is immense; You draw at your pleasure from the divine treasure.

Your maternal goodness and sweet clemency are a bottomless sea, a borderless ocean.

Pour on our weakness The blessed waves of your benefits.

Always and everywhere Show us the effects of your tenderness.

O sweet and tender mother, Of our humble prayer Listen to the sounds.

With your protective hand Guide your fragile children To their last end.

We sail on a sea so rich in shipwrecks, Where angry death dominates as a tyrant.

In concert, sirens, waves, reefs, and storms Threaten our fragility.

Keep our frail boat In this kingdom of death; Support it when it falters,

26

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

Accompany it to port.

O sweet and tender mother, Of our humble prayer Listen to the sounds.

With your protective hand Guide your fragile children To their last end.

We are your children! What honor! What glory!

But also what help do we not have in you?

Arrayed under your flags, we will have the victory On the world and on hell, which are under your law.

So, full of confidence Inspired by your maternal care, We will receive the reward That God gives immortals.

O sweet and tender mother, Of our humble prayer Listen to the sounds.

With your protective hand Guide your fragile children To their last end.

PREFACE We will first expound on the main reasons that led us to write this work. Then we will give some explanations on the form chosen and the outline we thought fit to follow. Finally, to complete our plan, we will indicate subjects we intend to develop in a volume that is in preparation.

27

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

I. Reasons that led to This Writing

Besides the powerful motive explained in our dedication to the Blessed Virgin, three particular reasons have led us to devote our leisure time to write this work: The exceptional importance of the topic, which is the last end of mankind; the possibility to know it better through study and meditation; and our desire to contribute as much as we can to the solemn homage that the Church, and through her all humanity will so justly render to Christ the Redeemer at the end of this century.

1. Importance of the Subject As a rule, the conduct of a rational being reflects his habitual thoughts and affections.

His life is Christian or worldly depending on whether his mind and heart are full of images and hopes of eternal goods or feed on real or dreamed-of passing goods. The Christian life is based on faith and shapes man according to the requirements of his last end; worldly life is based on naturalism, which can only end in misfortune because God did not assign to man an ultimately natural end. One can say that the whole human race subject to the test belongs to one or the other of these two categories or acts more or less according to these two opposite principles: the true paradise beyond or the false paradise of the present life.

We are all witnesses of the ravages that naturalism, this pest of the present time, is wreaking in human society today. It is no longer content, as in the past, to show itself fragile and weak, requiring remedies, but from the heights of the dummy throne erected by pride, it claims to be science and truth and pities the supernatural and its promises. How many people, alas, are deceived by the arrogance of this terrible vice, which moreover flatters all their bad instincts!

The few advances made in the knowledge of nature and inventions of things useful to humanity seem to eclipse the great teaching of the Church and hide the incomparable benefit of religion.

We are losing sight of the first principles and last ends and acquiring an

28

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

incomplete and false idea of Christianity. Hence many live a deplorable life, perhaps worthy of strong and industrious animals but not of rational and immortal men.

One is fool enough to believe that nature is sufficiently selfexplanatory, and intelligent beings are unrelated to a superior world.

Although endowed with reason, we prefer to ignore a thousand things concerning Creation rather than look for their adequate causes in the supernatural, which the whole Creation continually preaches, which history certifies to us most authentically, and which our heart continually calls for by pursuing happiness.

Accordingly, human life becomes a series of contradictions.

We seek science without wanting it to be great and true; we seek happiness by fleeing the sources from which it flows; we pretend to be virtuous but of a virtue that costs nothing; we are full of ambition but do not care about immortality; we love things great, beautiful, sublime, but detest them precisely when they are very great, very beautiful, very sublime; we know that we must sow in order to reap, that we must believe to be saved, that we must deserve the eternal reward to obtain it, and these are precisely the conditions we do not want to fulfill. And so, when human life is not Christian within Christianity, it is the most unreasonable thing in the world. It is the only thing that does not reach its last end, and – it is horrible to say – sinks into the eternal abyss of pain while necessarily tending to happiness.

How can one remedy such a general, profound, and fatal crisis? The Church of Christ brings into play all her resources to heal such great evil. This is her most essential ministry. She always prays, preaches, and dispenses graces from above to raise man to his sublime destiny.

Despite these continual efforts by the Bride of Christ, too many people turn their eyes to vanity and falsehood (Ps. 4:3) and live as if they have no hope of immortality, no greater good to attain, and nothing to teach them the existence, grandeur, and need of paradise according to the divine plan.

Some do not believe in eternal life. Others profess to believe in it, but their faith is so weak that it has little influence on their lives.

Still others behave ordinarily according to the teachings of their faith,

29

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

but with great difficulty for lack of an ideal sufficiently brilliant to attract them above themselves and make them despise transient goods.

It seems to us that meditations on Paradise are eminently useful to unbelievers and believers. Let unbelievers read them as an intellectual work on the universality of things. Those who still have some common sense and good faith will not fail to admire a doctrine so sublime, vast and harmonious, which describes the role of all beings and give more than sufficient reasons for the movements of the universe. It also expounds Christianity by its supreme causes and quickly explains humanity in everything it has, large and small, good and bad, transient and permanent. And so it presents to our eyes the past, present, and future of the universe, expounding the very profound and intelligible philosophy of God and all things finite.

Christian Science is incomparable. And it is not a science that puffs up, but science that loves and edifies (1 Cor. 8:1), because as all the greatest benefits, it comes from God, and man is only an animated instrument of it, all the more inclined to humble himself when writing about more divine things.

Let no one be astonished that a treatise on Paradise should, so to speak, incessantly deal with the universe and all its parts. For the universe was made for rational creatures, the only ones tasked with praising God with knowledge and love, and Paradise is the last end of intelligent creatures. So, all finite things gravitate toward the same end.

Therefore, the only way to better understand eras, events, and movements is to do so from the standpoint of the state and place of supreme happiness.

O ye who seek truth and have sublime aspirations in your hearts, read this book. Despite its numerous defects, attributable only to its author, it will open an immense horizon before your eyes. Its value is that of the authorities it quotes. If it gives you an accurate idea of the divine plan, it will render you a signal service, for all good things will come to you with wisdom (Wis. 7:11).

As for the faithful, for whom the future life is a dogma, they too have everything to gain from a meditation on Paradise. If our work had no other effect than to entertain them with their last destiny, to them, it still would be incalculably advantageous. “In all thy works,”

30

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

says the Wise man, “remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin.” 2 (Eccl. 7:40). Is never sinning not the door to true happiness? What is precisely the last end of man? Death is only the end of the present life; judgment is a transitional crisis; hell is the end of failed man, the opposite of his true end.

Paradise alone is the end that God in His goodness willed for man, satiating all his desires, and elevating him to the height of perfection. Therefore, Paradise should be the main object of his thoughts and affections. Forgetting about it or remembering it only weakly is the beginning of all his troubles; thinking of it and seeking it is the way to life and happy immortality. Hence the exceptional importance of any orthodox book that reminds wayfaring man of his last end.

Now, the small number of books written about Paradise is astonishing. True, all religious writings continually allude to it. But few treat this subject par excellence extensively, taking advantage of the multiple and precious data found in Sacred Scripture, the holy Fathers, the sublime theology of the great masters, and other sources. Yet this is about the end of man, the very goal pursued by all religious writings!

Oh how desirable it would be, it seems to us, for Paradise to have its own Summa, a special encyclopedia from which preachers could draw, in which the faithful would find rich nourishment for their believing souls, and which would help all men, by contemplating the ends of all things, to form a great idea of the Divine plan and Christianity! We are far from pretending to offer the public that precious manual. Such work would go beyond our strength, long applied to a multitude of other cares. But we are happy to give a sketch of it and draw the attention of Catholic writers to this vital subject.

Like a resplendent sun, the Christian ideal should make all other ideals practically and universally pale and disappear. However, it is difficult to disenchant men with sensual life, errors and vices without enthralling them with superior life and presenting to them, under

The Syriac text reads: Memor esto finis. Martini, whose translation is approved by the Church, thus renders this passage: “In all your actions, remember your last end, and you will never sin.” Others translate it the same way.

2

31

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

bright colors, the beauty and reward of virtue, and the delicious final lot of the faithful Christian.

True, they are constantly promised the vision, possession, and eternal enjoyment of God. Nothing could be more assured or greater. But this good is so sublime that mortals can only imagine it faintly and are tempted to disdain the land of delights and not to believe the word of God (Ps. 105:24). Describing the inferior goods that abound in the celestial homeland is more proportionate to their frail minds. These goods are more like those eagerly sought upon on earth, and hence they occupy people’s imaginations and serve to elevate their souls to the Sovereign Good.

Now, the Christian ideal of bliss contains all goods, not only those that satisfy the intellect and the will but also those that provide full satisfaction to the imagination, memory, and bodily senses. Hence it happens that the set of secondary goods, which the law promises to us as part of our reward is often the most direct and specific tool against our bad passions. 3 It is therefore important to expound the Christian ideal in all its integrity. Even its least aspects play a big role in relation to us. That is why our meditations concern particularly the accidental happiness of the elect.

Thinking about heaven has always been one of the most effective causes of martyrdom and holiness in the Church. A 24-year old soldier named Adrian, seeing the constancy of the martyrs amid tortures, asked what they were hoping for in compensation for so much suffering. The martyrs answered: We are hoping for those things that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). Struck by these words, Adrian embraced Christianity and also became a martyr. This happened in Nicomedia, under Diocletian, in the year 306 (Cornelius a Lapide, in 1 Epist. ad Cor., Chap. 2:9).

If our imagination is impressed by the image of secondary goods, we seek grace with more eagerness and avidity, and the whole Christian religion becomes more likable to us. The seven Maccabee brothers courageously suffered martyrdom hoping that God would restore their limbs through the resurrection, which refers to accidental happiness (2 Macc. 7).

3

32

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

In the French city of Autun, a young man called Symphorian was subjected to various tortures. As they led him to his last ordeal, his mother cried out to him, “My son, my son, remember eternal life, lift up your eyes to heaven, look up to Him who reigns there; they are not taking your life but changing it for the better.” And the young man bravely presented his head to the executioner.

There are many saints who, like Saint Benedict and his sister Scholastica, spent the night meditating or wondering about the joys of heaven. That was also the dominant thought of all other saints. With St. Paul, they said: “for we have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come” (Hebr. 13:14). Their marvelous life was a delicate blossoming of this sublime thought. “They are enemies of the cross of Christ . . . who mind earthly things.” If we were true Christians, we all could all affirm that our life is in heaven (Phil. 3:18-20).

Many saints can have particular lights on Paradise: “The Spirit breatheth where he will; and thou hearest his voice, but thou knowest not whence he cometh, and whither he goeth.” As far as inspirations are concerned, this happens with everyone who is born of the Spirit (Jn 3: 8). But good inspirations are seeds that must be converted into plants, which in turn must be cultivated; hence the necessity of meditation. And meditation supposes data which are usually found in study and pious readings. By doing these kinds of preparations, you seek in a way that you find: “seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you” (Mt 7:7).

We hope this writing will serve as an instrument of grace for many people. “I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: We shall go into the house of the Lord,” exclaimed the psalmist (Ps. 121:1). If our confidence does not deceive us, many will rejoice also considering the greatness, beauty, and variety of the celestial Jerusalem, which God “prepared for us from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34). A natural result of this joy is to inspire us to love all Christian virtues and despise passing goods.

2. The Possibility of Better Knowing Paradise

33

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

Since Paradise is one of the central mysteries of our faith: “Credo in . . . vitam aeternam,” some people imagine that we can only know very little about it and that it is better to believe in it than try to study and understand it. They thus fancy to concur with St. Paul, who said, “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). But we answer that God has revealed the mysteries for us to meditate upon them to initiate us on this earth with the sublime knowledge we will have in heaven. Although here these things are impenetrable in their innermost depths, they are nevertheless guiding lights for the entire Christian life, and the more they shine, the more effective they are to lead us to our last end.

As for the words of St. Paul, if we read them in their context, they have a very different meaning. The apostle is speaking about the divine wisdom that presided over the mysteries of Christ and which no prince of this century got to know only through the light of reason, “for if they had known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” It is true, however, that this wisdom also dispensed the goods of the eternal fatherland through Christ so that the bliss procured for us by the Incarnation and other mysteries of the Man-God is also part of the goods which the natural eye has not seen, etc. Hence the derived interpretation that many authors give of this passage.

But even if this interpretation is the only true one, St. Paul does not present to us celestial goods as inaccessible to our investigations as believers but, on the contrary, as having been revealed to the eyes of our faith.

What the (pagan) eye has not seen, says he, what the (unfaithful) ear has not heard, what has not (naturally) ascended into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him is also what God has revealed to us through his Spirit: for the Spirit penetrates all things, even the depths of God. For our part, we have not received the spirit of this world, a spirit closed to supernatural realities, but the Spirit who is of God, that we may know the gifts made to us by God, and which we announce

34

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

according to the doctrine of the Spirit. Animal man does not perceive what the Spirit of God is; for him, it is madness.

But the spiritual man judges all things. We have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:9-16). Is this not clear? Our mysteries are gradually intelligible and knowable. They are like mines that cannot be exhausted.

What man of common sense would find in these riches a reason not to exploit them! Thus, another reason for our meditations is the possibility of having far more extensive knowledge of Paradise than is commonly available.

Spiritual men who judge of all things, who have the mind of Christ, are inspired writers, popes, councils, those who compose and nourish tradition. The Holy Fathers, theologians, members of the teaching Church, learned and pious writers who, firmly attached to the chair of Peter, are inspired by the light of faith and live according to Christian morality, participate in this righteous judgment on all things and also have the mind of Christ. That is why their teaching and even their opinions are very worthy of our considerations and esteem and instruct us about Paradise rather abundantly.

Let us observe, however, that amid this infinitely varied world of notions, one must often discern rather than choose and complete rather than refute, under pain of considerably reducing the sum of knowledge. Indeed, in many cases, Catholic questions that very often seem opposed to each other are nothing but different and equally true aspects of the same subject. Sometimes, highly learned saints had very different points of view. We must not hurriedly declare them in conflict with each other but rather allow them to teach adequately and particularly doctrines that are difficult to grasp. By following this rule, which is also a tribute of respect to these great men, one has a chance to understand the truth more completely. The expression, distinguish frequently, contains a lot of wisdom.

Let us give a few examples.

St. Anselm, wondered if Paradise is a physical place and where it may be located. He says that it is not a physical place because spirits do not dwell in places. It is the spiritual abode of the blessed,

35

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

which the eternal wisdom perfected from the beginning; the spiritual heaven in which Divinity shows itself to spirits face to face as it is (Elucidar. Book III, Ch. 1).

Pope St. Gregory, St. Augustine, and others often have similar expressions. But they speak of the essential happiness of the elect, and in this respect, their teaching leaves nothing to be desired.

St. Anselm, writing about Paradise in greater detail, makes us consider the secondary bliss of the immortals as a consequence of their essential happiness. O what joy, he exclaims, what exultation they will have as they enter the joy of the Lord! Oh God! What joy will they have when they forever see intuitively, as they are, the Father in the Son, and the Word in the Father, and the Love of the Holy Ghost in both!

They will enjoy the society of the angels and the familiarity of all saints.

In a word, they will enjoy the goods of the Lord internally, externally, above them, below them, around them, and from all sides.

I urge all my friends to conquer these goods. If they listen to me, they will enjoy the affluence and superabundance of these delights in a society of countless happy persons. Such is complete joy: the sufficiency of all goods without any indigence. They are the equals of angels; they are the sons of God; hence they are so powerful that if they wanted to make another heaven, they would do it without difficulty.

Heaven, earth, and every creature will owe them such glorification (Ibid. c. 20). Their strength will be such that they will be able to move mountains and the whole mass of the earth with the same ease as they presently see these very things (Ibid, c. 18). The harmonies of heaven will always ring in their ears with concerts of angels and melodious instruments of all saints. They will abound of all riches.

Possessing the joy of the Lord, they will be established over all the goods of God (Ibid, c. 19). All corporeal creatures will be renewed and perfected for them. The entire earth will be like a paradise. Watered by the blood of saints, it will be perpetually adorned with fragrant flowers, lilies, roses, incorruptible violets. Hard work and

36

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

pain will no longer exist (Ibid. 15). These, of course, are precious notions.

Now, St. Thomas does not admit the existence of plants in the abode of the blessed. According to him, plants, animals, all things corruptible would not belong there. Except for the human body, material or mixed glorified beings will be only those naturally incorruptible such as the four elements and the fifth essence (celestial bodies).

After hearing St. Anselm, what should we think of St. Thomas’s opinion? Let us first observe that both of them admit a capital point: in the empyrean, there is no disgusting corruptibility. So it seems clear to us that we must complete rather than oppose St. Thomas’s opinion. 4 Indeed, today it is proven that air, fire, earth, water, and moving celestial bodies are corruptible. If, therefore, being changeable, they must be renewed and participate in immortality (which all authors maintain), the reason for the intrinsic corruptibility of animals and plants no longer serves to exclude them absolutely from Paradise. And so we stick to the general teaching of St. Thomas, according to which God did not create anything to annihilate it, which amounts to St. Anselm’s ideas.

Likewise, St. Anselm, St. Thomas, and generally all Scholastics affirm that the glorified heavens will cease to move as they attain their end. At the same time, today, many very respectable writers hold that the movement of heavens, being something magnificent and grandiose, will be perpetual.

Well then, should one condemn either of these opinions? Not in the least. They complement each other. Indeed, the heavens will no longer move to pursue their end, following a general law (imposed on all things somehow subjected to the trial) to escape corruptibility and impose on rational creatures a necessity that exercises their virtue. So We do not believe there is any pretension in this way of thinking and saying, for the fact that St. Thomas is the prince of theologians, and his general excellence, does not diminish the authority of other teachers and saints.

4

37

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

what is the end that these heavens pursue and attain? It consists in forming the material empire of the Blessed. Therefore, the heavens will move according to the ever-orderly will of their kings, the crowned children of God, gods: dii estis vos (“you are gods” – Is. 41:23).

Glorified human beings are equals of the angels, who govern all corporeal creatures (St. Thomas), and God establishes his elect upon all the works of his hands. The perfect members of Christ will reign with Christ. On what will they rule, if not, at least, on the physical world?

What the saints sometimes exceptionally did on earth by performing miracles, they do it constantly and universally in glory.

Moreover, contemplating in God supreme archetypes and a greater or lesser number of possibilities, they will enjoy making those possibilities come true concretely in the universe. They are capable, says St. Anselm, of making other heavens if they please. The harmony of heavens will, therefore, have become an effect of created wills, but wills fixed in the good. That harmony will vary according to the fertility that the divine model will always present, and to the marvelous power of the immortals.

Let us judge plants and animals according to the same rule.

All forms inferior to man, says St. Thomas, potentially exist in matter, and thus these corruptible things last forever. 5 Therefore, if the Blessed will draw some satisfaction seeing their environment adorned with animals and plants (which does not appear doubtful), those ornaments will not be missing. The Blessed themselves will form and arrange those things by their wisdom and the power they will have upon all things inferior to them in perfection. No one contradicts St. Anselm on this statement: It is certain that of all things the elect might wish to see in heaven, nothing will be missing (Meditation XVII).

As the state of blessedness does not change the nature of human faculties, it seems highly credible that in heaven, man’s lower Omnia opéra Dei in aeternum perseverant, vel secundum se vel in suis causis : sic enim et animalia et plantae remanebunt manentibus caelestibus corporibus. Q. v. De Pot. a.

9. ad 1.m Simpliciter dicendum est, quod nihil omnino in nihilum redigetur. 1 p. q. 104.

A. 4. In corp., and elsewhere.

5

38

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

faculties will desire to see ornaments. In turn, his higher faculties will yearn to contemplate God’s wisdom as an evening acquaintance (as St. Augustine calls it) in organic beings whose composition is far more perfect than that of minerals. If one were to remove from paradise the animal and vegetable kingdoms, one would eliminate a countless number of splendid ‘second-tier’ divine marvels precisely where the work of the Almighty must be displayed in its full extent and magnificence. This assumption, let us admit, is not admissible.

Now, it goes without saying that in Paradise, these beings will be in a state proportional to the abode of glory, as all parts of a perfect whole are analogous to one another. If there are development and change, nothing there is done difficultly or unpleasantly. What admirable transformations do we not see here below, apart from the sad spectacles of death and decay? Well, Paradise is nothing but good and beautiful for all beings there. It will be the supreme perfection of all things. Let us conclude, then, that plants and animals will not exist there as forming a crucial part of the creation and empire of the Blessed. Everything will be arranged up there for happiness, just as everything down here is set for the trial. 6 These are the most obscure questions that a theologian who deals with Paradise would encounter. However, as we have seen, all light is not lacking in these subjects. What can one say about many other points on which we can more easily find data? In general, Christian literature abounds with notions about the heavenly homeland; we need to gather and complete them by developing principles the Church has always formulated while respecting all the opinions of saints as much as possible and employing the advances of science and analogy.

In this matter, we would be overly hard to please if we only valued the dogmas of the Catholic faith. How many truths of divine faith taught by the sacred Scriptures have never been objects of definitions by the Church! How many substantial probabilities go hand “He that sat on the throne [Christ], said: Behold, I make all things new” (Apoc. 21:5).

“And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then the Son also himself shall be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).

6

39

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

in hand with moral certainty and would suffice to win our esteem and regulate our conduct in a thousand other practical cases! Why would we be more demanding concerning our future homeland when it is certain that the most beautiful opinions, after all, will be overtaken by reality?

Did saints not give us the example of real enthusiasm for the theses they defended – for example, St. Alphonsus Liguori when he wrote about the grandeurs of Mary? That is because Divine Revelation presents us with subjects so grand and sublime that -- keeping oneself within the analogy of faith and submission to the Church -- it is impossible, so to speak, to go too far.

Let us, therefore, happily welcome every detail concerning our last end. If we love the latter and live for it, nothing that concerns it can leave us indifferent. St. Thomas says of philosophy that “a piece of this science is worth more than the sum of knowledge that other natural sciences give us” (In Lib. 1 Metaph. Lect 3). For all the more reason, let us add, every subsequent notion we acquire about eternal happiness, even accidental, wins in excellence over the highest human philosophy because it is about Christian wisdom and our supreme destiny.

The great evil of man is to mind the things of the flesh (Rom. 8:5), to only mind earthly things (Phil. 3:19). Also, says St. John Chrysostom, “the present life is sweet and full of pleasure, not for all people but for those who are attached to it. If one raises his eyes to heaven and contemplates its magnificence, one immediately despises earthly life and finds it worthy of no esteem. In the same way, the beauty of bodies is an object of admiration for as long as one does not find something more beautiful; but as soon as a superior beauty appears, we despise that one. If we want to contemplate this first-rate beauty and consider the splendors of the celestial kingdom, we will immediately break the ties that bind us to this world” (Homily 66 in Joannes).

Therefore, since it is possible to know Paradise better and better, as we have observed, let us meditate deeply on this subject, and our Christian life will receive a marvelous boost.

40

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

3. A Homage to Christ the Redeemer and, Consequently, to His Divine Mother Paradise is the kingdom of Christ par excellence. The Good Thief told Jesus, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk. 23:42-43). We ask the heavenly Father every day for the complete formation of this kingdom by saying, Thy kingdom come (Mt. 6:10), which will happen, says Martini, when all rebels having been tamed and all the elect delivered, God ‘will be all in all things’ as St. Paul says (1 Cor. 15:28). But the reign of the Father is the reign of Christ: God has placed all things under the feet of the Word made flesh, and made him head of the entire Church, which is his body and complement (Eph. 22-23).

As a man, lowered for a while a little below the angels, Christ was crowned with glory and honor and received from the hands of God dominion over His works, so that all things were put under His feet and nothing was left that was not subject to Him (Heb 2:7-8). In His benevolence, God resolved to gather in the ordered fullness of time, all things in Christ, those that go to heaven, and those that are on earth (Eph 1:9-10). Having attained the height of perfection, Paradise is nothing but the entire and glorified empire of Christ and, consequently, also that of His divine Mother.

Therefore, it is impossible to meditate, however superficially, on heavenly Jerusalem without considering the incomparable greatness of the Man-God. On this crucial point, we will frankly say that theology can make progress. The last word about the grandeurs of Christ will be uttered only in heaven. However, it seems to us that for the elect, His grandeur will be an eternally inexhaustible object of contemplation, and His Soul, hypostatically united to the Word, will be the only adequate object of that contemplation.

Yes: for the members of Christ, progress in this knowledge is eternal. With all the more reason, that also happens down here until

41

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

the end of time. No matter how enlightened they were, the ancient doctors did not say everything about this matter. All our mysteries, especially the most profound, share the fate of the book of which God thus speaks to the prophet Daniel: “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time appointed: many shall pass over, and knowledge shall be manifold” (12:4). St. Augustine explains why these obscurities will gradually dissipate: “I do not doubt that all this has been divinely disposed to subdue pride by work, and to wring from boredom the human spirit, which is easily led to despise what is already found (De Doct. Christ., Book, 2, chap. 6, No. 7). Pope Saint Gregory says about the same thing (Homily in Ezekiel, L, 1. Homily 6, no. 1).

Not everything was complete from the beginning, says St. Epiphanius, but what the perfection of necessary things required. St. Augustine considers “Christ the man as our head and the very source of the grace from whence it spreads to all members…The predestination of saints is the very same that shone with its greatest brilliance in the Holy of Holies…We have learned that the very Lord of grace, who became the Son of God as a man, was predestined. He alone was predestined to be our head…In all this, it is the grace of God that reigns through Jesus Christ…the only begotten Son of God, the only Lord…God made us believe in Christ, gave us Christ, in whom we believe; in Jesus God operates, for men, the principle and perfection of the faith that made the man Jesus prince and consummator of the faith (De Praedest.

Sanct. c. 5, nos. 30, 31).

Thus, according to St. Augustine himself there is no faith, grace, holiness, or adoptive filiation without participation “in the very source of grace, the predestination of the Holy of Holies, the natural filiation of the Incarnate Word, to the very principle of grace and faith.”

Is it not clear that this reasoning embraces both innocent Adam and guilty Adam, angels as well as men?

As for St. Thomas, he speaks only of suitability according to Holy Scripture, which he seems to modify in other places: convenientius dicitur. But elsewhere he tells us that “the onlybegotten . . . according to the collation of grace (which took place in

42

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

the Incarnation, for the Word did not receive grace) is the first-born of many brethren…and Himself having been given to us, all things have been given to us (Comment. in Epist. ad Rom. c. VIII, 28-32).

Moreover, the Angelic Doctor adds, “the fullness of grace that is in Christ is the cause of all graces found in all intelligent creatures . . .

All angels have also received this fullness...This is the fullness of causality and influence, which belongs to Christ alone considered as man and the author of grace” (Comment, in Joan. c. 1, Lect. 10).

“In some way, all the angels knew the mystery of the kingdom of God, accomplished by Christ from the beginning but especially since their glorification” (p. 1. q. 64. a. 1. ad 4m). That is also the teaching of St. Augustine (De Gen. ad litt. 1.5.C.19, no. 38). Likewise, before the state of sin, man had explicit faith concerning the Incarnation of Christ as being ordained to the consummation of the glory.

And thus, the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ had to be believed in some way at all times and by everyone (2a, 2ae. q. 2. a. 7).

Why, if not because the then wayfaring angels and Adam, still a friend of God, were to gravitate toward Christ according to the real divine plan?

That is why many Fathers formally supported our thesis. “God first predestined animal man,” says Saint Irenaeus, “so that he might be saved by spiritual man; for since the Savior preexisted, it was necessary that some be saved, lest the Savior saved nothing” (1. 3. C. 33).

“Christ is the first foundation placed before us,” says St. Cyril of Alexandria; “it is upon him that all of us are built in the foreknowledge of God before the beginning of the world so that by virtue of a divine order a blessing should precede the curse, the promise of life precede the condemnation to death, the freedom of adoption precede the slavery of the devil, and by triumphing over its evils, human nature might reclaim its former dignity by the grace of Christ.

Before the beginning of the world, Christ disposed things in such a way that if we were to fall, we could rise again in Him (See this

43

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

book, No. 685). St. Fulgentius and St. Bernard think likewise (Ibid, 300).

St. Gregory the Great says, “No man or angel is holy if not in Christ” (In I Reg. c.2). These illustrious Fathers complete the teaching of St. Augustine, St. Leo, and St. Thomas.

Above all, the Sacred Scriptures give us the most splendid and categorical teachings on this issue. It is mainly these divine lights that have engendered in us the deep conviction of the truth of our understanding. Let us keep faithfully to the literal meaning, which is the foundation of other meanings and we will soon see that the Scriptures give of Christ a testimony (Jn 5:39) more favorable to our thesis than is commonly believed. It goes without saying that here we are only touching on this noble and vast subject.

St. Paul tells us that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world so that we might be holy…and predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:4-5). How then can we suppose that since this election was made before the foundation of the world, the angels and faithful Adam were excluded?

They were God's adopted children by grace and believed in Christ, as we have seen; therefore, everything leads one to believe that they were also predestined for adoption as children of God through Jesus Christ.

This conclusion seems all the more valid because God resolved in the fullness of time to re-establish in Christ all things that are in heaven and on earth (Ibid, 9:10). This is proof that His plan has dominated everything from the beginning. Indeed, the divine knowledge could not ignore anything, nor could the divine will change its resolution, nor divine wisdom demand faith in Christ without a powerful motive.

Indeed, Christ the man, “in whom we have redemption through His blood is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature,” no doubt in the divine predestination (Col. 1:14-15) according to this other passage: “I [created wisdom] came out of the mouth of the Most High, the firstborn before all creatures” (Eccl. 24:5).

44

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

The humanity of Christ, the Incarnation of the Word, was decreed first; and the Apostle adds that it is by Him, the Word, considered as incarnate or to be incarnate that all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones and dominations, principalities and powers: everything was created by Him and in Him. Why more especially by Him and in Him rather than by and in the Father and the Holy Ghost if not because the Word was slated to be made flesh, redeem us with his blood, and pacify everything through his blood, shed on the cross?

The Word created the procession of His humanity, and it is in Him considered as the first predestined one decreed to become a man that all finite beings have been born. That is why He exists before all and everything subsists in Him. Still as a man, He is the head of the body of the Church, composed of angels and men; He is the Principle, the first-born of the dead so that He should keep primacy in all things…because it pleased the Father that all fullness should live in Him. It pleased: This design stems from divine freedom just as Creation and Incarnation; God took steps to ensure that the Man-God keeps primacy in all things. These expressions would have no meaning if the Apostle spoke of Christ considered only as God because all fullness necessarily exists in God. Thus, the man formed in the Word, in the bosom of Mary, whom the Word deigned to be the Person, is the firstborn of every creature. It was through Him as the ideal of the Creator, and in Him as that same ideal that all things were created in heaven and on earth with him as their exemplary, meritorious, and immediate final cause.

It is He who is before all rational beings; everything subsists in Him because, having Himself been decreed, all the rest was decreed for His sake and for Him; and by willing Him, God thereby also wills His members and empire.

It is He who is the head of the body of the Church because He alone is hypostatically united to the Word, thus rendering the Church holy and divine. It is he who is the first created principle and the first resurrected man, for God freely wished that he should have primacy in

45

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

all finite things and that the fullness of good should dwell in Him as in the source from which all other beings must draw.

That is why God, who by His foreknowledge has eternally known both the angels and the first man, also predestinated them to conform to the image of his Son, that is to say, to that which was more visible in his Son, in His humanity, so that as a man He would be the firstborn of many brethren drawn from nothingness.

He also called those whom He predestined by creating them, and those whom He called, He also justified by giving them sanctifying grace at the same time as nature. And He also glorified those whom he justified and who freely persevered in good or were true penitents (Rom. 8:29-30), but always as conforming to the image of His Son. According to the divine decree, grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time because in relation to Christ, we are in some way contemporaries of the wayfaring angels and the father of humans. Only in our eyes, this grace has now been manifested by the appearance of our Savior Jesus Christ, who showed Himself to the angels and the first man only by faith (2 Tim 1:9-10).

That is why Christ, Redeemer of preservation and deliverance was already known before the foundation of the world as a lamb without spot or stain but manifested in the latter times, even in a sensible way, as a Deliverer because of us (1 Pet 1:19-20). That is also why the Lamb is presented to us as immolated from the beginning of the world and as holding in his hand the supernatural book of life of all times (Apoc. 13:8).

Likewise, the triumph of the good angels, the model of the victories of martyrs was also won by virtue of the power of God’s Christ…and they conquered the dragon by the blood of the Lamb…despising their purely angelic life to live the life of Christ, and giving Christians an example of contempt for death when the faith of Christ calls for it (Ibid. 12:10-11).

The words that the Son of God, Jesus the Savior, uttered from his human mouth are profoundly and universally true: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father, but by me” (Jn

46

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

14:6). The angels and Adam were sons of God by adoption only through his natural incarnate Son. He is the way by which the Creator descended to nothingness to draw his creatures, and also came to His choice creatures to enrich them with supernatural gifts. He is the way by which intelligent beings ascend to God, for in reaching the humanity of Christ, at the same time, they reach the Word, the Father, the Holy Ghost, the whole Trinity, God. He is the truth.

If you want to know the whole divine plan in its broad outlines, look only at Jesus and bring all these lines into Jesus. Could He be the truth in vain? Again, if you want a simple and sure rule of conduct that summarizes all rules and will certainly lead you to your end, look at Jesus, who is the Truth not only for the universe in general, the angels and the first man but also for you in particular. He is life: Oh, how sublimely so! The Word, whose life is the very being of God, formed in himself the humanity of Christ and wished to be His unique Person.

Here you have grace in its first flow! Here, all grace coming out of God is, as it were, in its source. God placed here all that He wants to pour out, and all authors admit that both the angels and innocent Adam drew from it through their faith. No one comes to the Father except through Christ. No one, nothing comes out of nothingness into being without the way, without the truth, without the life. No one passes into being to become an adoptive child of God and from that to glorified filiation without participating in the way, the truth, and the supernatural life that is Jesus.

Let us listen to the Word made flesh: “I was created from the beginning and before the world.” The creative act is eternal but turned to possible things according to their degree of importance, not to bring out in time those that were best but to decree them preferable to others and place others in harmony with them, as would be suitable to God alone. What wise artist would not do the same? God does not decree anything after the fact, as if instructed by experience, and always wants more sharply what is more valuable and more like Him, for otherwise, He would not be essential holiness.

47

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

Therefore, from the moment that His wisdom determined all finite things that must come out of nothingness and deploy one after another, His will addressed particularly that which will glorify Him the most and be most beneficial to other beings. This is not optimism as if God were obliged to create the best possibles; once the dose of good to be externally realized was determined according to the ends desired by the Supreme Being, His infinite will addresses above all these ends and, immediately afterward, that which most effectively leads to these ends, and then, in the same order, all the rest. Now, in creating, God first sought Himself, that is to say, the exterior shine of His goodness and glory. And to have all his glory, which is also the greatest good of finite beings, 7 He willed Jesus and Mary.

The merit of Jesus is literally infinite. Mary takes finite merit to the highest possible degree of perfection. Jesus the Man will be infallible and impeccable by the fact of His existence in the Word and by the Word, His Person. Mary will be impeccable as the Mother of Jesus. After them, the Almighty decreed peccable beings, the angels, and the two persons who were to live in Eden. In His decree, He oriented them to Jesus and Mary in whom they must believe as incorruptible agents of the glory of God and depositories of all supernatural goods destined for finite beings.

The destiny set for angels and humans was to be members of Christ and children of Mary both for the glorification of God and for their own benefit. And since they are called to such sublime nobility, God destined for them all the beings that make up the heavens and the earth.

After these decrees, which we conceive as successive, the Supreme Being began the realization of His plan: “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.” Now, before drawing anything out of nothing, the Creator certainly had to know why He was creating it, for what, and how He was going to guide it.

7 Deus suam gloriam non quaerit propter se, sed propter nos (St. Thomas, Sum. th. 2a 2ae. Q. 132, a. 1. Ad 1m).

48

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

This is what the sacred humanity of the Word expressed under the name of Wisdom when it says: “From the beginning, and before the world, I was created, and unto the world to come I shall not cease to be. . . . In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue . . . all these things are the book of life, and the covenant of the most High with His creatures, and the knowledge of truth” (Eccl. 24:14, 25, 32).

“The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways before He made anything from the beginning. I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived . . . before the hills, I was brought forth…When he established the sky…I was with him forming all things” as an exemplary and final cause. The Word, my person, eternal and creative as His Father, almighty because he is God, disposed all things with divine ease and joy because he found His delights to take me and to be with the children of men…He that shall find me shall find life and shall have salvation from the Lord (Prov. 8).

How seriously the Church should hear these words not only from the uncreated Wisdom, which is the Word, but also from created Wisdom, which is the humanity of Christ, and Mary, the most perfect image of that wisdom! These ideals have presided over the Creation and formation of all things.

The eternal life of the angels and the first human couple began as they were enriched with sanctifying grace and believed in the Incarnation of the Son of God. They drew from the same source from which we draw. What is this source? Listen to the beloved disciple of Jesus: “God has given to us eternal life. And this life is in his Son. He that has the Son by faith in the Incarnation of the Word has life; he that has not the Son in this way has no life. I write to you that you may know that you have eternal life, you who believe in the name of the Son of God” (1 Jn 5:11-13).

“That which was from the beginning was the Person of the Word; but what we have heard, seen with our eyes, looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life, was His humanity. That is how life manifested itself; and we have seen and do bear witness, and

49

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

declare unto you the life eternal, which was with the Father, and hath appeared to us: That which we have seen and have heard, we declare unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn 1:3).

Eternal life appears and manifests itself to intelligent creatures through the humanity of the Word. This humanity is the channel through which eternal life flows to communicate itself to these creatures. Thus, all the angels, as St. Thomas tells us, knew the mystery of Christ from the beginning. Likewise, when still innocent, man believed this same mystery with an explicit faith. The mystery of the Incarnation of Christ had to be believed...at all times and to everyone because it was Christ who drew upon them eternal life or grace as an object of faith and meritorious cause. He was for them as for us the way, the truth and the life, and then as now, no one went to the Father except through Jesus.

Why, then, wonder if the Word would have incarnated if Adam had not sinned! According to the real divine plan, nothing would have been created without the Incarnation of the Word. To this question, if one supposes a divine plan combined differently, or a merely possible plan, one can answer neither yes nor no. God chose the entire plan that He revealed to us, and He chose it with all its peculiarities. What would He have done if other characteristics had entered His plan? He alone can know it, and He has not told us. As we have just seen, He kindly revealed to us what He did but not what He would have decreed on this or that supposition. Poorly asked questions can hardly be answered.

When the Scripture teaches us that Christ appeared to take away our sins, that if the Son of God has appeared, it is to destroy the works of the devil (1 Jn 3:5-8), and that He did not come to call the just but sinners (Mt 9:13), it only completes the doctrine we have just expounded; for if all goods come through Jesus Christ to angels, men, and every creature, the redemption of deliverance also comes from

50

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

Him, and He did not come to call the just because when He came, all men were sinners and needed to be saved. 8 Some authors object that the original sin would hardly be explicable if one admitted that Christ always dominated the entire divine plan. It seems to us, on the contrary, that this sin would be inexplicable without it. For how can we imagine a plan conceived by infinite Wisdom and executed at the same time with omnipotence and infinite goodness that did not contain the necessary guarantees, was irremediably subject to ruin, did not reach the end for which it was adopted, required an unexpected intervention of its author, and a reshuffle that proved its primary imperfection? In truth, if such a plan were worthy of narrow minds and hearts, it would not be worthy of the Supreme Being.

Let God act as God, He who knows everything eternally and simultaneously, and decrees only in His goodness. If Adam sins for himself and his offspring, and if God permits this fall, it is precisely according to the real divine plan so that humanity can further exploit the incomprehensible riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8). 9 A fertilizing rain that abounds without measure is all the more advantageous on a field that is extremely dry, as it will absorb more than a soil already moistened by ordinary water. Christ was to come because God had predestined things in the Incarnation of His Son, but since “with the Lord there is mercy: and with Him plentiful redemption” (Ps. 129:7), the divine plan bears the imprint of its Author. Redemption will not only be preserving but liberating, not only abundant but overabundant.

Christ will come all at once so that his sheep may have life, and may have it more abundantly (Jn, 10:10), and so that, where sin abounded,

The Holy Scriptures do not speak to us only of a possible divine plan but of the real divine plan, which included permission for the first man to fall. On this subject, it seems to us that what they teach us is positive rather than conditional.

9 God obviously did not want original sin; indeed, He prohibited Adam from committing it on pain of death: Morte morieris. But He did not employ His omnipotence to prevent it, that is, He permitted it to derive a greater good from it.

8

51

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

grace did more abound (Rom, 5:20). As it is easy to see, our thesis explains original sin better than that of our adversaries.

But, they add, how can Adam represent the human race as to the preservation and loss of supernatural gifts if it is Christ who is the head of humanity according to the original divine plan? If Adam is not the head of the human race, he can only fail on his behalf. This, we answer, is a mere confusion of ideas. Christ is not only the head of humanity but also of the angels, heavens, earth, times, the whole universe.

Being only the head of humans would be too little for the King of all things. This secondary role was given to the natural father of the human family, who represented only himself and his family. Hence his responsibility is limited to his fate and that of his race. But since the human delegate failed (that is how little we can count on nature!), the Chief Delegate for all the works of God intervened and redressed Adam's deplorable administration. From a great evil, He brought forth a greater good for our species.

Accordingly, as the Universal Delegate thinks of everything, He made all beings gain something from this partial disturbance: God will have additional glory; the angels will see the ranks of their society reform and expand; the material universe, by contemplating the resurrected body of Christ, after having suffered torment and death will find that the more painful its labor of birth (Rom, 8:22), the more gloriously it will be renewed.

The immeasurable breadth of Christ's work alone would be enough to show us that the role of the Son of God is greater than that of a simple Repairer of the human species. The Son of God! The GodMan! Think about it. “For in him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…all things were created by Him and in Him. And He is before all…And He is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he may hold the primacy: Because in Him it hath well pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell” (Col, 1:16-19).

52

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

That is why we said that theology could make considerable progress. The magnitudes of Christ can be better known. Within the limits of our narrow strength, we have tried to bring them out with a new relief, along with the magnitudes of the Mother of God, in our Theological Considerations on Paradise. But since this is not a polemical work as such, we content ourselves with delving deeper into and meditating as best we can on the doctrine we find most true and honorable for the Man-God and His incomparable Mother.

Moreover, as far as data is concerned, this is the richest teaching on Paradise, the glorified kingdom of Jesus and Mary. And by this means, we hope to make our feeble contribution to the homage of praise, gratitude, and love, which the elite of humanity offers Christ the Redeemer as this century draws to an end.

II. Difficulties of Our Undertaking: Observations on the Characteristics of this Work, on the Pace we Followed, and on the Length Given to Certain Subjects: Total Submission to the Judgment of the Church A) Perhaps the reasons we had for devoting our attention to this work are excellent. But is the work itself worthy of the good intentions that inspired it? It is up to the readers to judge, and so they can do it in all fairness, we must declare that we did encounter difficulties. Even the most extensive ordinary treatises of theology mention many of the subjects we have meditated upon only in passing; they often do not even talk about them.

Despite our research, it has been impossible for us to find a single work on Paradise written from our point of view. So we were obliged indeed not to ‘create’ its primary elements (that would be absurd), but rather their frameworks and combinations. There was nothing that could serve us as a model or facilitate our work. We were only able to draw from general sources, immense mines in which the veins we probed were continually broken up and displaced.

53

DIFFICULTÉS DE NOTRE ENTREPRISE

That is undoubtedly the main obstacle that has prevented the modern theologians we know from considering Paradise as a special place of the universe. Fortunately, the Divine Scriptures, their learned interpreters, great theologians of past ages such as St. Augustine, St. Anselm of Aosta, St. Thomas Aquinas, Denys the Carthusian, Suarez, and some other luminaries of the Church have shed admirable light on this interesting subject.

But another severe hurdle arises. These holy and illustrious doctors preceded the great astronomical and physical discoveries.

Could modern science not have entirely ruined the old conception of the universe? Did it at least not make the idea of the Empyrean ridiculous as it dispelled the conviction that the earth occupies the center of Creation? We do not believe it. At any rate, it is not too easy to speak an ancient language in this world, which claims to be brand new.

Although astronomy and other natural sciences do not occupy a significant place in our book, we carefully studied their conclusions considered as certain, imitating St. Thomas and other great theologians who did not neglect any data in their philosophic-religious reasoning.

In the face of the scientific work of our time, we constantly had to distinguish sublime theological ideas of the ancients from their basic notions of the physical order and show how these agreed with certified demonstrations of our scholars –- another difficult task that our readers will kindly take into account.

B) These observations presage the features of our writing. It is a series of studies on the abode of the Blessed, an idea we would have expressed in the title of our work had we been able to keep cool in the face of heavenly Jerusalem and the things closely related to it. But we were not. As an object of knowledge, man’s ultimate end is something so eminently moral (we are not looking only at the material part of Paradise) that considerations about it naturally involve meditations passing from mind to heart, from speculation to practice.

54

CARACTÈRES DE CET OUVRAGE – MARCHE SUIVIE

Asceticism neither dominates nor is excluded from this process. These are meditations of the philosophic-religious genre which seek the truth, order, beauty, and good everywhere, both in asceticism and other sources, and which continuously tend toward God and the supreme deployment of His goodness in heaven: “Seek the things that are above...mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth” (Col. 3:1-2).

Anything somehow related to studies usually follows a more or less subjective pace. The idea of our work arose as we preached about the magnitudes of glorified Mary. As we said in our dedication to the Blessed Virgin, this is the origin of our writing, and we did not think it necessary to remove this note of special regard for the Mother of God. We begin our meditations with her and neglect no occasion to bring out her merits, grandeur, and glory. In fact, from the point of view we have chosen, we do not even believe we can address the topic of Paradise without expounding to some extent the role of the most sublime of creatures.

This procedure is necessary for us to understand what is inferior to Mary and what is superior to her. Occupying with the humanity of her Son the culminating point of things finite, she opens to us divine horizons that extend above her while showing us in her person, as the highest and personal second cause, the finite traits that will be imitated by other created beings and by their tendencies and destinies.

When we speak of her, her Son, King of glory and heir of all things naturally presents Himself to our considerations. Having willed to have such close relations with her, the Divine Persons and God, considered absolutely, show themselves to us as in a mirror proportioned to the weakness of our sight. The divine plan appears to us with very visible lines and colors. From then on, the splendors that emerge from the radiant face of the Virgin, illuminating with sweet and bright light, humanity, the angels, the inferior forms, the world of matter, and especially the supernatural element which, as it were, is the soul and life of all that, enable us to contemplate the

55

CARACTÈRES DE CET OUVRAGE – MARCHE SUIVIE

predestination, varied temporal role, and final destiny of all things: glorification.

Accordingly, the sublime figure of Mary has been of great help to us in our general considerations on heaven.

Mortals can hardly get to know directly the bliss of the elect, even accidental, as such. But since bliss corresponds to merit, and merit comes from all that constitutes the trial, we had to delve as deep as possible into the conditions of wayfaring humans and their environment to then judge the final term, which is Paradise: “Every man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labor” (1 Cor. 3:8). That is why we had to make many considerations about the temporal life of Jesus, Mary, saints, and angels.

With their proven and glorious lives, the holy angels – who form the first part of the heavenly Jerusalem with the already glorified heavens, and who presage and even show us in their persons what the future destiny of wayfaring humanity and the inner heavens will be like –-, should be objects of numerous and detailed meditations. They are our elder brothers, and we are called to become their equals.

According to analogy and revealed teaching, the lower creatures that serve us during our journey have the same destiny as the inferior and material beings that served the angels during their life of trial, and which, as a continuation and reflection of the glorification of these spirits, became the material paradise also prepared for us from the foundation of the world (Mt 25:34). Likewise, at that early time, the counterpart of the glorified empyrean, that is to say, the eternal fire, was prepared for the devil and his angels (Ibid. 41) and is the sad place also reserved for unrepentant men who take up the cause of the revolted angels, and consequently suffer the same fate. Therefore, everything that relates to angels interests humanity to the highest degree.

The first half of the great epic of the works of God is this first religious society cast into the arena of combat and merit, with its struggles, virtues, failures, and final crisis, which brings eternal glory or shame, and its aftermath on the fate of the universe. From there, how

56

RAISONS DE L’EXTENSION DONNÉE À QUELQUES SUJETS

many lights are projected on the lower heavens, the earth, the Church Militant, and our humanity, where the vicissitudes of the angelic world are repeated! How instructive their examples are and how they should make us wise!

“That which hath been made, the same continues,” says the Ecclesiastes, “the things that shall be, have already been: and God restores that which is past” (3:15).

God said to Job: “Where wast thou when I laid up the foundations of the earth?...Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Upon what are its bases grounded? or who laid the cornerstone thereof, when the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God made a joyful melody?” (Job 38:4-7).

It was in this early period that were cast the foundations of all things. At the same time that God created the angels, He also created the heavens above, or empyrean, to give them a dwelling proportioned to their unimaginable multitude. The extreme limits of the universe were then traced, and these morning stars, the largest, most numerous, and most beautiful, will be the solid foundation of all that will later come out of chaos.

In the meantime, together, they praise the Most High with their orderly and gigantic revolutions; and before sin breaks the unity of their concerts, all the children of God, all pure spirits created and adorned with grace raise to God songs of joy and praise. By the natural idea they have of Christ Jesus, and by faith, they know Him as the cornerstone that watches and unites God and His creatures. They know that the whole edifice built by Creation rises like a sacred temple in the Lord (Eph. 2:20-21) and that no one can lay any foundation other than that which has been laid, which is Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 3:11).

The great foundations of the divine works were laid at that early time. It was then that the general dispositions were made that the movements were impressed upon the various beings according to their ends, that began the intelligent city of God, His Church, and that was accomplished the first of two acts that compose the activity of all

57

RAISONS DE L’EXTENSION DONNÉE À QUELQUES SUJETS

creatures, preparing and prefiguring the second; for the divine plan shines with admirable unity, and all its parts complement each other, forming but one marvelous whole.

That is why angelic society occupies such a relatively large place in our work.

C) As we have said, the subject we deal with is among the most difficult. Have we consistently followed the magnificent rule of St. Augustine: “unity in necessary things; freedom in doubtful things; love in all things”? We sincerely believe we have neither affirmed nor denied anything that tends to compromise the unity of Catholic teaching on matters defined or regarded as such. On the contrary, we strove to support and bring out Catholic teaching as best we could.

Likewise, since our meditations are hardly controversial, there has rarely been an opportunity to practice the charity proper to a Christian discussion. However, since the chosen subject is one we did not find treated explicitly and extensively but only abundant sentences written in passing, we had to show our preference for this or that opinion and sometimes even refute those we see as false. In these cases, we tried to maintain moderation concerning people, without however weakening the view that in our eyes expresses the truth. So we gladly took advantage of the liberty writers have in dubious things: in dubiis libertas.

What a precious faculty this is! It powerfully favors progress in expounding the truth. It makes it possible to use new data that human work and true science provide to theology, as all activities depend on this great divine science. It gives the writer some latitude to move at ease like an astronomer in his observatory. Thanks to this latitude, he can also hold to the conclusions that result from his studies and observations. Since progress exists even when it comes to developing supernatural truths, this estimable freedom can only be one of its most efficient causes.

Nevertheless, since it is quite possible to misunderstand these delicate subjects which so to speak touch upon all points of theology, and especially the most difficult, we do feel the need to rely entirely on

58

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

the judgment of the Church about everything that we have written. She is the Church of the living God, the column and foundation of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). We set out to write only to serve her in her ministry to glorify the Supreme Being and to be useful to her children.

Therefore, if anything in our work should be at variance with her views, we formally acknowledge that it be modified so it may enter through the great door into the unity of her teaching.

III. Subjects We Are Presently Covering, and Are Intended to Form another Volume The work we now present to the public is far from exhausting the subject matter contained in its title. So we are preparing a second volume on Theological Considerations on the same subject that will be at least as large as this one. Although we consider these volumes independent of each other, leaving it up to the readers to read both or only one, they are two parts of the same plan. Because of that, we believe we do well by very summarily expounding here the subject matter of the volume now under our care.

1. We first devote a book to the Fiat lux. This great act is for us the end of the early epoch and the beginning of the formation of the lower heavens. This light is, first of all, the light of glory produced to glorify the faithful angels and the empyrean. Hence there is a series of meditations on this light and the essential happiness to which it gives access.

Hell, or the eternal fire is produced by the divine Word – a light that at fills the just with bliss, and the same time blinds and burns the reprobates because their dispositions are entirely opposed. Then it was that Satan, followed by his adepts, fell from heaven as lightning and was relegated, in our opinion, to the center of chaos, the nucleus of Creation converted into hell where the universe completely ceases to be heaven. We will make some considerations on this dreadful dwelling and its inhabitants.

59

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

At the same time that the light that illuminates our lower heavens were made, the whole chaos suffered a violent commotion.

We will study this light as such and its relations with the glorified beings of the empyrean.

We shall also briefly consider the successive formation of the lower heavens and their inhabitants, intelligent and otherwise, to understand as best as possible their temporal destiny and the final glorification reserved for them in various ways.

Then we will look at the dogma of the Incarnation, and inhabited worlds, if any.

2. We will then meditate more amply than we did in the first volume, on the progress of the mobile universe in the empyrean and its influences. We will try to understand better the theory of universal gravitation. To a certain extent, the supernatural and glorified realities belonging to the empyrean act everywhere in the worlds subjected to the trial, though in a way invisible to bodily eyes and pure reason.

The influences of Paradise penetrate our earth, humanity, and Church. These influences are produced not only by the bodies of the Empyrean but also and especially by the glorious angels, the souls of the blessed, Mary, the Eucharistic Christ, and His operations in all the sacraments and in the Church.

If a righteous person is absolutely pure, no sooner does he close his eyes than his soul sees the divine essence, the angels, and the entire celestial court. He enjoys the harmonies of Paradise and happy eternal life even before reaching the heavenly abode prepared for him.

This is an obvious proof that Paradise surrounds and penetrates us without our noticing it: Even before we have sufficiently deserved it, “our eyes are held by the need to live by faith lest we should not know it” (Lk. 24:16).

Hence the supernatural phenomena which have often manifested themselves in the life of the saints during their earthly pilgrimage: ecstasies, hearing angelic concerts, the elevation of their bodies above the earth, various triumphs over physical laws, etc. So “our conversation must be in heaven” (Phil 3:20). “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” (1 Jn. 3:2).

It is not so much production of new things but the complement and full manifestation of things that are real but still invisible. The bodies that form our habitat here below are not yet supernaturally renewed, the people on this pilgrimage with us are in the state of trial, and evil spirits infest our atmosphere and homes; the heavens we inhabit are not yet regions of Paradise but only areas that feel its influence; as a consequence, in it the fiercest struggles occur.

61

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

3. The mobile universe and the rational beings in search of their end must journey in this twilight of trial and faith until the day of resurrection. - The magnificence of the resurrection. - The qualities of blessed bodies. - Relationship of these qualities with the universe, their nature and origin. - The halos. - Consequences of resurrection concerning the material universe.

4. Once the rational creature is glorified in soul and body, the whole universe created for him will participate in that glorification and form an ambiance worthy of him. - Renovation of the material and mobile universe; certainty and beauty of this teaching. - Spectacle the Empyrean will present as it attains the height of its extension and perfection. - Condition in hell and limbo. - Physics and astronomy of the time dealt with according to the outlines drawn in this preface (I, 2°).

5. On ornaments of Paradise. Are there plants and animals there? An in-depth study of this issue and conclusions.

6. Chants and music in heavenly Jerusalem. The eternal life conducted there according to Holy Scriptures, Tradition, etc.

Aosta, on the Feast of St. Michael, September 29, 1899.

BOOK ONE General Meditations and Considerations on the Empyrean, Its Inhabitants, and Relations with the Lower Universe

CHAPTER ONE

62

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

True praise the Saints give to Mary; Invocation of the Virgin. General view of the heavens, of which Mary is the Queen; The heavens are made for the rational creature, which is greater than they are; We are destined to reign upon the heavens. Prayer to Mary.

Ave Regina cœlorun: Hail, Queen of Heaven.

FIRST MEDITATION The Church and the Saints Do Not Exaggerate at All When Speaking of Mary. Invoking the Virgin 1. About five centuries ago, the Church of the living God, column and foundation of truth10 put on the lips of her ministers and faithful those words so glorious for Mary: Hail, Queen of heaven, hail, Mistress of the Angels.

We are far from thinking that these expressions might contain any exaggeration or have been dictated by someone more poetic than mindful of the strict truth. The Church, continuator of Jesus Christ on earth, and living rule of our faith is neither subject to flights of the imagination nor has enshrined hazardous beauties for centuries throughout the Catholic world. For her and all the righteous, Nothing is beautiful but the true; the true alone is lovable.

If there is beauty in things, if our religion is a smile from heaven and embraces the whole universe, if our mysteries are most sublime and touching in this place of trial, the language of the Church and the saints obviously has something grandiose and poetic, for otherwise it would not be true or only have little truth.

So when we say to Mary, “Hail, Queen of heaven, hail, Mistress of the Angels,” we express our respect and veneration to her 10

1 Tim. 3:15.

63

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

as a person eminently superior to us and affirm her queenship over men, earth, the lower heavens, the highest heaven which is Paradise, the angelic choirs, in a word, over the whole universe.

All this, as we shall see later, is an especially imposing, noble, sublime, and graceful reality. As for the language used to express it, it is a thousand times more liable to be inferior to this task than to surpass it. Alas, it is very poor, indeed! When it comes to describing the magnitudes and charms of the supernatural world, human language is stiff and petty. We may pity both it and those who employ it to address these great subjects, but let us not rush to brand it as exaggerated.

What! Should the Church and the most distinguished saints be treated like vulgar dreamers? They whose conscience was so delicate, whose care for the truth was so powerful, who so carefully weighed all their words! Let us try to understand them! Let us delve into their thoughts and feelings as much as we can, and we will soon catch a glimpse of the broadest horizons and taste the purest pleasures.

2. How sweet it is for me, O Mary, to address you at the beginning of these meditations by saying: Hail, Queen of Heaven, Ave Regina coelorum. With one of your most faithful servants, 11 I would say: “Heaven and earth are full of your benefits. You are the Queen of the universe above all by your kindness and mercy, which benefit all creatures. Wherever our thoughts may take us, we see the happy influences of your Son, divine fruit of your virginal bosom.

If the entire kingdom of God belongs to the Incarnate Word by justice and for the exercise of justice, the same kingdom belongs to you, o Mary, out of mercy and for the exercise of mercy. 12 You embrace us from all sides with your benefits; you always extend to us the laces of your benignity so that we cannot rationally escape you, O sweetest Mother. Whether the thoughts of our hearts fly into heaven, earth, time or eternity, they meet you everywhere to rest in the bosom of St. Anselm of Lucques, Medit. de Salut. B. V. Mariae, scilicet, Ave Maria.

Quando Filium Dei in utero concepit, et postmodum peperit, sic dimidiam partem regni Dei impetravit, ut ipsa sit regina misericordiae, cujus Filius est Rex justitiae (St. Thomas, Preface to the Canonical Epistles).

11 12

64

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

your sweetness. So come ye humans from all sides, and break away from earthly concerns; let us salute such a noble and affable Virgin.

Hail Mary! O more than admirable salutation by which the demons are put to flight, sinners shed wholesome tears, the children of God are charmed, the angel congratulates Mary, the Word becomes incarnate, and the Virgin becomes Mother! Undoubtedly, this hail brought about the renewal of creatures, the Redemption of men, the reparation of angels. Let the whole Creation, O Mary, endlessly proclaim this marvelous salutation in your honor, this sweetest hail that causes all things earthly to rejoice, that delights in all heavenly things and unites the ultimate depths to the most inaccessible heights!

O Ave, hail, which illuminates the intellect, satisfies the soul, elevates the mind toward heavenly things, illuminates reason, and floods the heart with sweetness! 13 Today, O Mary, I repeat the angelic salutation, Ave, gratia plena, to ask you to be the light of my intellect and the compass of my heart in this work infinitely above my strength, whose object is the happiness of heaven and the glory that you enjoy. You are the Full of grace; nothing costs you, and I have absolute confidence in you.

Paradise is my last end; no object is more worthy of my meditations.

Assist me, then, as one of your children trying to walk; tell me, first of all, what is meant by these heavens of which you are the Queen: Ave, Regina coelorum.

SECOND MEDITATION An Overview of the Heavens 3. According to Aristotle, commented by St. Thomas, there are three heavens or three ways of understanding heaven. The first heaven is the highest. It is called first because of its perfection. It is also referred to as third heaven when one wants to emphasize the fact that it is the one 13

St. Anselm of Lucques, ibid. nos. 3 & 4.

65

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

furthest away from us. It occupies the extreme circumference of the whole universe. It is like the envelope that contains all Creation. In it are found the most perfect celestial bodies; it is the place particularly inhabited by immaterial substances, that is to say, the Angels, and God manifests His perfections there in a special way. Accordingly, all men attribute these higher regions to God. This heaven also takes the name supreme sphere and encompasses all others that make up the lower heavens.

Secondly, we call heaven all bodies and spheres that harmonize with the first heaven and continue it, so to speak, in the direction of the center, as these bodies and spheres are one and the same. They undoubtedly remain distinct and different but are linked together by a certain community of movement.

These spheres must not be confused with the visible bodies they contain. They are material; their nature is the same as that of the stars they contain and move. In them, however, the matter is vague and diffuse, which renders them invisible to the eye, while in stars, the matter is agglomerated and condensed to impact our senses.

Moreover, the spheres occupy all the spaces of heaven; as a whole, they form the great ocean of space where stars appear as luminous islands, and where no space is empty, for it is impossible for there to be emptiness in nature.

Thirdly, we call heaven more simply the whole universe, the entire content of the supreme sphere. So our earth is itself a piece of heaven. In reality, therefore, there is nothing outside of God except heaven and the inhabitants of heaven if one should not leave out hell and limbo, as we will see later. 14 4. “God has not only written His thoughts on the pages of this vast universe, publicae paginae (Saint Leo), but has established a secret harmony between each of its parts. The different spheres of Creation are like concentric circles of light and beauty which co-ordinate together, of which the first ones correspond to the second, and the last De Coelo et mundo, Book II, lesson 20th, lesson 13th; I. 1, lesson 8th & 20th & elsewhere.

14

66

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

are reflections of those above them. Light, being, life, are poured into each of these spheres in different doses; but one would say that the higher spheres are like secondary prototypes for the lower ones and that these are an image of the former.” 15 The brilliant astronomical discoveries of modern scholars have modified the ancient theory of the universe in many ways. Today it is proved, for example, that our earth is not the motionless center of the heavens but a simple planet that circulates around the sun.

However, we must be careful not to abandon the broad lines traced by the profound philosophy of the Middle Ages. At that time, science was not isolated and fragmented; moreover, the efforts of genius were seconded by the light of Revelation, and we still have much to draw from those teachings.

Thus, the astronomer Léon-Michel Desdouits is far from disputing the many spheres admitted by St. Thomas: “Nothing prevents us from admitting that the stars are not staggered in infinitely successive zones so that the light that leaves some of them must take millions and millions of years and centuries to reach us...Astronomers do not shrink from the thought of admitting an infinity of floors in the depths of the skies, and these floors would be spaced at prodigiously vast intervals...Nebulae form more and more distant systems; they are stages and zones that follow one another in space at intervals related to the magnifying power of various telescopes. Those that our instruments cannot reach are at the first level of an extent inaccessible to the means available to man. Aided by a telescope, our gaze takes in and crosses huge spaces, but nothing prevents us from admitting that beyond the limit that it reaches, there is still infinity of spaces comparable to this one.” 16 Therefore, let us not laugh at the many-storey heavens and spheres that St. Thomas mentions. 17 Bishop Jean-François-Anne Landriot, Le Symbolisme, I. 1. c. 1, n. IV. Leçons élémentaires d’astronomie, Chap. 14.

17 Lamartine thus sings the celestial vault: With fires multiplied more than errant atoms, From the sun shone transparent rays 15 16

67

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

5. Let us now try to get an idea of the multitude of worlds traveling in the heavens and the extent of the space they occupy.

First, let us observe that our sun is a simple star. In the expression of M. Desdouits, compared to other stars, the sun “is like an insect creeping in the midst of an army of giants.” However, despite its relative smallness it is fourteen hundred thousand times bigger than the earth. Now, the sun has a whole army of celestial bodies under its control. It has 309 planets, five of which are very visible to the naked eye, then several satellites of several of these planets, then an incalculable number of comets, which caused Kepler to say, “There are more comets in the sky than fish in the ocean.”

The space occupied by the sun with its planets and comets is seven billion leagues, and yet, so to speak, that is only a simple suburb of which our sun is like the deputy mayor.

Each star is another sun, a sun often more considerable than is ours, which in turn directs its planets and comets and all the satellites of its system. For example, we have discovered a planet of Sirius, a beautiful star of first magnitude shining on the south side. So great is the distance separating Sirius from our system, that if this planet were inhabited like our globe its inhabitants would see our sun as a simple star of fourth magnitude, and all the planets that accompany the sun would either not be visible or appear as “glued” to the sun, forming a single body with it. If we could launch a cannonball, it would take more than 700 thousand years to reach it. 18 Assuming that Sirius has a procession as numerous as our sun’s, together these two systems would already have a star population that would by far exceed one thousand.

Separated or grouped by layers, by stages, In foaming-like waves, innundating beaches So numerous, so hurried, that our dazzled eyes, Pursuing in space a vanishing star, See one hundred times, in their field of vision, Entire worlds circulating in torrents of dust!

Harmonie, livre 2°, IV. 18 Aloys Perrault-Maynaud, Uranographie de la jeunesse, Ch. 25, art. 1.

68

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

But these are only two stars. To have some idea of the number of celestial bodies floating in space, let us see how many stars are there. Without the help of instruments, one counts up to 6,000 of various sizes; with a spyglass, we find 40,000; the telescope shows at least 68 million; and it is clear that if we do not find more it is only because our instruments are too weak. Therefore, if each star, like our sun, commanded at least 500 secondary bodies, we would have 34 billion celestial bodies.

As for the size of the stars and their distance from us, it is something scary. Our sun, as we have said, is a star 14 hundred thousand times larger than the earth, yet all the stars of first, second and third magnitude more or less surpass it by their dimensions. But there is an infinity which seems to us small only because of their inconceivable distance and which, compared to the sun are like mountains compared to a puny mound.

It has been possible to measure the distance of a certain number of stars. The polar star is separated from us by 128 trillion leagues. Although the light moves at 77,000 leagues (186,282 miles) per second, the rays of this star, which now strike our eyes, had to travel 55 years before reaching us. The Goat, one of the most beautiful stars of the Northern Hemisphere, takes 74 years to transmit us its rays.

Many stars, which are visible only to the largest telescopes, take 2,700 years. “There are stars,” said Euler, “whose light may take a million years to reach the earth.” In the passage quoted above (No. 4), Desdouits goes even further.

How the heavens are populated with countless worlds! How vast they are, how they disconcert man’s imagination and thought!

“There are many things hidden from us that are greater than these: for we have seen but a few of his works. But the Lord hath made all things, and to the godly he hath given wisdom” (Ecclus. 43:36-37).

“You enchant me, Lord, by your work, I shudder before the works of your hands.

How great are your works, Lord, How deep are your designs!

The stupid man knows nothing about it,

69

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

And the fool can understand nothing. 19 Bless the Lord, O my soul!

O Lord my God, your greatness is infinite, You are clothed with majesty and splendor.

Wrapped in light like a coat, You unfold the heavens like a tent. 20 How many are your works, o Lord!

You have done them all wisely.” 21

THIRD MEDITATION The Heavens Are Made for Us; We Must Reign Over Them 6. However immense the universe appears to us with its billions of worlds, it is nevertheless made for the rational creature, which is its direct and immediate end. Whether or not there are other worlds with men in the state of trial like us, or at least intelligent and free beings different from us but who must also deserve their future happiness, or our little planet inhabited only by us creatures, the fact always remains that God’s works are wisely disposed and that matter must serve spirit.

The Vatican Council anathematized those who deny that the world was created for the glory of God, but this glory of God would be nonsense if there was no one to see it, contemplate it, and glorify God with knowledge and love.

“The heavens show forth the glory of God, And the firmament declareth the work of his hands.

Day to day uttereth speech, And night to night showeth knowledge.

There are no speeches nor languages, Where their voices are not heard.

Psalm 91:5-7.

Psalm 103:1-2.

21 Psalm 103:24.

19 20

70

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth: And their words unto the ends of the world.” 22 These stories and preaching require listeners. Someone must admire the order that governs the seasons, the day, and the night; someone must hear these voices and language in order to penetrate their meaning and raise to the sublime Author of nature the incense that glorifies Him. 7. All irrational creatures are at the service of man and the angels just as men and angels are at the service of God. “For all things are yours . . . the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's.” 23 Yes, “the world, which is the ensemble of all creatures, belongs to the faithful of Christ in that man is helped by the things of the world as to his bodily needs and the knowledge of God according to these words of wisdom: The greatness and beauty of the creature can make the Creator known and intellectually visible (Wis. 13:5). Life is useful to the faithful of Christ to merit; and death, for them to reach their rewards. Present things are useful to us as a test, and future things as the prize of our labors, for we have no lasting city here but seek one that is to come (Heb 13:14). But you belong to Christ because He redeemed you by His death: whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord’s (Rom 14:8). And Christ as man is God’s.” 24 “The world was created to bring us into being,” says Lactantius; 25 we are born to know God, the Creator of the world and ours; we know Him in order to serve Him; we serve Him to conquer immortality by our labors; for the service of God consists of the greatest works; we are rewarded with an immortal reward so that, Psalm 18:2-5.

1 Cor. 3:22-23. Omnia corporalia propter hominem facta esse creduntur: unde et omnia dicuntur eu subjecta. Serviunt autem et dupliciter: uno modo ad sustentationem corporalis vitae, alio modo ad profectum cognitionis divanae, in quantum homo per ea quae facta sunt, invisiblia Dei conspicit, ut dicitur Rom. I. Sum. Theol. 3 Suppl. q. 90. a. 1.

24 St. Thomas Comm. in epist. 1a ad Cor. Chap. III, lect. III. 25 Libr. 7. Inst. c. 6 - Ea (Omnia astra caeli) quae creavit Dominus Deus tuus in ministerium cunctis gentibus quae sub coelo sunt (Deut. 4:19).

22 23

71

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

having become like angels, we may eternally serve the Father and sovereign Master, and form His kingdom forever.”

8. O wonder! As men, and especially as children of God, we are greater than the heavens! We form with the angels the transition from the material worlds to the infinite, which is God. O billions of worlds, What do you have to flatter my desire?

I see your existence enslaved to mine; I am the King of the Universe.

You are essentially a heap of dust; You are all molded with a vile matter; And I am a thinking being. 26 Time makes you age but hurts me not; Heaven and earth, behold: on my soul is imprinted the image of Almighty God. No doubt, you occupy an immense extent; But do you add to this magnitude The power of seeing, thinking, feeling?

I am but an atom and a point in space, And I see the past, embrace the present, And pierce the future.

You know not the God who gave you birth; You have no voice to sing His power; For Him you are without love.

More fortunate than you, I know and love Him; I sing His blessings, and my supreme happiness is to possess Him one day. 27

Quamvis corpora caelestia maxime excedant corpus humanum, tamen multo plus excedit anima rationalis corpora caelestia, quam ipsa excedant corpus humanum. Unde non est inconveniens, si corpora caelestia propter hominem esse facta dicantur, non tamen sicut propter principalem finem, quia principalis finis omnium est Deus. Sum. theol. Supplem. q. 91. a 3 ad 6.m 27 Canon Léon-Clément Gérard, Le parfum de l’autel, Ode sur la dignité de l’homme.

26

72

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

9. In Paradise we will see God face to face with a vision that will, so to speak, divinize our whole being and all our faculties; we will possess God without fear of ever losing Him; we will enjoy the very happiness of which God is happy. This will be our main and essential happiness.

Of what can we be deprived when we possess the infinite ocean of all magnitudes, all beauties, all goods! Each of us will say with indescribable contentment: All good things have come to me with this possession, and I have received countless riches from His hand. And I rejoice in all things by the effect of this supreme good, which is the source of all goods.28 Not only will the billions of worlds be our domain, but for us, after our resurrection, they will be renewed and glorified so as to be more worthy of us; 29 which makes the sacred writers say that there will be new heavens and new earth, 30 that is, heavens and earth will be transformed for the use and glory of the blessed. The poor of spirit will not only have all goods and honors but also “royal dignity . . . The blessed will dominate the whole universe, that is to say, all the elements of the skies, animals, plants, mixed things, hell, the damned, and demons.” 31 “The blessed will possess the same kingdom that God possesses himself, and will reign there with God forever in the happiest and most splendid way.” 32 “They are the lords and kings of heaven and earth.” 33 10. If one considers man only in relation to his life and present state, the greatness of the heavens seems to be something very disproportionate to his powers (except for the instruction, which the aspect of the heavens gives him on the attributes of his Creator). But when man is gloriously resurrected, the indefinite expanse of space and universe will simply be a place of living suitable for his being and faculties.

Wis. 7:11-12.

Post judicium mundus totus, puta caelum et terra, innovabuntur et glorificabuntur, ac subjicientur Christo ejusque Sanctis. Cornelius a Lapide. In Matth. c. v. 1.

30 Psalm 65:17; 2 Pt 3:13, Apoc. 21:1.

31 Cornelius a Lapide, ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Id. in Apoc. v. 10.

28 29

73

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

By his clarity, he will obscure the splendor of stars. His impassibility will keep him healthy and happy whatever the conditions of celestial bodies and spaces may be. Nothing will be able to resist his subtlety, and he will master all material attractions. His agility in relation to other bodies will be incomparable – only the speed of thought can give us an idea of it. Just as the earth is proportionate to the activity of the pilgrim race of Adam, not only the full extension of the universe known by astronomers but also the real extent of the heavens will be proportionate to the magnitudes of angels and men.

Moreover, the freedom and power of the blessed will not be limited by beings inferior to them in dignity. If Joshua stopped the sun, if St. Gregory the Miracle Worker moved a mountain, if so many saints triumphed by faith in a thousand ways over nature and its laws in this place of test, what to say of glorified saints who are enjoying God himself?

“They freely do everything they want and find themselves without delay where they want to be. 34 . . . They will have such power that, if they so wanted they would move mountains and the mass of the earth with their foot with the same ease as we now watch such things. 35 . . . If they wanted to make another heaven, they would have enough power to do it. For they are the children of God and co-heirs of Christ, and therefore are gods: ‘I have said: You are gods’ (Ps 81:6). And because they are gods, they can do anything they want.” 36 O Mary! How easy it is for me now to understand that you are the Queen of Heaven! If we poor sinners are called to such kingship over heaven and earth, what to say of you, O Immaculate, full of grace, Queen of angels, Mother of God? Yes, ave, Regina caelorum not so much because you preside over it, but because you are our entrance St. Anselm of Aosta. Elucidar. Quidquid volunt lebere agunt: et ubicumque esse volunt, sine mora ibi sunt. Libr. III, c. 17.

35 Illorum talis erit valentia, ut si montes et omnem molem terrae pede vertere vellent, valenter possent, et tam facile quam nunc videre: hoc enfin nemo dubitat angelos posse, quibus ipsi aequales dicuntar esse. Ibid. c. 18.

36 Illorum tam efficax erit potentia, ut si aliud caelum facere vellent, potenter possent.

Sunt enim filii Dei, et cohaeredes Christi, et ideo dii, ut dicitur: Ego dixi, dii estis Et quai dii sunt omnia quae volunt possunt. Ibid. c. 20 34

74

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

gate to it by the graces you obtain for us. Oh pour upon us, pious Queen, those graces of salvation that will put us in possession of our sublime destiny! So be it.

CHAPTER TWO Mary Is the Queen of Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell; Paradise Considered as a Place; Its Unimaginable Extent; It Encompasses All Places That Serve to the Trials, as Well as Limbo, Purgatory and Hell Pulchra es, amica mea, suavis et décora sicut Jérusalem, terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata (Cant. VI, 3).

FIRST MEDITATION Mary, as Beautiful as Paradise, Is Herself a Paradise.

She Exercises Her Power over the Heavens, Hell, and Purgatory. Invoking Her Lights to Know the Great Supernatural Realities over which She Presides 11. The Holy Ghost, your heavenly Spouse, O Mary, thus speaks to you: You are beautiful, O my friend; you are as sweet and splendid as Jerusalem, as terrible as an army in battle array. You are beautiful as the daughter of the Father because, alone among all human creatures you have kept intact that primitive beauty which things had when they came out of the hands of the Creator. You are also exceptionally beautiful, because you are the most noble, most perfect work of the Almighty. So you are the friend of God par excellence. The Word

75

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

Incarnate cannot have this title because He is God with his Father, a friendship that supposes not only a distinction of Persons but also a certain division and the sharing of nature. The angels were in a state of trial in which their friendship for God was prone to perish. Man, created in innocence, did not persevere, and his children are born children of anger: Eramus natura filii irae, sicut et caeteri.37 But you, O Mary, have always and irrevocably been the friend of God. Therefore, you are not only pleasant to Him but sweet; the Divine Word is attracted by your sweetness and love, and espoused human nature for your sake, in you, and by your ministry. Mother of God, you will be as splendid as Jerusalem; not only as the earthly Jerusalem, which was the joy of the whole world; 38 not only as the Church on this earth, which is nevertheless without wrinkle 39 but also like the heavenly Jerusalem, the Empyrean; for just as the Empyrean was created, arranged and ordained at the same time, which cannot be said of the other heavens, so also O Mary, along with your existence, you received grace and sanctification. 40 For your ineffable charity, you yourself are an empyrean; just as heaven is very enlightened, you too are full of light and splendor . . . and just as this heaven is more sublime than all others, you are more sublime than all other creatures. 41 12. Besides, you are terrible as an army in battle array; like an army, says St. Sophronius, because you are surrounded by countless troops of angels and saints. 42 Moreover, your very name, Mary, means Mistress, and this name is perfectly suited to the Empress who really is the Mistress of heaven, earth, and hell. Yes, you are the sovereign of angels, men, and demons. 43 At the command of the Mother of God, a Eph. 2:3.

Ps 48:2.

39 Eph. 5:27.

40 Coelum empyreum (Maria est), quia sicut coelum empyreum quam cito factum est, ordinatum est, quod non alii coeli, sir et ipsa in gratia et sanctificatione. Albert the Great, in Bibl. Mar. super libr. Genes.

41 Bernardine de Busto. Sermo 3 de Nativ. B. M. 42 Serm. de Assumpt.

43 St. Bonaventure, in Speculo B. Virg. c. 3.

37 38

76

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

multitude of angels rush from everywhere to defend those who evoke the glorious Virgin. 44 Besides, O Mary, a pious invocation of your name repels the onslaughts of the cruel enemy against your servants, and preserves them from all attack. 45 Oh how I love to hear your very pious servant, St. Alphonsus Liguori, say of you: “The most holy Virgin is not only Queen of heaven and saints; she is also the mistress of hell and demons, over whom she has triumphed by her heroic virtues! Therefore, having recourse to Mary is a sure way to defeat all attacks of hell. Indeed, says St. Bernardine of Siena, her empire extends into hell; she reigns over the demons themselves, tames and overcomes them: “Beata Virgo dominatur in regno inferni; merito ergo Domina dicitur, quasidomas daemonum manus.” 46 It is said of Mary that she is terrible to the powers of hell like an army in good order: terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata; because she admirably knows how to dispose of her power, mercy, and prayers to confuse her enemies and rescue her servants who, in temptation, invoke her almighty help.” 47 13. Sovereign of heaven, earth and hell, o great Mother of God, your dominion extends also over Purgatory: Beata Virgo in regno Purgatorii dominium tenet.48 You deliver your devotees from these torments, visit them, and take care of their necessities. 49 You are especially the Mother of all those who are in purgatory; in some way, your prayer mitigates every hour all the pains they suffer to expiate their sins.

Because of you, every pain in the fire of Purgatory is softened and made easier to bear. 50 14. Since, O Queen of creatures, you extend your beneficent empire over the heavens and Purgatory, since you exercise a formidable power over the underworld, no one better than you can instruct me on these St. Gertrude, Revel., 1. 4. c. 49.

St. Germain, Orat, in Zonam Deiparae.

46 Pro Fest. Maria Virginis St. 3. a. 2. c. 2.

47 Glories of Mary, Explanation of the Hail Holy Queen, c. IV. 2.

48 St. Bernardine of Siena, Serm. 3 de gl. nom. Mariae.

49 Ibid.

50 St. Bridget, Revelations, book 4. c. 43 & I. 6 c. 10.

44 45

77

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

great supernatural realities, their nature, extent, and place in the universe.

Besides, your science equals your power: “In perfectly ordered things, a greater science accompanies a greater power, and a greater operation accompanies a greater science; therefore, O Blessed Virgin, you possess operation and science in the highest degree.” 51 “The knowledge of Blessed Mary, says St. Antoninus, surpasses all knowledge and all manner of knowing possible to any creature because of her incomparable purity, exceptional plenitude of grace, and the most intimate union of charity possible with God.” 52 You are rightly presented to us as vested with the sun because you have penetrated the abyss of divine wisdom much deeper than we can imagine. 53 Make shine in my intellect, o Seat of Wisdom, a ray of that great light!

SECOND MEDITATION Paradise Is Not Only a Happy State of Rewarded Creatures but also a Special and Most Joyful Place, a Region also Made for Spirits 15. Paradise is, first of all, that state of the rational creature in which it enjoys forever, in the surest way, the reward promised by God to those who victoriously come out of the trial. In this state, man is in possession of his last end. He fully enjoys God, the very Truth, the infinite beauty, the supreme Good. All his faculties, both those of the body (after the resurrection) and those of the soul are superabundantly satiated. In this state, man embraces the perfect good that entirely satisfies all his desires. 54 Such is the essence of paradise, or better, the essential happiness enjoyed by the saints in paradise.

St. Albert the Great, cited by Cristobal Vega, Theologia Mariana, no. 1136.

Ibid.

53 St. Bernard, Serm. l De Nativ.

54 St. Thomas, 1-2. Q. 2. a. 8.

51 52

78

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

16. But all theologians admit that the bliss of man, whether essential or accidental, requires goods other than God.55 The human body requires a locality. Man’s senses cannot perceive God directly as can his soul, and to have their share of happiness, they need to rest on creatures where the divine attributes shine in a sensible way.

Accordingly, Paradise is a particular place – most beautiful, delightful, largest, rich, joyful, and pleasant. Next to it, the earthly paradise – which nevertheless was a paradise of delights – is only a shadow. 56 The Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat from: the tree of life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil were also in the midst of paradise.

A river came out of this place of delight to water paradise. Gold and precious stones abounded there. So the Lord God took man and put him in the paradise of delights so that he would cultivate it and keep it.

He submitted to him the plants, the earthly animals, and the birds of the sky. 57 In this pleasant description, we see the Creator as fully preoccupied with preparing a most agreeable place for man. Humanity, even fallen and lost in the ways of idolatry, never lost the memory of Eden, or golden age. But what is that paradise of trial where two rational creatures were placed in comparison with the heavenly paradise created to serve as the eternal reward for countless multitudes of faithful angels and saints, the sacred humanity of the Word Incarnate, and the Mother of God? 17. The celestial paradise is the homeland of happiness, the most pleasant of places; it is destined, properly speaking, to be the habitation of God. 58 Hence Jesus Christ makes us say: “Our Father who art in heaven.” The paradise is a region entirely divine; it is a palace Camillus Mazzella, De Deo creante, no. 1162.

Gen. 2:8.

57 Ibid. v. 8 & ff.

58 Hugo Cardinal Card, Super Prov. c. 15.

55 56

79

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

worthy of the one created in the image of God.59 The supra-celestial paradise is a happy and glorious region full of delights and grace, sweetness and joy, beauty and glory. 60 “The celestial paradise is the Church Triumphant.” 61 “It is the dwelling of God, the place of joy, light, and orderly love.” 62 Paradise is an admirable city where there are no defects or misery, and no one suffers, ages, or dies. 63 18. It is therefore clear that paradise is a place, a determined region of the universe which in no way clashes but perfectly harmonizes with the happy state of its inhabitants.

Admittedly, this state is happy for several reasons. It is happy mainly because of the intuitive vision and assured enjoyment of God; it is happy because paradise is also the gathering of all secondary goods, among which must be placed the vast and delightful region occupied by the friends of God. Let no one think that a locality is required only by the resurrected bodies, as St. Thomas proves that it is also fitting that there be special places for angels and for souls separated from their bodies. 64 Angels have been appointed to the government of celestial bodies and inferior creatures, and since they are finite they can only be where their virtue [or power] is exercised. 65 This is how, while being spiritual, they occupy certain places. As for human souls isolated from their bodies, it is true that they are not intended to influence and direct other bodies but they still require by convenience and by a kind of proportionality, places proportional to their dignity and merit. 66 St. John Damascene De fide orth., 1. 2. c. 11.

St. Bernard. Proucc.

61 St. Bonaventure, Super Psal. I. 62 M. Tit. 5. Diaetae, c. 1.

63 St. Vincent Ferrer, Senti. 12, Doin. 4. adv. — Since paradise must contain resurrected bodies, it obviously must be a place: Non potest a corporis removeri quod sit in aligna laco vel situ nisi auferatur ci sua corporcita per quantum debentur et locus vel situe …

Corpus tintent gloriosum numquam suam corporeitatem amitet. St. Thomas, Sum. theol. supplem. q. 84. a. 3. ad 3.

64 Supplem. q. 69, a. 1 65 1- q. 9. a. 2.

66 Supplem. Loc. cit.

59 60

80

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

That is so true that Sacred Scripture assigns a special place to God himself: “The Lord hath prepared his throne in heaven: and his kingdom shall rule over all.” 67 “Heaven is my throne, and the earth my footstool.” 68 “The Empyrean is a bodily place and yet it was populated by angels immediately after its Creation. Now since both angels and souls separated from their bodies are incorporeal, it appears that we must assign certain corporal dwellings to the separated souls.” 69 St. Thomas proves his assertion in several ways, and writes six of his articles based on these proofs.

19. This doctrine has nothing to astonish us, for bodies are made for souls and spirits, and the latter are made to glorify God directly (Nos. 6 & 7). It is true that separated souls do not receive any influence, in the manner of bodies, from the corporal ambiances in which they are found...but it is also true that they rejoice or are saddened depending on whether they are sent to a place of reward or one of sorrow. 70 Let us conclude from all this that Paradise is a particular region of the universe 71 and should not be considered an uninhabited place even if it only contained angels and souls separated from their bodies. These spirits would be happy and praise God also because of the beauties of the place where they are.

Ps 102:19.

Isa 66:1.

69 Supplem. ibid.

70 Suppl. ad 3m ibid.

71 Animae (defunctorum) realiter existunt vel in inferno, vel in purgatorio, vel in limbo, vel in caelo... Camillus Mazzella, De Deo creante, no. 333. b).

67 68

81

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

THIRD MEDITATION Paradise, Empyrean, and Third Heaven. Paradise Encompasses the Entire Created Universe 20. Paradise, empyrean, third heaven, heavenly Jerusalem are substantially synonymous. It is useful to prove this assertion in order to better understand the language of authors dealing with paradise.

The empyrean, says St. Thomas, was created to be the place of the Blessed; it is the supreme heaven which somehow reaches the order of spiritual substances (angels); it is called empyrean, that is to say, igneous, not because of the fire that would be there but because of the light that floods it. 72 “The empyrean heaven is the highest of corporeal places, and is a fitting abode for the angelic nature . . . Being immobile, it is a fitting abode for the state of beatitude, which is endowed with the highest degree of stability. The abode of beatitude is suited to angels by their very nature, and so they were created there. But it is not suited to man's nature, since man is not set as a ruler over the entire corporeal Creation: it is a fitting abode for man in regard only to his beatitude. Wherefore he was not placed from the beginning in the empyrean heaven, but was destined to be transferred thither in the state of his final beatitude.” 73 Let us hear St. Paul on the same subject: “I know a man . . . caught up to the third heaven, and I know such a man was caught up into paradise.” 74 About which, the Angelic Doctor explains: “The apostle was taken to the third heaven, that is, to the vision of things that are in the Empyrean so that he clearly saw the things that are above the whole corporeal nature . . . According to the interpretation of St. Augustine, we must not understand the [third] heaven as being something from heaven but one and the same thing, Quodlibet VI art. 19. – See also Sum. Theol. p. 1, q. 66, a. 3.

P. 1. q. 102. a. 2. ad 1. - q- 66. a. 3. ad 2.

74 2 Cor 12:2-4.

72 73

82

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

which is the glory of saints, albeit from similar points of view. For Heaven refers to a certain height of light [glory], while Paradise expresses a pleasant sweetness ... It is said that the Saints are in heaven as they are in the light (quantum ad claritatem), and in paradise inasmuch as they enjoy (quantum ad suavitatem) ... Entering Paradise, that is to say, into the joy of the Lord (Mt 25:21) is thus to enter this sweetness of which the inhabitants of heavenly Jerusalem are constantly satiated.” It is therefore clear that, from the standpoint of substance Paradise is nothing other than the empyrean, the third heaven, or the City of God, etc. 75 21. But what strikes me deeply, because I had never studied this matter well is the unimaginable extent of Paradise and the place it occupies in the universe. According to the almost unanimous teaching of the best authors, Paradise is the periphery of the whole material universe.

Armed with telescopes, let us dive into the depths of the heavens above our heads; let our fellow-creatures do the same in America, Oceania, on all points of the oceans, on the extreme beaches of the north and south in relation to the heavens above them. Let us count the whole space that we all can embrace and count the billions of worlds moving in the heights: this grand ensemble is as entirely enclosed in the Empyrean as the flesh and seeds of an orange are enclosed in its peel.

“It is a truth commonly accepted in the Church and quite certain that a still heaven, nobler than the others and very luminous exists beyond all moving heavens. It is the delightful home of the blessed called the Empyrean,” writes Suarez. 76 In support of his “Paradise is triple. The first was the earthly paradise where Adam was placed. The second is corporeal and celestial; it is the Empyrean. The third is spiritual; it is the glory that comes from the vision of God.” St. Thomas, quoted by Giuseppe Marchini, Institut. theol. dogmat. Tom. II no. 104.

St. Augustine also designates the empyrean when, speaking about the higher material heavens he says that we strive to get there and that it is our homeland (Enarratio in Psalm. XXXII, Serm. 2. no. 6); also when he says that the angels are the citizens of the City of God who dwell in the heavens above the skies we see…in the heaven that belongs to the Lord (Confessions, book 12, chap. 11. no. 12).

76 Tract. I De opere sex dierum. c. 4 no. 2. “Since after the resurrection, the elect will have bodies, they must necessarily be in some physical place … Where will they be 75

83

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

assertion he quotes the Master of Sentences, St. Thomas, St. Basil, and other serious authors, and continues: “Supposing the dogma of faith that makes us believe in the supernatural glory prepared for the elect in heaven, it is eminently believable that this heaven is distinct from all other heavens that adjoin the earth, and surpasses them all by the loftiness of its position and by its nature and excellence.”

“Besides, all moving heavens were made for the service of wayfaring men. Therefore, it was fitting that a more perfect heaven was created solely to be the place of the glory of the blessed and as the corporeal throne on which God especially reigns.” 77 That is all the more admissible, continues Suarez, because God has destined a social place for the reprobate; “We must therefore believe with all the more reason that He has destined a heaven to be the future reign and abode of the blessed, so we can understand these words of Christ also in a material sense: ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’ (Mt 25:34). Finally, the constitution of this heaven greatly completes and embellishes the universe.” 78 22. The same author depicts to us the Empyrean as enclosing in its bosom all other bodies 79 and as being (in relation to the moving heavens) a magnificent roof which covers, contains and completes the whole universe. 80 “The Empyrean is like the resplendent envelope of the entire world; it is like the beautiful roof of the shiny divine palace (Creation), and like the superb cover of the temple of God. It is like His royal house, known as the abode of His glory and as the proper palace of the during the conflagration of the world? We can answer that they will be in the upper parts of the sky, where the fiery flames cannot reach.” St. Augustine, De civit. Dei, book.

20. Chap. 18, in fine. Behold the Empyrean, of which only the name is missing.

77 Ibid. Suarez, no. 4.

78 Ibid. no. 5.

79 Ibid. n. 12.

80 Ibid. c. 5. n. 10. Empyrean means the place that contains all things: locus intélligitur in coelo empyreo omnia continente. St. Thomas p. 1. q. 66. a. 4. ad 5m.

84

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

sovereign King. Compared to the Empyrean, the other parts of the world are only like workshops and vulgar houses compared to the residence of a king.” 81 “It is impossible to imagine a place of greater capacity than the Empyrean.” 82 23. This very categorical teaching cannot fail to be grounded on divinely inspired writings. Indeed, it often speak to us of God who sits eternally in the highest heaven, 83 and lives especially in the heaven of heavens; 84 the Lord, who is in the palace of His holiness, and has His throne in heaven; 85 God, who is to be praised especially by the heavens of heavens; 86 God, whom we invoke that He may deign to look at us from his sanctuary, and from this place where he dwells in the highest heaven. 87 Saint Paul says to the Ephesians, speaking of Jesus Christ: He that descended (by the Incarnation) is the same that ascended above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.” 88 Thus Jesus the Savior rose above all places to embrace the whole universe and manifest His glory, power, and triumph to earth, hell, and the whole multitude of creatures. 89 24. So here is the immense and divine dwelling prepared for us from the beginning of the world! It is up to us to go and reign there. All Christianity aims to lead us into this supreme region of happiness. Oh how the earth is vile when we consider heaven! Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 90 Let no earthly good, fleeting glitter of glory, the goods of a day or gross pleasures bewitch Guillaume de Paris, De universo. c. 35.

Bernardine de Busto, Serm. III, de Nativ. B. M. 83 Ps 67:34.

84 Ps 113:16.

85 Ps 10:5.

86 Ps 148:4.

87 Deut. 26:15.

88 Eph. 4:10.

89 Cornelius a Lapide, in hunc loc. Exaltata est humana natura Christi super omnem creaturam, non solum ordine dignitatis sed etiam loco. St. Thom. l. 3. Dist. 22. a. 3, ad 2m.

90 Mt 5:3.

81 82

85

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

us with their silliness to the point of weakening in us the idea of the true goods that God reserves for us in heaven. 91 Lift up your hearts! Let us live from now on more in heaven than on earth: Nostra autem conversatio in coelis est 92 (our conversation is in heaven), to establish a proportion between us and our future home.

Jesus Christ, Mary, the apostles and saints touched the earth only with the tips of their toes, so to speak; it was unworthy of them.

And now they reign forever happy in the Empyrean! A thousand times happy are those who understand this greatness of the children of God and mold their lives accordingly by practicing the evangelical virtues!

FOURTH MEDITATION The Place that Hell, Purgatory, and Limbo Occupy in the Universe 25. If as we have seen, paradise or the empyrean is vested in a cloak of glory, all other regions of the universe, 93 including hell, purgatory and limbo are contained in the great heavenly Jerusalem. So where is hell?

In a chapter based on two passages of Holy Scripture (Ps. 85:12; Apoc.

5:3) and titled Ubi esse infernus creditur, St. Gregory the Great concludes that hell must be under the earth: Quid obstet non video ut sub terra infernus esse credatur. 94 On this point, St. Thomas expounds the opinions of St. Gregory, St. Augustine, St. Isidore and several philosophers, and adds: Wis. 4:12.

Phil. 3:20.

93 Sicut coelum empyreum licet non sit in alio corpore quod illum circumdet, realiter adest ubi praesens est, et non est in nihilo (it is contained in the influences of God, Christ, Mary, the Angels and the other blessed) sed est ibi ubi superius corpus (in the material heaven) non est. Suarez, De Angelis. I. IV, chap. VIII, no. 12.

94 Dialog. lib. 4 c. 42.

91 92

86

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

It is more in accordance with Scripture and more appropriate to say that hell is under the Earth. 95 Segneri expresses the same thought, explaining: “The damned will descend to the lower parts of the earth” (Ps 62:10), that is, to its deepest center, where hell is more likely to be placed so that from all sides it is located the farthest away from the empyrean: “They are all delivered unto death to the lowest parts of the earth” (ad terram ultimam, Ez. 31:14). 96 “Thus the whole corporeal universe is enclosed between two fixed and immobile extremes which are at the two opposite limits as to their position and properties: for one is as dense and opaque as it could be, and the other exceedingly resplendent and subtle; and both have a disposition that makes them eminently suited to serve as the definitive abode for the elect and the reprobate, whether men or angels; and I do not see how one could seriously object to this truth.” 97 26. Christian teaching on this point is therefore quite clear, and one cannot suppose that such holy and distinguished men have erred unanimously, so to speak, in the Church led by the Holy Ghost. The empyrean is thus the largest space, which encompasses the whole universe as a circumference; hell, its opposite, is in the center. But is it the center of the earth or the center of the universe?

All the authors mentioned suppose that the earth is like a motionless nucleus around which the heavens move in a circular way, and many of them simply say that hell is in the center of the earth. But the reasons they give serve as a correction to this statement, which was partly motivated by an astronomical supposition that modern discoveries have disproven. Maxima distantia est inter paradisum et infernum, says St. Thomas (q. 9. De Veritate, art 6, Sed contra). But if paradise is like the circumference that encompasses the whole universe in its bosom, the most remote place in paradise clearly is its center.

Supplem. q. 97. a. 7.

Manna dell’anima, 37 August, point II. 97 Suarez Tract. I, De opere sex dierum 1. I. c. 4. n. 5.

95 96

87

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

According to the above quotations from the Psalms and the Apocalypse, hell is under or in the lower parts of the earth. Also according to St. Gregory and St. Thomas, it is under the earth; according to Segneri, it is at the furthest point of the empyrean; according to the quoted text of Ezekiel, hell is the last stage, the pit, the last world, one would say; according to Suarez, it is the region opposed to the empyrean. All these ways of saying apparently allow us to affirm that hell is in the center, not of the earth but of the universe.

Thus, the earth belongs to the mobile heavens and is above hell. Hell alone is not part of heaven but is like its sewer, 98 where there is no order at all but eternal horror. 99 27. According to St. Thomas, purgatory’s ordinary location is contiguous to hell so the same fire that torments the damned in hell purifies the righteous in purgatory. In hell, the damned occupy lower localities according to the inferiority of their merits. However, by God's permission, purgatory can be done in various places on earth for the instruction of the living or the utility of the dead. 100 We can therefore consider Purgatory as this spherical zone perhaps occupied by various bodies analogous to celestial bodies but invaded by flames of the infernal abyss, and embellished only by hope and love.

28. Around the perimeter of Purgatory is an area intended for the habitation of children who died without baptism and have only the stain of original sin. They are happy with a natural happiness. 101 Above their area is one occupied by saints before the ascension of Jesus Christ to heaven. Being holy and friends of God, they had to dwell in a higher locality. 102 29. The upper areas, up to the empyrean, are assigned to the use of rational beings in the state of trial that circulate between paradise and St. Thomas, 4 Dist. 47, q. 1 a. 4 ad 2m et 3m.

Job 10:22.

100 Supplem. Appendix, last page.

101 Sibi (Deo) conjunguntur per participationem naturalium bonorum; et ita etiam de ipso gaudere poterunt naturali cognitione et dilectione (St. Thomas II Dist. 33. q. 2. a. 2. ad 5).

102 Supplem. q. 69. a. 5 & 6.

98 99

88

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

hell. They are created for the empyrean but must work their salvation with fear and trembling 103 lest they should be cast into hell like Satan. 104 O Mary! O Queen and Mistress of the universe, he who finds you by true devotion will find life and draw salvation from the treasures of the Lord’s goodness. 105 I have full confidence in you, for a true servant of Mary will never perish. So be it.

CHAPTER THREE Perfection of Paradise Considered as Heaven, and the Incomparable Perfection of Mary, Who Is Called ‘Heaven’ for Many Reasons Ave, gratia plena; Dominus tecum.

Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with Thee.

(St. Luke 1:28).

FIRST MEDITATION The Three Divine Masterpieces; a First Look at the Corporeal Perfection of Paradise; Mary is a Heaven Herself

Phil 2:12.

Lk 10:18.

105 Prov 8:35.

103 104

89

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

30. The Archangel Gabriel, a sublime intelligence confirmed in the grace of God is the ambassador of the Most High who tells Mary: Hail, full of grace. His word is the word of Truth itself, which can neither be deceived nor deceive. Mary is full of grace in such an excellent way that so to speak, Ave, gratia plena is her name. All supernatural gifts, intellectual riches, qualities of the heart, bodily benefits, power over creatures, and all favors of heaven come together in her who is full of grace.

“It was fitting that the Virgin should be bound to God by such blessings that render her full of grace, she who gave the heavens glory, and to the earth, the Lord, who restored peace, brought faith to the gentiles, put an end to vices, regulated human life, and disciplined customs. She was also full of grace because others received this gift from heaven only partially, while Mary received the fullness of it at once. Yes, she was truly full of grace, for although the holy Fathers and Prophets were enriched with grace, they did not have it so fully; in Mary abounded the same fullness of grace as in Christ, but in a different way.” 106 Jesus Christ is the meritorious cause of all graces and is, like God, its primary source. He has the fullness of grace by right and by nature. Mary is, by privilege, the unique depot and only channel of grace so that all graces that God grants to men pass through the hands of Mary. Fully endowed with all natural and supernatural benefits, she was established as the dispenser of all divine benefits to creatures.

“The reign of God consisting of justice and mercy, Our Lord shared it: He reserved the reign of justice for himself and ceded the reign of mercy to his Mother, establishing that all graces granted to men pass through the hands of Mary, who gives them as she sees fit.” 107 Dominas tecum.

31. Comprising Divine Motherhood, the fullness of grace poured into the person of Mary is one of three masterpieces of God’s wisdom, goodness, and power, to which the Almighty Himself cannot add St. Jerome, Brev. Rom. Office of the Imm. Conception. Lesson IV. St. Alphonse Liguori, Glories of Mary, ch. I. To corroborate his statement, the saint quotes passages from Gerson, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, etc.

106 107

90

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

anything. “The humanity of Christ, considered as united to the Godhead; created happiness being the fruition of God; and the Blessed Virgin being the Mother of God, all have a kind of infinite dignity coming from the infinite good, which is God; and on this account, nothing better than these three can be done, just as there cannot be anything better than God.” 108 Is this not saying a lot? The Creator could draw millions of other worlds out of nothing, all more perfect than the existing ones.

But neither the Divine Persons nor God absolutely considered can distinguish themselves by better works than the three we have mentioned. The fact that our Father Who art in heaven allows his children to be happy with the very happiness of God; that the Eternal Word hypostatically unites to humanity in Christ; and that the Holy Ghost raises a human creature to the dignity of Mother of God are works so marvelous and so intensively perfect that the Infinite, as it were, exhausted in them the resources of His invention and power.

32. Let us say, however, that the first of these masterpieces is celestial bliss considered in its essence, that is to say, in the possession of God, and not precisely paradise considered as a locality and a corporeal world, which only belongs to the accidental happiness of the blessed.

But we must observe that this place is proportioned to its destination and that, therefore, it is the most perfect of places.

“A house must suit those who live in it. 109 The empyrean heaven is the highest of corporeal places...it is a fitting abode for the angelic nature...and for man in the state of final beatitude. 110 It is the place appointed for the contemplation of the blessed. 111 The empyrean is the most resplendent of bodies, and it is so perfect that it borders on the order of spiritual substances. 112 It is the corporeal place intended for the eternal contemplation of God so that its exterior and sensible clarity corresponds to the interior clarity of the

Sum. theol. 1. q. 25 a. 6 ad 4m.

Supplem. q. 91. a. I 110 1. q. 102. a. 2 ad 1.

111 2a 2ae q. 175. a. 3, ad 4.

112 Quodlib. 6. q. 11. a. 19.

108 109

91

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

angels and happy souls. 113 The light that floods and penetrates it may be the light of glory. 114 No body or place in the universe participates as much as it does in the nature of spirits and souls. 115 The supreme sphere is the noblest of all and its causal action is the most powerful.

116 As a place, it is so perfect that there is nothing outside of it as far as bodies are concerned. This mode of perfection belongs to the first and highest of bodies, which contains all others.” 117 33. O Mary, according to your most learned and pious servants, you are a heaven or empyrean. An empyrean, by the radiance of all wisdom; divine heaven, adorned with so many gifts that it is impossible to enumerate them; 118 an empyrean which received the Word of God; 119 an empyrean because, just as it is impossible to imagine a place of greater capacity than the empyrean, so also one cannot imagine a creature that has more charity than Mary; 120 a heaven of enrichment where all the best things come from; 121 a heaven capable of receiving the God that nothing can contain; 122 the heaven of the Divinity whose sun is Christ, whose clarity illuminates heaven and earth; 123 a heaven resplendent with virtues, greater than the universe. 124 O great Mother of God, O heaven animated by the King of all things, 125 help me understand the parts and arrangement of this heaven, this happy region where God in His goodness has reserved a place for me.

1. q. 66. a. 3. ad 3.

Ibid. ad 4m.

115 De coelo et mundo, lib. II, lect 15. n. 10.

116 Suprema sphaera est maxime formalis et nobilissima. Ibid. lect. 20, n. 7.

117 Ibid. lib. I. lect. 4. n. 10.

118 St. Bonaventure, Serm. 1. De B.V.M. 119 Bartholomew of Pisa, De laud. V. I. 1. fruct. 8.

120 St. Ernest of Prague, in Mariali. chap. 2.

121 St. Albert the Great, in Bibl. M. super libr. Deut. c. 28.

122 St. Methodius, in Homil. Purific. B. M. V. 123 St. Epiphanius, in Serm. De laude V. 124 St. J. Chrysostom, Orat. 7, in SS. Deipar.

125 St. J. Damascene, Cant, dormit. B. M.V. 113 114

92

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

SECOND MEDITATION Richness of the Empyrean in Diverse Systems and Worlds 34. We have seen, according to Desdouits (no. 4), that nothing prevents one from admitting the existence of an infinity of different zones and stages in the heavens, as Scholastic teaching confirms. We have also seen that the empyrean broadly encompasses the whole universe (22, 23, etc.). We were thus able to get an idea of its size, and, consequently, of its extent, which is one of the characteristics that constitute its perfection as a place.

But we must observe, moreover, that these zones and stages have greater or lesser depth and are unlike thin vaults or stretched fabrics but rather like spherical spaces where more or less numerous stars float at very different heights. Thus our sun, with its five hundred subjects (no. 5), occupies in its path a large spherical belt. “Its distance from the planets that revolve around it vary from 15 million leagues (Mercury) to 1147 million leagues (Neptune); the space this system occupies in the sky is about 7 billion leagues” 126 if you consider these celestial bodies as fixed, that is to say, that the solar system is not traveling.

But it does move. We have seen that the universe has a center (25, 26) and that today’s astronomers accept this opinion. 127 Therefore, our sun with its whole procession is on an orbit at a certain distance from this center, and thus in its revolutions, the solar system occupies a much larger space than the one we mentioned above, since it is necessary to allot to it all the space which it successively crosses with its large family. I also want to say that this space, which is no more than a zone in the sky, is extremely high and wide since Neptune is at 1,117 million leagues from the sun, and that the other satellites of the sun, although less distant from their leader, nevertheless move at great Fr. Albert Farges, L’idée de Dieu, 1e partie, Merveilles de l’astronomie.

Fr. Benjamin-Marcellin Constant, Science et révélation, ou la Conception scientifique de l’univers et le dogme catholique, c. II., Paris, Impr. de F. Levé, 1892.

126 127

93

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

distances from each other and always without encountering bodies belonging to other systems.

35. If, therefore, the celestial zone constituted by our solar system, which for us is only the lower sky, is already so deep and contains so many bodies at such great distances from each other, what about the zones and heavens superior to ours? What about these 68 million stars (no. 5), most of which, with families much larger than the one that accompanies our sun, probably travel on orbits immensely greater than that of our system? Finally, and this is where I am driving at, what to say of the number of celestial bodies located in the empyrean? Should we believe that the lower zones contain so many stars and the upper zone contains only a few?

The empyrean alone forms the largest, noblest, and most beautiful of heavens: what variety of stars should it not, therefore have, and at what distance should they not be from one another in the largest zone or sky that encompasses all heavens? 128 36. Many reasons lead me to believe that the third heaven by itself is as rich in stars as the lower heavens. Indeed: 1. The empyrean was created first, as we will see in another meditation; it is like the material type of the lower heavens, of which they are but pale images. We must therefore eminently find in the third heaven, what we find in the others: extent, depth, number and variety of bodies.

2. After the Judgment, there will be new heavens and a new earth, that is to say, the visible stars closest to us as well as our globe will be supernaturally transformed and glorified. The second heaven will cease to move and so will the first, which is our own. These celestial bodies and heavens will have reached their end, which is only to serve the angels and saints established forever as friends of God. So According to St. Thomas, the more things are perfect, the more God created them in in large numbers, because God had in view above all the perfection of the universe.

Now it is clear that the empyrean is the best in terms of celestial bodies. So celestial bodies abound much more in the empyrean than in the lower heavens. 1 p. q 60 a 3.

128

94

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

the empyrean will have acquired its final extension by assimilating and incorporating the lower heavens, which we will amply prove below.

Now, with this, we see that the empyrean is not generically different from the two lower heavens. It is only more nobly informed, 129 as will be the other heavens after the Judgment.

Therefore, having essentially the same nature as other heavens, it goes without saying that, like them, it abounds with celestial bodies of various dimensions, placed at different heights.

3. If, as Suarez told us (no. 21, at the end), we can also understand in a material sense this kingdom prepared for us from the beginning of the world, what prevents us from understanding in the same sense these other words of the Savior: “In my Father's house there are a great number of mansions” 130? Indeed, this text means first the various degrees of glory. But accidental happiness also has degrees, and the diversity of places must correspond in some way to the diversity of merits and rewards; 131 a suitable place is intended for each glorious body according to its degree of dignity. 132 4. These places must be proportional to an inconceivable multitude of angels of all ranks and degrees of perfection and to an equally huge multitude of saints whom God wants to reward eternally and in God. Now, what abode should we imagine is suitably proportional for angels and resurrected and glorious men, endowed with such faculties, all of whom must be fully satisfied?

In truth, in addition to the clear vision of the divine essence, they need a great variety of places and worlds either as a habitual abode or place of entertainment. “Man naturally loves the whole universe; therefore, he desires the good of the universe, and God will improve the universe to satisfy the desire of the glorified man.” 133 But if the universe must be glorified after the Judgment to satisfy man’s Suarez, lib. I, De universo, c. 5. n. 3.

Jn 14:2.

131 1. q. 66. a. 3, ad 3m.

132 Supplem. q. 84. a. 2, ad 5m.

133 Ibid. q. 91, a.1. This enhancement will be a glorification supernaturally operated by God, ibid. ad 3m, 4m et 5m.

129 130

95

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

desire, what glorified worlds are already present in the empyrean for the happiness of the angels and the first resurrected men?

5. Note that the bodies of Jesus Christ and Mary are not the only ones that currently shine in the third heaven; many Old Testament Saints have already risen. When Jesus gave up his Spirit, the tombs opened, and many bodies of saints, who had fallen asleep, arose, and leaving their tombs after His resurrection, they came to the holy city and appeared to a large number of people. 134 Now, according to the soundest teaching, to use the expression of Cornelius a Lapide (in hunc loc.), these resurrected Saints did not die again; their resurrection was definitive, and they formed a triumphal procession with Jesus Christ ascending to heaven. St. Thomas is of this opinion, 135 as are St. Jerome, St. Anselm, and a large number of authors.

It is believable that all the greatest saints of the Old Testament are already in heaven in body and soul. 136 Hence it is very admissible that to satisfy the desire of these saints and to honor Jesus Christ and Mary God arranged the Empyrean so that it has a large number of glorified celestial bodies, perhaps even more than it is supposed to acquire after the Judgment.

6. According to St. Thomas, the entire universe, with the possible exception of hell and limbo, is destined to be part of the empyrean or city of glory when the world is renewed. 137 Now, if asked how I picture the abode of the blessed, to answer this question, I must merge the ideas expressed above with those that the Holy Scriptures give us on the same subject.

Mt 27:50-52.

3. q. 77, a. 1. ad 3.

136 Cornelius a Lapide, loc. cit.

137 Supplem. q. 74. a. 1. The great doctor says the same thing even more clearly in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, chap. VIII, lect. 4. on v. 21; The renewed heavens should be inhabited by the children of God. 134 135

96

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

THIRD MEDITATION General Arrangement of the Empyrean and the Universe 37. We have seen (nos. 20 & ff), that the expressions paradise, empyrean, heavenly Jerusalem, third heaven are substantially synonymous. Heaven is, therefore, a city, 138 but one which is at the same time, the third heaven. 139 It is the house of the heavenly Father, in which there are a large number of mansions, 140 but it is at the same time the kingdom of heaven, 141 the glorious kingdom of Jesus Christ, 142 the place where one will be happy with Jesus Christ, 143 the kingdom that has been prepared for the elect from the foundation of the world. 144 The New Testament refers to it mostly as the kingdom of heaven.

St. Matthew alone refers to it in this way about fifteen times, not counting the texts in which he designates the Church on earth with the same words. Besides, the same evangelist speaks to us of paradise about twenty times in terms such as Our Father who art in Heaven...whatever you shall bind on earth will be bound in heaven, etc.

Is it not significant that the word ‘heavens’ in the plural is so often repeated?

Can we not conclude from this that paradise is a whole set of Heb 13:14.

2 Cor 12:1-4.

140 Jn 14:2.

141 Mt 5:10, etc.

142 Lk 23:42.

143 Ibid. 43.

144 Mt 25:34. A kingdom is a country that includes many regions. The kingdom of heaven includes many heavens. Being the kingdom of Jesus Christ, to whom everything is subject in heaven and earth, it encompasses all heavens, the earth, and in a sense, even hell. Being the kingdom prepared from the origin of the world, God shaped the universe for this destination. Incidentally, the saints, reigning with Jesus Christ, will have the same kingdom as Him, that is to say, first, the worlds of the empyrean, and then the worlds that will be glorified after the Judgment.

138 139

97

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

systems of already glorified celestial bodies that form the empyrean? If paradise is a city, its palaces are worlds; its various districts are planetary systems; its streets and squares are spaces that separate worlds and systems; and its inhabitants are gods: “I have said: You are gods and all of you the sons of the Most High.” 145 What are the distances like in such a vast abode for angels and resurrected men? They are proportional to their condition (9, 10). In heaven, the human senses are so transformed, and the light of glory illuminates all these worlds so intensely that their unprecedented magnitude is proportional to the inhabitants of heaven in a just and harmonious degree.

38. To me, all things considered, this conception of the abode of the blessed seems to conform to the teaching of both ancients and modern astronomers on condition of modifying certain accidental details in the works of the former and completing the works of the latter with supernatural notions.

Thus, in his Theologia Mariana (no. 1874), Cristobal Vega writes: “I establish above all that Mary’s already glorified body is now on the convex surface of the empyrean, where many theologians believe the bodies of other blessed are found, except that the body of the Virgin occupies a higher place. Several authors say the same thing of Jesus Christ, explaining in this sense the following passage from St. Paul: “For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” (Heb. 7:26). Suarez thinks the same. Cajetan says: On the outermost spherical surface of the empyrean, God has arranged an elevation in the form of a summit and a throne for the sovereign empyrean who is Christ: but the other dwellings or regions (veliqui autam situs) are those of the blessed, who are all the closer to Christ the more they resemble him by their degrees of holiness.” 146 39. Advances in astronomy now prevent us from admitting that the 145 146

Ps 81:6.

Cristobal Vega, Theologia Mariana, no. 1874.

98

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

heavens have a convex or concave surface. It had meaning only for the ancients, who believed that the stars and the spaces that separate them formed homogeneous bodies. Let us listen to St. Thomas on this point: This space in which the stars are moving cannot be empty because a vacuum cannot exist in nature. Now what fills this void cannot be air or fire because these are corruptible elements while the heavens are incorruptible. One can therefore conclude that the entire space in which the stars seem to move is full of a celestial body that belongs to the very substance of the spheres. 147 This body that follows the stars is invisible because it is not as dense as the stars but it is nevertheless solid, 148 which does not prevent it from being diaphanous. 149 Thus, for St. Thomas and the other scholastics, the heavens were like immense skullcaps, all in one piece, superimposed on each other, having an invisible although solid substance, and appearing only by their bright ornaments which are the stars. According to them, the latter do not move by themselves but are fixed on their sphere and led in a circular movement of invisible spheres; 150 and these spheres only move to move the stars. 151 40. These notions of celestial spheres should modify the reasoning of these theologians on the arrangement and external form of the empyrean. In these matters, we who profit from the progress of science should follow a straightforward procedure. We accept the theological principles of these great men but modify their applications according to data provided by more enlightened astronomy. In so doing, we imitate the example of St. Thomas himself, who did not shrink from citing the authority of the astronomers of his time. 152

De caelo et mundo, lib. 2. Lect. 13 n. 3.

Ibid. lect. 10 and elsewhere.

149 1. q. 66. a. 3, ad 4.

150 De caelo et mundo, lib. II, lect. 13.

151 Ibid. lect. 19. n. 3.

152 De caelo et mundo, libr. II, lect. 9, a, 1. etc.

147 148

99

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

41. Let us, therefore, take up the reasoning of Cristobal Vega and other Scholastics and translate it into modern language.

There are no convex or concave surfaces that encompass or are encompassed by the universe. But there are a very great number of different planetary or even stellar systems, each of which is composed of a more or less considerable variety of celestial bodies. The universe has a center. The various systems are staggered at determined distances and circulate around the center, each in the area assigned to it.

But the systems furthest from the center do not circulate: they form the empyrean or abode of the blessed. The empyrean has no circular movement; it is the highest of corporeal places and is entirely immutable. 153 Everything that moves does so either to avoid some evil or to acquire some good. 154 But the empyrean is already glorified, and so it does not have to seek perfection through movement. 155 It is at rest because it has arrived at its place and occupies its definitive place.

156

Since the empyrean is at rest, all the systems, all the worlds, and all the bodies that compose it are also at rest. But they are arranged so as to form higher or lower heavens within the empyrean, as the Holy Scriptures state: Heaven and the heavens of heavens cannot contain God. 157 Behold the heaven, and the heavens of heavens …and the things that are in them shall be moved in his sight. 158 Praise him, ye heavens of heavens. 159 Look from thy sanctuary, and thy Caelum empyreum est supremum corporaliun locorum, et, est extra omnem mutabilitatem. 1. p 102, a. 2, ad I. 154 De caelo, etc. libr. I. lect. 21, n. 13.

155 As we said in the preface, the Empyrean does not move as if it were in the state of trial and seeking perfection, because it is already perfect. But the glorified elect can move it. One should take this observation into account whenever one speaks of the immobility of the Empyrean.

156 Quaecumque mota quioscunt, tunc quiescunt quando perveniunt ad proprium locum.

Ibid. no. 14.

157 1 Kgs 8:27; 2 Paral. 2:6; 6:18.

158 Ecclus. 16:18.

159 Ps 148:4.

153

100

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

high habitation of heaven, and bless thy people Israel. 160 The kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor of spirit and those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice. 161 The empyrean is, therefore, a great division of the heavens subdivided into a greater or lesser number of heavens. God occupies especially the highest heaven of the empyrean: Hosanna in altissimis, glory be to God in the highest heaven; 162 Gloria in altissimis Deo; 163 this is spiritual heaven, where only the infinite Spirit reigns.

Immediately below is the heaven reserved for the holy humanity of Jesus Christ and Mary. Jesus Christ is elevated above the lower heavens. 164 He ascended above all heavens by His infinite divinity, and by His humanity, He ascended above all heavens, which must be transformed, and above all the lower heavens of the empyrean, to fill all things. 165 For Him, climbing all the way to the top of the Empyrean does not mean to lack influence or power in the lower heavens but to fill more space by His radiance; and the God-Man occupies the highest of the material heavens, filling with His virtue all things finite.

42. According to St. Augustine, St. Albert the Great, and St. Peter Damien, Mary is in the same heaven as the holy humanity of her divine Son. To you, O Sovereign Queen is owed the throne of the King of glory, says the great bishop of Hippo. The King of glory himself, loving you more than all other creatures as His true Mother and the beautiful spouse of the Holy Ghost, associates you with Himself in a loving Deut. 26:15.

Mt 5:3 &10.

162 Mt 21:9.

163 Lk 2:14.

164 Heb 7:26.

165 Eph. 4:10. Nulla ratio cogit ut nomine caeli... unum tantum corpus caeleste, illudque supremum et empyreum intelligatur, nam frequens et usilatus modus loquendi habet, ut, noinime caeli simpliciter dicti totus ordo caelestium corporium comprehendatur. Qui mos etiam frequens est in Scriptura, etc. Suarez. Metaph. Disp. 13. sect. 11. n. 26. Now it seems to us that when Scripture speaks of heavens (in the plural) and at the same time of Empyrean, at least secondarily, it designates a plurality of celestial bodies in paradise.

160 161

101

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

embrace. The Virgin, says St. Peter Damien, raised to the throne of God the Father is placed in the very seat of the Trinity. 166 That should not seem surprising, for since the Trinity is alone in the spiritual and infinite heaven, which we conceive as extending infinitely in all directions outside the universe the throne of the Trinity is the universe itself, and especially the highest spheres of the empyrean.

Now, the Man-God and his worthy Mother preside over the universe together. They form, so to speak, a transition between the infinite and the finite. Mary stands as a prelude to the hypostatic union, and Jesus Christ is the man hypostatically united to the divinity.

They, therefore, occupy on their own all of the highest material heaven, Jesus Christ as the King, and Mary as the Queen of the universe. They have everything under their feet: the spheres of angelic choirs, the spheres of the apostles, those of other saints and all lower heavens. Let every knee bend in heaven, on earth and in hell to worship the Word Incarnate and deeply venerate His divine Mother. 167 43. It must be seen as certain that Mary was raised in glory above all pure creatures, says St. Bernardine of Siena; she alone 168 forms a whole distinct order, a whole hierarchy in which right reason prevents us from supposing the existence of any other person because it is appropriate for the Son of God to have only one natural Mother. But natural reason spontaneously dictates to us that the Mother of the King of all things must be placed on a throne which dominates all the orders of ministers. 169 Fulbert of Chartres thus speaks to Mary: You are placed in the heavenly kingdoms above all choirs of Virgins. And the Church sings: The Holy Mother of God has been exalted above the choirs of angels in the celestial kingdoms. 170

Cited by Cristobal Vega, Theologia Mariana no. 1873, p. 8.

Phil. 2:10 168 Not to the exclusion of her Son, but of any creature other than herself.

169 Tome 3, Serm. 3. De gloria Nom. Mariae, art. 2, chap. 1.

170 Cf. Vega, loc. cit.

166 167

102

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

44. The Empyrean is therefore composed of a large number of kingdoms (caelestia regna) or is the kingdom of heaven, that is to say, a kingdom made up of a large number of heavens superimposed on each other, in which the lower ones serve as thrones for the blessed of the upper heavens, which are the abode of Jesus Christ, Mary, the most distinguished angels, and the twelve apostles who judge the twelve tribes of Israel, 171 according to the dignity and merits of these happy inhabitants of paradise.

45. O Mary, your fullness of grace is expressed in heaven by the sublimity of the place you occupy, and by the plenitude of your radiance on the whole universe, which is at your feet. For just as on earth you have been more privileged in grace than the rest, so also the glory that you receive in heaven is incomparable. 172 Since you thus preside over all of nature, how easy it is for you to obtain for us all kinds of graces, even temporal graces! Ah, what unlimited confidence I want to have in the one full of grace! Ave, gratia plena.

CHAPTER FOUR The Beauty of Mary and the Beauty of Paradise Tota pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te (Cant. 4:7).

Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee

FIRST MEDITATION Mt 19:28.

St. Bernard, In Assumpt. Serm. I.: Quantume enom gratiae in terris adepta est prae cacteris, tantum et in caelis obtinet gloriae singularis.

171 172

103

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

Most Beautiful Mary Is like an Incarnate Divine Archetype—a Heaven More Beautiful than all Heavens 46. According to Cornelius a Lapide, these words apply mainly to Jesus Christ and to Mary. Among creatures, the humanity of Jesus Christ and Mary stand alone as fully beautiful and spotless. There was a time when even the faithful flock was not entirely beautiful because they were put to the test and could offend God, even though, with the help of grace, they did not do so. They were not entirely beautiful because being able to accept the supernatural and refuse it they had the grace proper to the state of trial, but not the unshakable grace of those confirmed in the friendship of God. Because of the hypostatic union of His humanity with the Godhead, Jesus was always fully beautiful as He was absolutely impeccable from the beginning of His existence. And Mary was always very beautiful by the privilege of impeccability, which she received at the same time as her life. But impeccability was, so to speak, only the first degree of perfection of these two incomparable types. On this foundation, Jesus apparently added ever-increasing wisdom and grace before God and men. 173 In reality, He was grace itself, that is to say, the one in whom the Father had placed all His kindnesses, the beloved par excellence, 174 and grace in its source, for all creatures receive grace only from His fullness: 175 He is full of grace and truth! 176 47. You, O Mary, are also full of grace – Ave, gratia plena – but as if by reflection. You are full of graces received for you and for other humans (no. 30). Now, how high does this fullness rise? You are all beautiful, O beloved of God, perfection itself, and there is not a spot in you! You are entirely beautiful: beautiful in spirit, beautiful in heart, beautiful in the body; there is no stain in you, not even a venial sin or slight

Lk 2:52.

Mt 3:17; Mk 11; Lk 3:22.

175 Jn 1:16.

176 Jn 1:14.

173 174

104

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

imperfection; your entire life has been beautiful and spotless. What else is there to say?

48. You are O lovely creature, an incarnate divine archetype; an archetype incarnated without losing anything of its perfection, incarnated to acquire a concrete perfection that did not exist as such in the divine mind. O marvel! To have an idea of this, however inexact, I must think there are at least three ‘myselves’ in the mind of God. The first is the absolute ideal of my person, that is to say, the divine idea of the highest degree of perfection to which I am called and to which I would arrive if I had been and continued to be always faithful to grace in everything. This ideal is the divine archetype that concerns me; God will judge me by confronting myself with this model; it is the perfect myself, but only in idea.

The second myself is this kind of divine photograph which retraces my entire conduct, vicissitudes and variations as a concrete being from the beginning of my existence to the last moment of my mortal life: this is the idea that God has of my temporal pilgrimage.

The third myself is this real and definitive self (or the idea that God has of it) that will succeed death and resurrection, and that will no longer change.

Now, what a difference there is between the first myself and the other two! How distant the second is, alas, from the perfection of the first! And how many and most beautiful features appear in the first but will never shine in the third! O, how miserable is my poor life!

Unfortunately, however, with one or the other exception, this is the sad condition of all men. There is no just man on earth who does good and does not sin. 177 If we say we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 178 Jesus Christ and Mary are the only representatives of the human race who perfectly match their supreme archetype. They even add material reality to it! O embodied ideals, how worthy you are of 177 178

Eccl. 7:21.

1 Jn 1:8.

105

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

our admiration and love! How you do honor to our species! Let it no longer be said that all ideal is necessarily imaginary and nothing more and that all finite reality is inferior to its ideal: let one look at Jesus! Let one look at Mary! You are all fair, o my beloved, and there is not a spot in you.

49. If anyone claims, says the Council of Trent, that justified man can avoid any sin, even venial, during his whole life without a special privilege of God, as the Church admits was granted to the Blessed Virgin, let him be anathema. 179 It is therefore certain, almost of faith, that Mary never committed any venial fault. This is what St. Augustine affirms: Mary, he says, received enough graces to overcome sin completely and in all respects because she deserved to conceive and give birth to the One who certainly had no sin at all. 180 Let us also quote the Angelic Doctor: Purity, he says, is measured by its distance from its opposite, which is mixing or impurity; that is why one is able to find something created which reaches the maximum possible of finite purity if the contagion of sin has not defiled it in any way; and such was the purity of the Blessed Virgin, who was free from original sin and actual sin. 181 Finally, let us say with St. Epiphanius that except for God, Mary is superior to all things; she is more beautiful than the Cherubim, the Seraphim, and the entire angelic army. 182 50. Entirely beautiful, Mary is also beautiful in the body. The Blessed Virgin, says St. Thomas, must have displayed everything that belongs to

Sess. 6. can. 23.

De natura et gratia, c. 36.

181 Puritas intenditur per recossum a contrario, et ideo potest aliquid creatum inveniri, quo nihil purins esse potest in rebus creatis. si nulla contagione peccati inquinatum sit. et talis fuit puritas beatae Virginis, quae a peccato originali et actuali imnunis fuit. In IV Distinct. 44. q. unic. a. 3. ad 3.

182 Solo Deo excepta cunctis superior existit; natura (she was BORN more perfect), formosior est ipsis Cherubin, Seraphin, et omni exercitu angelico. Orat. De laud.

Deiparae.

179 180

106

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

perfection. 183 The Blessed Virgin had the best natural gifts and a most perfect bodily complexion and disposition. 184 The Virgin Mother of God was the glory of all intelligent nature and all sensible nature; she was superior to all created beauty and splendor. 185 Not only did the Holy Ghost say of thee, O Mary: ‘Thou art beautiful,’ indicating that you have all human beauty, but he adds, ‘and there is not a spot in you,’ to mark that you have no faults. So you have been supremely beautiful (summum pulchra) by the possession of all goods and have been spotless by the absence of all evil and all fault. 186 According to St. Antoninus of Florence, Mary resembled Jesus Christ perfectly and necessarily and vice versa because Jesus had no temporal father and had to take his form from Mary and because the divine operation that accomplishes the mystery of the Incarnation could not meet obstacles.

Now, concludes this holy Doctor, Jesus is the most beautiful of the children of men; therefore, the Virgin Mother of God is also very beautiful. 187 St. Augustine likewise addresses Mary: ‘If I call you the form of God, you are worthy of it.’ 188 She was the type, the mold of the Man-God! O perfection of Mary!

51. You are more beautiful than the sun, o sublime Mother of God; you surpass any star system and compare to light, you come out ahead. 189 You are more beautiful than the sun and all the lower heavens. The entire nature is nothing but the stepladder of your feet. You surpass any star system and even the brightest, most ornate, best arranged, of the Empyrean. After God and Jesus Christ, you are the most delightful presence in paradise.

In beata Virgine debuit apparere omne illud quod perfectionis fuit. In IV Dist. 30. q. 2. a. 1.

184 St. Antonin of Florence, IV p. tit. 15. chap.10, 2.

185 Virgo Deipara fuit munis intelligibilis, ac sensibilis naturae gloria et claritate creata Superior. 7° General Council, Act. 3.

186 St. Bonaventure, Serm. 1. de BeataVirgine.

187 Loc. cit. c. 11 188 Si formam Dei te appellem, digna exsistis, libr. II Contra Munich. Chap. 44.

189 Est haec speciosior sole, et super ominen dispositionem stellarum, luci comparuta invenitur prior. Wis. 7:29.

183

107

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

Compared to light, you are ahead of it and surpass even the light of glory. This light is a creature, and no creature equals you. This light is the supreme fulfillment, the noblest crowning, and the beatific consummation of grace, but Divine Motherhood, especially glorified, is a grace of a higher order. Its splendors are lost in the heights of the hypostatic union above the common glory of the saints and, with the clarities that emanate from the divine body of Jesus Christ, form as it were the upper heaven of the empyrean itself.

52. O Mary, who from the summit of created beauty surpass in knowledge all pure creatures, 190 please enlighten me on the beauty and intrinsic perfection of paradise. Who can do it better than you, the living heaven built by the One who extended the heaven of nature! You are the heaven where the fire of Divinity lived and came out from God like a rising sun to enlighten those who were plunged in darkness. 191 You are the heaven which incomparably surpasses the other heavens in excellence because the Architect and the conservator of heavens made himself a child in you without human intervention. 192 You are a heaven more divine than heaven because the Sun of justice, who made the sun in the sky, was born from you. 193 You are a heaven nobler than the one which envelops the whole universe (the Empyrean). Your resplendent virtues are stars, etc.

194 O heaven of divinity, 195 make some of your rays shine in my eyes so that I may get to know, however little, the beauty of the heaven of the angels and Blessed!

In beata Virgine fuit major cognitio, quam in aliqua pura creatura. Bernardine de Busto, p. 4. serm. 2. De virtut. Marian.

191 Caelum animatum, ab eo qui caelum extendit, elaboratum, ex quo caelo Deus inter medias tenebras de gentibus, tanquam sol oriens prodiit, et in quo Divinitatis ignis habitavit. St. John Damascene in Men. graec. die 22 januar.

192 Id. orat. 2 de Assumpt.

193 Caelum caelo divinius, nam qui in caelo solem efftecit, ex hoc jusfitiae sol ortus est. Ibid. Orat. I De Nativ. B. M. V. 194 Caelum loco mundum ambiante nobilius, habitaculum virtutum fulgoribus, ceu stellis coruscans. Ibid. Orat. 4 De Nativ. B. M. V. 195 Caelum Deitatis. Id. In cant. Eccl. grace. Sono 1.

190

108

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

SECOND MEDITATION The Beauties of Paradise According to Father Segneri 53.

How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of host!

My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord.

Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, O Lord: They shall praise thee forever and ever. 196

“Consider,” Father Paolo Segneri 197tells us, “how beautiful paradise must be since it is the house of God: Domus Domini. The nobler the prince, the more sumptuous and splendid should be the house in which he lives. So how could we ever find any house better than this, the home of the greatest of kings? Dominus dominantium. 198 Five qualities make a home perfect: size, layout, beauty, richness, amenity. Where can these qualities come together better than in the house of God? Indeed, the greatness of paradise is such that our weak understanding cannot grasp or even form an image of it: O Israel, quam magna est domus Dei.” 199 Above we have tried to describe the vastness of the heavens (no. 5), and have seen that paradise is even greater as it envelops the whole universe in unimaginable proportions (nos. 21- 24).

“Concerning its layout, Jesus Christ lets us hear it very well in this passage: ‘In my Father’s house there are a large number of

Ps 83:2, 3, 5.

Manna dell’anima, Nov. 1.

198 Apoc. 19:16.

199 Baruch 3:24.

196

197

109

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

mansions,’ 200 indicating at the same time multiplicity and order, the greatest variety associated with a most admirable unity of design while everyone knows that in the houses of the great, nothing produces as much confusion as the multiplicity of apartments.” We have seen above 201 how rich the empyrean is in star categories, systems, and diverse bodies, and how these numerous residences are arranged in order of excellence, which makes their distribution at the same time simple and sublime.

54. “As for the beauty of paradise, it suffices to take a look at it, albeit from far away, namely, from our earth, to inspire our love for it: ‘I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of thy house; and the place where thy glory dwelleth.’ 202 “Its riches? Anyone looking for genuine wealth should seek it there if he wants to find it: Opulence and wealth are in His house. 203 What we enjoy outside of that is poverty, not wealth.

“Finally, what to say of its amenity? Do you not know that this divine house is not so much a house as a very pleasant garden of delights? Hence its name, Paradise: you have been in the delights of God's paradise. 204 “See how right the psalmist is to exclaim: Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, O Lord! So what is this house that makes you happy just by living in it? Is it the house of great people, palaces of monarchs? Certainly not: on the contrary, in the latter, we are often unhappier than at home because at home we are free, and in them we are slaves. Only the abode of bliss has the privilege of making happy those who live in it. Such is the house of God: Domus Domini. So what are you waiting for to fall in love with this house, as if on earth, wherever you are, you were not among those having only huts for Jn 14:2.

Nos. 34-36 202 PS 25:8.

203 Ps 111:3, from the Hebrew.

204 Ez 28:13.

200 201

110

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

shelter and living in houses of clay?” 205 Let us try to delve deeper into these notions that Fr. Segneri gives us about the beauty, richness, and amenity of Paradise by consulting scholastic philosophy and theology.

THIRD MEDITATION Beauties of Paradise from the Standpoint of Its Material 55. St. Thomas thus defines the beautiful: It is the shine of form observed on materials proportionally arranged, or on different forces or actions. 206 Its main elements are, therefore, the form, the material, and the remarkable qualities of both. In a later meditation, we will look at the actions or influences of the empyrean on the lower heavens.

What we have called the richness and amenity of paradise fits into the elements that we find in its beauty. Let us start by studying its material.

56. The Scholastics deal very seriously with the material that composes the heavens. 207 They wonder if it is of the same nature as that of the four elements, that is to say, the four bodies considered simple: fire, air, water, and earth. They generally conclude that the heavens are made up of a fifth essence, that is, another simple body, which is ether, and is incorruptible. Far from being a mere curiosity, this subject is important because it addresses the physical constitution of our future abode. To cover it, we will follow the process indicated in no. 40, taking into account the progress of astronomy and chemistry while drawing inspiration from major theological principles and great scholastic views.

Job 4:19.

Opusc. de Pulchro: Resplendentia formae super partes materiae proportionatas, vel super diversas vires, vel actiones.

207 St. Thomas 1. q, 66. a. 2. — De caelo et mundo, libr. I, lect. G, n. G, etc. Suarez, De opere 6 dierum 1. I, c. 5; Disput. metaph. Tom. 1, Disput. 13, sect. 10 & 11.

205 206

111

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

57. Today, the five elementary bodies of the ancients are replaced by seventy simple bodies, the number of which may increase or decrease with the properties of chemistry. Each of these bodies has specifically different atoms, the weight and size of which vary considerably depending on its species. Thus, the weight of the hydrogen atom is represented by 1; uranium, 240; iron, 56; gold, 196.5; silver, 108; mercury, 200; lead, 207; sulfur, 32, etc.

Considered mathematically, each of these atoms is indefinitely divisible; but in reality, they are indivisible by all physical means208 as each atom has its specific form that requires a minimum quantity of fixed and invariable matter as an essential instrument for its sensible manifestations. 209 So, when rust attacks iron, or acqua regia attacks gold or nitric acid attacks silver the molecules of these simple bodies disintegrate and form compositions but in any composition of molecules formed of heterogeneous elements, their atoms remain materially the same. We can, therefore, conclude that there are seventy different units of matter, of which the multiplication and various combinations form the entire material universe.

58. Now, do these specific differences which distinguish atoms of various kinds come only from the substantial forms of these atoms or also from a different nature of the material principle? For example, is gold gold only because its atoms have the substantial form of gold or also because the material part of its atoms is distinct from the material part of silver, mercury, etc. regardless of their formal principle?

This is a serious question, of which Suarez cleverly explains the pros and cons. 210 A great number of theologians, he says, are of the opinion that the material principle considered in itself and Licet corpus mathematico accoptum sit divisible in infinitum, corpus tamen naturale non divisible in infinitum : in corpore natnrali invenitur forma naturalis quae requirit determinatam quantitatem sicut alia accidentia. St. Thom. Phys. lec. 9.

209 Farges, Matière et Forme, l Part II, 2, a).

210 Disput. metaph. p. prior. Disput. 13. sect. 11e. Today's science agrees with St. Thomas on this point and accepts the plurality of the first elements of matter regardless of the diversity of forms.

208

112

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

independently of any form is identical in all bodies, so that matter is one. According to this opinion, it would suffice to give silver the substantial form of gold (which God alone, however, could do) for it to actually become gold since atoms would be of a different nature only because matter, unique in substance, would be grouped or crystallized in a different way by the various active ingredients which are its forms.

However, other theologians, including St. Thomas and Suarez, hold that matter is multiple and that the diverse activities of the various forms are not enough to produce material beings of a different nature. The various things have various matters; for the matter (substance) of spirits is not the same as that of bodies, and the latter is not the same as that of celestial and incorruptible bodies. There is no single matter with the potential to become anything in nature. 211 59. After these observations, it is easier to answer the following question: What is the matter of the empyrean and the lower heavens?

If we follow the first of the two opinions mentioned above, it is clear that the matter of the heavens, whatever they are, would be fundamentally the same as that of the earth because there would be only one raw material in the universe. However, as there are a large number of simple bodies, variously informed, nothing prevents the heavens, especially the empyrean, from being composed of the most beautiful and best elements.

If with the Angelic Doctor and Suarez we recognize the existence of several material types predating any form properly speaking (which, frankly, to me seems impossible if we judge it according to the scholastic notions of raw material and form, the first being pure power and having absolutely nothing determined by itself), will it be necessary immediately to conclude from there that the heavens are of a material constitution quite different from that of the earth? Saint Thomas thought so and based his assertion on the belief that the heavens are incorruptible, and incorruptible elements cannot be identical to decomposable elements such as those we see on earth.

211

Contra Gentiles 1. II. c. XVI. no. 8.

113

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

60. Although regretfully, I cannot follow the Master on this point 212 for several reasons. 1. The heavens and the earth have the same material constitution, at least generic, because the earth is itself a part of the heavens. 2. Uranoliths or stony masses that have fallen from the sky are composed of known material elements, iron, nickel, chromium, phosphate, silicates, carbon, etc. Besides, spectral analysis of the sun and stars leads to the same conclusions. 3. All heavens, except the Empyrean, as we will see in another meditation, were drawn from the same early chaos, the same shapeless matter of which the Book of Wisdom speaks. 213 4. Today we no longer admit the incorruptibility of the stellar skies: ‘Spectral analysis shows stars in the process of formation, others in the strength and brightness of mature age, while others are faltering and show by the dark-red lines of the spectrum an overabundance of hydrogen, a sign of old age and decline.” 214 “Spectral analysis teaches us to establish categories among the stars. Some are younger than our sun; others, on the contrary, are more advanced in their cooling process. The sun does not escape this general development; by dint of radiating heat and light one day, its rays will be extinguished and it will cover itself with a solid bark.” 215 “In the beginning, O Lord, thou foundedst the earth: and the heavens are the works of thy hands.

They shall perish but thou remainest: There are “elements common to celestial bodies and to terrestrial bodies: this is a considerable novelty. Until now, one had imagined that celestial bodies had a more subtle and purer material, a material apart and incorruptible. It was a fantasy. Today, we teach without contradiction that the stars are bulky, heavy, dense, sometimes solid, sometimes gaseous, similar in these points to matter here below...A chemical analysis of fragments of broken celestial bodies that fell on earth has verified that they contain iron, cobalt, manganese, copper, and other metals and metalloids representing about a third of the substances that science has distinguished in terrestrial bodies...Subjected to spectral analysis, the light of the sun and stars showed in their substance the presence of gas or vapor, iron, calcium, etc ... According to astronomers, the stars...are made of a material that is partly identical to the one that makes up our globe” Pierre Vallet, L'idée du beau dans la philosophie de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, II. c. II, III, 1887.

213 Creavit orbem terrarum ex materia invisa. Wis. 11:18 214 Farges, L'idée de Dieu, Part One, II, 2°.

215 Albert Auguste de Lapparent, speech at the Congress of Geology, Paris, July 4, 1878.

212

114

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

And all of them [the lower heavens] shall grow old like a garment: And as a vesture thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed.

But thou art always the selfsame, and thy years shall not fail.

The children of thy servants shall have a permanent abode [especially in the empyrean]; and their seed shall be directed forever.” 216 61. From these various considerations, we will draw several important consequences, which we will explain in part here and in part in the next meditation.

1. With all their happiest possible combinations, the 70 simple bodies give us a much more advantageous idea of the material perfection that paradise can have than if we simply admit a fifth essence uniformly common to all. Indeed, variety pleases – varietas delectat – and since God wants to make heaven the abode of definitive and unmixed bliss, imagine if you can the richness, beauty, variety and amenity of the material combinations these elements will form with each other!

Fr. Albert Farges 217 writes, “Twelve people around a table with 12 place settings can arrange themselves in 479,002,600 different ways; between two domino players who would take 7 dominoes each, they calculated over 137 billion different possible games. One’s imagination shrinks before this result; what would it be like if we tried to calculate the number of atoms in the earth alone (about 30 million per cubic millimeter) and the number of their possible combinations? All the buildings extant in the five parts of the world would not be enough to contain the manuscripts necessary for the calculators. And if we add that our globe is only an infinitely small point in the vastness of the heavens we can conclude that the total number of combinations of atoms in the universe can practically be considered infinite.”

Now, what sublime and ravishing combinations can divine wisdom operate for the beauty and richness of heavenly Jerusalem by using 70 simple bodies of different species whose atoms, multiplied to infinity, are so to speak countless! Everything here disconcerts our 216 217

Ps 101:26-29.

Fr. Albert Farges, L'idée de Dieu d’après la raison et la science, 1e partie, II. 5, B,b).

115

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

imagination: the skills of [God’s] infinite science, the possibilities of producing variety and beauty with the matter, and divine love, which will want to physically complement for eternity, one of its three masterpieces (nos. 31, 32).

62. 2. Besides, if it is true that God can admirably combine all matter, it is no less true to say that the empyrean will abound in the finest, most gracious and richest elements. The wall of the city of God was built with jasper stones but the city itself was made of pure gold, similar to a very clear glass. And the foundations of the city walls were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The first foundation was made of jasper, the second of sapphire, the third of chalcedony, the fourth of emerald, the fifth of sardonyx, the sixth of sardoin, the seventh of chrysolite, the eighth of beryl, the ninth of topaz, the tenth of chrysoprase, the eleventh of hyacinth, the twelfth of amethyst. The twelve doors were twelve pearls; each door was of a single pearl, and the city square was made of pure gold like transparent glass. 218 On the twelve doors of the heavenly Jerusalem ... are written the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. 219 ... On the twelve foundations of the city wall were the names of the apostles of the Lamb. 220 “The various beauties of all these precious stones, says Bossuet, 221 “represent very well the various gifts that God has placed in his elect and the various degrees of glory that St. Paul explains in another way by comparing stars: a star differs in clarity from another star.” 222 Let us add that the mystical and symbolic sense in no way harms the literal sense, which is like its body, but only completes it in a noble way. The Twelve Apostles of the Lamb and the various tribes of the elect, or Israel, have their private residences in the house of the heavenly Father, 223 and a dwelling, says St. Thomas must be Ap 21:18-21.

Ibid. 12.

220 Ibid. 14 221 Ap 21:19-20.

222 1 Cor 15:41 223 See above nos. 36, 38.

218 219

116

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

suitable for those who inhabit it just as the exterior clarity of a dwelling must correspond to the interior clarity of happy souls (no.

32).

Besides, let us not forget that the holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem, is identical to the third heaven and the empyrean (nos. 2024; 37, 41). Therefore, for example, the clarity of the sun is different from that of an apostle’s dwelling; the clarity of the moon, from the abode of a holy servant; the clarity of the stars, from the material and glorified attributes of the greatest Saints. 224 63. Oh, how sweet it must be for us to deprive ourselves here of material goods that are not absolutely necessary because they are all very imperfect, coarse, ugly, perishable, dangerous! Let us be satisfied with having food and clothing, for those seeking to get rich fall into temptation and the snares of the devil. The desire of money is the root of all evils. We have everything to lose by pursuing such imperfect and misleading goods. Let you, a man of God, flee these things and seek justice, piety, faith, charity, patience, meekness, and gain eternal life. 225 With it will come all goods, including the richest material goods; we will rejoice in all that is good, for that life is the mother of all goods. 226

FOURTH MEDITATION Beauties of Paradise Judged by Its Forms 64. For the sake of brevity, let us summarize in a few words this great and superb subject in the hope of completing the concepts below.

1. The ancients, who believed that every heaven is a homogeneous body and that all heavens together form a fifth essence, could simply ask themselves what the substantial form of the empyrean is. We must say that in the empyrean, there are as many 1 Cor 15:41.

1 Tim 6:8-12.

226 Wis. 7:11-12.

224 225

117

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

specifically different forms as there are specifically different bodies, and these bodies are not only simple bodies but also chemically composed bodies like most of those we see on earth.

Moreover, the heavens, including the empyrean (nos. 37, 41), are composed particularly of bodies and even of systems of celestial bodies; but these masses do not have the unity that we see in a plant or animal, where only one substantial form reigns. They have only the unity that comes from accidental forms. Consequently, they are aggregates of variously informed substances which, as we have observed above, can have a most admirable variety.

2. If we consider the material of the empyrean in relation to its forms we can say that it is in various respects corruptible and incorruptible. It is naturally incorruptible in its first elements. Thus, the atoms of gold, silver, or any simple body cannot be altered by finite causes. It is physically indivisible and its form always exists either in act if the gold is pure, or potentially if it enters into the composition of another body. God alone has control over simple bodies, that is to say, over the primary units of matter. 227 But bodies considered as such are subject to corruption if composed of simple elements in greater or lesser numbers. That is why if the empyrean has only incorruptible bodies even though they truly are composed, it is because this incorruptibility comes from an extrinsic and supernatural cause, rather than from the condition of matter.

Such is the opinion of Plato, quoted by St. Thomas. According to this Greek philosopher, God speaks to celestial bodies thus: You are decomposable by nature, but my will is that you become indissoluble.

My will wins over your composition. (1. q. 66. a. 2.). Let us conclude from this that the bodies that constitute the empyrean shine with These units are essentially made up of their form: the form of gold, sulfur, etc. They are like intrinsic foundations of the material universe. Nothing in nature can attack them. By competing for matter, these primitive forms generate secondary forms, which are those of chemical compounds and thus pass from act to potency, ready to awaken on a favorable occasion. Secondary forms are attackable by various agents of nature and are subject to corruption. In paradise, which is supreme material perfection in action, there no struggle among forms, but the more perfect reign without obstacle.

227

118

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

certain qualities divinely operated in them. They are subjects of a certain supernaturalization analogous to that which makes man an adopted child of God and citizen of heaven. Consequently, the bodies in the empyrean surpass other bodies since a Christian surpasses a pagan, and a resurrected human body surpasses a human body in its natural state.

65. 3. The human body glorified by the resurrection will be incorruptible and impassive, though certainly not because of its constitution, for as a compound it can be subject to corruption. But the empire that the glorious soul exercises over it and the effective protection with which the soul surrounds it 228 will make the human body the king of all bodies and protect it from all harm. 229 Now, if man’s body -- the most perfect of bodies – even when glorified does not have in itself the principle of its incorruptibility, what could be said of inorganic bodies in the empyrean!

In truth, they can challenge corruption only by virtue of principles that ensure the incorruptibility of the human body or similar principles. These principles are God and rational creatures: God as their efficient and final cause, and rational creatures as meritorious and subordinate final causes. The world was made to be the habitation of man and so it must suit man. But man will be glorified by the resurrection and so also the world must be proportionally glorified.

God will glorify the world to please man and to make the divine perfections shine in glorified bodies and even in man’s bodily senses.

This glorification of bodies will not modify their species but will add a more brilliant perfection to them. This perfection will be supernatural and will come from the Supreme Agent. Now, man deserves this glorification of the universe, which is done in his honor just as a man can deserve to wear sumptuous clothes. 230 Now, if these are the causes of the future glorification of the world, we must also attribute the empyrean’s present glory, incorruptibility and beauty to God as the author of the supernatural, to St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae suppl. q. 82. a. 1.

Ibid. Sed contra.

230 Ibid. q. 90. a. 1.

228 229

119

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

the faithful angels, Jesus Christ, Mary and the Saints. Oh, how everything in this abode is shaped and arranged to please us even in a supernatural way and to meet all our tastes! It is up to us to embellish it with more merits! In this respect, divine omnipotence will, so to speak, be at the service of our desires! God has committed Himself to make us fully contented! Absolutely nothing will be missing from whatever we may want to find there. 231 66. 4. Thus, the ravishing beauties of the empyrean, like those of the blessed who inhabit it, come mainly from accidental forms and are effects not only of the goodwill of God but also of the effort of rational creatures to make progress in the good. Let him who is just, continue to justify himself, and let him who is holy still sanctify himself. 232 Blessed is the man whose heart is disposed to ascend by steps and who, in this vale of tears, goes from virtue to virtue. 233 Paradise is like a very clear mirror that shines in its various places according to the light and beauty of the people who dwell there. Everything there is proportioned to the highest degree. So I cannot agree with Suarez, who thinks that the empyrean is equally beautiful and uniform everywhere.

234 No, while divinely beautiful everywhere, it is so in a way proportionate to the merits of each one, for accidental happiness, like essential happiness, has degrees: Multas mansiones sunt. 235 67. 5. The holy city is beautiful in the clarity of God that inundates it, and its light is like a precious stone, a jasper stone, even crystal. 236 The glory of God illuminates it, and its lamp is the Lamb. 237 Light is the form of the first bodily agent which is the sky. 238 The Empyrean’s light is not St. Anselm: Hoc scio quod nihil omnino aperit quod velis iidesse. Meditatio XVII : De fatum benefices Dei. d.

232 Ap 22:2.

233 Ps 83:6-8.

234 De opere 6 dierum, Lib, 1. e. 5. n. 5 235 Job 14:2.

236 Ap 21:11.

237 Ibid. 23.

238 St. Thomas, Quodlib. VI, a. 19. q. 11 : Lux corporalis est forma primi corporis agentis, scilicet caeli.

231

120

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

condensed into a body as in the sun, but is very subtle: it can be the light of glory 239 as long as it perfects inorganic bodies. This is what makes the heavens of heavens, that is, the regions or worlds of paradise unshakable. He [the Lord] established them forever; He hath made a decree, and it shall not pass away. 240 Thou wilt hear [the stranger] from heaven which is thy firm dwelling place; 241 the heavens of the Empyrean are very solid as if they were of brass; 242 the others will change (60, 4).

68. 6. Since the greatest riches, the rarest beauties, the most precious qualities come from the grace of God as much in the corporeal order as in the spiritual order, His grace is the good that I must seek most eagerly: Advenial regnum tuum. 243 O God for thee my soul hath thirsted, and so hath my flesh, like a parched earth! 244

CHAPTER FIVE Chart of Heavenly Residences Ego in altissimis habitavi, et thronus meus in columnna nubis. Gyrum caeli circuivi sola, et profundum abyssi penetravi: in fluctibus maris ambulavi, et in omni terra steti; et in omni populo, et in omni gente primatum habui (Ecclus. 24:7-10).

(I dwelt in the highest places, and my throne is in a pillar of a cloud. I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven, and have penetrated into the bottom

Habet incem caelum empyreum non condensatam … sient corpus solis, sed magis subtilem: vel habcl claritatem gloriae.1. q. 66, a. 3, ad 4..

240 Ps 148:6 241 2 Chr 6:33.

242 Job 37:18.

243 Mt 6:10.

244 Ps 62:2.

239

121

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

of the deep, and have walked in the waves of the sea, and have stood in all the earth: and in every people and every nation I have had the chief rule.)

FIRST MEDITATION Meaning of Mary’s Heavenly Dwelling The divine language which forms the Holy Scripture is eminently more fruitful than human language; it can designate at the same time several different things found at different degrees of perfection. The reason is that the source of the word of God is the infinite intelligence which absolutely cannot ignore anything upon revealing something. Therefore, this intelligence can have several subjects in view when saying only one word, and this word will also be true about all the things that it means, although it means them according to their nature or particular excellence.

69. Thus, the same passage can denote the city of Jerusalem and in higher meanings, the Christian soul, the Church, and the heavenly Jerusalem. This way of instructing is the one that best suits the Organizer of all beings and movements. It is the most natural language of this Providence which arranges the lower things so they serve superior things, and all together harmoniously elevate man to paradise and to the intuitive vision of God. 70. Besides, do we not find something similar in human language? If we reason about a plant considered as a living being, what we say about it is also true, but more perfectly so, of an animal; it is also true about man but to a higher degree; it is still true, but more excellently so of an angel; finally, God is life itself, substantial and infinite, the primary source of all life.

71. The Church to whom the Holy Ghost taught all truths is the witness and guarantor of the fact that God wanted to adopt this method of instruction in the Holy Books. For example, at times, the Church understands the same text as referring to uncreated Wisdom, at times

122

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

to Mary, at times to itself.

The admirable words quoted at the beginning of this meditation are proof of this: eternal Wisdom making itself known to us.

It is at the same time the absolute Wisdom of God and the hypostatic Wisdom in person, who is the Word, and Incarnate Wisdom, who is Christ. But although in a less elevated sense it also very truly refers to Mary, who participates in wisdom to the highest degree and to the Church, which is wisdom that guides man; and then, to lesser degrees of meaning, it refers to the supernatural wisdom of the saints and the just.

Every degree of wisdom can, therefore, say, each in its own measure: I have fixed my abode in the highest heavens, and my throne is on a cloud pillar: I live in the heights and my kingdom is as beneficent as the cloud that lit, led, and housed the Israelites in the wilderness; 245 my empire comes supernaturally from God. I alone go all around the firmament, and delve into the depths of abysses because I have knowledge of the first and supreme causes that are the divine attributes on which rest all things finite.

I walk on the waves of the sea, for being like a supernatural radiance from the face of God, the words of the world and changing things do not reach me.

I set my foot on all parts of the earth and exercise my dominion over all peoples and nations.

I was born Catholic, universal, and have not only superior knowledge of the world, its origin, and destiny but also a divine predominance that will always crush the enemies who charge against me, and under that influence, my friends will always be filled with blessings across the world and through the ages.

72. If wisdom can rightly hold this language even when considered in its lower degrees, what can be said of the highest participated wisdom of the most sublime of creatures, the Mother of God? What can we say 245

Ex 13:21 etc.

123

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

about her, not in her condition as a wayfarer on earth, but as triumphant and glorified in heaven? Let us try to understand the sublimity of these words.

I have fixed my abode in the highest heavens, and my throne is on a cloud column: my share of celestial happiness is so great and incomparable that it alone exceeds all the combined shares of angels and blessed. The sun, having reached the highest point of its diurnal course, eclipses the stars and the moon so much that they seem to no longer exist. Likewise, the Virgin, messenger of the true light in the abode of mortals, prevails by her splendor in the inaccessible light of the empyrean; and the dignity of angelic and human spirits so pale in comparison to the Virgin that they neither can nor should appear. 246 Thus, Cristobal Vega affirms that the Son of God alone can describe the glory of Mary and the Angels are incapable of doing so. 247 That is why the Mother of God can say: My throne is on a pillar of cloud, a bright and graceful cloud that makes the whole paradise rejoice, but a cloud that rises very high like a column and throne above the Seraphim, who cannot understand its entire elevation.

73. From atop her heavenly abode, the Holy Virgin may continue to say: Of all pure creatures, I am the only one who goes all around heaven; I penetrate the depth of the abysses, walk on the waves of the sea. The exceptional glory the Almighty showered upon me floods with its strong and soft light all regions and residences of the empyrean. I set my foot on all parts of the earth of the living as my Son has placed all things beneath me, and I exercise my dominion over all peoples and nations that inhabit the kingdom of heaven, blessing them with secondary happiness.

Indeed, after God, say the elect, Mary is the source of our

Sol incidius incandescens, ita sibi syderum et lunao rapit positionem, ut sint quasi non sint et videri non posuint : similiter et Virgo veri praevia luminis, in illa inaccessibili Ince praelucens, sic utroruinque spirituum hebetat dignitatem, ut in comparatione Virginis nec possint, nec debeant apparere (St. Peter Damien, Serm. De Assumpt.).

247 Mariae gloriam solus Filius describero potest, non Angeli. Cristobal Vega, Theologia Mariana, Syllabus rerum in voce Maria, no. 1879.

246

124

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

glory and greatest joy. 248 It is certain that the blessed feel more honored and content to contemplate the single spectacle of Mary’s beauty than to see all the marvelous ensemble of the heavenly court save for Jesus Christ. 249 St. Peter Damien tells holy Mary: After the glory that comes from the intuitive vision of God, sovereign glory consists in seeing you and being united to you by love. 250 And St. Bernard says that the glorious Virgin, by her Assumption, undoubtedly filled the citizens of heaven with additional happiness and joy. 251 74. This doctrine makes us know better and better the local and material home assigned to Mary in the empyrean. Indeed, we have seen that the divine Virgin occupies the highest material heaven (no.

38), that she shares her Son’s presidency over all Creation and forms the transition from the finite to the infinite (nos. 41-45).

The glorified celestial globes and systems are arranged to form and materially supplement the accidental happiness of the elect. That is the purpose for which the great Artist made and ordered them.

Therefore, they cannot fail to fulfill their destiny.

Now, since as we have just seen, Mary’s presence in paradise is the most beatific one after God and Jesus Christ, her throne, home, star, and sphere must be visible to all saints to the fullest unimaginable extent (nos. 21-23) of the kingdom of heaven, which is the meaning of the text placed at the head of this meditation.

75. I fixed my abode in the highest heavens: that means my area is not only a section of the most sublime material heaven but the whole extent of this heaven, which surrounds all the others. My throne is on a cloud column: It appears to all as very highly placed and surrounded by richness, beauty and grace impossible to express even in the language of a Seraphim.

Post Deum major nostra gloria, et majus nostrum gaudium ex Maria est. St. Bonaventure.

249 Vega, ibid. no. 1869.

250 Summa gloria est post Deum te videre, adhaerere tibi. Serm.1, De Nativ.

251 Virgo gloriosa caelos ascendens supernorum gaudia civium copiosis sine dubio cumulavit augmentis. Serm. 1 De Assumpt.

248

125

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

I alone go around the whole firmament and penetrate the depths of the abyss.

I share this abode and kingdom only with my divine Son; and our beatific radiance, mine through his, spread like a flood of sweet lights through all the lower worlds and on all parts of these worlds where some of the elect are found.

I walk on the waves of the sea, set my foot on all earth, and exercise my dominion over every people and nation. I reign not only with my Son over the ocean of all the finite goods that enrich the empyrean, and over its glorified worlds and happy inhabitants, but from high above I am also the star of the moving sea which is in the state of trial, and as Queen and Mother of humans I bless the peoples and nations that invoke me.

76. O great Mother of God, welcome these two filial tears that my eyes shed when I think of the grandeur of my heavenly Mother and the beauties and immensities of paradise. Please grant that faithful to the graces you have given me from atop your glorious abode, I may sanctify my earthly pilgrimage and end my days of trial only to contemplate you, the joy of heaven, your divine Son, Savior and immortal King of the ages, 252 and God the infinite Ocean of being, truth, beauty, and good.

SECOND MEDITATION Overview of Celestial Residences Under Mary’s 77. “It is written that 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 this Spirit.

For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.” 253 252 253

1 Tim 1:17. l Cor. 2:9-10.

126

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

This text deals first and directly with the mystery of the Incarnation and the spiritual goods set to derive from it for the salvation of man; mystery and benefits that, left to its own strength human reason could never have suspected but that we know thanks to the Revelation made to us by the Holy Ghost.

Now, according to observations made above (nos. 69-71), the inspired Apostle also speaks of later effects of the Incarnation and grace of the Redeemer, that is to say, the eternal rewards that God has prepared for those who love Him. This is also the interpretation of excellent commentators.

78. That is why we would have neither the audacity nor the capacity to deal with paradise, its spiritual glories, and corporeal residences if God had revealed nothing to us through His Church, the Holy Scriptures, or this kind of corporeal and visible Gospel which is nature. 254 Fortunately, the divine lights that illuminate humanity are abundant; and although our feeble glances can only perceive it in part according to the gift that God makes to each of us, what little we can contemplate is nevertheless admirable.

79. There are many mansions in my Father's house, said the divine Master. 255 But the House of the Father, which is in heaven, is the heavenly Jerusalem; it is the Empyrean with all its worlds (nos. 20-22; 34-44). What can and must these numerous residences be like? Of course, according to St. Thomas, Saint Gregory, St. Anselm, they are above all the various degrees of glory and bliss. But these expressions are generic and embrace both the essential and accidental happiness of the elect. Nature and the documents of Revelation tell us in unison that these mansions are also material and arranged in the shape of heavens.

Indeed, by the word heavens, we mean the various stages of Creation spherically superimposed on each other in relation to us, Velut quoddam Evangelium corporale et visible. Herbert de Boscham, pious author from the Middle Ages, cited by Msgr. Jean-Baptiste François Landriot, Le Symbolisme 1.

I. c. I. 255 Job 14:2.

254

127

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

containing various bodies like air, ether and innumerable stars, and hiding their upper parts from us. 256 The two main ideas that come first and most naturally to our mind when we name the heavens are, first, an indefinite space, and second, a prodigious number of globes that move broadly in that space.

Consequently, the kingdom of heavens and the heavens of heavens have as many spacious residences as different globes, and each of these globes can be shared as our earth is at present, in more limited residences: There are many dwellings in my Father's house.

That is why we do not represent the empyrean as a single celestial body, however large; for conceived in this way, it would hardly be a heaven and even less the kingdom of heaven.

80. One might object that in the Gospel, the Church is often called the kingdom of heaven, although she occupies only a small planet. I answer that this way of designating the Church is only a derivative and therefore, she cannot have a meaning as full as its type, which is the heavenly Jerusalem.

Note that the Church is called like that because she comes from the glorified heavens, from which her Founder descended; because she lives here below from the supernatural life that she receives from the higher heavens; because she is the nursery of future citizens and kings of the heavens; because taken in her totality as Church Militant, suffering and triumphant, she really embraces a large number of worlds; and finally, because during the formation of the new heavens and new earth the globe she occupies will be a district or perhaps a city of the immense empire of renewed heavens. Therefore, the name the Man-God gave the Church is not at all opposed to our interpretation of the celestial mansions but continues it in many ways.

The word coelum derives, according to some authors, from Koilos, hollow, concave, profound. Others read enclum, hence the verbs caclare and celere, to chisel, sculpt, and hide. Cadum vocation est eo quod tanquam caelatum vos impressa lumina habeat stellarum, veluti signa. St. Isidore of Seville, Book 13. Etymol. c. 4. St. Ambrose said the same thing: 1.2. Hexam, c. 4. According to the Fathers, and from the etymology of the word heaven, there is no heaven without stars.

256

128

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

81. Thus understood, these residences give us a somewhat less imperfect notion of St. John’s description of the Holy City. Indeed, to consider this happy abode merely as a city forgetting that it is the kingdom of heaven, the dwelling of the Father who is in heaven, the third heaven, the empyrean, is to risk getting an idea of it much inferior to what Christian teaching tells us. So let us try to understand St. John’s description from the point of view that we could call astronomical.

82. The city had a great and high wall. 257 This rampart is big and tall compared to us because the empyrean, if only in its interior, contains all moving heavens within our solar system, limbo, purgatory, and hell.

However, this wall is only one hundred and forty-four cubits 258and thus little related to the prodigious elevation of the buildings of this city.259 That is certainly not surprising because the wall or boundary line that separates the empyrean from the inferior heavens is the lowest and least perfect part of paradise. 260 The wall has twelve gates, at the gates twelve angels, and inscribed on the gates are the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.

There are three gates at each cardinal point; the twelve gates are twelve pearls, and each gate is a single panel. Certain astronomical notions are necessary to understand these passages.

83. In the heavens, there are stars of the most diverse forms. The planet Saturn has around it three solid, opaque, concentric rings separated from the planet by a considerable space, independent from each other, and separated by empty spaces. Comet 1744 had six tails arranged in the shape of a fan. We have seen comets whose tail occupied more than a quarter of the sky; the comet of 1843 measured 62 million leagues. 261 The stars called nebulae are even more remarkable. Very numerous, they form cones, spindles, spirals, diamonds, rings. “That Ap 21:12.

Ibid. 17.

259 Fr. P. Drach, Commentary on the Apocalypse.

260 According to Bossuet, the wall is measured by its thickness and not its height.

L’Apocalypse, ch. 21. It would be the thickness of the bordering area.

261 Léon-Michel Desdouits, Leçons élémentaires d’astronomie, c. XL. 257 258

129

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

long, white band that circles the sky, which everyone knows as Milky Way is only a huge nebula.” 262 “Mr. Otto Struve thinks that the stars that compose the Milky Way do not form a full disc as William Herschel claimed but a ring on the circumference of which the stars would be massed in great numbers while the empty part would be occupied by our sun and a few stars scattered around it. Our stellar system would only be a kind of ring-shaped nebula.” 263 84. Since the skies accessible to the observations of human science present us with such vast rings and stars that embrace a quarter of the sky, countless armies of stars 264 that seem to form only one and surround the whole sky like a broad belt, I ask: are we very far from this wall of which St. John speaks, which surrounds the heavenly Jerusalem and separates the empyrean from the inferior heavens?

There are nebulae in all parts of the sky; there are huge clusters of cosmic matter. Everything leads us to believe that the apostle saw the wall that separates the empyrean from the mobile and changing skies, that is, the lowest zone of the empyrean where the stability and glorification of matter begins; its wall was made of jasper.

Here are the three ideas that the wall of the heavenly Jerusalem brings to mind: the immobility of matter, which has attained its perfect equilibrium; the limit which separates the abode of glory from evolving worlds; and the richness profusely displayed there.

85. The wall has twelve gates, three on each side of the city, which indicates its size and perfect symmetry. 265 Are the twelve gates all placed on the same horizontal plane or are some of them arranged one above the other on a vertical plane? The Apostle does not say it, but it is clear that with its twelve doors, the empyrean, which encompasses Ibid. c. XIV n. 118. Certain astronomers even tell us that there are many Milky Ways in the skies, although with the naked eye we see only one.

263 Marie-Nicolas Bouillet, Dictionnaire des sciences, entry Voie.

264 There are only 18 million stars in the Milky Way, and there are nebulae all over the sky.

265 We will see later (nos. 160-162), that in its external form the empyrean is a large cube. Its internal surfaces, which immediately encompass the lower worlds seem to have the same shape. In this case, it would have two gates in each of its six faces.

262

130

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

all lower heavens, opens up to all of them as well.

86. Twelve angels stand at the twelve gates: this is where the supernatural and glorified kingdom begins, very well indicated by the presence of the angels. No one can get there without the special help of Providence. Besides, the divine messengers are there to honor those who enter and those who go out, all of them children and beloved of God. 87. The twelve gates of the holy city have the names of the twelve tribes of Israel; the Church on earth is an image of the Church of heaven; the Old Testament, relatively imperfect, was the vestibule of the New; and its saints, generally speaking, did not equal in holiness those who were formed in the heyday of the Gospel. No one greater than John the Baptist arose from among the children of women, yet the smallest person in the kingdom of heaven, in his capacity as a Christian, and observant of the law of grace in the Church of Jesus Christ, is greater than him. 266 That is why the regions of the empyrean closest to the gates are especially residences of the saints who preceded Jesus Christ on Earth. 267 This layout of the heavenly Jerusalem makes us think of one of its clearest corporeal images, the temple of Jerusalem, which had three courts in succession: that of Gentiles, then that of Jews, priests, and finally, the Holy of Holies. Besides, the twelve tribes of Israel indicate the multitude and universality of saints rather than remarkable degrees of holiness, an indication clearly placed on the gates of the City of God. 88. These twelve gates were twelve pearls, and each gate was made of one of these pearls. “St. John employs all these hyperboles,” Father P. Drach says, “to give us a faint idea of the beauty of the Spouse of the Lamb.” 268 Mt 11:11. Out of the three passages taken from the best authors, ours is one of the two most natural interpretations of this passage.

267 Duodecim portae designant patriarchas... per quos tides venturi filii Dei, meritis beatae Virginis, ad posteros pertransivit. St. Bernardine of Siena, T. III, Serm. De Assumpt. B. V. 268 Loc. cit.

266

131

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

With due apologies to the venerable author of these words I must ask: If there are pearls in this world, is it astonishing that there should pearls and very large ones, in the empyrean as well? Should the material chosen to constitute corporeal paradise not be the richest and most beautiful of the mineral and animal kingdoms? And since this material serves so to speak as a mirror to the light of glory, can it be of less value than the perishable substances formed in the shells of mollusks? If astronomers see three rings around Saturn if there are nebulae and comets in the most varied forms, why find it singular that the empyrean has material doors at least as rich as pearls and made in one piece?

These substantial and palpable realities are not at all opposed to the symbolism or mystical meanings that Christian authors find in them; instead, they are their material causes. And through glorified material beings, the living Church and the spiritual things that form the higher beauties of Paradise acquire visible features that complement the riches and beauties of the glorious City of God. On this point, let us hear the Angel of the School, St. Thomas Aquinas.

89. Eyes of flesh cannot enjoy the vision of the divine essence; this is why as suitable compensation for the deprivation of this vision they will see the divinity in its corporeal effects, which will evidently shine with signs of the divine majesty and particularly in the flesh of Christ, then in the bodies of the blessed, and finally in all other bodies. Hence it will be necessary even for the celestial bodies to receive a greater influence of divine goodness than they would in their natural state.

That influence will not change their species but will add a certain glorification to them. 269 Therefore, the words of St. John mentioned above can be taken literally, except for the true statement that human language, even revealed, is unable to describe all the beauty and richness of the abode of glory.

90. If the gates of paradise are so magnificent, what can one say of the increasingly sumptuous mansions stretching on all sides to the top of 269

3 p. q.90.a. 1

132

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

the empyrean? It is suitable for the corporeal place intended for contemplation to have an exterior clarity proportional to the various degrees of interior clarity of the blessed. 270 As part of the accidental happiness of the saints, a suitable place is assigned to each glorious body according to its degree of dignity. 271 Thus, the beloved apostle, telling us about the city walls and the foundations of its buildings, says they were adorned with all kinds of precious stones and bore the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb. One thing is the richness of the gates, and another the sumptuousness of the foundations. But what is meant by these foundations?

91. In astronomy (because the paradise embraces the heavens of heavens and is heaven par excellence), the foundations are the largest and most majestic bodies which govern the lesser bodies and are the great centers of attraction. I, therefore, imagine these foundations as placed in the highest regions of the empyrean and holding all bodies of smaller dimension under their dependence. These are the thrones suitable for the Apostles of the Lamb and are more proportional to the interior clarity of the Church’s founders. 272 The universal harmony that reigns in this happy abode is so perfect that the material residences themselves reflect the glorious influence of those who inhabit them. Here, the material Church is all laid out to physically and admirably reflect the degrees of perfection of the members of the living and triumphant Church.

Moreover, nothing prevents the apostles from having as entourage in their splendid residences, even better than kings of the earth, people who imitated them most faithfully during the earthly trial. There is no isolation in the supreme reign of charity or in the happiest of societies. The foundations of the City are thus adorned with Locus corporeus deputatur contemplationis... propter congruitatem, ut exterior claritas interioris conveniat. 1. p. q. 66. a. 3. ad 3.

271 Locus congrues unicuique glorioso corpori deputatus secundum gradum suae dignitatis perlinet ad praemium accidentale. 3 p. q 84, a. 2, adl 5.

272 Fondamenta ejus in montibus sanctis: The foundations (of the City of God) are on the holy mountains (Ps 86:1).

270

133

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

all kinds of precious stones, even as they are themselves miracles of wealth.

92. As for the pure gold, limpid like crystal, that paves the square and is used for the construction of the buildings, it indicates the beauties and riches common to all residences of the empyrean rather than distinguish them from each other.

Besides, here everything is carefully measured; nothing is done at random. All residences, the most and least splendid, are placed at a suitable height and bear the ornaments proportioned to their inhabitants’ reward.

THIRD MEDITATION The Provinces of the Empyrean and the Residences of the Apostles 93. I also imagine the empyrean divided into twelve immense provinces, each of which is presided over by an apostle and ends at one of the gates. These, as we have seen, bear the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. The divine Master said to his dear disciples: Amen, I say to you, that you, who have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the seat of his majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 273 94. About this passage, Cornelius a Lapide points out that the throne of the Apostles signifies their function as judges, their dignity and preeminence over others, the proximity to Jesus Christ of the place they will occupy, their very close union with the Man-God, their primacy of grace, happiness and glory. They are known as the princes of the kingdom of heaven who have the right to judge others, to admit 273

Mt 19:28.

134

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

in paradise those who are worthy, and to exclude the unworthy. St. Thomas teaches us exactly what the judgment of the Apostles will entail: they will proclaim, he says, the sentence pronounced by Jesus Christ so that everyone knows what is rightfully due to him. 274 The saintly Doctor goes on to write an entire article to prove that the power to judge belongs to the poor who abandon everything and are attached only to Jesus Christ. This power is due to them, first because having trampled on everything that can corrupt one’s judgment they will be able to judge very fairly as they preferred the truth of justice to everything else; second, because they deserved the glory of being judges by suffering for the love of Christ all the humiliations that poverty entails; third, because, prepared by poverty their intellects and minds are enlightened with all divine truths, which they can manifest to others. 275 95. Several consequences naturally follow from this doctrine: 1. It goes without saying that in heaven, the Apostles will keep the same preeminence they will enjoy on the Day of Judgment because the reasons for this primacy do not change and they will always be the princes of heaven with all the prerogatives attached to their dignity.

2. It is they who, charged by Jesus Christ to make known to everyone what is due to him for his merits, will assign to each elect his home and to each reprobate his measure of punishment.

3. The Apostles, occupying twelve thrones, will, therefore, have so to speak twelve kingdoms; 276 and as they judge on behalf of Jesus Christ the twelve tribes of Israel, that is to say, all the faithful people of the entire world, 277 they will reign with Jesus Christ over the whole extent and all the inhabitants of the empyrean, each one Part 3, q. 89. a. I. Ibid. a. 2.

276 Aperuisti credentibus regna caelorum. Brev. rom.

277 Super duodecim tribus Israël, intelligitur tota plebs fidelium totius mundi : quia... gentilitas... facta est consors promissionis factae patribus. St. Thomas. Comment. in Matth. C. XIX, 28.

274 275

135

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

especially on what I would call ‘his province,’ for it is not without reason that the Gospel presents to us the tribes and thrones as distinct.

4. While in the Church Militant, which is the image of paradise, the Apostles had jurisdiction over the whole world: Euntes in mundum universum, 278 they nevertheless worked in specific regions.

5. Their thrones in the empyrean are worthy of close friends of the Son of God and are very highly placed in the upper glorified heavens as befitting princes of the celestial court, the poorest, most persecuted, most zealous, and most holy after Jesus Christ.

96. From atop their thrones, close to that of the Son of God, their glory and dignity radiate throughout Paradise and particularly in the region assigned to each of them, which ends at one of the gates of the empyrean. St. Vigilance says about the life of St. Astion: The City of God is very illustrious ... its wall has twelve gates...The first is that of Peter, the second that of Paul, the third that of Andrew, the fourth that of John, the fifth that of James, the sixth that of Philip, the seventh that of Bartholomew, the eighth that of Thomas, the ninth that of Mathias, the tenth that of Thadeus, the eleventh that of Simon, the twelfth that of Mathew. 279 We cannot find in this list the name of James the son of Alpheus who, however, according to the Savior, also has his throne. St. Vigilance designated Paul in his place. But this is not a serious difficulty because, without having recourse to the mystical interpretation commonly given by the authors, Peter and Paul might as well appear together, since the Church gives them the same name -- Princes of the Apostles. 280 They completed their apostolate together and the Church Mk 16:15.

Cited by Cornelius a Lapide, Comment. in Apoc. C. XXII, 5.

280 Decora lux aeternitatis auroram Diem beatis irrigavit ignibus, Apostolorum quae coronat principes, Reisque in astra liberam pandit viam.

Hymn of the Apostles Peter and Paul, Brev. Rom. 29 June.

“Si hic audivoriums (Paulum praedicantem), et illic (in caelo) ipsum omnino videbimus, 278 279

136

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

solemnizes their memory with the same feast; hence, nothing prevents them from sharing the same throne in heaven.

97. What we have just said about the gates of Paradise does not invalidate what we said above according to St. John: that the names inscribed on the gates are those of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel (no. 87), for although these gates have the names of the twelve tribes they give access to the regions presided over by the Twelve Apostles who, as twelve new patriarchs and in a higher sense, spiritually engendered the Christian tribes and are with them in the higher stages of the empyrean thanks to more sublime degrees of perfection.

98. In my view, the formal teaching of Jesus Christ seems to corroborate these explanations. He presents Himself as coming back from heaven to judge men on the last day, commanding that His servants be brought to Him to find out how much each of them put to work the money (graces) he gave them. It is the same circumstance as the one mentioned above (no. 93), but here the kind of reward that will be granted to His faithful servants is better indicated.

The first servant came, saying, Lord, your pound has gained ten pounds. The Lord said to him: well done, good servant; because you have been faithful in a little, you will have power over ten cities. A second one came and said, Lord, your pound has produced five more pounds. And the Lord said to him, be you also the head of five cities. 281 “That means,” observes Cornelius at Lapide, “that for one pound you will receive one hundred, and therefore a thousand; for much more, you will receive the government of a province, for example, ten cities and more. For a little work and care that you had on earth, you will win great, amazing, ineffable rewards in heaven and will notably preside over those with whom you shared your divine gifts on licet, non e propinque stantes, videbimus tamen prope regalem thronum splendentem, ubi Cherubim Deum glorificant, ubi Seraphim volant, illic Paulum videbimus cum Petro Sanctorum Chori principem ac ducem, et ejus germana caritate fruemur” St. John Chrysosthom, Breviar. Rom. die IV julii, lect. IV. 281 Lk 19:15-19.

137

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

earth, whom you will have converted to Jesus Christ or established in faith and in virtue.”

99. Now, the work of the twelve Apostles was such that all the supernatural gifts that are dispensed to men until the end of time come in some way from their ministry, work and examples, and their complete immolation to the cause of God and souls. 282 Besides, after Jesus Christ, it was thanks to them that the figurative Church of the Old Testament was transformed into a relatively perfect Church of the New Testament and achieved her destiny.283 Therefore, the adequate reward for such works in matters of accidental happiness can only be glory and preeminence over all celestial tribes and all the regions they inhabit.

100. Let us listen to St. Ambrose commenting on the evangelical passage reported above: the ten cities are the souls on which are rightly appointed those who have lent human souls the currency of the Lord, that is to say, the true doctrine. For, as the earthly Jerusalem is said to be built like a city (Ps 121), so are peaceful and glorified souls; and just as angels preside over, so do those who deserved to live the life of angels. 284 “You will have stewardship over ten cities,” said the venerable Bede, “that is to say, in heaven, you will have more abundant bliss and honor and will be glorified in the higher regions for all the good that you did to others and for all those with whose salvation you cooperated. The order of dignity and homage among the blessed, proportional to each one’s rank, will remain even after the Judgment.

That is what the Apostle says: “For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of

For in Jesus Christ, by the Gospel, I have begotten you, says St. Paul (1 Cor. 4:15.), which is true of all Apostles.

283 God...has made us fit ministers of the new testament...in the spirit...a ministry much more abundant in glory than that of Moses (2 Cor. 3:6-13).

284 Cited by St. Thomas, Catena aurea, in Lucam, XIX. 17.

282

138

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

glory? Are not you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For you are our glory and joy.” 285 101. But how will the Apostles in heaven respond to the honors and tributes they receive from their inferiors? St. Thomas teaches: “There is no harm in admitting that someone receives some light from another: for the angels are enlightened by God and men by the angels.

Not surprisingly, men will be enlightened by the Apostles, who will be full of light. That is why the role of the Apostles will not be limited to judging men, as we have said: ‘They will also shine a certain light on the righteous ... Just as the light was given by the angels, the execution of the judgment will also be done by the angels,’ that is to say, by the Apostles, ‘because those are called angels who followed justice and abandoned everything else, according to Job's words: judgment will be ‘entrusted to the poor (Job 36: 6).’”

102. So says the saintly Doctor in his Commentary on Matthew, 286 and the Church has also consecrated this doctrine by her liturgy. Let the globe leap with joy, she says; let heaven resound with praise: let earth and stars sing in unison the glory of the Apostles. She calls them the judges of ages and true lights of the world. They are the ones who close the temples of heaven and open them with their word.

With hearts inebriated with joy, let us sing the eternal gifts of Christ, the glory of the Apostles, their palms, and the hymns that are due to them. They are the princes of the Churches, the generals victorious in battle, the soldiers of the celestial court, and the true lights of the world. In them shines the glory of the Father; in them, the Son triumphs; in them reigns the will of the Spirit; through them, heaven is filled with joy. 287 Thus, the light which the Apostles project on all lower regions of the empyrean is not a simple clarity but a divine effusion that adds to the light of glory brings the saints varied contentment and enhances 1 Thess. 2:19-20. This passage from St. Bede is cited by Cornelius a Lapide. Comm. in Lucam, 19:17.

286 Mt 19:28.

287 Hymns of the Roman Breviary Comm. of the Apostles.

285

139

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

their accidental happiness. God uses them to complete the bliss of the blessed as He used them to lead men to the kingdom of heaven, and in this way, they gloriously reign in the empyrean.

Moreover, Paradise is undoubtedly the most perfect type of a well-ordered society; it is an empire the parts of which best harmonize with each other and the whole. The theological reason, therefore, adds its weight to that of the authorities we have cited.

FOURTH MEDITATION Reflections 103. Happy, a thousand times happy are those who during the short time of their mortal life faithfully follow in the footsteps of the august Mother of God and the Holy Apostles! It is by adopting their views, feelings and tastes, and by imitating their conduct that we build ourselves rich and imperishable residences in the empyrean. The more graces we receive and the more care we have to make them bear fruit, the more we will be elevated and glorified in the celestial abode: “Because you have been faithful in a little, you will have power over ten cities.” 288 But these little things, these talents that have been allocated to each of us can increase indefinitely in number and quality because fidelity increases graces, and graces increase fidelity. It, therefore, depends largely on us to climb from degree to degree up the increasingly resplendent floors of the celestial homeland.

104. O Mary, the happiest, holiest, most lovable of creatures, please use your almighty credit to obtain for me the grace to imitate you on earth so that I may imitate you and share your happiness in heaven. I ask particularly for the grace of Christian wisdom, a choice gift of the Holy Ghost that shone in you to the highest degree and which I need to appreciate spiritual and eternal goods at their true value and to prefer 288

Mt 25:21.

140

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

them to all else. If you deign to heed my wishes, I will happily say with you, albeit to a lesser extent: 105. I fixed my home in the highest heavens: my usual thoughts and most frequent aspirations are for the third heaven, where God was kind enough to prepare a home for me. That is the purpose of my existence. Oh, how right it is for my intellect, heart, imagination, and everything in me that can rise to the higher regions, to tend to do so constantly!

My throne is on a cloud column. It is true that to live in 289 heaven I must be carried there by a supernatural force that tears me away from the tyranny of the senses, breaks the ties that attach me to this visible world, and lifts me up as if on a chariot despite the resistance of nature and the prince of the powers of the air; 290 but this force, this chariot, this throne is faith, this faith which is victorious over the world 291 and whose good fight makes me win eternal life, to which I am called. 292 106. I alone go around the sky and penetrate the depth of the abysses; I walk on the waves of the sea: in solitude, my soul meditates on the ineffable goods of the kingdom of heaven: I descend by thought to the abyss of perdition and frightened by this latter spectacle as much as enchanted by the former I live on this earth as if walking on sea waves, always prepared for death, seeing only so to speak a naked and mobile surface and becoming attached to nothing, because this world passes away. 293 May your grace, o my God, your benign protection, o Mary, sustain my frail boat on this sea in these waves I must cross so they do not overwhelm me but that I dominate them. Accompany me with the favorable wind of your heavenly inspirations so that I do not remain

Nostra conversatio in caelis est. Phil 3:20.

Eph. 2:2.

291 1 Jn 5:4.

292 1 Tim 6:12.

293 1 Cor 7:31 289 290

141

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

stationary for a single moment but unceasingly move toward the port by continually accomplishing my duties.

107. I go all over the earth: that is to say, I thought about my ways and about all the paths that open up to me all over the earth, of all I could do and become during the days of my trial, and turned my feet into your testimonies. 294 Vanity of vanities, says the Ecclesiastes, all things are vanity; 295 only one thing is really important to man: to fear God and observe His Commandments, for in his Judgment God will take account of all his faults and all the good and bad he will have done. 296 108. I have primacy over all peoples and nations: This Christian wisdom gives all those who practice it a marked superiority over the whole segment, however large, of the human race that does not practice it.

One must despise the world to master it. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. 297 Every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting. 298 Mary and the Apostles acted in this way to reign in heaven, and you made them princes over the whole land of trial 299 and established them as princes over all the land of the living. Oh, how true it is that to serve God is to reign! And what a noble way to reign!

Ps 118:59.

Eccl 12:8 296 Eccl 12:13,14.

297 Mt 6:33.

298 Mt 19:29.

299 Ps 44:17.

294 295

142

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

CHAPTER SIX The World Accessible to our Observations Gives Us an Idea of the Disposition of the Celestial Residences because of the Unity of the Divine Plan Fundamenta ejus in montibus sanctis: Diligit Dominus portas Sion super omnia tabernacula Jacob. Gloriosa dicta sunt de te, Civitas Dei...

Numquid Sion dicet: Homo et homo natus est in ea; et ipse fundavit eam Altissimus? ... Sicut lactantium omnium habitatio est in te.

(Ps 86:1-7) Since this psalm is so beautiful and directly related to the subjects deal with in this chapter, let me first give its full translation from the Hebrew, done by Vigouroux and Lesetre. 300 1. The Lord establishes its foundations on the holy mountains; 2. The Lord loves the gates of Zion above all the tabernacles of Jacob.

3. Glorious things are said of thee, O City of God! 4. I will be mindful of Egypt and Babylon among my servants. Behold the foreigners and Tyre, and the people of the Ethiopians, these were [spiritually] born there [in Jerusalem].

5. And they say of Zion: “A whole multitude of men was born there.” The Most High founded it himself.

6. The Lord shall tell in his writings of peoples and princes, of them that have been in her.

7. And singers and musicians exclaim: “All my sources are in you!

Fulcran Vigouroux, Manuel Biblique, and H. Lesètre, Le livre des psaumes. Here I merge two slightly different French translations into one, taking advantage of commentaries.

300

143

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

FIRST MEDITATION Physical-world, Human Society, Visible Supernatural; the Scripture Teaches Us about Paradise and especially the Diversity and Subordination of its Mansions 109. The Lord establishes on the holy mountains. That is the case with all the works that God founds. They are based on something which exceeds them in excellence or quantity because the supreme Wisdom arranges everything orderly. 301 Thus, in terms of its surface, the Moon, which is based primarily on Earth, is fourteen times smaller than our globe, and its volume is forty-nine times less than that of our planet. The Earth, which hangs around the sun, is fourteen hundred thousand times less voluminous than the star of the day. Likewise, the visible heavens, with their millions of worlds, are all attracted to the empyrean, which is the real cause of their centrifugal movement and far surpasses them in perfection and grandeur.

Finally, the whole material universe rests on spirits, on the Angels who govern it, on the three Divine Persons whose power, wisdom, and love support, direct and lead to their ends all things created. The deepest foundation of all that exists is God considered absolutely, the Lord who is infinite and exists by Himself: I am the One who am, independent in all respects, sufficient reason of myself and of everything that exists outside of Me. 302 Nothing outside Me has being by itself; I am the Lord, and there is no other. 303 Ad providentiam divinam pertinet ut ordo serveter in rebus ... haec autem proportio (ordinis) est, ut. sicut supremne creaturae sunt sub Deo, et gubernantur al) ipso, ita inferiores creaturae sint sub superioribus, et regantur ab ipsis... Corpora inferiora reguntur a Deo per superiora... Mediantibus creaturis intellectualibus aliae creaturae reguntur a Deo... Substantiae intellectuales inferiores reguntur per superiores. St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles, 1. 3. cc. 78, 79, 82.

302 Exod. 3:14.

303 Isa 45:6.

301

144

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

110. All beings in nature that serve as a basis or platform to other things, can be called holy mountains because they are faithful ministers of God acting in a manner perfectly according to the divine plan.

It is befitting a king’s dignity, says St. Thomas, to have a large number of ministers and several kinds of executors of his orders; for the more he has subjects in various degrees of being, the more will his authority display greater brilliance and force. But there is no king whose dignity is comparable to that of the divine King who rules the world. Therefore, the plans of divine Providence should be carried out by agents of varying degrees. 304 111. Human society, too, is founded on an analogous principle.

Authority usually presupposes more intelligence and merit than is found in common men. However, it is true in all cases that authority is formed by more abundant participation in the sovereign domain that the Creator has over all things. That is why kings, priests, heads of families, and generally all men who govern society are specially called ministers of God: they exert a powerful attraction on which social order is founded.

Moses was told to choose from among the entire people firm and courageous men who fear God, love truth, are enemies of greed, and to make some of them the leaders of a thousand men, others of a hundred, others of fifty, others, of ten. Let them occupy themselves doing justice to the people at all times: but let them reserve for you the biggest cases and judge only the smallest: thus, being shared with others, this burden that weighs on you will become lighter. 305 The fool Contra Gentiles I.3.c. 77. In hoc mundo visibili nihil nisii per creaturam invisibilium disponi potest (St. Greg. Dial. liv. 4. e. 6). — Omnia corporalia reguntur per Angeles (Sum. th. 1 p. q. 110. a. 1.). — Omnia corpora (reguntur) per spiritum vita rationalem... et ille per ipsum Deum (St. Augustine De Trinit.

I.3.c.4). — Dei providentia regens atque administrans universam creaturam ... subdit primitus omnia sibi, deinde creaturam corporalem creaturae spirituali, irrationalem rationali (id. De Gen. ad litt. 1. 8, c. 23).

304

305

Exod 18:21-22

145

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

shall serve the wise. 306 A wise man is valiant; a knowledgeable man is strong and resolute. 307 There is safety where there is much counsel. 308 A wise servant shall rule over the foolish sons of his master. 309 112. Finally, if we consider the two orders of things that share the universe – the supernatural order and the natural order – we will also note that the former, being incomparably more perfect than the latter, from one standpoint serves as its foundation and from another standpoint crowns it with perfection. 310 See how all beings of nature support one another, big ones serving as centers for little ones, and these as centers for others still smaller. But all things seem to lack natural support and would fall into nothingness were they not carried by the supernatural ocean in which they all swim without exception. This is the ocean of glorified angels and especially of the infinite Being in whom we live, move, and are. 311 So the Church has her ministers recite this sublime prayer daily: “O God, the sustaining power of created things, who in Thyself dost remain unmoved and dost determine our times by successive changes of the light of day: Bestow Thou upon us Thy light in the evening [of life], that life may never fail us but that eternal glory may await us as the reward of a holy death.” 312 113. It is, therefore, true that the Lord builds only on holy mountains.

Everything that has a leading role in nature ranks among His ministers, and as such, participates in God’s holiness, which is a substantial and infinite love of order and all good. But as we observed above (69-71), the divine style is full of things; it is like the mirror of the whole world.

Prov. 11:29 Prov. 24:5.

308 Prov. 11:14 309 Prov. 17:2. Cf. Contra Gentiles 1. III, c, 81.

310 Quia ille (Deus) non est talia substantia, quae videri oculis posait, et miracula ejus, quibus totum mundum regit, universamque creaturam administrai, asaiduitate viluerunt.., servavit sibi quaedam…Majus enim miraculum est guberniatio lotius mundi, quam saturatio quinque milliun hominum de qunque panibus. St. Aug. Tract. 24 in Joann. et Brev. Rom. Dom. IV Quadrag. 3° nocturno.

311 Acts 17:28.

312 Breviarium Romanum, hymn of None.

306 307

146

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

Each image reflected in this mirror first presents to us, very faithfully, directly and without difficulty, the features of the thing that God wants to make known; that is its literal meaning. But since this reflection is much more faithful than photographs and often reproduces the entire thing, when considered in the light of Revelation, this thing appears with all its relationships with the other parts that make up the universe.

Now, by making nothing in isolation, and by arranging all things in groups and categories the Creator so to speak makes us see, in germ, superior things in inferior ones, and glimpse in superior things, more and more noble and perfect things until we find and contemplate Him face to face; 313 hence the other meanings of divine Scripture.

114. If what is invisible in God has become visible since the Creation of the world by the knowledge that creatures give us of Him, 314 with all the more reason, the things that enter into the divine plan tend to make one another known in divinely inspired Scriptures.

Certainly, while there are closely knit relations between a creature and its Creator, no less close relations exist among the various parts of the same supernatural order. These parts resemble the members of a body; they fit into each other, the shape of one helps people know how to determine the shape of others and to get an adequate idea of them. Let me make a comparison taken from paleontology.

115. The illustrious zoologist George Cuvier, having found some scattered fragments of a fossilized animal body of unknown species made a drawing of the whole animal with no other indications than the shape of the fragments he possessed. Scholars disputed the accuracy of his reproduction.

“Suddenly, from a plaster quarry exploited in Vitry-sur-Seine, a gigantic skeleton rises: do you recognize me, the monster seems to ask.

Talis est ordo in rebus, quod superiora in entibus sunt, perfectiora inferioribus; et quod in inferioribuis continetur deficienter et particulariter et multipliciter, in superioribus continetur eminenter et per quamdam totalitatem et simplicitatem. Sum. Theol. 1 p. q. 57 a. 1.

314 Rom. 1:20.

313

147

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

Now compare Cuvier's drawing to the precious fossil; which of the two is a copy of the other? Never had science achieved such a dazzling and complete triumph.” 315 Now, material Jerusalem, with all that was attached to it, was only a part of the things that appear in the divine plan, and which belong in some way to the supernatural order. But thanks to Christian teaching, this part described by the Holy Books has features that lead us to the knowledge of the Church, the Heavenly City, and Mary, especially glorified Mary.

We must, therefore, find less and less astonishing that a single psalm presents to us at the same time the description of the earthly Jerusalem, the Church, Paradise, and the Blessed Mother. For if even nature offers us something analogous, it goes without saying that the divine word, supernaturally expressed, has incomparable fruitfulness.

116. Let us add that God, absolute master of all things finite who makes everything converge toward the Christian religion and heaven, wants to give us lessons about things with words and examples. Thus, the Old Testament intended to represent and prepare the New. All those things that happened in the desert after the exit from Egypt prefigured what awaits us. All those events were prefigures written to be a warning to us, to whom the end (fullness) of time has come. 316 The educational material we have mentioned contain, therefore, much more than pieces of information on the single plan that encompasses them, and much more than the harmony that unites them with one another. To this must be added the formal destination that some have of announcing, prefiguring, and foreshadowing others.

Therefore, before God abandoned it, ancient Jerusalem was a prophecy and a prelude to the Church, as the Church is a prophecy and a prelude of heaven; and the three Jerusalems, which owe everything to the Incarnate Word, also preach in unison the glory of His Mother.

Admiral Jurien de la Gravière, President of the French Academy of Sciences, cited by Farges, L’idée de Dieu, 1° p. II, preuves par l’ordre du monde et sa finalité.

316 1 Cor. 10:6,11.

315

148

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

117. Oh, what veneration we must have for Holy Scripture and the various meanings of its teachings! 317 No, it is not human imagination that creates relationships between the things that God wants us to know.

In the Scriptures, the spirit emerges from matter and events like poetry which is as delicious as true; the anticipated future shines on the present; the truth shows itself to us by degrees proportional to our understanding, to make our souls rise; holiness, so difficult to acquire, is often preached to us by facts so striking that we cannot forget them. In a word, the Scripture is the science of God associated with his love, which speaks to us. Can there be anything as rich in varied and beneficial instruction?

118. Just as the posterity of Jacob, severely tested in Egypt gravitated toward the Promised Land and the holy mountains where the famous Temple dedicated to the true God was to rise, Israel and the gentiles gravitate toward the Church of Jesus Christ: Let us love the Church as the earthly center of our thoughts and affections.

With the Church, our intellects and hearts gravitate toward the higher truths of faith and evangelical holiness just as faith, holiness, and grace, which is their principle, gravitate toward the intuitive vision of God and the light of glory. Let us not, by abusing our freedom, hinder the movement that God has imprinted on our inner man: that would upset the order wanted by the Creator and make us unhappy.

Man has been created sociable and perfectible, and must also aim to obtain some temporal happiness. Let him, therefore, gravitate toward the authority that must be the form of his society, firstly toward Jesus Christ to whom all power was given in heaven and on earth, 318 then to the sacred ministers of Jesus Christ, who received from their divine Master the same mission that He Himself received from his

“We have the more firm prophetical word: whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts … For prophecy came not by the will of man at any time: but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet 1:19,21).

318 Mt 28:13.

317

149

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

Father; 319 and lastly, without prejudice to the first two tendencies, toward any man invested with authority such as the king, who is above the others, and the governors sent by him; 320 for there is no power that does not come from God. 321 What admirable hierarchy rules the entire nature as a whole and in its details! All bodies attract one another in proportion to their masses and in the inverse proportion of their distance square. 322 Little ones gravitate toward big ones because they are looking for others that are bigger and better than themselves in some ways, and all gravitate together toward the empyrean, which is the true material foundation of the universe, the place of glorified matter where the friends of God reign. 323 Thus, the whole universe with all that it contains, as well as each of its parts, is founded on the holy mountains. O my soul, look and listen: there is nothing that does not show or preach heaven to you. O peoples of the various regions of the earth come and compete to ascend to heaven! O Faith divine, you are the dawn of heaven. O Revelation, heaven is what you make us consider above all. O physical world, the Almighty set you in motion toward the heaven of the blessed until you find your final stopping point, and then the lights of the empyrean will flood you from all sides, and you will be glorified.

Jn 20:21.

1Pet 2:13,14.

321 Rom 13:1.

322 Newton’s Law. 323 “Everything comes from the beautiful and the good, and aspires to the beautiful and the good ... It is toward the beautiful and the good that everything looks, it is beneath them that everything moves and is preserved ... All beings crave, love and cherish the beautiful and the good so that through them and for them, inferiors attach to superiors by soliciting their attention…and the most excellent to the less noble, by serving them as providence” (St. Dionysius the Areopagyte, Beauty as a Divine Name, div.C. IV. par. X. 319 320

150

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

Naturalism and hell are like two enormous masses of lead which flee from heaven and are repelled by it. Hell is the center of the universe, and naturalists plunge into it without a centrifugal movement preventing their appalling fall, because they refuse grace! 324

SECOND MEDITATION Jewish Jerusalem Gravitates Toward the Church as the Church Gravitates toward Heaven. The Church is the Lab where the Dwellings of the Church Triumphant are Outlined and Take Shape 119. If we consider the psalm expounded above in its literal sense, it sings the fleeting glory of Jewish Jerusalem. The Lord builds on the holy mountains of Zion, Moriah, and Acra, transforming ancient Iebus and ancient Salem into Jerusalem, the vision, or possession of peace. The Bashan mountain is called the mountain of God for its height but is vainly jealous of other, materially lower mountains on which the Lord will establish His abode and will thereby merit the name holy: Mountain of God, Mount of Bashan, Steep mountain, Mount of Bashan, Why do you envy rugged mountains, The mountain where God is pleased to dwell?

For there the Lord shall dwell unto the end.

Thousands and thousands attend the chariot of God. Advocates of naturalism are impostors who follow their disorderly and impious passions. They are those who separate themselves from the body of Jesus Christ and the high source of all goods; sensual men who do not have the Spirit of God. But you, my beloved, elevating yourselves as a spiritual edifice on the foundation of your most holy faith, and praying in the Holy Ghost, who raises you to the higher regions, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ, unto life everlasting” (Jude,19).

324

151

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

The Lord is among them in Sinai, in the holy place. 325 The prodigies, theophanies, and revelations of Sinai, the divine government, concentrate so to speak in Jerusalem and its temple, both dedicated to this sacred use. So the Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all of Jacob's tabernacles.

120. Formerly, the Holy Ark was nomadic, but now it has an established residence; and whether entering or leaving it goes through the gates of Zion, the cherished city of God: He brought them to his holy land.

Into the mountain of his sanctuary: The mountain which his right hand had purchased.

And he put away the tabernacle of Silo, His tabernacle where he dwelt among men…

And he rejected the tabernacle of Joseph...

And chose the tribe of Juda, Mount Zion which he loved.

And he built his sanctuary as high as the sky, In the land which he founded forever. 326 121. Glorious things have been said about you, the City of God! After the brilliant victory over Sennacherib, the various neighboring peoples flocked to Jerusalem to receive spiritual regeneration and worship the true God. Particularly during the reign of Hezekiah, Egyptians, Babylonians, Tyrrhenians, Ethiopians, Philistines come to be reborn in the city established by the Most High and to offer gifts to the Lord.

The God of Israel counts this multitude of proselytes and records them in His book of life because they were born in the holy city. And singers and musicians cry out: All my sources are in you, O Zion: in you, we find salvation and learn to serve God, who alone is the source and provider of all goods; all that is truly happy dwells in your bosom, O Jerusalem.

325 326

Ps 67:16-18.

Ps. 77:54, 60, 67,69.

152

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

122. But who does not see it at first sight? This prophecy refers much more to the Catholic Church than its prefigure, perishable Jerusalem.

Accordingly, in this psalm, all Holy Fathers admire the features of the Bride of Jesus Christ and a large number of them see in her the image of the glorious City of God and Mary. And all this is true at the same time.

123. Indeed, is the Church not built on the foundations of the holy Apostles and prophets 327 who, in turn, rest on a mountain or a single and unchanging foundation, Christ Jesus? 328Is this spiritual Zion, which the Redeemer purchased by shedding his blood 329 not loved by God more than all the tabernacles of Jacob, from which the Lord of Hosts has removed His affection? 330 Yes, it is particularly of you, O Church of Jesus Christ that glorious things were said by the prophets and especially by your divine Founder. In the latter times, the mountain on which the house of the Lord will be built will be founded on top of the hills and rise above them to show itself to all the earth; and all nations will roll toward it as all waters flow toward the ocean. 331 The earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the sea with the waters that cover it. 332 Go ye and teach all nations: 333 preach the Gospel to every creature. 334 There will be only one flock and one shepherd, 335 and this allpowerful Shepherd will be with His Church until the end of time. 336 Since she is founded on this immutable cornerstone and on the secondary rock of a visible chief, the gates of hell will not prevail Eph. 2:20.

1 Cor. 3:11.

329 Act. 20:28.

330 Mal 1:10.

331 ls 2:2.

332 Is 11:9 333 Mt 28:19.

334 Mk 16:15.

335 Jn 10:16 336 Mt 28:20.

327 328

153

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

against her. 337 This Church will have the keys to the kingdom of heaven; 338 she will truly be the house of God and the gate of heaven. 339 Great is the Lord, and exceedingly to be praised In the city of our God, His holy mountain, splendid in its height, Joy of the whole earth...

O God, we have received thy mercy, In the midst of thy temple.

According to thy name, O God, so also is thy praise Unto the ends of the earth. 340 124. It is the Most High who founded it, not in an ordinary way as He founded most of His other works but first by descending from the heights of His glory to the lower parts of the earth. 341 The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. 342 Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for it to sanctify it purifying it by the baptism with water in the word of life; that He might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish. 343 O Church, the one who governs you, is the One who created you; His name is Lord of hosts: your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; he is the God of all the earth. 344 You could not be better founded and protected than you are. The mountains will shake, says your God, and the hills will tremble but my mercy will not depart from you, and the Id. 16:18.

Id.16:19.

339 Gen. 28:17.

340 Ps 47:2, 3, 10,11.

341 Eph 4:9-10.

342 Jn 1:14.

343 Eph 5:25-27.

344 Is 54:5.

337 338

154

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

alliance by which I make peace with you will never be shaken. Poor desolate one, beaten by the storm, without human consolation, I myself lay in their ranks the stones that compose you, and your foundations will be of sapphire. I will build your ramparts with jasper, make your doors of chiseled stones, and your enclosure will be of selected stones. Your children will be taught by the Lord and enjoy abundant peace. You shall be founded on justice. 345 125. The Lord counts and registers peoples to make them citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem. When born in the Church, they are written in the book of life because the Church is the gate of heaven. Therefore, let the children of the Church rejoice and sing in unison: All my sources are in you.

If God has brought me out of nothing, O holy Church, it is so that I would become your child and through you an heir to the celestial kingdom. If the Creator has endowed me with an avid intellect and an insatiable heart, it is so that by seeking truth and good, I will reach the luminous regions of faith and holiness and from there, I may rush to the place of perfect happiness. If I aspire, even in this place of trial to some contentment befitting this exile, I still find it in you.

O blessed Church I can overflow with joy amid all tribulations.

346 Really, all my sources are in you; you offer me the goods of soul and body, the goods of time, and those of eternity!

126. The Church is the most perfect image of the heavenly Jerusalem that can be seen here below. But she is a living, active image that constantly gravitates toward her original just as ancient Jerusalem gravitated toward spiritual Jerusalem. For this reason, the sacred writers give us descriptions that are partly confused with those of paradise.

According to St. Paul, the Church is the ensemble of heavenly things, not complete and glorified, but in the process of becoming so.

347 In his epistle to the Galatians (4:26) he calls her the Jerusalem from Ibid. 54:10-13.

2Cor 7:4.

347 It was necessary that the images of celestial things [Moses’ tabernacle and 345 346

155

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

above that is free and our mother; for, observes Martini, “she originates from heaven, from where her Head came down, and because following her Head she continually aspires to heaven.” 348 Jerusalem, City of God, says Tobias, give glory to the Lord for thy good things...Thou shall shine with glorious light and the ends of the earth shall worship thee... Blessed are all they that love thee and rejoice in thy peace! My soul, bless thou the Lord because the Lord our God has delivered Jerusalem His city from all her troubles...The gates of Jerusalem shall be built of sapphire and emerald, and all the walls thereof of precious stones. All its streets shall be paved with white and clean stones, and in them, Alleluia shall be sung. 349 127. How great are your squares, O spiritual Jerusalem! How long and wide are your streets! How numerous, tall, rich and magnificent are your palaces! Do you not encompass the whole globe? And if there were other worlds within your reach, would your force of expansion not cover them with your neighborhoods and suburbs? How much you surpass your own image! It is hard for me to find countries small enough to compare to the famous Promised Land presided by the Jerusalem of Israel; and however precious was the religious influence of this city, how limited was its circle of action! The most remarkable thing about it was that constant and strong voice that predicted the birth of its founder and its universal empire.

Yet, O Catholic Church, what are you next to the Church Triumphant, its greatness, and the number and sumptuousness of its residences! What are you next to this empire that surrounds all visible heavens, where the Most High reigns with His countless angels and saints, where even its raw material is glorified and so many wonders

testament] should be cleansed with the blood of animals but that celestial things [the Church] be purified by more excellent victims (Jesus Christ and those who suffer with Him) (Heb. 9:23).

348 Commentary on this text.

349 Tob 13:11-22. The eyes of the blind shall be opened … and the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and shall come into Zion with praise, and everlasting joy will be upon their heads...and sorrow and mourning shall flee away (Is 35:5,10).

156

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

displayed that even a most daring imagination could dream of a millionth part of it? 350 128. However, despite your relative smallness, you give us a great and beautiful idea of Paradise. You take hold of this whole globe on which you were founded; your provinces and apostolic prefectures contain the largest kingdoms of the earth. You occupy the first rank everywhere by the light of your doctrine, the sanctity of your morals, the excellence of your members, and by your divine powers. You are obviously more celestial than terrestrial to everyone who knows you.

How perfect your hierarchy is! A living physical body is no better arranged and proportioned than your huge moral body. What an admirable subordination between your members! What order presides over all your operations! You cross the ages with undisturbed serenity.

Carried away by some feverish delirium, human societies continuously change form; but your form remains unchanged, and your progress consists of deploying the immensity of your resources more and more. Yes, you are the faithful image and prelude of the Empyrean, enclosing in your bosom all the changing Creation. All lights and graces come from you; in you are found as many mansions as degrees of merit. You will finally flood all heavens with your glory, destined as you are to embrace all peoples and make of them a single flock under the leadership of a single shepherd.

129. You fight and Paradise triumphs; you acquire merits, and Paradise crowns them; you beget and raise children of God, and heaven is their final abode. In you, God reigns by His veiled grace, attracting human freedom toward spiritual and imperishable goods. In heavenly Jerusalem, God reigns in the open and His elect rule with Him through the possession of all goods. You live in faith, hope, charity, divine and supernatural elements; and the celestial Church lives from the light of glory and the possession of God. Bound to reign eternally with Jesus Descriptions of the Church Militant in the Holy Books often contain characters fully suitable only for the Church Triumphant, as we have seen above (no. 126). The reason is that inspired writers are inclined to consider the Church Militant also in her end.

When they see her fighting, they almost always also see her triumph. And when she triumphs she will be fully transformed into the celestial and glorious Church.

350

157

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

Christ, you already have the land of the blessed, the land of the living.

351 Your roots are planted in heaven more than on earth. 352 Your Head is placed in the heavens: It is He (Christ) who rules your body, and although you do not see Him, you are united to Him by Charity. 353 You are for us the outline of Paradise.

THIRD MEDITATION How the Church Militant Gives Us an Idea of the Variety of Celestial Mansions. The Role Mary Plays on Earth Gives Us an Idea of Her Heavenly Abode 130. As we have just seen, the Church is a sketch of the eternal City of God or a pale image of her primary and perfect type just as heavenly Jerusalem and the angels preceded the formation of inferior places and of our earth (as we will see in more detail). Moreover, all theologians admit the principle that what is primary in any genre is the cause of other things in the same genre. Now, paradise is the first being of its kind as Church both by its perfection, which makes it an exemplary cause and by the date of its formation, which precedes all the rest.

Paradise is also the first heaven of its kind so that the lower heavens with the bodies that compose them are more or less imperfect portraits of the empyrean and its residences. We can have an idea of the abode of the blessed by contemplating the stars, outer space, and other works of God, who is the exemplary cause of everything that He makes. I would even say that a work which is a diminished copy of another makes us know its material type better, as there is less difference between two works which are brothers than between these In aeternun regnatura cum Christo (Ecclesia) ipsa est terra beatorum, terra viventium (St. Augustine 1.3. De Doct.Christ, c. 34).

352 Ecclesia radices in caelo fixas habet potius quam in terra (St. John Chrysosthom, De verbo Is. Homil. 4).

353 Ecclesia... habet illud caput (Christum) position in caelestibus, quod gubernat corpus suum... et si separatum est a visione, sed adnectitur charitate. St. Augustine, Ps 56.

351

158

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

works and their author, whom we would be unable to know simply by looking at them.

131. This is why the visible world and supernatural institutions, along with the sum of the revealed truths combine to depict the kingdom of heaven to us. Now the Church makes it better known to us than the physical world because she lives from a continual emanation from the Empyrean. She unfolds under its influences, receives her forms from above, acting mainly on higher impulses.

That is why when we see the Church so powerfully and saintly invasive by her educative force, which makes her the mistress of souls, and by her civilizing action with all its effects (which shows that she is the most effective factor of all improvements, even material), we say that nothing is as extended as the celestial Church and that she will end up by encompassing and glorifying all the worlds in her vast empire except for limbo and hell.

When we see the Church Militant subdivided into so many particular churches, archdioceses, patriarchates, dioceses, different positions in the same diocese we think of the provinces of Paradise and its multiple and varied residences; for it is a city, and at the same time the kingdom of heaven.

132. However, one should not forget that the Church on earth is very imperfect compared to that of heaven. Many people in the Church occupy equal positions and have the same rank both in the teaching Church and in the taught Church. But in heaven, no two people likely occupy equal places or are in the same conditions of essential glory and accidental glory. There, the slightest different nuances of talents, tastes, aptitudes, virtues, and merits appear on the outside of residences perfectly proportioned to each individual. The risen men will be like and equal to the angels. Being children of the resurrection, they are equal to the angels and are sons of God with the full attributions of this dignity. 354

354

Lk 20:36.

159

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

Each angel, says St. Thomas, has his office and particular order in the universe and much better than each star, although we do not know these details. 355 The Angelic Doctor adds that anyone who knew nature perfectly would be able to distinguish several orders even in celestial bodies and in each category of beings. 356 Among the angels, there are as many different species as there are individuals. This also holds true for every elect in heaven. There all the blessed are so well known, so rightly put in their place, so adequately rewarded and so filled with honor even above their merits, that the slightest different nuance that one could imagine between the saints will give rise to very marked distinctions even as to the location, form and size of their residences.

God’s perfect justice, crowned by His ineffable goodness, can leave us no doubt on this point. The variety of celestial residences is, therefore, unfathomable.

133. After all that, what can we say of the abode of Mary, the Mother of God and men, Queen of angels, saints, and of heaven and earth? To get a rough idea, let us examine the particular role the Virgin played during her mortal career concerning grace, God, the universe, the Church, and humanity.

134. To name Mary is to name the full of grace, and her fullness is the same one that abounded in Jesus Christ. Mary had it by privilege and Jesus Christ by nature (nos. 30 & 31). As for the Blessed Virgin’s correspondence to grace, we have seen that it was absolute to the point that we should consider the New Eve as an incarnate divine archetype (nos. 46-52).

From this, it is clear that the virtues of Mary, even those common to other saints, are so heroic and eminent in her that they 1 p. q. 108. a. 3.

Ibid. According to St. Thomas, just as an angelic individual constitutes a whole species unto himself, so will every individual man after his glorious resurrection by becoming incorruptible: Unde videmus quod in rebus incorruptibilibus non est nisi unum individuum unius specici, quia species sufficienter conservatur in uno; in generabilibus autem et corruptibilibus sunt multa individua unius speciei ad conservationem specici. p.

1. q. 47, art. 2.

355 356

160

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

constitute a higher order than the one the other blessed possess. Her virtues are so sublime and admirable that they transcend all rules in the order of grace itself. 357 It is certain, says St. Alphonse of Liguori, that there is an infinite distance between the Mother of God and the servants of God, according to the famous word of St. Jean Damascene: Matris Dei and servorum Dei infinitum est discriminen. 358 This privileged Virgin, the same holy doctor continues, was elected to an order higher than all creatures because her dignity as the Mother of God, according to Suarez somehow belongs to the order of the hypostatic union. Hence she had to receive from the beginning of her existence, gifts of a higher-order incomparably above those granted to all other creatures.

It was fitting for the Lord to adorn her with immense grace and place her in a higher order than all other men and angels, conclude all theologians with St. Thomas. 359 St. Bernardine affirms that to be Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin had to be raised to a certain ‘state of equality’ with the divine Persons by a kind of infinity of graces. 360 135. How true it is that God loves the gates of Zion more than all of the tabernacles of Jacob! The unfathomable perfections of Mary’s soul and body were the gates through which the Man-God entered the world. 361 The Virgin Mary, born of David, conceived the Child God in her mind before conceiving Him in her body. 362 Mary’s ineffable moral beauty, her virtues which constituted the most faithful and purest mirror of divine holiness, provoked a new display of power on the part of the Father, a boundless devotion on the

Segneri, Manna dell’anima. 8 Dec. 4 point.

Glories of Mary, Speech on the Immaculate Conception, end of 1st point.

359 Ibid. Speech on the Nativity, no. 1.

360 Quod femina conciperet et parevet Deum, opportuit eam elevari ad quamdam acqualitatem divinam, per quamdam intimitatem gratiarum. Ibid. Speech on the Annunciation, point 2.

361 Heb 10:5.

362 St. Leo, Pope, Serm. 1. De Nativ. Domini. Saint Augustine also says: Beatior Maria percipiendo fidem Christi, quam concipiendo carnem Christi: sic et materna propinquitas nihil Maria profuisset, nisi felicius Christum corde quant carne, gestasset.

De S. Virginit. c. 3.

357 358

161

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

part of the Son, a divine outpouring of love from the Holy Ghost; and the Word became flesh in Mary’s womb, and dwelled among us. 363 136. Thus Mary became the daughter par excellence of the Father who is in heaven, the Mother of the Son, and the Spouse of the Holy Ghost.

She alone is so excellently established on the holy mountains of the adorable Trinity. The Creator poured on her all the treasures of His graces and natural and supernatural gifts to then make them flow back to the world and to heaven.

O Daughter of the Father, how you imitate Him by making your kindness shine on all Creation to the end of time and beyond! O created and human Providence rich in all the gifts of God with a mother’s heart, what miracle of kindness, generosity and tenderness you are for us! Let all men, whoever we are, praise the most perfect of creatures with one heart and soul, ardently love and imitate her! Mary is the Father's Creation par excellence. 364 137. Mary is the Mother of the Son. By Him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, principalities and powers. Everything was created by Him and in Him. He comes before all, and everything subsists in Him. He is the head of the Church’s body; He is the principle, the firstborn from the dead, so that He keeps primacy in all things. 365 And yet Mary is His Mother and Jesus was subject to her! 366 I understand, O Mary, that your dignity has something infinite (no. 31), since the Creator of all things willed to exist as a man through you without ceasing to be God. How wonderful it is for Him to whom everything is subject 367 to submit to you as a Son to His Mother! Oh, how gracious is Jesus’ love Jn 1:14.

Maria est Filia nobilissima Domini Patris... Filia Domini qua nulla nobilior. St. Bonaventure, in specul. B. M. V, cap. S. — Est Filia digna Deo. S.J. Damasc. Orat. 1 De Nativit. B. M. V. — Filia Regis Deo Patris Creationem et gratiam. Idiota. De B. M. V. p.

14. contemplat. 4. — Filia duceus nos ad Patrem. St. Petrus Dam. Serm, in Annunt. — Filia praedilecta aeterni Patris. St. Laur. Justin. in triumphali Christi agone, chap. 7.

365 Col. 1:16-18.

366 Lk 2:51.

367 1 Cor 15:26.

363 364

162

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

for us for wanting to have for Mother a daughter of the human race!

This goes much deeper: the Creator and King of the universe subjects Himself to Mary to subject His entire empire to her. He wants the empyrean, the moving heavens, the earth, the angels, men, and all creatures to have a Queen, a Mistress, a Mother. And for that, He who embraces everything bows before Mary obliging the universe to recognize her as Sovereign because of her incomparable excellence and powers and because her divine Son wills it. 368 138. Mary is the Spouse of the Holy Ghost. The Word is wisdom in person and wanted to have Mary for mother; the Holy Ghost is the hypostatic love that wanted to have Mary as a spouse. How marvelous is the conduct of the three divine Persons toward the Virgin! We have already seen that Mary is one of the three masterpieces that God, in one respect, cannot outdo (no. 31). But to have a slightly less incomplete idea of this perfect divine work, let us consider that in her case, God’s infinite power, infinite wisdom and infinite love worked by common agreement and employed so to speak all their resources.

That is why everything the Father had in terms of kindness, grace, and perfections in His treasures, He contributed to form and adorn the Maiden of His heart, 369 His beloved creature, 370 the one He wanted to associate to His own fertility so that she became Mother of the Incarnate Word just as He is the Father of the eternal Word: virtute

By wanting to have a mother, Jesus Christ also preaches humility, obedience, and filial love. He restored the honor of women, so compromised by Eve and so little known by the gentiles. He raised in Mary, the female sex as the male sex was raised in Jesus Christ. He made His love extremely popular and intelligible. He prepared a mother for us all in the supernatural order and a queen, crowning the whole edifice of nature by analogous perfection but divinely added to the original Creation, completing the divine plan.

369 Filia praeceordialissima Patris aeterni. Denys the Chartusian, De pree. B. M. V. lib. 2. art.14.

370 Creatura perfecta in summo inter parus creaturas. St. Bonav. Sermo. 2. B. M. V. — Creatura nobilior omnibus creaturis, quae in humuna nutura fuerint, unt possint, aut potuerint generari. St. Bernardine de Siena. Sermo de Sancto Josepho. — Creatura divinissima primatum in ominibus sortita. Denys the Carthusian, De laud. V, lib. I. art. 21.

368

163

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

Spiritus Sancti, Filium generavit, communem Filium utrique. 371 Hypostatic Wisdom, the Supreme Artist, employed all His genius, industry, and marvelous creativity to make Himself a worthy mother: Sapientia aedificavit sibi domina. 372 This divine wisdom, which is the architect of all things, implemented and spiritually worked in Mary all that one could imagine in a most perfect work of art. 373 However, one should add to the work of infinite power and meditations on hypostatic Wisdom, the operations of Divine Love in person to form a wife according to His taste. Mary is the Spouse of God the Holy Ghost, and perfectly responds to hypostatic Love. 374 She is the spouse of sovereign goodness, the spouse of the consoling Sovereign, 375 the dearest bride of the Holy Ghost in whom He is exceedingly pleased. 376 St. Anselm assures us that the Divine Spirit, the love itself of the Father and the Son, came corporally into Mary (to produce a bodily effect, i.e. the conception of the Son of God), and enriching her with graces above all creatures, reposed in her and made her His Spouse, Queen of heaven and earth: Ipse…Spiritus Dei, ipse Amor Omnipotentia Patris et Filii … corporaliter venit in eam, singularique gratia prae omnibus quae creata sunt, sive in coelo, sive in terra, requievit in ea; et reginam ac imperatricem coeli et terrae … fecit eam. 377 139. This shows that the three divine Persons place their predilection in Mary and want to live with her as in a continuous and very familiar feast, which leads the saints to call Mary triclinium locus Trinitatis. 378 St. Antonin of Florence, Summa, p. 4. tit. 15, chap. 3.

Prov. 9:1 373 Ernest of Prague, Mariait, ch. 84 374 Sponsa justissima Domini Spiritus Sanctus, St. Bonaventure, in Specula B. M. V. ch. 5.

375 Id. ch. 8: Sponsa summae bonitatus... Sponsa summi Consolatoris.

376 Denys the Carthusian I. 2. De laud. S. V. M. art. 26.

377 St. Anselm (De Excell. V. e. 4) cited and translated by St. Alphonse Liguori, Glories of Mary, Speech on the Immaculate Conception, 3° p.

378 St. Bernardine of Siena, Tom. 2. serm. 5, Triclinium Deitatis. St. Bonaventure, Laud.

B. M. V.— Triclinium nobile latins Beatissimae Trinitatis. St. Thomas. Serm. De B. V . M. Dom. 4. Quadr.

371 372

164

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

140. God placed in her the fullness of all good; 379 being Mother of Jesus Christ, she possesses everything that is under God by hereditary right, and governs it as true Queen; 380 she is the mother of the communication of all goods; 381 as Mother of God, she is by that very fact the Mother of all creatures, 382 Mother and mistress of all things 383 and Mother of the angels themselves, glorified because they owed their fidelity to the expected merits of Jesus Christ and Mary.

O how good God is by placing the whole universe under Mary’s feet and happy influences! The Creator loves everything that exists; 384 this is why He does not want His work to merely float in His love, so to speak, but to have this love literally coupled with maternal love. O universe, you have not only a Father in heaven but also a celestial Mother, who takes care of you through the angels, her faithful servants. Any beneficent action that the Most High exercises for you passes through the heart of Mary, where it becomes maternal before pouring down on the creatures that you contain.

141. What can we say of the role Mary plays concerning the Church and to men? The Father of glory… gave Christ as head to the whole Church, which is His body and fullness: it is Christ who fully develops through her, 385 and Mary is the Mother of Christ! She is hence also the Mother of the Church, of Christians, and all those called to become Christian, that is to say, all men.

It is true that having also been redeemed by Jesus Christ, she is a member of the Church, of which Jesus Christ is the head; but she is like the heart, which belongs to a living body and is the primary element in a body in formation, where the very formation of the head begins.

St. Bernard, Serm. de Nativ.

St. Albert the Great, Biblia Mar. super libr. Sap. 381 St. Bonaventure, 1. 3. Sent. d. 9. p. 1. a. 1. q. 3. art. 2.

382 St. Albert the Great, Super Missus, chap. 198.

383 Id. chap. 182.

384 Wis. 11:25.

385 Eph. 1:22-23.

379 380

165

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

142. O Mary, from all these aspects of your temporal destination I can see what your dwelling must be like in heaven: it is somehow confused with that of your divine Son; it dominates all other residences from high above; the splendors that emanate from the glorious humanity of Jesus soften in your splendors and pass, so to speak through your rainbow before radiating across the abode of glory. Immersed in divine love so motherly, the whole empyrean forever flinches with joy.386

CHAPTER SEVEN Configuration of the Heavenly Jerusalem Civitas in quadro posita est...et mensus est civitatem de arundine aurea per stadia duodecim millia: et longitudo, et altitudo, et latitudo ejus aequalia sunt.

(Ap 21:16) “And the city lies in a foursquare … and he measured the city with the golden reed for twelve thousand furlongs, and the length and the height and the breadth thereof are equal.”

143. The love of the celestial homeland led Scholastic writers to wonder if the empyrean is a sphere similar to the mobile heavens or if it has another shape. Since we have hitherto considered the residences Mary must, indeed, play in heaven a role analogous to the one she plays on earth but superior in everything. She gave birth to Christ for humanity: she is known in heaven as the mirror, which reflects the immense radiance of the Incarnate Word throughout the empyrean. With her, the three divine Persons wanted to work and share the great work of salvation of rational creatures. Therefore, immediately after the divine Persons, it is Mary who makes the glory and the bliss of paradise. Mary nourishes the Church with the fullness of the graces received from Jesus Christ, and all graces pass through her hands. So I imagine Mary’s celestial zone as encompassing all lower zones of the empyrean, which gravitate toward it.

386

166

PROFESSION DE SOUMISSION À L’ÉGLISE

of Paradise and especially its great divisions in broad outline it remains for us to see concerning what I would call its general geography if there is anything we can know about its overall aspect. We have already seen in various places that it envelops in its vast bosom all the rest of the universe but we have not specified its configuration. Let us try to do so in this chapter.

167

TABLE DES MATIERES

FIRST MEDITATION The Opinion of Scholastics. The Holy City’s Concept Is Very Different from That of Ordinary Cities 144. St. Thomas accepts on this point the opinion of Aristotle, who called the last sphere supreme heaven, and said it is absolutely spherical, that is, perfectly round. Because of its dignity, he also called it ‘first sphere’ and ‘supreme sphere.’ 387 Elsewhere, the Angelic Doctor appropriates the words of St. Basil that it is solid and strong enough to separate the higher parts from the lower ones. 388 This barrier is what we called above, after St. John, the wall of the City of God (no. 82).

145. Suarez prefers the spherical form to any other form. The figure of the empyrean, he says, is uncertain, but it is more accurate to admit that it is round. 389 He adds that nothing prevents the existence of a vast motionless plane in the spherical and mobile skies; that glorious bodies do not gravitate but stand as easily on any plane, whether horizontal or not; that they can go up or down at leisure without touching other bodies; that, since the Scriptures and Fathers keep silent on this subject, one should stick to [Aristotle’s] philosophical doctrine and refrain from making reckless statements on what no eye has seen nor Revelation disclosed. 390 146. Is it true that Revelation and the Fathers gave us no teaching on this? It is certain, says Cornelius a Lapide, that what they describe to us 391 in a literal sense can only refer directly to the heavenly and triumphant Church.

Prima sphaera ordinatur sieut extrinseca et contentiva omnis mutationis, De caelo et mundo, lib. 1. lect. 21 n. 7 et alibi. — Concludit ex praemissis (Aristotle) manifestum esse quod mundus sit sphaericus tum propter corpus primum (supremam sphaeram) quod continet totum mundum... Unde sequitur quod superficies supremi corporis caelestis sit maxime regularis. Ibid. 1. 2. Lect., no. 8.

388 Constat factum esse caelum rotunditate conclusion, etc. p. 1. q. 66. a. 3. ad 4m.

389 De opere sex diem, I. 1. & 10, no. 16.

390 Ibid.

391 Apoc. 21.

387

168

TABLE DES MATIERES

That pious and learned commentator cites this remarkable passage from St. Augustine: It is overly audacious to understand these things (that St. John describes in the chapter indicated) as referring to the present time because the Scripture utters the words ‘God shall wipe away all tears’ with such great certainty of the future world and the immortality of the saints that if one finds these things obscure one should no longer bother to seek or read anything in the Sacred Books. 392 Now, I would add, St. John clearly marks the exterior form of the Holy City. As I observed above (no. 88), it does not matter that this form is symbolic since it can be real at the same time, and in my humble opinion, we have no basis at all to claim that it is cubic. The heavenly Jerusalem is certainly corporeal and must, therefore, have a specific configuration. Now, if St. John describes it to us very clearly, what reason would we have to doubt? 393 147. The city is built as a square, and its length is as large as its width.

And he (the angel) measured the city with his golden reed over a space of twelve thousand furlongs, 394 and its length, height and width are equal. 395 Everything in it is square, says Bossuet, and it makes up a perfect cube, which marks perfect stability. 396 Without prejudice to the mystical meanings indicated by the arrangement of the holy city, it seems clear to me that in St. John’s description, everything is also materially and literally true but needs to be explained.

148. Let us observe, in this first Meditation, that heavenly Jerusalem, except by analogy, is not a city similar in all to those built on earth.

Indeed, the Church Militant is called a city more than once, although it does not have the shape of a city considered as a whole; and in her Catholicity, she encompasses the whole earth.

De Civitas Dei, book 22, c. 27, or better, I. 20, & 17, éditeurs de Migne. See also Manuel biblique ou cours d’Écriture Sainte à l’usade des séminaires by Bacuez and Vigouroux, 1895, Tome IV, no. 933.

393 Everything that appears round from the inside does not have to be also round or convex outside. St. Thomas, comments on St. Basil, 1 p. q 68, a.2. ad 2.

394 One furlong is roughly 607 feet. M. Drachi, Apocalypse.

395 Apoc. 21:16 396 Ibid.

392

169

TABLE DES MATIERES

He told the Apostles: You are the light of the world; a city located on a mountain cannot be hidden. 397 This city is undoubtedly the visible Church, which is visible all over the earth. We are, says St. Paul, fellow citizens with the saints and domestics of God.398 This house is as vast as the Church; Jerusalem will be called the city of truth, 399 and the Gospel must be preached to all creatures. 400 In the last times, the mountain on which the Lord will build His house will rise above other mountains and hills to show itself to all the earth. All nations will flock there in crowds, 401 and this house of God will be visible from everywhere. Isaias also tells us about the city of the wicked, which is the world: the whole world is under the empire of the evil one; 402 this city will be reduced to a tomb, and a powerful people will revere the Most High. 403 Let us conclude that the Church Militant is a true city in the biblical style, and is at the same time universal; that it is the house of God, an immense house in terms of the places it occupies, with no limits other than our planet’s, offering views of also of the empyrean and purgatory. What prevents the heavenly Jerusalem from being a city of this kind, the city of which the Church Militant is the image? 404 149. A great deal of additional evidence supports this interpretation.

At the risk of repeating ourselves, let us point out some.

This City is a kingdom, the kingdom of heaven (nos. 20-21, 37, etc.). If we are faithful to Jesus Christ during our trial, in heaven, He will make us enjoy His entire kingdom. His whole kingdom will be ours as if we were its heirs. 405 If we suffer together with Him, we will reign Mt 5:14.

Eph 2:19.

399 Zak 8:3 400 Mk 16:15.

401 Is 2:2.

402 1Jn 5:19.

403 Is 25:2-3.

404 There are two cities or societies, says St. Augustine, one of angels and good men, and the other, of the wicked. City of God, I. XII, c. 1.

405 Segneri, Manna dell’Anima, Dec. 24, point 3.

397 398

170

TABLE DES MATIERES

with Him. 406 Now, Jesus Christ will certainly reign over the whole universe, and so it will also be our kingdom without, however, abandoning the Celestial City, which is the largest of empires.

Cities are built for men and, therefore, are laid out according to their inhabitants’ nature, conditions, needs, and tastes. We see that all cities that rise here and there on the surface of the earth attest to the fact that man is a wayfarer, and his life is one of trial. Houses are enclosed within narrow limits so as not to hinder those of neighbors, minimize expenses and repairs, and provide better shelter against cold or robbers. Their roofs, doors, walls, and countless other features serve to keep out inclement weather, thieves, preying animals, and other enemies of human well-being. Dwellings, built as agglomerations, form administrative, commercial, intellectual centers, etc. All these things are consequences of man's inclination toward evil, life’s necessities, ignorance, and other effects of original sin or, at least, of the state of trial.

In Paradise, there is none of that. There, all creatures are friends of the elect. There is no fear, ignorance, a tendency toward disorder, the need to be sheltered, defended or governed.

Furthermore, for resurrected man, all distances are suppressed so to speak. He moves faster than light and encounters no obstacle in nature. His sight, hearing, and strength are as powerful as his agility, and the light of glory in which he lives and thanks to which he contemplates the divine essence itself eternally maintains and promotes all his faculties’ ‘divinized energy,’ as it were.

How then can we suppose that such a being would have houses and cities similar to ours? Nature, when clement and pleasant, is the most magnificent of homes; nay, it is so when perfectly submitted to man and glorified for his use and happiness. 407 2 Tim 2:12. Si filii (Dei), et haerades: haeredes quidem Dei, cohaeredes autem Christi: si tamen compatimur, ut et conglorificemur (Rom 8:17).

407 Dominas in caelo paravit sedem suan, et regnun ipsius omnibus dominabitur.

Benedicite Domino, omnes angeli ejus... benedicite Domino, omnia opera ejus, in omni loco dominationis ejus (Ps 102:19-22). Does this not mean that heaven and all the 406

171

TABLE DES MATIERES

150. The celestial city is, therefore, Creation, the greatest, most beautiful, pleasant, and delicious aspect of God’s work. 408 Thus the Holy Scriptures do not tell us that our first parents sheltered in houses while enjoying a sample of happiness in the earthly paradise, satisfaction undoubtedly much lower than that of the celestial homeland. Their home was the garden of delights; from the beginning, the Lord God had planted a delightful garden in which He placed the man He had made. 409 The first human couple lived day and night in the open air, near fountains, under the shade of trees, in various sites of a countryside always pleasant and fertile, vast environment a thousand times healthier and more agreeable than the boxes that fallen men later built and decorated with names of cities and palaces.

The human space, now affected by sin and threatened by various revolted elements of nature and by criminal humans, had to retreat behind four stone walls, to use invigorating air and joyful light sparingly, and to adopt a low profile and hide. Before that, man felt like the king of nature and countered climate disturbances only with clothes and tents, proof that his real home is God’s great work of Creation and not the artificial buildings that sin alone made necessary.

151. Well then, in heaven, we have a house built by God and not by human hands, as St. Paul tells us. 410 It is eternal in its predestination, immutable in its reality, as permanent as eternity. First of all, it is heavenly glory, a beatific splendor that emanates from God, from the Man-God, from Mary and the principal immortals of the celestial court.

Secondly, it is the whole set of creatures which form the empyrean, a works of God constitute not only His throne but also His city and empire? See below no.

407. Do you not know that this divine house is not so much a house as a very joyful garden of delights? Segneri, Manna dell’Anima, I. nov. I. 408 God, who made the world, says St. Paul, and all things therein, being Lord of heaven and earth dwelleth not in temples made with [human] hands (Acts 17:24). Does this not mean that the true material house of God, the type of His earthly temples is the ensemble of His works? Earlier in the same book of Acts, we find this idea expressed even more clearly. Act. 7:48-50. See no. 407, in which this passage is explained.

409 Gen 2.

410 2 Cor 5:1

172

TABLE DES MATIERES

set of charming worlds in an immense, celebrating, supernaturally shaped, and embellished nature.

There are many residences because, in the empyrean, different homes represent all degrees of talents and merits (no. 132); how everything here is grand, vast, worthy of God, and the blessed!

There are eternal tabernacles 411 , but they are light, aerial, similar to the cloud which enveloped the Apostles on Mount Tabor412 and hid from their eyes, in the high atmosphere, the Savior ascending to heaven! 413 “The saints all rejoice in glory.

They shall be joyful in their beds.” 414 These beds are places of rest distributed according to each person’s rank and the merit of his works. 415 As a whole, they constitute the kingdom that Jesus Christ prepared for His friends to eat and drink at His table in His kingdom. 416 It is not a small palace, room, or city like those which men build in their place of exile, but comprises the immeasurable expanse of the heavenly kingdom. 417 O Father, you crowned your Son Jesus with glory and honor and established Him on the works of your hands. You placed all things under His feet, and by submitting all things to Him, You left nothing that was not subject to Him. 418

Lk 16:9.

Mt 5.

413 Acts 1:9 .

414 Ps 149:5.

415 Omnis misericordia faciet locum unicuique secundum meritum operum suorum, Eccli.

15:15.

416 Lk 22:29-30.

417 Although the whole universe belongs to God, says St. Ambrose, the Church is called the House of God: Cum totus mundus Dei sit, tamen damna ejus Ecclesia dicitur (I Tim Chap. 3). If, therefore, the Church Militant spread all over the earth is called the House of God, the Empyrean can bear the same name although it is even greater. It is the House of God par excellence because God is particularly the Father of those who live there and because all His children worthily praise Him there. Christus Filius in domo sua; quae donnus sumus nos... Heb. 3:6. The Church is this house as well.

418 Heb 2:7-8.

411 412

173

TABLE DES MATIERES

The kingdom of your only begotten Son is, therefore, the universe of things, and particularly glorified things. Above all, it is the empyrean, and the abodes, tabernacles, and beds of the blessed are proportional to the extent of the empire that Jesus Christ possesses with the saints (149, 37 & ff.).

152. The heavenly Jerusalem, therefore, surpasses our tasteless cities as much as the Church Militant surpasses a modest hamlet, and the sky surpasses the earth. However, it is not only a city but the archetype of all cities because of the unity and harmony of all its inhabitants; its unimaginable riches; the marvelous diversity of its residences; its layout (which is the work of uncreated Wisdom); and its absolute security, as no evil can access it.

In the second Meditation, we will see how the general idea that we have of the Holy City agrees with St. John’s description of it in the Apocalypse. To minimize the chance of error, let us weigh each word of this inspired language and literally stick to it.

SECOND MEDITATION Saint John Saw a Sample of the Empyrean, which Is a Perfect Cube 153. The city is clearly built as a square; its length is the same as its width, so no one could doubt whether the empyrean’s shape is spherical or square. We have demonstrated above (nos. 20-24) that the words empyrean, third heaven, paradise, and heavenly Jerusalem are substantially synonymous. But here is what makes heaven a unique city: its length, height, and width are equal.

174

TABLE DES MATIERES

What? Does the height of this city equal its length and width?

That means that its buildings must be incredibly tall, namely, 753 kilometers [468 miles] to take only the smallest measurements. 419 If the angel measured only one side of the city (which seems much more reasonable because by knowing one face of a cube, we immediately know all the others), the city must have a height of twelve thousand furlongs, that is to say, 2,220 kilometers [1,379 miles].

However, many interpreters are very embarrassed facing these calculations and their results, and others take refuge in their mystical meaning, which is more convenient.

154. But, in my humble opinion, St. John indicates to us a detail of the highest importance, which is the key to the mystery. The angel, he says, measured the city over a space of twelve thousand furlongs. He did not measure the entire city but only a small district of it. He would have had a tremendous measuring job if he were to give St. John an idea of the heavenly Jerusalem and its layout. For that, a faithful sample sufficed.

The seer of Patmos must, therefore, have been shown a heavenly Jerusalem in miniature, and the prophet describes to us what the angel sought to make known to him. Earthly cities do not have buildings that measure more than twelve hundred miles in height, so the measurements given by inspired writing are unintelligible, and one must give up their literal sense.

155. However, everything becomes admirably clear if we admit that the city of God is a heaven or a set of heavens, according to other teachings of Holy Scripture (nos. 23,37,41), and that St. John saw only a faithful miniature representation. We can call Rome a photograph of Rome and even more so if we have a maquette in wood or plaster in which everything is reproduced in full relief, with exact proportions.

One furlong, as we said, is 185 meters (607 feet); and, according to the most conservative measurements, the height of the city is three thousand furlongs; we therefore have 755 km (469 miles). But some serious authors say that the Angel only measured the city in one direction, and that its length is twelve thousand furlongs.

Now, it was useless to measure the other sides since they are all equal; so I prefer this interpretation to the former. For me, the city is a cube, rather than a simple square.

419

175

TABLE DES MATIERES

Thus, we have a whole city but in miniature, which suffices to convey basic knowledge of this city. Now, St. John saw the heavenly Jerusalem in a revelation; it is a teaching given to him which he conveyed to us, and for that purpose, a faithful sample of Paradise met all the necessary conditions.

156. Accordingly, the Apostle does not tell us that he saw everything in the city or that the Angel measured it entirely. On the contrary, he formally states that the angel measured it over a space of twelve thousand furlongs, leaving undetermined anything beyond that. Now, if the angel had wanted to give us the dimensions of the empyrean, who among mortals could have understood his language and numbers?

If it is very difficult to get a clear idea of what one million means, and especially one billion, the measures of the empyrean would have been absolutely unintelligible to us.

Besides, why did the angel measure the city? He certainly knew its dimensions without operating as a surveyor. But among other reasons, by this process, he indicated to us that there is very little that we can conceive here below concerning the immensity of the heavenly Jerusalem. So he presented to the eyes of the prophet a sample proportional to man’s ordinary capacity as if indicating that he was not showing the entire empyrean.

157. Moreover (and to me, this seems very likely), it may so happen that every slightly remarkable part of the empyrean is a facsimile of the whole. This pattern appears in some plants and crystals, and one sees it also in skies superimposed in the universe, which seem to be successive enlargements of the same design. In any case, the empyrean with each of its parts is the most perfect and symmetrical material masterpiece.

It is not surprising, then, that St. John either saw only part of the great whole or a three-dimensional maquette adapted to our poor human sight, with a rather metaphorical expression: “I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” 420

420

Ap 21:2

176

TABLE DES MATIERES

158. However, this sample has colossal proportions. If we stick to the calculations of Cornelius a Lapide, 421 who takes the twelve thousand furlongs as the full measure of the city 422 it occupied a space equal to that spanning between Naples and Milan, in both width and length. But it should be observed that Alcazar quadruples this space because he takes the twelve thousand furlongs as the measurement of its length alone, and thus assigns to heavenly Jerusalem a square area that would extend from Seville to Naples.

It also seems to me that the most natural sense of the context is that in which the angel measures only one of the three dimensions of the city. He measured the city with his golden pole over a space of twelve thousand furlongs, and its length, height, and width are equal. It is as if he said: I measured its length; its height and width equal its length, which is twelve thousand furlongs. The wall is measured apart.

According to this interpretation, a furlong being roughly about 185 meters, the area of the holy city would be four million nine hundred twenty-eight thousand four hundred square kilometers, that is to say nearly half of Europe, which is 9,900,000 km [6,151,574.803 miles]. 423 159. In truth, these proportions are respectable for an earthly city for the use of mortals.

If we consider that: The celestial city is the homeland of immortals for whom the universe was made (nos. 7-10) and who must reign with Jesus Christ over all works of God; That it is the kingdom of heaven most often promised to us in the Gospel, formed by the heavens of heaven; That billions of worlds will be renewed and glorified for the use and glory of the faithful angels and men who reached their supreme destination; Ap ibid.

Considered as a simple square.

Alcazar also sees the city as a square, but since St. John clearly tells us that it is a cube, we must take these measurements six times to have the surface of the whole cube. We must operate the same multiplication with the measures given by Cornelius a Lapide, if we prefer his interpretation to that of Alcazar.

421 422 423

177

TABLE DES MATIERES

That their intellects will be as it were deified by the light of glory, their bodies will be glorified, and human senses will have become perfect instruments of those happy souls now capable of mastering, so to speak, all that is inferior to them in excellence:, We must admit that the heavenly Jerusalem that St. John saw is only a miniature empyrean. Besides, the beloved disciple of Jesus seems to indicate this to us quite clearly in many ways.

160. So it is easy to understand how the City of God forms a perfect cube, and its height is no longer surprising. Indeed, why would the Empyrean be more like a sphere than a cube? The persuasion that it is spherical was due to the appearance of the vault of heaven, later dispelled by the progress of astronomy (nos. 39-41).

Besides, the spherical shape is particularly suitable for mobile worlds and skies. Well-balanced as it may be, their movement is nevertheless a continual search for rest. It is a journey aiming at an end, and we know from Revelation that this end will be attained when the heavens and the earth are glorified. Then, according to the common teaching of Catholic philosophy and theology, the two will no longer circulate; having reached their end, they will rest. We know, says St. Paul that every creature groans and travails in pain until that hour. 424 But will they be arranged to form an immense sphere or a huge cube? Saint John tells us that the cubic shape will prevail, as the length, height, and width of the holy city are equal. The city already has this shape and will grow by incorporating and assimilating the lower skies without changing its configuration: In quadro posita est.

161. Several other serious authorities corroborate this teaching.

Cornelius a Lapide tells us that St. Jean Chrysostom, Theophylact, L. Molina, St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and the doctors of Coimbra hold that the empyrean is not round but quadrangular at least in its convex or exterior surface because that is the doctrine of St. John in the quoted passage. Saint Clement says that heaven is shaped as a square and is as stable as stone. 425 However, no doubt led by the conventional idea of 424 425

Rom 8:22.

Cornelius a Lapide, Commentary on the Apocalypse, 21:16.

178

TABLE DES MATIERES

his time that heaven is vault-shaped, the learned commentator does not share this opinion and invites us to understand these words of the Apocalypse as symbolic.

The square shape, he says, indicates stability and beauty; square cities are more convenient, beautiful, perfect, more robust, and better suited to architectural ornamentation. With great respect for the distinguished author, I agree that the heavenly Jerusalem is indeed all that and has all those qualities. As fas as material works are concerned, none are more convenient, beautiful, perfect and better adorned than Paradise, and nothing shows the attributes of the Holy City better than their palpable reality. Therefore, let us not seek difficulties in doctrine so clearly revealed. The city is built as a square, and its height, length, and width are equal. The Empyrean is a cube. 426 162. The changing heavens move in the immense cube of the empyrean. And when the lower heavens are renewed, the worlds, like molecules that form crystals, will place themselves very symmetrically and harmoniously in the interior of the great cube not only because of natural law but also under the glorifying influences they will receive.

However, this great cube and the worlds that are part of it should not be conceived as forming only one continuous body. The empyrean will always be the type of heavens in which bodies stand at various distances.

The streets of heavenly Jerusalem run in all directions: lengthwise, crosswise, and vertically, as for the immortals, all directions are convenient. Its streets and places are very proportional to the vast expanse of the city. The light of glory floods it entirely, and I imagine that it continually increases in intensity as you ascend from the interior The cube is necessarily made up of six faces. Now Saint Augustine finds great perfection in this number: “Hoc commemorandum putavi ad commen-dandam senarii numeri perfectionem, qui primus, ut dixi, partibus suis in summam redactis ipse perficitur in quo perfecit Denis opera sua.Unde ratio numeri contenenda non est, quac in multis sanctorum scripturarum locis; quam magni aestimanda sit, elucet diligenter intuentibus. Nec frustra in laudibus Die dictum est : omni in mensura et numero et pondere disposuisti (Wis. 11:21). Since paradise is one of the three masterpieces of God par excellence (no. 32), it should have a cubic shape” (St. Augustine, The City of God, 1.II. Chap. 30).

426

179

TABLE DES MATIERES

toward the surface so that each blessed person perceives it only according to his capacity. It is not far-fetched to admit the existence of bodies in the form of immobile globes, as the absence of angles favors sight and communications. These bodies are arranged so their ensemble forms the large cube of which we spoke.

163. This is how – O our Father in heaven -- I dare imagine my celestial abode from the depths of this place of exile. Since there is no doubt that I am but a small child in the face of these ineffable realities, I speak as a small child, have the tastes of a small child, and reason like a small child. One day, if so you deign to grant me this favor, as I firmly hope, I will become a man and see you no longer through an enigmatic mirror but face to face. 427 I will see not only you, my sweet Savior Jesus, but the great and good Mary, the Angels and Saints, and all the heavenly Jerusalem. Grant O God, that I may continually live from this thought, and that it informs my entire conduct.

“Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy law, and I will always seek after it.

Give me the understanding to keep thy law, and I will keep it with my whole heart.

Lead me into the path of thy commandments; for this I have desired.

Incline my heart toward thy teachings, and not to covetousness.

Turn away my eyes that they may not behold vanity: quicken me in thy way.

Establish thy word to thy servant, in thy fear.

Turn away from me the opprobrium that I fear: for thy judgments are righteous.

Behold I have longed after thy precepts: make me live in thy justice.” 428 “Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord: or who shall stand in his holy place?

427 428

1 Cor 13:11-12.

Ps 118:33-40

180

TABLE DES MATIERES

The innocent in hands, and clean of heart, Who hath not taken his soul toward evil, nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbor.

He shall receive a blessing from the Lord, and mercy from God his Savior.

This is the generation of them that seek him, of them that seek the face of the God of Jacob.” 429

THIRD MEDITATION Isn’t Paradise Thus Conceived Too Big? 164. For many reasons, many of which we have already indicated, we answer that it is not. Let us quickly point them out here, and add some we see as authoritative.

1. Paradise is the kingdom of heaven not only because this kingdom is in heaven, but also and especially because it encompasses the heavens.

2. Indeed, it is certain that the worlds of the universe must be renewed and glorified for the use and accidental glory of the immortals and become part of their kingdom.

3. It is also certain that the immediate end of all irrational creatures is to serve the privileged creatures that know and love God. Besides being the vision, understanding, and fruition of God, paradise is also the full exercise of all the rights of humans and all rational beings that deserved to attain their supreme end. That is why the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

4. The immortals are children of God no longer being formed, 429

Ps 23:3-6.

181

TABLE DES MATIERES

growing, and in the state of in trial but adorned with a royal and divine diadem. Their dignity is such that they are gods by participation: I said: you are gods. You are all children of the Most High, 430 and this dignity demands empire upon the universe.

To him that shall overcome, says Jesus Christ, I will give to sit with me in my throne: as I also have overcome, and am set down with my Father in his throne. 431 If we suffer along with Jesus Christ, we will reign with Him; 432 if we are children [of God], we are also heirs of God and co-heirs with Jesus Christ as long as we suffer with Him to be glorified with Him. 433 So as Jesus Christ reigns over all creatures (no.

151), we will reign over all creatures with Him. 5. The perfections of the soul, body and senses of the risen blessed are so great and sublime that the glorified universe is an abode merely commensurate with their moral, spiritual and physical faculties.

Not sufficient to their greatness, it is only one element of their accidental happiness; only the Infinite Himself can fully satisfy them. I, says the Lord, am myself your exceedingly great reward. 434 O my God, I will not be satisfied when worlds are subject to me, but when your glory shall appear. 435 The human intellect wants more than the finite; the human heart is greater than Creation; glorified man’s body and senses will be servants worthy of intellects and hearts that drink from the infinite Good (nos. 9, 10, 149). How then could material distances and magnitudes disconcert such beings? Not at all; all things in the universe will be the garden of delights of the immortals. It was made for them, and they are the reason why God created the world so vast and full of glory. Why then should one find the whole work too extensive compared to the elect if they themselves were used as measures in the divine mind? 436 Ps 81:6.

Ap 3:21.

432 2 Tim 2:12.

433 Rom 8:17.

434 Gen 15:1.

435 Ps 16:15.

436 The predestined are those about whom God has thought from eternity; they are 430 431

182

TABLE DES MATIERES

165. 6. The angels are the ones who govern celestial bodies (nos. 10, 110 with notes). Now, the risen men are equal to the angels. 437 If, therefore, the universe is not too vast at this time for the multitude of pure spirits, it will be even less so when all the elect of the human race mingle with the angelic choirs and reign with them as friends and brothers. 438 166. 7. While governing the universe, the angels enjoy the intuitive vision and are in paradise. It is true that paradise thus considered is not complete in its accidental improvements, which will only happen after the world is renewed. But this renewal will only add to it, as the supernatural completes, adorns, and elevates nature without restricting or diminishing it. So at present, the angels act partly in the already glorified paradise and partly in all the bodies of nature that will be glorified. Therefore, nothing is exaggerated in our conception of the City of God. 167. 8. The inhabitants who populate the whole Empyrean will certainly not compete for places as the offspring of fallen man scandalously do. Everyone will have everything he wants according to his ability and tastes. The immortals will be like wealthy men and kings.

And given the prodigious, supernatural expansion of soul, body, and all faculties that they will experience, everyone will have, as it were, a kingdom in the grand empire of Jesus Christ.

This kingdom, including its extent, will be fully proportional to them. Add to that the actual number of blessed, i.e., all angels (who

those that fulfill all His designs. That is why omnia propter electos: everything is for the elect. That is also why diligentibus Deum omnia cooperantur in bonum : “everything contributes to the good of those who love God;” omnia, all, and since everything is done for their glory, there is nothing to which the Creator has not given power and even a secret inclination to serve them. Bossuet, 2nd sermon for the Feast of All Saints, 1 point. See this entire superb sermon by Bossuet, worthy of his genius.

437 Lk 20:36.

438 “Pleni sunt caeli et terre gloria tue: hosanna in excelsis,” chants the Church.

Therefore, intelligent spectators of God’s glory, worshipers of God, all full of God but not of his glory, must exist in all the heavens.

183

TABLE DES MATIERES

will then be visible as ordinary citizens),) 439 and all the elect of the human species from Abel to the last righteous one living on earth; all the children who died in innocence; all persons who, in various denominations, belonged to the Soul of the Church; and all those who reconciled with God through an act of repentance as they left for eternity.

Paradise must adequately accommodate this whole multitude of kings! Who can tell when the earth is going to end? And in the meantime, how many souls will go to heaven before the earth is purified by fire!

168. 9. Besides, there may exist other inhabited worlds outside of our microscopic planet. Almost all astronomers today agree with this idea.

“What should one think of stars which, like our sun, undoubtedly are centers of light, heat, and activity that, like the sun, maintain alive a multitude of creatures of all species? We would think it absurd to look at these vast regions as uninhabited deserts; they must be populated by intelligent and rational beings capable of knowing, honoring, and loving the Creator. And perhaps these inhabitants of the stars are more faithful than we have been to their duty of gratitude to the One who drew them from nothingness.” 440 The learned Vincenzo Cardinal Ludvico Gotti, who died in 1742, tells us that in his time, very distinguished philosophers and mathematicians shared this opinion, which nevertheless surprised and displeased him. 441 Today, many authors, and highly reliable ones like In the Scriptures, the number of angels is always called very large and immense.

Martini, Apoc. 5:11. “But you are come to mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many thousands of angels” (Heb. 12:22; Dan. 7:10). One should not believe that by speaking thus, the prophet undertook to count them. This prodigious multiplication he made only means they are innumerable and that the human mind is lost in that immense multitude. Count if you can the sands of the sea, or the stars of the sky, both those that we see and those we do not, and believe me, you have not reached the number of angels. It costs God nothing to multiply the most excellent things and so to speak He is most generous in producing the most beautiful ones” (Bossuet, Elévations, IV, serm. I El. 440 P. Secchi, Le soleil, p. 418.

441 Elie Mérie, L’autre vie, Tome 1, chap. 5.

439

184

TABLE DES MATIERES

Alfonso Cardinal Capecelatro and a large number of others, hold this opinion, which the Church has neither approved nor condemned. 442 169. 10. Who knows if the Gospel does not favor this opinion? “And He (the Son of man) shall send his angels with a trumpet, and a great voice: and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the farthest parts of the heavens to the utmost bounds of them.”

443 Would one not say that the Son of Man has his elect in all heavens?

In any case, according to the description we made, these last depths of the heavens would express the extent of the empyrean.

170. We believe we can legitimately conclude from this that Paradise is the largest, more beautiful, and richest part of the universe.

“Blessed, O my God, is he whom thou hast chosen and taken to thee by thy grace!

He shall dwell in thy courts.

May we be filled with the good things of thy house, Of thy holy temple!” 444

FOURTH MEDITATION According to Saints and Doctors, Mary Is Also a City of God, a Perfect Divine City 171. As we have seen, the cities of God are different from those of men; they are truer, nobler, more complete. They are primordial, archetypal cities, of which human cities are only small and pale images.

St. Augustine, speaking of the higher material heaven, asks himself who are the inhabitants that populate them. Enarrat. In Psalm. XXXII, serm. 2. No. 6.

443 St. Matthew 24:31. St. Mark 13:27, express the same thought, though with less emphasis.

444 Ps 64:5.

442

185

TABLE DES MATIERES

But if I may say so, there are several species of cities. The Heavenly City is a perfect model of unity: it has the same glory, same charity, same happiness, same immortality, and at the same time it is a place vast and most pleasant.

The Church Militant is an imperfect miniature of the Church of heaven. Applied to preserve the unity of mind by the bond of peace, be one body and one spirit, as you have been called to have a single hope in your vocation. There is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all, amid all things and in all of us. 445 It is a divine city, the citizens of which are spread over the whole earth and which encompasses by right all humanity along with the globe in which it travels. The ancient earthly Jerusalem was a divine city that served as a prelude to the city of the Gospel.

172. The Virgin Mary is also eminently a divine city. She is the bustling city of which the prophet said: glorious things have been said of you, City of God (Ps 86), 446 city of the great king not by the excellence of its houses and the height of its buildings, but by the grandeur and purity of its divine and sublime virtues, which are incomparable; 447 the city of God made man, in which He chose to be contained, as without abandoning the higher regions, He dwelt in it like dew upon the earth and remodeled us in its bosom; 448 the city that received the Word of God and God the Creator Himself in a way that surpasses nature and all-natural possibilities without circumscribing His divinity. 449 173. Oh, how true it is that Mary is an excellent city! By city we mean first of all a fairly considerable number of men living as sociable beings, and therefore, together. What distinguishes a city above all is its social character. Mary was created for more than just society. St. John Damascene addresses her thus: You will have a life superior to that of nature, not for your own sake, as you would not have been born for

Eph 4:3-6.

St. John Chrysostom, Orat. De Annunt.B.V. 447 St. Germain, Oratio in zonam Deiparae.

448 St. Andrew of Crete, Can. In Sabbat. S Sanct.

449 St. John Damascene, Orat.1, De Assumpt. B.M. 445 446

186

TABLE DES MATIERES

that; you have received life for this end. 450 Why would Mary have existed without the Incarnation of the Word? 451 Mary owes her existence, first of all, to the relationships that the three divine Persons willed to have with her for the salvation of fallen humanity. The main purpose of her being is her society with God, from which flow the other social characters of her existence such as the maternity of men in the supernatural order and the correction and improvement of the motherhood of Eve. According to Church Fathers and theologians, Mary would never have been born simply to become the adopted daughter of God and to save herself like other humans. If you permit this expression, she is, like Jesus Christ, an entirely social being. How true it is, therefore, that she is a divine city!

174. A city supposes a considerable number of people living in unity and harmony under the same laws and authority, with the same general end to achieve. Now Mary is, after Jesus Christ, the most potent factor of unity, the unity that should make of all men a single flock under the leadership of an only shepherd. 452 To fulfill this great social ministry, everything in her was arranged to make her a perfect model of unity, a kind of incomparable moral city.

Mary is a city, i.e., she is the unity of citizens and the full concordance of their reason and senses; a city whose inhabitants have holy thoughts, pious affections, fervent desires, and similar things tending toward a single necessary goal, 453 and governed by the counsel of the Holy Ghost because citizens must be guided by prudence. 454 Thus, Mary is a kind of personal and living harmony produced by the Divine Persons and by grace; nothing in her is opposed to their directions and superior impressions. She is a harmony destined to 450 Orat. 1. De Nativ.Virginis: Vitam natura praestantiorem habebis, non tibi ipsi, neque enim tui ipsius causa progenita es, quocirca Deum habebis, ob quem in vitam prodiisti.

451 Si non erat Deus caro quorsum Maria in medium producta? St. Ephrem, Sermo De Transfig. Christi.

452 Jn 10:16.

453 Lk 10:42.

454 St. Procus, De laud. V. lib.XI.

187

TABLE DES MATIERES

harmonize all creatures, and especially man, with the divine plan.

Accordingly, St. Bernardine of Siena says that Mary is a city that mystically encloses all the elect with the twelve patriarchs and all the predestined. 455 175. Mary mystically encloses all the elect in a very real way but one that is not so easy to understand, and so one must meditate and try to delve deeper into these mysteries.

If God willed Mary to be the Mother of the God-Man, of the Savior of men, according to the divine plan, she is with all the more reason the mother of the members of Jesus Christ. She is, says St. Augustine, the mother of the members of Christ, that is to say, us. For with her charity, she cooperated in the birth of the faithful in the Church, of whose members Jesus Christ is the Head. 456 As we said (no. 173), Mary was an entirely social being in every way compatible with her nature, supernatural gifts, and privileges. Created to be the Mother of the Redeemer, she is salutary to everyone in the sense of Redemption.

At first, her radiance concentrated entirely on the Redeemer to give Him birth; and then, as a secondary agent of redemption, it naturally extended to all men. God dispenses no grace to men other than through the hands of Mary.

The Creator wants this sublime creature to serve as a link between God, who saves, and men, who are to be saved. In His great mercy, He wants humanity to also have a Mother in the divine order (137, 140), and for this Mother, by the graces at her disposal, to give birth to all the elect of heaven.

True, she is a member of the Church (no. 141), but as a mother is a member of her family. The Apostles, their successors and all their spiritual children, are children of Mary. Also her children are all those called to be children of the Church, i.e., all men. Furthermore, Tom. 3 serm. De Assumpt. B.V.: civitas in qua omnes electi mystice continentur, etc Mater membrorum Christi, quon nos sumus, quia cooperata est charitate, ut fideles in ecclesia nascerentur, qui Christi capitis sunt membra. In libr. de sancta virginitas.

455 456

188

TABLE DES MATIERES

she is the queen of angels and all creatures (nos. 2, 12). Finally, she floods the entire empyrean with her sanctifying glory (nos. 73-75).

Therefore, it is impossible to find a factor of unity as powerful as Mary, unity that she produced under God’s supreme domination.

Therefore, causally, Mary alone is not only the entire human and angelic society but also the community of all finite beings.

If you look at all relationships that unite things with one another and with God, you will see that at the summit of Creation, they all concentrate in Mary and, through the ministry of Mary, join the Word Incarnate and arrive at the last end, which is God. Mary, says Saint Anselm, is the celestial city, of which the fertility is God. 457 She is the city of the sovereign good; 458 she gives creatures the God-Man who is their Head and to whom she gives birth.

She gives God the creatures of which she is the Mother and Queen.

Thus, as all fullness dwells in her by God’s grace (no. 30), playing a supporting role, she reconciles all things with Jesus Christ, those that are on earth and those that are in heaven. 459 According to St. Albert the Great, she is the peace of the Lord: pax domini. 460 According to St. Ephrem, she is world peace, pax mundi.

461 According to St. Bonaventure, she is the blessed peace of hearts, pax beata cordium. 462 How eminently, therefore, the holy Virgin is a city, holding in her hand the scepter of universal unity!

176. A city is also a center of light, administration, and government.

Now, Mary is like the metropolis of God, metropolis die, 463 where the Word was made flesh to dwell among us. 464 She is the metropolis of all these cities, which are the souls of the faithful. 465 She is the city of the

Psalter. B.V. part. 2.

Id. De Concept.Virg.

459 1 Col. 19:20.

460 Super Missus, c. 121.

461 Sermo De laud. B. V. 462 Psalter. B.M.V 463 St. Andrew of Crete. Or. 3 De Dormit.B. V. 464 Jn 1:4.

465 Richard de St. Laurent De laud.B. M. V. libre. 11.

457 458

189

TABLE DES MATIERES

Great King, i.e., Christ, who is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, 466 and in whom the fullness of the divinity dwelled bodily as the ManGod. 467 She is the Mother City of God, civitas dei genitrix. 468 Consequently, says St. Ephrem, she is a very pure light that illuminates the world; 469 an inextinguishable light more resplendent than the sun, says St. John Chrysostom; 470and a light that shines divinely before God 471 and between God and the world because she is the light of the world, says St. Bonaventure. 472 She is the scepter of pure doctrine, according to St. Cyril of Alexandria, 473 the scepter of the King of all things, according to St. Andrew of Crete, 474 to preside over every created authority.

The Church also attributes to Mary these words from the Book of Proverbs: By me, kings reign, and lawgivers decree just things; by me, princes rule, and the mighty decree justice. 475 Indeed, since Mary is the queen of all things, every participated authority must report to her. Since she is the dispenser of all graces and authority is a grace, as such it must also pass through her hands.

The Mother of God must, says St. John Damascene, have all that belongs to her Son; all Creation must bow before the Mother of God. The Son has placed all creatures at the service of His Mother. 476 To command is to participate in God’s providential action to lead men to their temporal and eternal ends. Since the Incarnation of the Word in her womb, Mary became as it were the universal focus of

St. Proclus. De laud.Virginis, Lib.11.

St. Germain. Orat. in zonam Deiparae.

468 St. Bernard. De prec. elegantis ad V. M. 469 Serm.De laud.B. M. 470 Hom. In Christis Nat. 471 St. Anselm, Orat.ad B. V. 472 Psalt. min. B.V.M. Quinquag. 1.

473 Homily 6, Contra Nestor.

474 Can. In Dom. Post diem 17 Dec. 475 Prov 8:15-16.

476 Opportebat die matream ea quae Filii erant possidere, atque ab omnibus rebus conditis ut Dei matrem adorari… Filius Matri resomnes conditas in servitutem addixit.

Orat. 2 De Assumptione.

466 467

190

TABLE DES MATIERES

everything that glorifies God, everything that honors His attributes, everything that benefits man individually and socially.

In the expression of St. Bernard, God placed in Mary the fullness of all good, totius boni pleinitudinem posuit in Maria. It is therefore clear that the divine Virgin is a sublime city of God as the center of light and authority.

177. That is also true in another respect. Just as cities have more activities than the countryside and attract distinguished men, favoring the work of great talents and geniuses, so the Mother of God attracts all the best of humanity in terms of holiness and true science.

Mary is a kind of meeting place for great souls who find the present world too small for their desires, too bad for their tastes, too changeable and fleeting for their immortal nature, too inferior to their almost infinite aspirations.

The Mother of God opens to them the vast horizons of Christian faith and hope. Mary is for all good souls, at the same time, a high place and a city of refuge: civitas in excelsium and in refugium nobis posita. 477 Like the Church, she is in an even nobler sense the divine city where predestined souls gather before taking flight toward heavenly Jerusalem.

What dazzling virtues do people who are truly devout to the Mother of God, not practice? How they project around them the good odor of Jesus Christ, realizing the words of the great Apostle: We are for God a good smell of Christ toward those who are saved and toward those who perish! 478 What a fertile leaven of holy influences these children of Mary leave to society when they go to heaven, as posited by St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, St. Bernard, St. Alphonse Liguori, St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas and countless others!

477 478

St. Albert the Great, Biblia Mar. Super Evang. Matth. C.V. 2 Cor 2:15.

191

TABLE DES MATIERES

Oh, how sweet it must be to all exiles here below to recite the Rosary devoutly, piously commemorate the feasts of the Virgin, run to her altars during the touching pious exercises of her month of May! Hearts that gather around Mary in this valley of tears and compose a mystical city with the Mother of God already belong to heaven more than to earth and have one of the most assured marks of predestination to eternal happiness. She is the assured salvation of all Christians who have a genuine and sincere devotion to her, 479 the most powerful agent of salvation for humanity, 480 the true salvation of the world. 481 178. The fifth characteristic of cities is to be federations of people for the common defense against enemies. Now, Mary is alone an army in battle array to whom anyone under attack by the enemy must resort, be it the world, the flesh, or the devil so the Mother may send help through her Son from above and send salvation from heaven. 482 Mary is the victory of pious people, victoria piorum, as St. Gregory, the miracle worker says. 483 179. In antiquity, there were cities of refuge where people guilty of unintentional manslaughter could find status and security. Mary is the city of refuge for sinners. In her, God’s mercy has provided merciful shelter even for those who sin willingly. 484 She is the refuge of sinners (St. Ephrem), 485 the refuge of our souls (Saint Sabbas), 486 the refuge of all Christians (St. Damasus), 487 the very strong refuge against invasion Suius firma universorum christianorum ad eam sincere et vere recurrentium. St. Ephraem. Serm. De laud. B. M. V. 480 Salus hominin tutior. St. Bonaventure, In laud . B. M .V. 481 Salus vere mundi. S. Germ. Serm. In Annunt. B. M .V. 482 Acies Castrorum ordinata, ad quam respicere debet, quecumque sentit impugnationem ab hostibus, vel a mundo, vel a carne, vel a daemone ut ipsa per filiume mittat auxilium de sancto et de sion tueatur. Pope Innocent III, Serm. 2. De Assumpt.

B.M.V. 483 Orat. 2. De annunc. B.M.V. 484 St.Anthony of Padua, serm. In dome, 3 quadr.

485 Serm. De laud.B .M .V .

486 Menae. Grec. Die 17 jan.

487 Can. In Elia Proph.

479

192

TABLE DES MATIERES

by any enemy, visible or invisible (id), 488 the refuge of the desperate, 489 the refuge of the afflicted, 490 the stable refuge of the world, in which we are saved. For by becoming incarnate in her, God gave her to us all as wholesome protection (id). 491 180. Finally, a city is an expression of progress, and its goal is well-being and prosperity that men cannot attain in isolation or small groups. For herself and her children, Mary is the height of progress, prosperity, wealth, and happiness. She is the city endowed by the Holy Ghost with all grace, all virtue, 492 and all the advantages of nature, grace, and glory; 493 a city in which the entire celestial civilization reigns; 494 the city of the sovereign good. 495 Mary is, like heavenly Jerusalem, the city built as a square formed by faith, hope, charity, good works, justice, strength, temperance, prudence, 496 all infused virtues, all gifts of the Holy Ghost, divine and human Motherhood, and has glory proportional to all these greatnesses.

Nothing is more accomplished than Mary. She is a moral empyrean superior to the material empyrean, the wonder that eclipses all other works of God. Happy are those who live in this safest city. In it, they find peace, piety, kindness, virtue, light, honesty, joy, merriness, gentleness, love, harmony, and are not deprived of any good. 497 True devotion to Mary is the beginning of paradise.

Ibid.

Cant. eccles. grace. Sono.1 490 In Paracl. B. M. V. 491 Ibid.

492 St. Proclus. De laud. Virg. Psal. 30. 1. II. 493 St. Albert the Great, Bibl. Mar. Super Jerem. Proph.

494 Id. in Postil. Super cap. X Luc. 495 St. Anselm. Ut supra, n.175.

496 Civitas in quadro posita (Apoc.XXI) cujus quadratura fuit fides; spes, Charitas, etc. St. Proclus, ibid. ut supra.

497 Idiota, De Beata Virgine, part. 14, contemplat. 36.

488 489

193

TABLE DES MATIERES

CHAPTER EIGHT Despite the Immensity of the Empyrean, Jesus Christ and Mary Are Very Visible from all Points of Paradise and Exert Their Beatific Influence Everywhere. Need for Mary’s Intercession according to the Divine Plan Signum magnum apparuit in caelo: mulier amict sole.et luna sub pedibus ejus, et in capite ejus corona stellarum duodecim. (Apoc. 12:1) A great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

FIRST MEDITATION Jesus Christ and Mary Are Clearly Visible Throughout the Empyrean Because of Their Beatific Excellence 181. This passage begins with the Church's struggle against the devil; this is its proper and most natural meaning because it is prophetic (the Apocalypse is the only prophetic book in the New Testament). So this is the meaning that the Holy Ghost primarily had in view. 498 Its second meaning is allegorical and expresses Michael's fight against Lucifer or instead alludes to it and is symbolic. Its third meaning reveals the struggle between the Virgin and the devil; this sense is historic. It is so to speak the original and fundamental meaning, and the first of these three meanings alludes to the other two. 499

498 499

Cornelius a Lapide.

Id.

194

TABLE DES MATIERES

This passage presents the Blessed Virgin to us as the model of the Church, and the Church as the most faithful image of the Mother of God. A great wonder appeared in the supernatural heaven: Mary. She is the woman clothed in and fully penetrated by the splendors of the divine Sun. Under her feet are the Church, of which she is the queen and mother, and all inferior excellences along with the entire natural world, symbolized by the moon.

On her head is a crown of twelve stars which, according to St. Bernard’s method of interpretation, 500 are the marks of Mary’s main privileges: Immaculate Conception, confirmation in grace, primacy in the possession and practice of the three theological virtues, the four cardinal virtues, the interior and exterior gifts of the Holy Ghost, the fullness of grace and merit, Divine Motherhood, and the spiritual maternity of men.

These are so to speak the twelve stars that make up her crown, the twelve jewels that sum up and indicate her greatness. After Jesus Christ, these are the foundations of her royalty in heaven and on earth, and of her quality as Queen of the Apostles and of the Church Militant.

182. The Church is like a second prodigy that appears in the firmament and, if we may say so, is only a development of the first. The first is the original and fundamental prodigy; the second, a derivative prodigy and a mystical accomplishment of the original prodigy.

Mary is the dawn of the Incarnation and Redemption. The role of Jesus Christ is the heavenly light that shines through her and surpasses her like the sun surpasses the moon. In her, it is simply imitated, without being equaled.

Playing a similar role, the Church becomes a ‘moon’ in relation to Mary, who is not the sun, but is directly and abundantly clothed in solar splendors. For her part, Mary dresses in light the Church, mystical body of Jesus Christ, to which she spiritually gives birth after having delivered the God-Man.

500

Quoted by Cornelius a Lapide, in hunc loc.

195

TABLE DES MATIERES

Therefore, while the Church is a second woman clothed with the sun vis-a-vis humanity, she is only an imitation and child of Mary.

This does not prevent St. John, at least in this chapter, from addressing the destinies of the child rather than those of her Mother, predicting the destinies of the Church according to those of Mary.

183. Thus, the main circumstances that St. John indicates in the twelfth chapter are first suitable for Mary, and then for the Church.

As Queen of martyrs, the blessed Virgin was, of all women, the one who suffered the most and especially so on Calvary. There, cooperating with our Redemption, she gave birth to us amid the most incomprehensible sorrows.

The seven-headed dragon with ten horns, that is to say, Lucifer and his cohorts, persecuted to death Mary’s Firstborn, her male child and Man par excellence, who was to rule all nations with an iron scepter.

The same dragon, after the Man-God ascended to His celestial throne, likewise pursued the offspring of the divine Virgin, the Christian people, whom Mary was nursing as it were with love proportional to the pains that the birth of her Son had caused. But under the protection of God, Mother and Child renewed the victory that Saint Michael had long before won over the army of Satan.

As Mary was taken to heaven, following in her footsteps and under her maternal protection, another woman clothed in the sun continues to play her role on earth: the Church, which has come of age and identifies with Mary as a living image with its original.

The prophet does not say that a woman succeeded another because there is no succession except in appearances. Mary always reigns in the world, and the Church fights along on her side. But since the Church is at a lower level of perfection and faces different conditions, certain details are only suitable for the Church as an image, while others are better suited to Our Lady as a model.

196

TABLE DES MATIERES

184. Let us say with Bacuez: “The holy doctors have reason to apply this image (mulier amicta sole) to the Blessed Virgin. As Queen of the Church, Mary must have all her gifts and share all her prerogatives.

One could say that both ideas are present here at the same time.” 501 185. Indeed, the best Catholic authors often apply to Mary this entire passage from Revelation. First, they call her a great sign, a great wonder in the sky: Mary is an admirable, marvelous wonder, and one very different from what nature can present to us. 502 She is a great wonder seen in the sky, 503 a prodigy that leaves her mark on all ages, past, present and future (Richard de Saint-Laur); 504 a great prodigy in terms of grace and glory, merit and reward.

She is great because she is a virgin, even greater because she is at the same time a Mother and greater still because she is the Mother of God, surpassing all created greatness. 505 She is a great prodigy because of the place where she appears, heaven, 506 a great prodigy by being a completely unheard-of novelty, as no one could ever have suspected that a mere human creature would be exalted above all angelic orders. 507 She is the sign of a great grace because, by her gracious cooperation in the Incarnation, she associated heaven and God Himself 508 with us.

She is the sign of glory so great that it surpasses any other created glory and makes all angelic citizens rejoice. 509 She is a virginal and heavenly sign that appears in the firmament of the Church Militant as an example of all virtues, 510 a virginal sign that appeared in the heaven of glory.

Manuel biblique, Tome 4. No. 925, IV. The author cites in a footnote, this passage of St. Ambrose; multa in figurae ecclesiae de Maria prophetata sunt.

502 St. Basil, Hom. 25, de hum. Cti. gener.

503 St. Bernard, serm. De B.V.M. on this text of the Apocalypse.

504 De Laud. S. V. I. 7.

505 Ibid.1. 12.

506 Ibid.

507 ibid.

508 St. Bernardine of Siena, tom. I. serm. 61.

509 Ibid.

510 Ibid.

501

197

TABLE DES MATIERES

When raised to heaven in body and soul, Mary embellished and adorned the whole celestial court, 511 being, therefore, the great wonder that appeared in the firmament of both the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant. 512 186. As the august Mother of God is a great celestial prodigy, a divine phenomenon that marks all ages, prophesied and fulfilled, an actual wonder resplendent with eternal glory, a shining sign of grace and salvation for wayfarer humanity, and of glory and happiness for the citizens of heaven, the whole humanity needs to see her in some way and improve and rejoice under her sublime influence.

Everyone on earth can and must see her through faith, as all are called to be children of the Church and Mary. But in heaven, where faith will be replaced with clear vision, all the blessed will contemplate their divine Mother directly, not only with the eyes of the spirit but also those of the flesh. For them to contemplate God Himself, the infinite Spirit, with an intellect strengthened by the light of glory, their bodily eyes must receive an enhancement proportional to that of their souls and enable them to enjoy all the best that exists in the created universe.

Accordingly, they will contemplate the glorious humanity of Jesus Christ and Mary easily and with deep joy from all points of the happy empyrean despite its unimaginable extent. And Jesus Christ and Mary will see with their bodily eyes the entire empyrean and each of its inhabitants, as well as all creatures contained in the lower zones, as we will demonstrate below.

187. Mary is not just a great prodigy or sign: She is clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. What could be more conspicuous? What creature could be best suited to see all others?

Addressing the Virgin about this text, St. Bernard says: The sun, who is Christ, abides in you and you in Him; you put Him on, and He puts you on; you dress Him with the substance of the flesh, and He 511 512

Ibid.

St. Antonin of Florence, Summa, 3 p. tit. 31, c 3 .

198

TABLE DES MATIERES

clothes you with the glory of His majesty. You dress up the sun with a mist and are clothed in the sun. 513 Mary’s condition is as if mixed with that of Jesus Christ. The glorified humanity of the Son of God comes from Mary and communicates to her His immense majesty and glory.

Mary is the woman clothed in the sun because the sun of divinity shines in her and around her. It penetrates her entirely and having illuminated the Virgin to the highest degree, it also illuminates the citizens of heaven. 514 One would say that the light of glory first concentrates in Jesus Christ and then spreads to Mary before radiating to the angelic spirits and souls of the blessed so that in heaven as on earth, all graces go through Mary.

Besides, why would it be otherwise? The light of glory is a supernatural gift, a pinnacle of grace that brings the human soul to the supreme perfection that enables it to see God face to face.

If all graces of salvation are drawn from the bosom of God by the merits of Jesus Christ and go through Mary, why would something similar not happen in heaven, where far from being eliminated, all roles are perfected? The vision of God would be no less immediate because everything that gives people’s intellects the capacity to see precedes their vision, which is done without any intermediary.

It even seems a requirement that, after Mary, St. Joseph, the apostles, and most glorified angels and saints play similar roles. Since they were living ministers and instruments of grace at the time of trial and faithfully fulfilled the noblest of missions, they must have a reward fitting their merits in the place where all perfections are crowned.

188. That admirable hierarchical place (more about it in a moment) makes us understand ever better the close familiarity that reigns St. Bernard, Serm. de B. V. In hunc loc. Apoc.

Richard of St. Victor, Explicatio in Cantica Canticorum, Chap. 39: mulier amicta sole, quia sol divinitatis infulget ei, et circumfulget eam, et totam occupat, et post eam maxime illustratam caeli cives illuminat.

513 514

199

TABLE DES MATIERES

among all the blessed notwithstanding the immeasurable distances in the Empyrean.

Back to Mary, it seems to me that several serious authors support the point indicated above more strongly than I dared to do.

Mary is the woman who appears in the sky clothed with the sun, says Albert the Great, having the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. The divine state shines in her in the operation of miracles. 515 All that the moon means in terms of graces (as it receives all its light from the sun), is poured on the Church by her merits; all light that shines in heaven upon the blessed comes from Mary or is related to her because she is the Mother of the Redeemer who opened the gate to the heavenly kingdom. 516 Mary is the woman clothed in the sun, says the same doctor, having on her head, in divine splendor, a crown of twelve stars, that is to say, the brilliant crown of saints because she repaired the ruin of humanity and filled the void that the rebel angels left in heaven. 517 189. Let us listen to Saint Bernardine of Siena and Denys the Carthusian. The former describes to us Mary’s temporal mission, and the latter, her eternal one.

St. Bernardine says: Mary is the woman clothed in the sun, i.e., in Christ’s solar truth, wisdom, and charity, with the moon, that is, temporal and created things, under her feet. She is in heaven, meaning solidly established above the inhabitants of heaven, in mind, and contemplation. In her womb, i.e., in her maternal affection, she has the Son of God and the entire mystical Christ, meaning the Head with the whole body of the elect, triumphant over the dragon, etc.518 Now if all the predestined who compose the entire mystical Christ are in the bosom of Mary in a mystical but real way--which is Quia fulgor divinus splendet in ea in miraculis.

Quidquid lucis refuget in caelo in beatis, refertur in eam, eo quod Mater est Redemptoris aperientis januam regni caelestis. In post. Sup. c. X. Luc. 517 Mulier, quae in caelo amicta sole apparuit, in splendore divino coronam duodecim stellarum, hoc est, claritatis sanctorum, restaurta ruina, habens in capite. Ibid.super c. I. 518 Tome III. Serm. 3, De glorioso nomine Mariae.

515 516

200

TABLE DES MATIERES

unmistakable--, how can it be any different in heaven, where her role must be even more sublime and the elect, who must be completely happy, are even more closely united to her?

Wayfarers, we are in Mary's bosom to nourish ourselves with graces of salvation; possessors of bliss, we will be in Mary's bosom to imbibe the light of glory that will enable us to see and possess God, and with God all secondary goods. Is this not also the thought of Denys the Carthusian, who is even more explicit than the authors cited above?

190. St. Denys, a great devotee of Mary, taught very rightly that she purifies, enlightens, and perfects even the higher orders of angels such as the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim. She also perfects lower orders much more excellently than does any higher order, as the incomparable Virgin far surpasses all celestial citizens in wisdom, science, and knowledge of divine secrets. 519 Indeed, the Seraphim and Cherubim may be pure and perfect by their nature but will never be able to see the infinite God if their nature is not strengthened and elevated by the light of glory. This light comes to them through Mary, who receives it through Jesus Christ as paradise is the real ideal of order and proportionate glorification of beings.

Before the Ascension of Jesus Christ and the Assumption of Mary to heaven, the angels could receive the light of glory by virtue of the expected merits of the Man-God and His Mother. But from the moment that the King and Queen of the universe were installed in their thrones, rivers of supreme grace began to flow from them to the various degrees of the empyrean in divine waves, according to the capacity and merit of each child of God. 191. Whatever the extent of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus Christ and Mary should be seen as present to all the Blessed, who in turn are present to Jesus Christ and Mary. These two animated stars are undoubtedly brighter than the sun and the moon, which nevertheless are present, as it were, at all points of the earth and in many celestial 519

De Laud. Virg.

201

TABLE DES MATIERES

localities.

But the empyrean is better lit by the Sun of Justice and the one we call the Morning Star; by Him, whose face shone like the sun even here below, 520 and by Her, who is clothed with the sun, than is our planet by the star of the day and that of the night.

We, therefore, salute you, o Mother of God and ours, heaven where God resides, the throne from the top of which the Lord dispenses all His graces! Pray unceasingly to Jesus for us so that through you, we may find mercy on the Day of Judgment and share the glory of the elect in eternity. 521 As St. Bernard said to Mary, all generations will proclaim you blessed, you who have engendered life and glory for all generations on earth. 522 The same will happen more excellently still in heaven, where she lives with all the blessed, and all the blessed live with her in great union of souls.

SECOND MEDITATION Jesus and Mary Are Very Visible from the Whole Empyrean Because of the Place They Occupy and the Role They Play in the Hierarchy of Beings 192. If we consult theological teaching, we must draw about the same conclusions. St. Denys affirms, says Cristobal Vega, that the upper choir of angels has more grace and therefore more glory than the lower choirs. They can be compared to celestial orbs. Just as the upper orbs surpass the size and capacity of all the lower orbs and contain them in their bosom, so the higher choirs of angels surpass in perfection and intensity the grace and glory of all the lower choirs as a container surpasses its content.

Mt 17:2 St. Alphonsus of Liguori, Glories of Mary, Expl. of the Salve Regina: Mary our life.

522 Cited by himself, ibid.

520 521

202

TABLE DES MATIERES

However, below we demonstrate that in heaven, the Blessed Virgin constitutes a choir much higher than those of angels and all men.

Just as God arranged the entire sphere of the universe so the fiery sphere is larger and has greater capacity than the earth, air and water; just as the empyrean far surpasses all other celestial orbs together by its size, volume, and perfection; just as the highest of the nine choirs of angels surpasses all lower choirs in wisdom, grace, and glory, so also God raised a creature who by her dignity as His Mother would be of a higher order, infinite after a fashion, so her excellence would outdo the graces and degrees of beatitude of her inferiors. If one extended Mary’s grace and glory to infinity, one would neither exceed the terms of her dignity nor its due proportion. 523 193. To fully understand the significance of this passage concerning the subject at hand, let us recall that Mary is essentially a social being in her nature raised by grace, and also by her direct and special destiny (nos. 173-175). Therefore, she is elevated and glorified more than all creatures in the heavens, not just because she is worthy of occupying the first rank or adorning the empyrean with her presence. In that position, Mary fulfills a social ministry analogous and ineffably superior to the one she dispenses to wayfaring humanity and the Church Militant. In heaven, she continuously deploys her activity to elevate angelic and human intellects to the intuitive vision of God so that her heavenly and eternal function is the supreme enhancement of her temporal function.

194. This conclusion is clear from the theory widely taught by Denys in his Heavenly Hierarchy. Hierarchy, says this Church Father, is a sacred ordination, science, and operation to reproduce the image of God as much as possible and rise all the way to an imitation of the Deity in proportion to divinely infused enlightenments. 524 Hierarchy, therefore, aims to assimilate and unite to God as much as possible. 525 Indeed, the perfection of the members of a hierarchy consists in rising with all strength to the imitation of God (Eph. 5:1) and something even more Theologia Mariana, no. 1868.

Ch. 3. par. 1 525 Ibid. par. 2.

523 524

203

TABLE DES MATIERES

divine, say the oracles, to become cooperators of God (1 Cor. 3:9) and manifest the divine operation in oneself with all possible brilliance. 526 Here are two functions of the celestial hierarchy, i.e., the angelic choirs: to rise as much as possible by imitating God, and something even more divine, to cooperate with God to elevate the lower orders and beings as much as possible through that imitation.

Now, it is certain that Mary is the most God-like creature of all and God’s most perfect imitation by her utterly incomparable perfection in the world of finite things. Even more divine, as Mother of God and Queen of heaven and earth, Mary is after Jesus Christ the being who most resembles God and most powerfully cooperates with Him and His Son to raise His subjects and children, the Angels and men, to divine imitation. So in heaven, Mary fulfills the role that St. Denys attributes to the most perfect finite beings.

195. What is that role? The functions of any hierarchy, responds St. Denys, are reduced to receiving and transmitting in a holy way, unalloyed purity, sovereign light, and perfect science, 527 primary substances that rise above all created power visible or invisible and constitute a special and unique hierarchy. 528 Now, these characters are suitable only for Mary.

Cristobal Vega also devotes a whole thesis to prove that in heaven, the Virgin Mother constitutes a special choir superior to those of the angels and saints. 529 He cites numerous authorities, including St. Bernardine of Siena, Fulbert of Chartres, the liturgy of the Church (see above no. 1.4), St. Antonin of Florence, Albert the Great, Gerson. The Virgin alone, says the latter, constitutes the second hierarchy under the One and Triune God who is the first and sovereign hierarch in whom is raised only the humanity of His Son, who in turn sits at the right of the virtue of God thanks to His hypostatic union with the Word. 530

Ibid. when quoting St. Denys, I use the French translation of Father Dulac.

Ibid. ch. 7 par. 2 528 Ibid.

529 Theologia Mariana. Palaestra 35, certamen II, nos. 1873 & ff.

530 Ibid. no. 1873.

526 527

204

TABLE DES MATIERES

The three divine Persons, with the holy humanity of Jesus Christ, form the first of all hierarchies. The Virgin, Mother of God and men and Queen of all creatures forms the second. 531 Then appear, in descending order, the hierarchies constituted by the angels and men according to their degrees of merit and glory.

Authoritative authors think that the Man-God and Mary form the first hierarchy after God; Son and Mother would thus belong to the same order as the glorious humanity of the Word (no. 42).

196. The fact remains that we must complete the sublime reasoning of St. Denys by placing Mary above all angelic hierarchies.

Having been in the counsels of God, i.e., in predestination, the object of the same decree as the Incarnation of divine Wisdom (Pius IX, cited in note 2), and having reached the maximum fidelity to grace during her mortal life (nos. 48, 49), the holy Virgin is close to her Son Jesus Christ both in the beginning and end of predestination.

Therefore, when St. Dionysius teaches us that the first substances (Seraphim and Cherubim) have the honor of communicating with Jesus…from whom they immediately receive the knowledge of His deific lights, he does not exclude Mary’s intermediate ministry between Jesus Christ and the higher angelic hierarchy. But, as we said in the preceding number, he seems to suppose that the Word Incarnate and His Mother form the first hierarchy after God and the divine Persons. In our opinion, this is how we should understand the following passages from the holy doctor.

197. The mid-level hierarchy of celestial intellects is purified, illuminated, and perfected by thearchical (divine) lights secondarily passed on to it by the first hierarchy. Mediation by the first hierarchy “Above all creatures did God so love her…far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all celestial gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity that this mother, ever absolutely free of all stain of sin, all fair and perfect, would possess that fullness of holy innocence and sanctity than which, under God, one cannot even imagine anything greater, and which, outside of God, no mind can succeed in comprehending fully. … God alone excepted, Mary is more excellent than all, and by nature fair and beautiful, and more holy than the Cherubim and Seraphim” (Pius IX, Apostolic Letter Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854).

531

205

TABLE DES MATIERES

communicates those lights to the mid-level hierarchy in the second degree of their manifestation. 532 This enlightenment is more vivid in the angelic orders that are closest to the divinity and participate in it more directly than in those whose enlightenment takes place only in an indirect way. That is why our priestly tradition says that the first intellects perfect, illuminate and purify those of a lower rank...because it is a general rule instituted in a sovereign way by the principle of all order (Taxiarchy) that those who follow receive divine enlightenment only from those who precede them. 533 The higher orders eminently possess the sacred properties of the lower orders, but the latter as a whole do not possess the excellences of the former, which only partially transmits to them, according to their capacity, the initial enlightenments with supersubstantial light. 534 The latter’s intellects have the properties of the former but within more reduced limits. 535 Thus, it is according to the same laws of the physical world, 536 that the super-physical world, Fount of all order visible and invisible, supernaturally shows forth the glory of Its own radiance in all-blessed outpourings, first to the highest beings, and through them, those below participate in the Divine Ray...And thus, throughout the whole Hierarchy, the higher impart that which they receive to the lower and through Divine Providence all are granted participation in Divine Light in the measure of their receptivity...But it is ordained that in imitation of God each of the higher ranks of beings is the source for the one that follows it, as the Divine Rays are passed through it to the other.

Therefore, the beings of all the angelic ranks naturally consider the highest Order of the Celestial Intelligences as the source, after God, of all holy knowledge and imitation of God…On this account, they refer Celestial Hierarchy, ch. 8, par.1.

Ibid. par. 2.

534 Ibid. ch. 11, par. 2.

535 Ibid. ch. 12, par. 2 536 In this regard, St. Dionysius says that the light of the sun passes readily through the first matter, for it is more transparent, and by this means it displays more brightly its own brilliance; but when it falls upon some denser material, it is shed forth again less brightly because the material illuminated is not adapted for the transmission of light.

532 533

206

TABLE DES MATIERES

all holy works in imitation of God, to God as the Ultimate Cause, but to the first Divine Intelligences as the primary regulators and transmitters of Divine things. 537 ...The divinity enlightens all lower virtues through the higher ones. 538 198. Let us now apply these vast and profound insights to Mary. Since enlightenment is more vivid in the creatures closest to God and directly illuminated by the very source of light, we wonder which creature is highest and most intimately united with God. Is it not Mary? As for the angels, they are all subjects and children of Mary.

The Blessed Virgin, said St. Bernard, received from God the Father inexhaustible fertility to give birth to the elect and to give the angels themselves an increased delight in divine dignity and science. 539 If the angels, says St. Antonin of Florence, receive the glory, perfection and bliss of Jesus who restored all things on earth and in heaven, Mary being the Mother of this divine Redeemer is in a way the fountain and source of the glory of angels and can rightly be called their Mother. 540 Furthermore, St. Thomas tells us that Jesus Christ is the head of men and angels because He is more closely united to God and participates more abundantly and perfectly in His gifts. Thus, not only men but also the angels themselves receive His divine influences.

Christ is the head of the entire celestial Church (comprehendentium), having the absolute fullness of grace and glory...the humanity of Christ, by virtue of His spiritual, i.e. Divine nature can cause something not only in the spirits of men but also in the spirits of angels on account of its most intimate, personal union

Ibid. ch . 13, par. 3.

Ibid., par.4. Hence Mary is Potentia divinarum illuminationnum immediate susceptiva, et omnium bonitatum veluti distributiva. St. Albert the Great, Missus est, chap. 53.

539 T. II. Serm. XI. art. 2.

540 Part. VI. Tit. XV, ch. 24, paragr. 3. These two passages are cited by Fr. Just of Mieckow, Lectures on the Litanies of the B.V.M., Lecture 379 - Mary Queen of Angels.

537 538

207

TABLE DES MATIERES

with God. 541 In the soul of Christ is found fullness, given with measure to all rational creatures, both angelic and human. 542 But we have shown above that Mary has, by privilege, the same fullness of grace that Jesus Christ has by nature (nos. 10; 31; 33); that nothing among creatures can approach Mary in dignity and excellence (no. 134); and that the union of the Holy Virgin with the three divine Persons is the most intimate that one could imagine after the hypostatic union of Christ with the Word (nos. 136-142).

It necessarily follows that in the kingdom of heaven, Mary receives the most vivid and direct illumination; that the hierarchies of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones are enlightened through the hierarchy of the Mother of God; that the Daughter of the Father and Spouse of the Holy Ghost is the channel of divine light pouring out godly splendors immediately or eventually on all stages of the empyrean; that Mary constitutes, with the holy humanity of Jesus Christ, the highest order of celestial intelligences which is the first finite principle of all sacred knowledge concerning God, and of all sacred similarity with God. 543 199. We must repeat that this doctrine is not at all opposed to the teaching that in heaven, blessed have a direct and immediate vision of God. All we have just said is somewhat related to the providential order, the supreme goal of which is to lead rational creatures to their last end. Now, the last end of angel and man is nothing other than the contemplation, possession and fruition of God. Consequently, the light of glory is so to speak the last providential means that directly puts the rational creature in possession of his ultimate end.

Sum. Theol. P. 3. q. VIIIV.a.4.

St. Thomas, Comment. In Johannes, Chap. 2, ad V.14.

543 Praedilecta (est Maria) ut sol, quia sicut sol solum orbem illuminat; sic haec sola solidiori lumine et angelos et hominos illustrat. St. Peter Damasc. Serm. 4 de Ass. Sic ergo illuminans Maria in gloria sua rutilans per omnia respicit; quia per omines angelos, et per omnes sanctes gloriae suae illuminationem extendit. St. Bonaventure, Speculo Virginis lect . 3 541 542

208

TABLE DES MATIERES

Would it, therefore, be astonishing if this supreme subjective improvement in the elect is effected by the Redeemer and the CoRedemptrix, the Head and the Mother of the whole Church, Jesus whom the angels adore 544 and the Queen of Heaven whose perfection is beyond the comprehension of angels? (No. 72, with notes.)

The intuitive vision is the height of perfection for angels and men, but what makes them capable of it is something created, and Jesus with His Mother undoubtedly throne at the highest peak of the finite world. 545 While God is the efficient cause of the light of glory, Jesus and Mary are its meritorious causes.

200. Therefore, the initial illuminations come from them. It is through the ministries of the God-Man and Mary that the angelic spirits and human souls are purified, enlightened, and perfected to the point of being able to contemplate the essence of God. In the empyrean, Jesus Christ, as man, and Mary are the first masters and ministers of divine things. Who can doubt it concerning Jesus Christ? One must also admit this about the Virgin because she reached the highest possible degree of finite purity according to St. Thomas (no. 49) and is superior to any pure creature and more beautiful than the Cherubim and Seraphim, according to St. Epiphanius (no. 49). Clothed in the sun, she floods the whole empyrean with her illuminations. 546 201. We have purposely insisted on this doctrinal point because it has admirable consequences. Let us briefly outline some of them.

1. The light of glory is like the element or atmosphere in which all the citizens of heaven live. Therefore, if Jesus Christ and Mary Hebr 1:6.

Also St. Thomas says that the higher angels illuminate the lower ones quantum ad capacitatem videntis, qui divinam essentiam non comprehendit (lib. II, Dist.9. a. 3. Ad 5).

The Soul of Christ, therefore, receives its capacity from the Word; Mary receives hers from Christ; Joseph receives his from Mary (see no.460); the Seraphim, from Joseph; the Cherubim, from Seraphim, and so on.

546 Electa est ut sol (Maria) ad irradiandam totam multitudinem spirituum beatorum. St. Bernardine; Tome 3. Serm. 3 .B. Virgini immediate a Trinitate illuminationem omnis dispensatur et per ipsam in reliquos angelos descendit… B. Virgine reliqui omnes sive angeli sive homines illuminationum ac revelationum arcana mutuantur. Cristobal Vega, Theologia Mariana, no. 1528.

544 545

209

TABLE DES MATIERES

are the sources of this luminous and vital atmosphere, it follows that Jesus Christ and Mary are perfectly visible from all points of the empyrean, in which the light of glory is missing nowhere.

2. This light, as it were, is an intrinsic and vital element in each blessed analogous to the grace that lifts and perfects our souls.

Therefore, all the elect will see Jesus Christ and Mary as the fountains of their blessed life; and the Man-God and His Mother will so to speak live in each of the blessed according to the word of St. Paul: For to me, to live is Christ. 547 So every inhabitant of heaven closely feels the presence of Jesus Christ and Mary.

3. That which happens mystically and invisibly in the Church Militant happens ostensibly in heaven, where clear vision and evidence replace faith. Is it not true that the holy Virgin is present in some way to all souls who invoke her throughout the inhabited globe and that her servants know how to find her everywhere, on the highest mountains, on the vast surface of the oceans, in the vast countryside, as well as in churches and homes? Well then, at the gate of the empyrean, all darkness and shadow dissipate at the approach of the indestructible light; the holy conviviality of the heavenly Mother with her children will be a most beautiful spectacle that will delight the eyes and hearts of the immortals.

If grace now unites us with Jesus Christ, the Queen of heaven and the fortunate dwellers of this divine abode without the least hindrance from any distance, what will it be like when so to speak grace itself is glorified and called the light of glory? Will it not have splendors and energies superior to all notions we can now form? That is why, however vast the empyrean might be its material proportions will pose no inconvenience to the personal relationships that will unite the citizens of paradise with one another and their divine Mother.

Furthermore, upon entering into the composition of the empyrean, all matter will be glorified and placed at the disposal of the friends of God, for their well-being. Hence, far from hindering

547

Phil 1:21.

210

TABLE DES MATIERES

communications among the blessed by its nature or extent, all its properties will aim at their happiness. 548

THIRD MEDITATION The Need for Devotion to Mary Deduced from the Principles set out in the First two Meditations 202. The need for Mary’s intercession to obtain salvation and hence to have devotion to the Mother of God is a vast subject that we will often bring up. Here we will consider its general relationship with the divine plan per the data expounded in the first two Meditations.

203. Mary is the greatest prodigy that exists in the order of finite things: signum magnum; a prodigy of grace in the heaven of the world of grace, and in the heaven of the world of glory; a prodigy in the eyes of the greatest saints; a prodigy in the eyes of the Seraphim and Cherubim; in a way, a prodigy in the eyes of God Himself: quam pulchra es, amica mea! Quam pulchra es!549 She is the great prodigy that appears in the firmament of the Church Militant and the heaven of the Church Triumphant, the wonder that leaves its mark on all ages, present, past and future (no. 185).

Therefore, Mary is not only the most perfect creature that would embellish the universe; she is also the most active and beneficent, so this great prodigy is a wonder of love and charity for all ages and all rational creatures, both durin the time of trial and in the place of immortal glorification.

She is clothed with the sun to project life-giving splendors in a mystical way on the struggling Church and wayfaring humanity, and in an ostensible and evident way on the angelic choirs and the elect of the 548 Creatura corporalis finaliter disponetur per congruentiam ad hominis statum, etc . S. Thom. Contra gent. I. IV . c. 97 in fine.

549 Cant. 4:1.

211

TABLE DES MATIERES

human species.

The moon is under her feet, i.e., this world, which receives divine influences only through Mary, receives rays not directly from the sun but from the one clothed with the sun. This lower world is purified, perfected, and illuminated by the ministry of the creature that surpasses all others in purity, excellence, and union with God (no.

197). 550 On her head is a crown of twelve stars, which designate her royalty on the universality of finite things, and the deific influences (in the words of Saint Dionysius Aeropagyte) she draws from the infinite source and spreads on lower hierarchies. It is a general rule instituted in a sovereign way by the Principle of all order, that what follows only receives divine illuminations from what precedes (ibid.).

You, O Mary, precede all pure creatures in the divine mind and predestination; you surpass them all by your ineffable dignity and incomparable perfections. As a result, all divine blessings pass in some way through you before reaching your subjects and children, the universal empire that you govern.

The principle of all order, God the uncreated Wisdom wants you to fulfill this role of dispenser of all graces and intelligent channel of all benefits. The need for your intercession and having recourse to you by everyone able to do so is therefore obvious and arises directly from the divine plan itself.

204. We can say that order is the supreme and direct end of all created beings. Nature, society, the individual, everything moves on the right track as long as it is in order; evil begins where disorder begins, and the height of good is the height of order just as the height of evil is the height of disorder: ubi nullus ordo sed sempiternus horror inhabitat. 551 That is as true in the moral world as in the physical world, in the supernatural world as in the natural world. Now, the order requires In caelesti hierarchia tota ordinis est ex propinquitate ad Deum, et idro illi qui Deo propiniquiores, sunt et gradu sublimiores, et scientia clariores; et propter hoc superieores nunquam ab inferioribus illuminantur. St. Thomas, Sum. Th. p.1q. 106, art.

3, ad 1.

551 Job 10:22.

550

212

TABLE DES MATIERES

that lower things depend on those that are superior and that the latter fulfill the role of beneficent ministers with regard to the former so that, according to the divinely realistic plan the most excellent and perfect of creatures is the common reservoir of all goods for beings that belong to the lower categories.

205. These general theses have been proven by the best theologians: Mary is the first-born of creatures in divine predestination, i.e., all things are done and organized for her and in view of her, to glorify her, and to find their good in her. 552 Mary is the channel of all divine graces and benefits; she deserved with the merit of congruity, that is to say, convenience, everything that Jesus Christ deserved by right in the rigor of justice. In some way, along with and second to Jesus Christ, Mary has always presided and will always preside over the fate of angels, over the fate of men, and over the fate of the universe.

These propositions and many similar ones are only developments of the principle affirmed above, namely that the various creatures are purified, perfected, and illuminated by those superior to them. All creatures undergo the same process by her who is raised upon them, and she by Jesus Christ, the Man-God, according to the divinely established order.

What could be more effective to make us understand how greatly necessary the role of Mary is for us, and how important it is to have recourse to Mary with true devotion to comply with the divinely instituted order?

206. Here is what St. Bernardine of Siena says about the sublime ministry of the Holy Virgin: Solemnities of the Blessed Virgin Mary must be sanctified because of the sovereign perfections in which she These statements have nothing against the passage from Holy Scripture: “The Lord hath made all things for himself” (Prov. 16:4); for, says St. Thomas, God does not seek his glory for himself, but for us (2,2, q. 132, a. 1. Ad I). All that is inferior in excellence to Mary must glorify Mary, as Mary glorifies Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ glorifies God. But God does not need anything. He attains all his glory when his creatures enjoy his kindness and perfections to the desired degree.

552

213

TABLE DES MATIERES

abounds and which she shares by granting them to us, inspired by her divine ministry. For just as God is the general giver of all graces that descend on the human race, and Jesus Christ is His general mediator, so the glorious Virgin is their general dispenser. She is the neck of our Head through which all spiritual gifts are communicated to the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. 553 Elsewhere, the same saint gives more excellent details about this doctrine. Mary dispenses to her devotees, he says, the light of divine wisdom and the dew of celestial grace, which makes St. Bernard say: No grace comes from heaven to earth without passing through the hands of Mary.

St. Jerome says, in his sermon on the Assumption: In Christ was the fullness of grace as in the head, which is a center of influence, and in Mary as in the neck, which serves as a channel (in collo transfundente)…For just as vital spirits spread through the neck from the head they also flow continuously from Christ, Head of His Mystical Body, especially to His friends and devotees.

The heavenly graces flow in hierarchical order. This beneficent river of graces starts from God and floods the blessed soul of Christ, for every perfect gift comes from above and descends from the Father of lights; 554 it then floods the soul of the Virgin, then the Seraphim, then the Cherubim, spreads successively over the other orders of angels and saints, and finally pours on the Church Militant and especially on the friends of God and the glorious Virgin. 555 207. How could grace and glory have been given to the angels through the ministry of Mary when the angels were enriched with grace and crowned with glory long before the birth of the Mother of God? A complete answer to this objection requires expounding a great and beautiful theological thesis, which we will do in a subsequent meditation. Here we simply indicate the main points of view that give an overall idea of the divine plan.

Serm. 10, first Lent of Tom. II (30).

Ja 1:17.

555 St. Bernardine of Siena, Serm. De glorioso nom. V. M. 553 554

214

TABLE DES MATIERES

1. When God created the angels and the other finite beings, He had primarily in view Jesus Christ and Mary, whom he contemplated in his eternity as for God, there is no future.

2. Jesus Christ and Mary were the objects of the angels' faith during their trial; and the angels received existence, grace, and then glory through the anticipated merits of the Redeemer and the CoRedemptrix; that is why, 3. Jesus is the Savior of angels and men; of men since His Incarnation, of angels from the beginning of the world; 556 of men, by raising them from the fall; of angels, by preserving them from it. And since Mary deserved with the merit of congruity all that Jesus Christ earned with the merit of justice, it follows that she is with Jesus Christ, and second to Him the co-Redemptrix of angels and men.

208. Just as Jesus Christ and Mary are visible from all points of the empyrean and see everything that happens in the vastness of the universe, so also in some way, they have been present as actors in all divine works at all times.

The sublime ministry of perfecting and glorifying that they fulfill in heaven is but the ultimate complement and crowning of the ministry they always fulfilled with all creatures as objects of faith, meritorious causes, efficient causes, and final causes that attract by their kindness.

Thus, O Mary, you are clothed in the sun, which you imitate but outdo. The sun extends its course from one end of the world to another, and nothing escapes its ardors. 557 No creature lives without your benefits; no benefit is granted without you. Anyone who wants life must seek you and draw it from you, who draw it from God.

556 557

St. Bernard, Serm. I de Circumcisione.

Ps 18:7.

215

TABLE DES MATIERES

CHAPTER NINE God, the Holy Humanity of Christ, and Mary Are the Temples and Principal Lights of the Empyrean Et templum non vidi in ea: Dominus enim Deus omnipotens templum illius est, et Agnus. Et civitas non eget sole neque luna ut luceant in ea, nam claritas Dei illuminavit eam, et lucerna ejus est Agnus (Apoc.

21:22, 23).

And I saw no temple therein [in the celestial city]. For the Lord God Almighty is the temple thereof, and the Lamb. And the city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it. For the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof.

FIRST MEDITATION Comments on This Text – Part One 209. In the celestial city, there are no temples like the ones we see on earth. Why would there be? Temples are necessary in a world where profane elements abound. In it there must be, here and there, as it were little paradises where one can worthily praise God, pray, and offer sacrifices to Him. In this in this parched world immersed in evil, where one finds so many buildings to shelter man or satisfy his vanity and hide his weaknesses and vices, there must be oases, holy places, 558 houses dedicated to God. But in the empyrean, everything is holy and devoted to the contemplation and praise of God. There is no temple like ours because the empyrean itself is nothing but a temple, the largest, richest, and holiest of material temples in which God is eternally glorified by all His elect in a manner worthy of Him. 558

1 Jn 5:19.

216

TABLE DES MATIERES

210. Saint John raises our thinking even higher by telling us that the Lord, the Almighty God, is the first temple of the heavenly Jerusalem.

What does that mean? It means that the saints have their divine and happy abode in God, the divine and incarnated temple. For them, God is at the same time a temple and the one who presides over the temple and over everything in all things. 559 According to St. Ambrose and Pascal, God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. And the empyrean and all the worlds that move within it float in God so to speak like a fish in a vast ocean. God is, therefore, the temple par excellence.

Everything that God dwells in, says St. Thomas, can be called a temple. But God lives mainly in Himself because He alone comprehends Himself. Hence it follows that God is His temple unto Himself. As one reads in the Apocalypse, the Almighty God is His temple, 560 a temple such that it encompasses not only all things finite but even the infinite. And since God is visible to the blessed even better than we now can see the walls and vault of a material temple, He appears to them as the temple that encloses everything in His divine immensity. 561 211. Furthermore, as one can call temple everything in which God dwells particularly by His grace through special consecration or holiness, Jesus Christ is the first temple after God; Mary is the first temple after her divine Son; then come the blessed, then all men whose souls are adorned with sanctifying grace, then the material empyrean which is as it were consecrated and glorified; then churches, which are used for divine worship on earth. Only the inhabitation of God, says St. Thomas, makes a temple or temples of God562 in the Cornelius a Lapide.

In Epis. 1 ad Cor. C. 3, lec. 3. in the beginning.

561 We must conceive God as the temple of the universe independently of this truth that God is the temple of the empyrean: It is in Him that we live, move, and are (Act. 17:28 ), and all things finite are in the most holy and largest of temples, which is God. But this temple is currently visible only in the eyes of reason and faith. Our sacred temples are visible images of the Infinite Temple.

562 Ibid.

559 560

217

TABLE DES MATIERES

noblest sense, that is, dwellings of God as the author of the supernatural.

Moreover, God is in all creatures by His essence, power, and presence. 563 By His essence, because there is no point in the created universe nor possible worlds in which God does not find Himself with all His being and substance. By His power, because every finite or possible being only exists and acts or and can only exist and act by virtue of the primary cause and necessary foundation of all that is dependent. By His presence, because He sees everything: His designs, finite things, and the various ways in which He wants to direct, perfect, and raise them to Him by His power according to their capacity. 564 Hence it follows that the natural world itself is also a temple of God, although in the least noble sense. Now, all these various temples in which God dwells and manifests Himself in different degrees are contained in the infinite temple of the divinity, in the spiritual sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

212. God is the temple of the empyrean, especially in His capacity as Almighty: Dominus enim Deus omnipotens templum illus est. It is His power that sustains Him and at the same time supports all worlds: those already glorified and those still in the state of trial, on their way to attain glorification because, as we have seen (nos. 21-23), these worlds are in the empyrean.

Thus, having spoken in general about celestial residences, those of Jesus Christ, Mary, the Apostles, angels, and lower saints, we can form an idea, albeit very imperfect, of the abode of God. The Great Spirit dwells in Himself, and everything dwells in Him. 213. But how is it that the Lamb, along with God, is the temple of the Holy City? Undoubtedly, as I said, it is because God lives particularly in Ibid.

Cf. St. Thomas, Summa Theol. P .1 q. 8. a, 3. We can also explain these words as follows: God is in all creatures by his essence, as a being by himself. He is infinite, immense, the creative and conservative cause of the finite; by its power, as a very pure and always active act, he is the primary motor of all activity; and by his presence, as I said in the text.

563 564

218

TABLE DES MATIERES

Him or better because He is God Himself. Besides, the most holy humanity of Jesus Christ exerts such a visible and striking influence on all the empyrean that all the other glorified creatures are as it were, drowned in His glory and enclosed in it as in a temple.

214. Indeed, in the heavens, God placed Christ on His right above all principality, power, virtue, domination, and every name given not only in this century but also in the future. He put all things under His feet and made Him the head of the whole Church, which is His mystical body and last complement, for we should see Christ attain His full development in the supernatural development of things and their supreme perfection. 565 The Church says Martini, is the mystical body of Christ, and hence it is the complement of Christ; for just as the head provides adornment, complement, and integrity to the members, it receives its perfection from union with those members.

Just as the human body, made for the soul, is the complement of the soul, so also the Church, made for Christ, is the complement of Christ. 566 The whole Christ is fulfilled in all. He makes a complete and perfect whole in union with all His members, that is to say, by uniting the faithful who make up the Church and by making them worthy of having Him as their Head. 567 215. Now, in its full development, the body of Jesus Christ is the whole Church, that is to say, the Church Militant, the Church Penitent, and the Church Triumphant with all the faithful angels and saints.

Considered in its broadest sense, the Church is the full development of Christ so that all things potential in Christ are accomplished in some way in the members of the Church. Different graces, various virtues, and their degrees, spiritual gifts of all kinds, everything that can exist in the Church is found abundantly in Christ as in its source and flows from Christ to the members of the Church to Eph. 1:20-23.

Corpus est factim naturale est quaedam plenitude animae. Nisi enim essent membre eum corpore completa, non posset anima suas operationes plene exercere. Similiter itaque est hoc de Christo et Ecclesia. St. Thomas, Comment. In Epis. Ad Ephes. I. 23.

567 Comment. In cap. I ad Ephes. V.23.

565 566

219

TABLE DES MATIERES

have its final deployment in them. 568 That is why Christ is sometimes called the whole Church, and why the apostles so often say that we are, grow, act, and suffer in Christ. 569 It is, therefore, easy to understand how the Lamb is, after God, the temple of the heavenly Jerusalem. All that is supernaturally glorified is like the final and complete radiance of Jesus Christ.

Just as an emperor is accomplished, says St. Jerome, when his army grows larger by the day, and new provinces come under his scepter, so is Jesus Christ. 570 216. Christ penetrates the entire Church by His virtue, operations, and influence. He is like the hypostasis, the soul and the spirit, that is to say, the form of the whole Church. 571 Like Saint Paul, the Church can say, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. 572 Jesus Christ can say, the Church abides in me, and I in it. 573 Now, since the Lamb is the holiest and greatest after God, and is holier, greater, more perfect, richer and more powerful than the Church, He is eminently the temple that contains the Church and all that must belong to the Church: the times, nature, and the empyrean.

217. Christ is the Judge of the angels and the one who presides over the administration of all creatures. God governs lower things through higher things, in a certain order. The soul of Christ, who is above all creatures, governs all things. 574 It is Christ, not only as God but also as man, who assigns the angels their tasks and activities. 575 St. Thomas I. cit.

Cornelius a Lapide. Ad Ephes, I.c.

570 Cited by Cornelius a Lapide, ibid. The Man-God instituted His Church for the edification of His mystical body so that we all may arrive, by union of faith in, and knowledge of, the Son of God to the state of perfect men, commensurate with the Age of the fullness of Christ, that is to say, to perfect and supernatural virility and to full development as members of Christ, outlined in this life by holiness, and completed in the next life by the resurrection. Eph. 4:13.

571 Cornelius a Lapide, ibid.

572 Gal. 2:20.

573 Jn 6:57.

574 St. Thomas 3. q- 59, art. 6, ad 3.

575 Ibid. in corp.

568 569

220

TABLE DES MATIERES

In the empyrean, the body of Christ is placed higher than the most sublime angels, and its sensible radiance encompasses all glorified people and places. The nobler a thing is, the higher the place it needs. Personally united to God, the body of Christ surpasses in dignity all angelic spirits. This is why He must occupy a place higher than those of other creatures, including spiritual ones. 576 Therefore, if as we have seen the Almighty God is the temple of the Empyrean, the soul and body of Jesus Christ form the greatest and noblest created temple after God in the most complete and perfect sense. All lower creatures live from and in the influences of the holy humanity of Christ, influences that, in heaven, will be very visible and sensible.

218. St. Thomas Aquinas gives us the reasons for these affirmations.

1. Human nature assumed and elevated by the Word is the closest thing there is to God, and that is why the soul of Christ is filled with the virtue of the Word more than any angel. 577 The soul of Christ is full of the truth of the Word of God. 578 This role of the first intermediary between God and creatures, and this fullness of grace and truth superabundant in the soul of Christ give rise to a flow of beatific influences on all lower orders of the empyrean, beginning with Mary; for Jesus Christ is our head, and what was given to Christ was also given to us in Him. 579 It is therefore not surprising that their holiness permeates the entire empyrean as in a temple.

2. Christ sits on the right hand of the Father also as a man because of grace, which is more abundant in Him than in any other creature in such a way that the human nature of Christ is happier than other creatures and has a royal power over them all. 580 Therefore, He radiates supreme grace, which is the subjective Ibid. q. 57, a.5.

3. Q. 59. A. 6.

578 Ibid. a. 4.

579 Ibid. q. 58, a. 4, ad 1.

580 Ibid. a. 3.

576 577

221

TABLE DES MATIERES

principle of supreme happiness upon all things below Him that form His Empire. When we were dead in sin, God, who is rich in mercy, gave us life in Christ. 581 We are justified in Jesus Christ, will be raised with Christ, will be established in heaven with Christ; and the divine radiance will be projected on us in Christ. Yes, after God, the Lamb is the temple of paradise!

SECOND MEDITATION Commentary on This Text – Part Two 219. Likewise, the celestial city does not need the inanimate sun or moon to light it, for the glory of God illuminates it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The empyrean has suns, moons, planets, stars, and all kinds of radiant stars; they are so to speak its palaces.

Now, these stars are not there necessarily to produce light: Ut luceant in ea. There, angelic spirits, glorified souls, and resurrected bodies are brighter than any purely material light. The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. 582 If this is the brilliance of the righteous, what to say of the splendor of God and the splendor of Christ?

Compared to material lights, the righteous will be like suns that will eclipse all the light of the stars. But compared to Jesus Christ and God, they will be like the lights that the stars project on us. The blessed who took instruction will shine like fires on the firmament, and those who taught the way of justice to many will shine like stars for all eternity. 583 But the Lord is the great sun of the empyrean, the sun of all understanding, 584 infinite light that will be seen only by spirits. This glory of God, Claritas Dei, which illuminates the empyrean, is God per Eph 2:4-7.

Mt 13:43.

583 Dan 12:3.

584 Wis 5:6.

581 582

222

TABLE DES MATIERES

se, immense splendor 585 showing Himself as He is. And when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is, 586 and God is light. 587 220. God is light to such a point that He is light itself, the essential and infinite light, the primordial center, and source from which all lights draw with unequal participation. As a man, Christ is the most enlightened of all beings by the eternal splendors of divinity. The Lamb is the lamp that lights up the heavenly Jerusalem.

No matter how incomprehensibly sublime are the perfections of Christ’s soul and even body, compared to the infinite Sun, they are only the lamp of the empyrean, for all things created are infinitely below the infinite. But this lamp, which lights up directly at the very center of the divinity and distributes its lights to the lower beings in varying degrees, is the most resplendent one after God. Perhaps this modest name -- lamp -- indicates the special place where this light shines, which is the house of the Heavenly Father.

Maybe this name marks this light’s proximity to the elect and, if I may say so, its familiarity with each of them and proportionality, even bodily, to the various Blessed.

As for the illuminating force of the Lamb, it is without question the maximum of created splendor. The Divinity of the Word shines directly and immediately on the soul of the Man-God, and His soul shines on His body, so the sacred humanity of Jesus is the great created sun of all things finite and the second source of all finite light also in the material empyrean.

221. The most holy humanity of Jesus Christ, says Martini, will spread an immense light that will illuminate the blessed and fill them with consolation.588 This lamp, lantern or light that illuminates and enchants the bodily eyes of the blessed, writes Cornelius a Lapide, is the brightest and most glorious humanity of Christ, which spreads its light Cornelius a Lapide.

1 Jn 3:2 587 Ibid. 1: 5.

588 On the Apocalypse 21:23.

585 586

223

TABLE DES MATIERES

across the empíreo as a very bright moon so that helped by this light, the eyes of the saints can see the humanity of Christ, the other blessed, and everything that is in heaven. The splendor of the humanity of Christ also produces a visible clarity of the Saints, their glorious transformation (recreationem), and most abundant sensible joy. 589 Just as the light of glory (which enables fortunate intellects to see God intuitively) comes somehow from Jesus and Mary (nos. 187190), the secondary lights that allow the Blessed to see bodies and everything else in heaven after God and the spirits, are like varied reflections of most perfect creatures. All secondary lights alight immediately or indirectly in the great center of the humanity of Christ.

Mary, after the humanity of her Son, is the most luminous star of the empyrean. Then come, gradually, the angels and saints according to their degree of perfection. All the blessed, even in the lowest ranks, see the lights above their own, and especially those of Jesus and Mary, and happily salute them as the kind sources in which their lights are kindled (nos. 193 & ff).

Jesus Christ, Mary, and the most distinguished of the blessed are therefore visible from all over the empyrean not only because they contribute to the diffusion of the light of glory (nos. 157, 201) but also because they exert their influence on second-tier lights (197), which they enlarge and strengthen. 590 222. Prophet Malachi calls the lamp of which Saint John speaks, ‘sun of justice.’ The sun of justice, he says, will rise over you who fear my Name; and you will find your salvation under its wings; and you will emerge from the dust of the tomb and tremble with joy. 591 Christ, says Martini (whose translation and comments are approved by the Church), is the one here called the Sun of Justice. Just In hunc loc. See next footnote.

This opinion is not opposed to that of St. Thomas, who says that the qualities of resurrected bodies are like reflections of their glorified souls because the holy humanity of Jesus Christ also acts on people’s souls, and through their souls, on their bodies. His body also acts upon other bodies and souls, witness the Eucharist.

591 Mal. 4:2.

589 590

224

TABLE DES MATIERES

as the sun illuminates all things, so Christ on that day will illuminate, glorify, and make the virtue of the righteous visible to all ... And salvation is found under its wings: the wings of this sun are its rays, which will give the bodies of the righteous, resurrection, immortality, agility, impassibility, and ineffable splendor. It will give their souls incomparable joy, perfection in all faculties, the light of glory, and the vision of the sovereign good, which is God. 592 223. Can we not conclude from this, that without Christ the blessed will not enjoy any good in the abode of glory, and that all goods that constitute the bliss of the Elect are like rays of Christ upon them? For us, says St. Paul, there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom all things are, and we also through Him. 593 I imagine the radiance of Jesus Christ in the empyrean in the form of three concentric spheres, all of which encompass the entire universe.

The largest sphere is that of uncreated light, and this radiance of Christ is identified with that of the Father and that of the Holy Ghost.

There is nothing higher than divinity. 594 Christ sits on the right hand of His Father, being God like Him, and this place is inaccessible not only to all men but also to all angels. 595 The second luminous sphere is that of the soul of Christ, which illuminates with secondary clarity all created intellects.596 The third is that of the radiance of His body. This radiance illuminates all glorified bodies to varying degrees. It is the great sun of all matter, and in the empyrean, no corporeal thing escapes its heat and light. 597 224. A beautiful passage from St. Thomas confirms this doctrine and the one expounded in the First Meditation. The more abundantly a body partakes of divine goodness, says the Prince of theologians, the higher it must be placed in the ordered set of corporeal things.

Commentary on the cited verse from Malachias.

1 Cor. 8:6; Rom. 11:36.

594 Nihil est divinitate altius. Sum. Theol. 3 p. q. 57, a. 2.

595 St. John Chrysosthom, cited by St. Thomas, ibid. q. 58, &. 4. Ad 4.

596 Anima Christi magis est plena virtute Verbi Dei, quam aliquis Angelorum, unde et Angelos illuminat. Sum. Th. P. 3. q. 59 a. 6 597 Ps 18:7.

592 593

225

TABLE DES MATIERES

So we see that bodies endowed with the most perfect and influential forms (corpora magis formalia) are naturally superior to others because it is by its form that each body participates in the divine Being.

Now, a body participates more abundantly in divine goodness by its supernatural glorification than by its natural form. And it is manifest that the body of Christ shines among glorious bodies with incomparable glory. That is why it is very appropriate that His body is placed at a height from which it dominates all other bodies. 598 225. Just as you do not put a lamp under a bushel but on a candlestick to illuminate everyone in the house, 599 so also the body of Christ is highly placed in the empyrean to light the entire house of God and the countless mansions of the Elect. Saying that He is atop a throne that looks like a high mountain is not enough. Such a throne would rise only on one point of the empyrean, but Christ ascended in body and soul above all heavens to fill all things 600 with His power, majesty, victory, glory, triumph, domination, royalty, empire, which made St. Bernard say, Christ ascended above all heavens to fill all things; for having already demonstrated that He is the master of all things on earth, in the sea, and hell, all that remained was to prove (in the same way or an even better one) that He is the master of the skies and heavens.

Lord Jesus, for you, it remains to rise in the air as master of space in the eyes of your disciples and rise above all heavens. That will prove that you are the master of all things because you fulfilled all things without exception so that in your Name every knee may bend in heaven, on earth, and in hell, and that every tongue may confess that you are in glory, at the right hand of the Father. 601 To this end, every creature must somehow receive an imprint of Jesus Christ.

226. Obviously, Jesus Christ rises above all heavens, not as God but as a man. Therefore, He presides over the whole universe, of which He is Sum. Theol. p. 3. q. 57, a. 4.

Mt 5:15.

600 Eph 4:10.

601 Cf. Cornelius a Lapide, Ad Ephese. c. IV, 10, septimo et planissime.

598 599

226

TABLE DES MATIERES

the illuminating star also as a man. The humanity of Christ has the glory and honor of divinity because of the Person to whom it is united. That makes St. John Damascene say: The Son of God, eternal like God and consubstantial with His Father, sits with His glorified flesh in the glory of the divinity; for along with His flesh, He is adored by every creature in one act of worship.602 It would be undoubtedly heretical and absurd to claim (with the advocates of ubiquitousness), that the flesh of Christ is everywhere just as the divine Person to whom it is hypostatically united. But it makes sense to assert that the glorified soul and body of Christ inundate the entire Empyrean with their lights and beatitudes, and Christian teaching on this point appears to be abundant.

227. Glorified bodies, and especially the body of Christ, observes St. Thomas, do not need to be contained by the heavens because they receive nothing from heavenly bodies; through their soul, they receive from God all the life-giving influences that beatify them.

Therefore, nothing prevents us from admitting that the body of Christ is outside all boundaries of the heavens and not confined in a place. 603 Accordingly, I see it as a sun whose powerful radiation embraces, penetrates, and illuminates the whole empyrean (no. 223).

This conclusion summarizes all the considerations we have made on this subject and is a sort of counter proof of our assertions.

228. Thus, the Lamb is, at the same time, the temple of the empyrean and the lamp that illuminates it. His body is the highest placed; Christ is visible throughout the entire heavenly Jerusalem so we can see how He reigns with His Chosen Ones and how great His kingdom is.

His celestial abode is clearly defined by His humanity and radiance. He occupies the highest heavens, and nothing limits the diffusion of this light to the lower stages of the empyrean, except for the different capacities of the Elect and other creatures to receive His illuminations and supernatural effluvia.

602 603

Sum. theol. 3. p. q. 58, a. 3, ad 1.

Ibid. q. 57, a. 4, ad 2.

227

TABLE DES MATIERES

The sphere of action and influence of His humanity is so to speak between the immense and infinite God on the one hand, and the created universe on the other. Everything comes from God through Jesus Christ, first to the empyrean and then, through the empyrean, to the lower beings.

229. O Christ, how great you are! Your grandeur is commensurate with your goodness. In you, all sublimities are proportional. While placing all creatures under your feet by ascending to heaven, you elevate human nature -- in which we participate -- to boundless sublimity, above all celestial magnitudes and angelic orders. Your humanity sits at the right hand of the Eternal Father, associated with His throne and glory because it is associated with Him in the Person of His Son.604 It sits on the right hand of the Father, not locally, because God is spirit and has no right or left, but by the universal power, 605 glory and honor it shares with God Hhimself. 606 Thy humanity, O Christ, with Almighty God is the temple of the empyrean and of all things, for everything comes under its power and that of God. It is also the lamp, the secondary luminous source that illuminates the whole empyrean and all things with the glory of God. For all goods come from God to creatures only through Christ.

The radiance of the humanity of Christ, both in reality and after the accomplishment of this great mystery, is the vital element of everything that enjoys glory, movement, and existence. There is nothing that is not in Christ in some way. God made us know the mystery of His will: He resolved to reunite in Christ, in the orderly fullness of times, all things that are in heaven, and all things that are on earth. Yes, everything in Christ: instaurare omnia in Christo… in ipso. 607 O, Christ! O sacred temple that contains the universe! O universal element of glory, life, and existence! How sweet it must be St. Leo, Pope, in the Office of the Ascension, lesson 5.

Ipsam dexteram intelligite potestatem. Quam accepit ille homo susceptus a Deo. St. Augustine, Serm. De Symb. 1. 2, c. 7.

606 Dexteram Patris dicimus glorian et honorem divinitatis. St. John Damascene, De fide orth. 1., 4, c. 2.

607 Eph. 1:9,10. French translation by Martini.

604 605

228

TABLE DES MATIERES

for humans to adore thee, the God-Man! What an honor, what a pleasure, what a need for man to live in thee through supernatural life!

To think with thee by faith! To live from thy life by grace! To be one body with thee through charity!

O, religion of Christ, how beautiful, sublime, and delightful you are! O Church, how lovable you are as the body of Christ! O universe, how holy you are, forming the empire of Christ and aspiring to glorification that will make you the worthy kingdom of the glorified God-Man! O man, how great your destiny is and how happy you are, bound to share with Jesus Christ, an empire that will have no end!

Alas! It torments me to think of sinners, unbelievers, or indifferent. My dear brother, wake up from your slumber, arise from the dead, and Christ will illuminate you. 608 230. Let us close this Meditation with a prayer of the Church: 609 Eternal and sublime King, Redeemer of the faithful, to whom death, defeated, brings the triumph of supreme glory; You ascend through the celestial orb on this throne to which you are called, not by human power but by your own divine power over all things, So that the triple order of beings, celestial, terrestrial, and infernal bend their knees before their Conqueror.

The angels tremble to see the changing fate of mortals; the flesh sins, and God made flesh erases sin, and reigns.

Be our happiness and reward in the Empyrean, you who rule the universe and overcome all worldly vanity.

From here below, we raise our prayers and supplications to you. Forgive all our faults and lift our hearts all the way to you by divine grace So that when you suddenly emerge in a cloud, shining as a Judge, you may drive away the punishments we deserve and return our lost crowns.

O Jesus, Divine Craftsman of men’s salvation, the delight of hearts, Creator of the redeemed world and chaste light of those who 608 609

Eph. 5:14.

Excerpts from hymns of the Office of the Ascension.

229

TABLE DES MATIERES

love you,

May your mercy oblige you to amend our faults and enrich us by contemplating your face with the light of glory!

You are our guide to the stars; you are our way; be also the goal on which our hearts gravitate; be here below the joy of afflicted mortals and their sweet reward in immortal life.

THIRD MEDITATION After God and Jesus Christ, Mary Is the Temple and Light of the Empyrean 231. “To render Mary worthy of her Son,” says Bossuet, “God moulds her after the Son Himself; and before giving us the Incarnate Word, He already shows us today in the Nativity of Mary a rough draft of Jesus Christ if I may say so, a fledgling Jesus Christ with a lively and natural expression of His infinite perfections.” 610 If this is true of nascent Mary, a fortiori it is also true of Mary after becoming more perfect through the practice of all virtues, then becoming Mother of God and glorified in heaven, where each elect possesses the height of perfection.

Therefore, Mary is in the living and natural Jerusalem of the infinite perfections of Jesus Christ reigning in His glory. That is why she sits in its front row and is, after the Lamb, the temple 611 and lamp of the Empyrean. This is clear from the teachings of saints and doctors.

232. Let us first listen to St. Anselm.

Mary is the Queen of angels and mistress of the world…the gate of life and salvation...the sanctuary of universal propitiation, cause of general reconciliation, vase and temple of life, and the salvation of all things. 612 First sermon on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, exort.

Sicut lactantium omnium nostum habitatio est in te, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Roman Breviary, In festis B. M. V.3 ant. Du II noet.

612 Tu aula universalis propitiationis, causa generalis reconciliationis, vas et templum 610 611

230

TABLE DES MATIERES

O, admirable mistress, you are the one who showed the world its Lord and God whom it did not know; you made visible to the world its Creator.

The earth, rivers, day and night, everything arranged for man in any way rejoices, o mistress for having recovered through you its original beauty and been enhanced with a new and ineffable grace.

All things were as if dead and stripped of their original dignity, serving sinners for whom they were not made. Now, somehow resurrected, they rejoice anew when ruled by friends of God and having the honor of serving them. Above all, they triumph with joy for the new and priceless grace received when, not just feeling their God and Creator invisibly governing them from above, they clearly see Him in their midst and using them to sanctify Himself. 613 These great benefits come from the blessed fruit of the blessed bosom of blessed Mary.

But why do I say, O Mistress, that the earth is full of your benefits? By the fullness of your grace, they penetrate even hell and rise above the heavens. The souls of the Holy Fathers, who were in hell, rejoice at their deliverance; and the angelic orders in the higher regions of the universe rejoice for having been restored.

Through the glorious Son of your illustrious virginity, the City of Angels, half-ruined, is rebuilt and completed. O woman full of grace whose overabundant fullness sprinkles and rejuvenates all creatures! O Virgin blessed beyond all measure; through your blessing, the whole nature is blessed!

233. O marvel! O how exalted is the throne on which I contemplate Mary! Nothing is equal to Mary; except for God, nothing is greater than Mary. After their degradation, all good things want to be repaired only through Mary. God is the Father of creatures; Mary is the mother of recreated things. God begot the One without whom absolutely nothing is in good condition. Truly the Lord is with you, having given you this

vitae et salutis universorum.

613 To sanctify Himself, that is to say, to prepare to immolate Himself in sacrifice for mankind.

231

TABLE DES MATIERES

privilege that all nature should be as indebted to you at the same time as He is. 614 234. O happy Mother of God, Virgin Mary, temple of the living God, palace of the eternal King, shrine of the Holy Ghost. Nothing can be compared to you in any respect. 615 You are the joy of Israel, the nobility of the Christian people. O Queen and mistress of the world, ladder of heaven, throne of God, gate of paradise; 616 when you were born, the world was illuminated. 617 On the day of your Assumption, you were joyfully raised above the choirs of angels and established forever as the glorious Queen of heaven, where you help all those who glorify you as mistress. 618 Mary, Temple of the Lord, sanctuary of the Paraclete, illustrious Queen of Heaven, celestial lamp of the globe, ethereal light, 619 by your radiance, you obfuscate the splendor of the sun. Beautiful, delightful, you are a canticle of joy. One must celebrate and praise you in private and in public not only here on earth but throughout this world and in heaven. 620 235. Eadmer, a disciple and confidant of St. Anselm, who successfully made popular the doctrines of that great doctor, employs more or less the same language in his work on the excellence of the Virgin Mary. To mention the divine maternity of the Virgin, says Eadmer, is to express all that could be conceived as most sublime after God. 621 By maternal right, the reign of Jesus Christ glorified became the Reign of Mary. The whole celestial court belongs to Christ, but through Christ, it also belongs entirely to Mary. 622

St. Anselm, Oratio LT ad S. V. Mariam.

Singulari privilegio nescis in omnibus comparationem.

616 Oratio 54.

617 Oratio 55.

618 Ubi adjuvas omnes qui te Dominam glorificant. Oratio 5.

619 Oratio 60. Rithmus.

620 Hymni et Psalterium S. Virginis, p. 3. Hymn. I in laud. S. Deiparae.

621 Chap. 2.

622 Chap. 7.

614 615

232

TABLE DES MATIERES

Your assumption, O mistress, has not only raised you to ineffable height: on that day, the very heaven that you entered and all that it contains was adorned with new and indescribable glory.

Your presence in the sun enhances its glory beyond what one could say or think; you illuminate it with the incomparable dignity of your clothing; you flood it with the immense light of your kindness and graces.

What else can I say, O mistress? When I consider the immensity of your grace and glory, my mind is confused, and my tongue exhausted. 623 236. God raised Mary above all heavens and placed her on a throne of glory from where she reigns with God over all creatures by inalienable right. The angels rejoice to see their half-ruined city rebuilt by the glorious fruit of Mary's fertile virginity. 624 By the ministry of Mary, all creatures are restored to their original dignity.

The light of the sky, the movement of the stars, bothe sky and stars having been created only to serve the friends of God, were as if humiliated and depressed by having to serve sinners. 625 Air, land, sea, and everything therein suffered the same fate. As a result of sin, all kinds of things experienced disturbance, confusion, reduction, dishonor. Mary’s ministry repaired that damage to creatures; through it, all things recovered the freedom of their early condition. 626 237. Therefore, every rational and irrational creature is greatly indebted to this very holy Mistress. Just as God, by His power is the Father and Lord of all things, so happy Mary, by repairing the universe by her merits, is the Mother and Mistress of things. 627

Chap 8.

Ibid.

625 It would be wrong to say that the sinner loses all property rights because of his sin.

The goodness of God maintains this right for his conversion. But it is also true that the universe was created only for the righteous, currently such, or to become such.

626 Chap. 10.

627 Chap. 11.

623 624

233

TABLE DES MATIERES

We, therefore, ask you, o Mistress, by the same grace by which the good and Almighty God raised you to the point of making everything possible for you with Him, to obtain for us from His kindness the fullness of grace that you deserved to mercifully operate in us and make us, one day, participants in the blessed reward. 628 238. Let us go back to the central thoughts of St. Anselm and Eadmer to understand their significance better.

Mary is the mistress of the world meaning not only of this earthly globe that carries us and the people and things that inhabit it but also of the entire universe, i.e., the angels and all rational creatures, the heavens with all the beings they contain, the empyrean, and all the works of God. On the day of her Assumption, she was happily raised above angelic choirs and established forever as the glorious Queen of heaven.

Therefore, she presides over every pure creature.

By maternal right, the kingdom of Jesus Christ -- that is to say, the whole system of finite things – has become the reign of Mary. The entire celestial court, which naturally belongs to Christ, belongs to Mary by grace. Placed above all heavens on a throne of glory, she reigns with God over all creatures by inalienable right. Mary is the Mother of things and, at the same time, their Mistress. 629 What could be clearer to establish that Mary, after God and Jesus Christ, is the temple of the Empyrean?

Everything that God worked ad extra is in Mary's sphere of influence. And since that which is invisible on earth is visible in heaven, where vision replaces faith, Mary's universal influence is like an element of happiness inside which every creature that has reached its last end rejoices. The sublime Virgin’s radiant goodness is like a sacred Chap. 12.

Maria est domina omnium. St. Dionysius Aeropagyte, Orat. Ad B.V. apud S; Birgitt. In Revel. 1. IV.c; 103. Domina cunctis sublimior. S. Ephrem; Serm. De laud. B.M.V. Domina omnium vere. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, In treg. De C. pat. Domina totius mundi. St. Augustine, Sermo 20 ad fratres in eremo. Domina rerum omnius. St. Sabba, in Men. Grece. Die 14 aug. Domina totius universi. Id. die 18 jan.

628 629

234

TABLE DES MATIERES

temple in which the Elect and the renewed lower beings, each according to its capacity, eternally sing the praises of the Most High. 630 239. That is all the more true since Mary is not only Queen but also Mother of all creatures. Her power in heaven is eminently beneficial.

Just as here she is for every rational creature the gate of life and salvation, shrine of universal propitiation, vase and temple of life and salvation of all things, in the empyrean, she is all that, only more perfectly.

As a heavenly temple, she transmits so to speak into the lower strata of the heavens, the infinite lights of the infinite temple, which is God, and the ineffable radiations of the humanity of Christ, which is the largest finite temple. An instrument and universal channel of grace, Mary is also, in a way, that of glory.

Thus, Mary enhances everything with a new and ineffable grace; her blessings rise above the heavens; she is the Virgin blessed without measure by whose blessing all nature is blessed.

Nothing is equal to Mary, not even the Empyrean considered without her. God alone is greater than Mary; the entire nature owes her its greatest goods, and especially the imperishable goods that abound in heavenly Jerusalem.

While nothing is equal to Mary, she shares the sphere of influence of Jesus Christ, her Son, who, as man, always wants to report to Mary in a sense. Along with the Word Incarnate Himself, every creature is indebted to Mary for its greatest goods.

Look at all things finite: none of them can be compared to Mary in any way. Just as the more contains the less, her perfection is such that it contains all other perfections of the empyrean, and consequently, all goods except for the good par excellence, God. Maria est un templum magnificum gloriae divina. St Andrew of Crete, oratio in annunt. B. V. M. templum caeleste. St. Hildephonsus, Serm. 7, de assumpt. B. V. Templum animarum, excelsius caelis, totoque creatorum ambitu latus ac capacius.

Georges of Nicomede, orat,1 de Prasent. B.V.j; Templum Dei sanctum, coelis amplius ac speciosus. St. John Damascene, In Paracl.B. V. 630

235

TABLE DES MATIERES

Mary is the glory of the world and, after God and Jesus Christ, the greatest glory of heaven. 631 Just as Mary’s birth lit up the world, her presence illuminates the empyrean. The glorious Queen of heaven helps all those who glorify her as Mistress, i.e., all the Elect, 632 for they enjoy the light of glory only with her intervention (nos. 198-200; 206).

Mary is the celestial lamp, the ethereal light of paradise. With her brightness, she hides the splendor of the sun; after the Lamb, no light is brighter in heaven than the Mother of God and all creatures. So Mary should be celebrated all over the world and in heaven. She illuminates heaven with the incomparable dignity of her virtues; she floods it with the immense light of her kindness and graces.

240. O Mary, Mother of grace, glory, 633 and all goods, 634 the link that unites Christ to the Church, the Creator to the creature 635 since all that is good and divine comes from God to us through you: How just it is that we go to God through you! O Mediatrix of heaven and earth, 636 render God propitious to us, and please obtain for us the grace to live as true children of God.

CHAPTER TEN The Throne and Thrones of God, Christ, Mary, and the Other Blessed Templum gloriae supercaelestis. Id. in cant. Eccles. Grace. Sono.1. Templum divinum multutudine luminum splendens. Id. in Men. Grace. Die 27 januar. - Templum animatum, quod caelis est sublimius atque universis rebus creatis amplius et capacius.

Jacob. Monach. In Mariali, Orat.3. Gloria regalis universu. S. André. Cret. Orat. De Nat.S.M.V. Gloria universi ex hominibus prognata. St. John Damascene, in cant. Eccles.

Grace. Sono.2.

632 Domina quae omnibus est auxilio. St. Sabba, in Men.graecie 25 jan. Mary is also lucifer in quantum dat principium agnitionis divinae. Jacobus De Voragine, In Mariali, Serm.10.

633 St. Albert the Great, Super Missus est, c. 182.

634 Ibid. chap. 57.

635 St. Bernardine of Siena, Tome 3. Serm. 1.

636 St. Epiphanius, Serm. De laud. B. M.V. 631

236

TABLE DES MATIERES

Et vidi, et audivi vocem angelorum multorum in circuitu throni, et animalium, et seniorum: et erat numerus eorum millia illium, dicentium voce magna: Dignus est Agnus, qui occisus est, accipere virtutem, et divinitatem, et sapientiam, et fortitudinem, et honorem, et gloriam, et benedictionem. Et omnem creaturam, quae in caelo est, et super terram, et sub terra, et quae sunt in mari, et quae in eo : omnes audivi dicentes : Sedenti in throno, et Agno, benedictio et honor, et gloria, et potestas in saecula saeculorum (Ap 5:11-13).

“And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the ancients; and the number of them was thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and benediction. And every creature, which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them: I heard all saying: To him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, benediction, and honor, and glory, and power, forever and ever”

FIRST MEDITATION General View of These Thrones 241. What should we understand by ‘Throne of God’ strictly speaking?

Having read a lot on this subject by most authoritative authors, we believe we can affirm that the throne of God, in general, is the universe, that is to say, the ensemble of created things. 637 It is true that being immense and all spirit, God penetrates His work in every sense, for He is in all His creatures by His essence, power, and presence (no. 211). Now since He manifests His glory and kindness with the greatest brilliance above all in the highest heavens -- in altissimis (nos. 41-44) –- we say that He is particularly in the heavens, 638 and in the heavens of heavens, that is to say, in the vastest heavens Qui caelorum contines thronum, et abussos intueris, domine, Rex regun, etc. Hymn of the Roman Breviary, Saturday before the 4th Sunday of Nov. 638 Mt 6:9.

637

237

TABLE DES MATIERES

furthest from the center (no. 41). Thus, the earth, the moving heavens, and the fixed heavens of the Empyrean make up the throne of God and are like the stool of His feet 639 because it contains all creatures, and they all serve Him. 242. As is easy to see, this divine throne is made up of a large number of degrees. Jesus Christ himself summarily indicates them when He says: do not swear in any way or by heaven because it is the throne of God, nor on the ground, because it is the stepladder of His feet.640 When we say heaven and earth, we express the whole of all creatures at the same time as their diversity. Everything that God drew from nothing is part of His throne, but the Creator reigns with more brilliance over the noblest and most perfect beings: this is what the Lord says; heaven is my seat and the earth my stepladder. 641 243. The most sublime part of the throne of God, the divine throne par excellence, is the holy humanity of Jesus Christ with the glory that it projects throughout the empyrean.

The divinity, says Cornelius a Lapide, is not the seat of the humanity of Christ but rather the opposite: His humanity is the seat of divinity.642 Of Christ as a man, did Isaias say, on behalf of God: This is my servant whom I have chosen, the object of my predilection in whom my soul has placed all its indulgence. I will rest my spirit upon Him. 643 If all divine kindnesses gather on Christ and for Christ, He is, as a man, the firstborn of all creatures. 644 His predestination is the first and Mt 5:34,35.

Isa 66:1. Qui jurat in caelo. Jurat in throno Dei, et in co qui sedet super eum. Mt 23:22.

641 Comment. Ad Hebr. 1:8.

642 Mt 12:18.

643 Col 1:18.

644 We said above (no. 205), that Mary is the firstborn of creatures. So say the saints and the Church, who repeat secondarily about Mary what they say about Jesus Christ.

Note that after having formed Christ as a man, Mary shares with her Son the highest degree, which is why Jesus Christ and Mary appear in the same decree of predestination--Codem decreto, as Pius IX says in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus. Besides, 639 640

238

TABLE DES MATIERES

primary cause of every other predestination. 645 The divine gaze has always rested on Christ as on its throne of predilection.

Christ is the head of the body of the Church. 646 Only attracted

by Christ is divine love poured out on the Church. It pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell in Christ so that all goods, all excellences, all glories come to the universe, to the Empyrean and to the Elect only as radiance from Christ and participation in His incomprehensible riches. 647 Thus, when the eyes of heavenly citizens turn to God, they see the sovereign Being as enthroned over Christ and through Christ over all other beings.

With His luminous sphere full of beatific influences embracing the entire empyrean in a delightful atmosphere, Christ seems to be the immediate seat of the divinity, whose immensity appears to rest on His sphere.

244. After the holy humanity of Jesus Christ and its theandric radiance, there is nothing as noble, beautiful, perfect and great in heaven as Mary and her radiance as the Mother of God and rational creatures.

That is why saints and doctors often call her the throne of God. She either constitutes by herself with her visible influences the highest degree of the divine throne after the one which Christ forms as a man, or composes with her Son the highest degree of this throne, as we have seen (nos. 42-44; 195). This latter opinion seems to us the one most consistent with Christian teaching.

245. The divine Virgin, according to St. Methodius, is the intelligent and glorified throne worthy of God, 648 the virginal throne on which the Lord clothed in flesh showed Himself publicly. 649

Mary is absolutely the firstborn of all pure creatures.

645 Ibid. 18.

646 Ibid.19.

647 Eph 3:8.

648 Homil. In festo purific. B. M.V. 649 Ibid.

239

TABLE DES MATIERES

As we can see, the role that Mary played on earth in a manner proportional to this place of trial she also plays in the sojourn of glory in a most perfect way.

According to St. Gregory the Miracle Worker, Mary is a Cherubic throne sparkling with luminous splendor in the highest spiritual realms. 650 She is the throne of divinity (St. Epiphanius); 651 Our Creator’s most glorious throne (St. Ephrem); 652 The throne of God more sublime than the heavens and any creature (St. Andrew of Crete); 653 The most vast, igneous, sublime cherubic throne which carried Jesus Christ in its bosom (St. German of Constant); 654 The throne which raises to a summit the animated seat of God in glory, offering itself to God as His main place of rest (St. John Damascene); 655 The throne of the Lord that surpasses Cherubim and Thrones, placed in the highest residence of God (St. Joseph the Hymnographer); 656

The most precious and sublime throne of God Most High; 657 Throne of the Holy Ghost (Denys the Carthusian); 658 Throne of the entire Trinity (St. Albert the Great). 659 246. Mary is a divine throne whose properties undoubtedly surpass the angels called Thrones, meaning that she occupies the most sublime height and surrounds the King, certainly not in an absolute way but relative to the inhabitants of the Empyrean.

Thronus cherubicus in summis spiritualibus regnis lucis splendore coruscans. Prat. 2, in Annuntiatione B. M. V. 651 Serm. De Laudibus Beatae Mariae Virginis.

652 Idem.

653 Can. 7. In partum Beatae Mariae Virginis.

654 Serm. In Nativitate Beatae Mariae Virginis.

655 Thronus alte fastigium tollens. In gloria animata sedes Die… et portionem Deo requiem praestans. In Orat. 4; de Nativitate B. M. V. 656 Hymn. In Mariali.

657 Ibid.

658 Liv. IV, de Laudibus S. V., art. 9.

659 In Biblia Mariae, super lib. III Regum.

650

240

TABLE DES MATIERES

She is a stable throne in a determined place that receives the King; she is chosen by the King and remains at His disposal. 660 With Jesus Christ, her Son, Mary is the throne of God of whom Saint Paul said (Hebr. 4:16): Let us go therefore with confidence to the throne of grace: that we may obtain mercy and find grace in seasonable aid. 661 Now, since the Empyrean is the supreme enhancement of all things, it seems evident that Mary plays in it from the standpoint of glory and in an incomparably excellent manner, the same role she played on earth concerning the Incarnation and the distribution of graces.

Just as the divine Word did not want to reign over men or show Himself to them without using Mary as a living throne and having her participate with Him in all the operations of grace in souls, it seems evident that the same plan is realized in heaven as far as glory is concerned.

In glory, Mary is, therefore, with her Son, the highest step of the divine throne or rather the noblest part of this immense throne after her Son. At the same time, always with Jesus Christ, she is a universal source of light, glory, and happiness for all the inhabitants of the Empyrean inferior to her in perfection.

247. The most distinguished angelic spirits are also divine thrones, but partial and secondary. Mary surpasses them all with incomparable familiarity with God. For if Jesus Christ as God is consubstantial with His Father, as man He is consubstantial with His Mother. And if Jesus Christ as man is the throne of God par excellence, Mary participates in the glorified humanity of her Son at the same time as the King of the universe. That is why she is also the throne of God from which Christ exercises peaceful jurisdiction. For by His presence, the Son is deliverance for captives, light for the blind, grace for travelers, and crown of glory for victors (nos. 238, 239). 662 God, therefore, leaves to the holy humanity of Jesus Christ and to Mary the care of rendering the Elect capable of the light of glory Maurit, de Villa Probata, Serm.14 Coronae novae B. M. V. Ibid. Serm. 54.

662 Pierre de Blois, Serm. 33.

660 661

241

TABLE DES MATIERES

(nos. 198-200; 206) and producing all influences necessary for the accidental happiness of heavenly citizens. Thus, they are not only the secondary temple of the Empyrean (nos. 219 & ff, 234 & ff.) but also the summit of the divine throne. They are a throne for God, the universal center of beatific influences for all the other blessed because Mary is, with Jesus Christ, the summit of summits, 663 the peak that encompasses all degrees of glory, 664 the brightest star that shines in the Empyrean 665 (no. 42).

248. The Angels, Apostles, all the Elect, the Empyrean, and the lower heavens are also thrones of God or more or less precious and noble parts of the sole throne of the Almighty.

The throne or thrones of God corresponds to the divine kingdom considered as single or multiple (nos. 37, 43, 44). The Church, the just souls, the world, and Paradise are thrones of God because God reigns there or sits there to reign so to speak, and reigns over each category of things in a manner proportional to the ability, ends and qualities of different beings.

Creatures also reign, under God, over beings inferior to them: Jesus Christ, as man, and Mary reign over the whole universe; the Elect and other beings reign on what is inferior to them according to their degree of perfection. Thus, the divine throne partially becomes the throne of the Elect: “To him that shall overcome, I will give to sit with me in my throne: as I also have overcome, and am set down with my Father in His throne.” 666 249. As God, Jesus Christ has the same throne as His Father, i.e., His holy humanity and the entire universe; and as a man, He has for a throne the whole Creation, over which His humanity reigns. The Elect St. Germain de Constant. Orat. 2 in Praesent. B. M. V. Caput capiens... omnes gradua gloriae. St. Antonin of Florence, Summ. P. 4, Tit. 15, c.

23.

665 St. Albert the Great, Serm. 3. in Annunt. B. M. V. Thus we can understand how Mary surrounds God even in the Empyrean; her luminous sphere is so to speak between God and the blessed; she understands all the understanders who only go to God through Mary, and the Virgin can say with her Son: Nemo venit ad Patrem nisi per me (Jn 14:6).

666 Ap 3:21; Jn 14:2.

663

664

242

TABLE DES MATIERES

will participate in this empire over creatures, each according to his degree of essential glory.

In my Father's house, said the Savior, there are a large number of mansions. 667 Truly I tell you that you, who followed me, when after the resurrection the Son of man will be seated on the throne of His glory, you too, Apostles and all of you who have imitated the Apostles and others saints, will each sit on a particular throne, judging everything that comes under you, 668 and enjoying the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 669 O divine goodness! O precious revelation of the divine secret!

O infinite love, how you explain everything!

250. What was the guiding idea of the Creator when He brought the universe out of nothingness and arranged it the way reason and faith teach us? It was to form thrones and kingdoms to make people happy.

Unable to lose interest in His glory, without which nothing can be satisfied, He first makes Himself a throne with all that He creates to make everything gravitate toward the infinite good, a disposition perfectly worthy of Righteousness and essential Love. But since creatures are very different in perfection and quality, they cannot all reach the infinite Good to the same degree and so it must be proportional to each of them. How will this goal be achieved?

251. Rational creatures in the state of trial have more or less plentiful resources from reason and the supernatural to approach God. The Elect have a light of glory proportional to each of them, which makes them see and possess God directly but unequally, according to their capacity.

Now, since God is visible only to intellects, and since He is the good of all finite beings, He makes sure to communicate with all things, and especially in the place of bliss. Man’s secondary faculties such as memory, imagination, and bodily senses, also demand their share of Jn 14:2.

Mt 19:28.

669 Mt 25:34.

667 668

243

TABLE DES MATIERES

infinite good. The same is true of more imperfect creatures, which will be renewed and glorified.

That is why, when everything has been submitted to the Father and forms a worthy throne, the Son Himself as a man -- the throne of God par excellence -- will be subject to the One who has submitted all things to Him so that God may be everything in everyone and everything. 670 The Son of Man, seated on the very visible and very sensible throne of His glory, will transmit the influences of the infinite Good to all things subject to His humanity but in a way suitable to every being and every faculty.

People’s imagination and bodily senses will perceive the supreme Good placed at their disposal by the Man-God and by Mary, who is inseparable from her Son. The others – the Apostles and greatest princes of the heavenly court – will play a similar role concerning all things that form their individual throne so that God be everything in everyone. Thus, from one throne to another, by faithful ministers, the infinite Good communicates to the various creatures, all the way down to simple glorified celestial bodies, true images of God, who created them only to make them happy.

252. Here you have the ideal that presided over Creation. God prepared a kingdom for each of us from the foundation of the world!

And what a kingdom! The whole universe only has this end. How many worlds are still unknown to us! Except for limbo and hell, all these worlds will be glorified for rational creatures!

O infinitely good God, why do all men not live in a perpetual ecstasy of love for you? Why, men of little faith, do we find this earth’s trial, and fulfilling divine law so difficult, when the short and light tribulations of the present life accrue for us an eternal treasure of sublime and incomparable glory?

670

1 Cor 15:28.

244

TABLE DES MATIERES

Oh, what danger we run of being bewitched by the silliness of the times that hides real goods and threatens to defeat our souls with the fickle passions of lust! 671 Let us be rational and Christian. Let us not consider the things that are seen, but those that are unseen; for the things that are seen are fleeting, but the things that are not seen are eternal. 672

SECOND MEDITATION The Thrones as per This Chapter 253. St. John saw a divine throne surrounded by four animals, twentyfour elders, and a countless multitude of angels as an earthly throne would be with courtiers and soldiers. This notion of the divine throne, considered as a circumscribed and central eminence, is more popular than the one we have just expounded.

The vision’s main purpose apparently was to present God and the Lamb in an attitude of judges armed with thunderbolts against the enemies of the Church and all wicked. So, seeking to instruct us on the rigor of the Judgment and the future fate of the Church rather than on the final disposition of the heavenly court, God made to St. John, the beloved disciple, revelations with these ends in view.

However, if we pay close attention to what the Apostle wrote, it seems to us that he does not exclude our conception of the divine throne but powerfully confirms it. This interpretation also easily reconciles the texts we have quoted (nos. 242, 248, 249, 251) with the descriptions that St. John gives us in the Apocalypse. 673 254. Indeed, to consider only the text at the beginning of this chapter, Wis 4:12.

2Cor 4:17-18.

673 Furthermore, let us not lose sight of the notion of empyrean we amply expounded above (nos. 20-23). A good interpretation of the holy books always bears in mind all parts of Christian teaching. Let us also remember that the texts of the holy books can have several higher meanings other than their literal one. See nos. 69-71.

671 672

245

TABLE DES MATIERES

we see that the divine throne is unique for God (although He sits in it variously according to the diversity of created perfections) but multiple concerning finite beings. I saw and heard around the throne, animals and old men, the voice of many angels, and their number was thousands of thousands; from the Greek, myriads of myriads. 674 This throne is undoubtedly the throne of God because every creature is His throne, but it is not the entire throne of God and Christ because the angels cannot surround it.

Christ is above all heavens. God sits upon the entire heaven, including angels (no. 242). The angels are only part of the throne of Christ, which envelops them in its radiance as a temple (nos. 223-229).

Above the angels is the splendor of the humanity of Jesus Christ, mingled as it were with the splendor of Mary, and the angels can only be invested with it. They are, therefore, around the lower throne of God, around animals and old men, and all creatures of lesser perfection that make up the thrones of angels.

255. The Angels said in a loud voice: He is worthy, the Lamb who has been slain, to receive virtue, divinity, wisdom, strength, honor, glory, and blessing. They recognized the absolute superiority of the hovering Lamb enthroned over them both as God and man, who died for the salvation of the world. They proclaimed that the Lamb is worthy to receive virtue and divinity, or according to the Greek, wealth, that is to say, the tributes due to Him to whom all power has been given in heaven and on earth 675 and who, being in the form or nature of God, did not believe it a usurpation to make Himself equal to God 676 and King of all Creation.

The Lamb is worthy to receive wisdom and strength, i.e., His humanity is enlightened enough to know perfectly all things finite and powerful enough to support and govern them. That is why He must be honored, glorified, and blessed by all angels, men, and other creatures.

The angels outnumber all atoms in the air and all grains of sand in the waters.

Segneri, Manna dell’anima, 31 July, point 3.

675 Mt 28:18.

676 Phil 2:6.

674

246

TABLE DES MATIERES

Is this not to recognize that everything is enclosed in Christ, was placed under His feet, and the entire Creation serves as His throne? 677 256. The angels surround the lower part of the throne of Christ and God. Their loud voice is heard by all creatures that are in heaven, below them on the earth and under it, on the sea, and in it. All these beings join their voices to the powerful voices of the angels to make only one concert. They say: To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb: blessing, honor, glory, and power in the ages of ages. And the four animals say: Amen. And the twenty-four elders fall on their faces and adore the one who lives in the ages of ages.

257. In the Empyrean, the Elect have close relationships with all beings, and especially with Jesus Christ and Mary. Here the universe is presented to us in its current state, with all its grandeur and multiple parts. The Empyrean is in the high places; crowned by Jesus Christ, it continues down to the angels, then the four animals, then the elders, and then the other Elect.

In the lower places are the creatures that belong to the mobile heavens, including our earth with all that it carries, and the sea with its inhabitants. These words also indicate that the most central parts of the universe, and under the earth, are limbo, purgatory, and hell (nos. 25-29).

Infinite wisdom has so linked and arranged the whole of created beings that a man supernaturally prepared by grace can hear everything that is said there: omnes audivi dicentes: sedenti etc.

Myriads of angels, whose number is unimaginable (no. 167, Pater diligit Filium: et omnia dedit in manu ejus (Jn 3:35). The Son has all things in His hand! How absolute His reign is, and how greater He is than what He rules! How everything is in Him! Concerning God and Christ, one can say that the words throne and empire are synonymous so that everything is under the feet of Christ just as everything is in His hand. The throne of Christ does not symbolize His empire but is His very empire; it does not support Christ but is supported by Him; it does not contain Christ but is clothed in Christ, who reigns over it. What a throne, and what a King!

Other thrones and kings are just pale imitations. So it is also as a man that the Son has everything because all has been given to Him with His humanity.

677

247

TABLE DES MATIERES

note), surround the universe, which they support and govern as faithful ministers of God (nos. 109-110). They invite everyone in a loud voice to praise God and the Lamb, and there is nothing in Creation that does not expressly respond to their call and is not associated with their concert.

Hell itself, the pit of the abyss, 678 roars in honor of God and the Lamb in its own way, for nothing can exist except for the glory of God; and in the name of Jesus, all knees must bend even in hell. 679 Why? Because everything is God’s divine throne, even Christ, as man, and Mary; because everything, even the angels, is the throne of Christ and Mary; because all else that follows, coming down, is the throne of the angels and Elect. And the last of saints, who ranks last in the Church Triumphant, will judge the rebellious angels 680 and trample on hell.

THIRD MEDITATION More Specific Considerations On the Thrones of Christ and Mary 258. If we consult other passages of the Apocalypse, they confirm and complete even better what we have just said.

Immediately I was in spirit, St. John continues, and behold there was a throne set in heaven, and one sitting upon the throne.681 To be proportioned to the common ideas of mortals (no. 253), the vision shows the Apostle only part of the great throne of God. So it is not simply the throne of God but a throne, and that is why it is placed in heaven instead of encompassing all heavens and creatures. It is so to speak the transient throne of judgment rather than the divine throne Ap 11:1-2.

Phil 11:10.

680 1Cor 6:3-4.

681 Ap 4:2.

678 679

248

TABLE DES MATIERES

considered in its entirety because it sends off lightning, voices, and thunder.

Justice and Judgment only prepare the final divine throne, 682 putting in place every part of the great throne of the Almighty of which it is said, after the Judgment: Your throne, O God, is eternal. 683 But as we have stated, the restricted meaning does not exclude the complete sense.

259. The one who sat on the throne looked like a stone of jasper and sardonyx, stones which, according to interpreters, by their reddish and orange colors are symbols of the justice of God, and perhaps also of the Incarnation of the Word. Around the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. “Interpreters rightly think that the iris and green color of the emerald represent divine mercy to us.” 684 260. The rainbow where emerald colors prevail is around the throne of God; it is like the atmosphere that surrounds the Empyrean and keeps the citizens of heaven alive. Each of them says: I will praise thee, O Lord my God: With my whole heart, and I will glorify thy name forever: For thy mercy is great towards me: And thou hast delivered my soul out of the lower hell. 685 I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy.

For thou hast regarded my humility, Thou hast saved my soul out of distresses.

And thou hast not shut me up in the hands of the enemy: Thou hast set my feet in a spacious place. 686 The earth, especially the land of the living, is filled with the Ps 88:15.

Ps 44:7. Quanquam Pater in Filio, et Filius in Patre, et alterutrum sibi et habitator et thronus sit, tamen in hoc loco ad regem, qui Deus est, sermo dirigitur. St. Jerome. Epist.

65. This throne is formally divine.

684 Fr. Drach, La sainte Bible, Apoc 4:3.

685 Ps 85:12,13.

686 Ps 30:8-9.

682 683

249

TABLE DES MATIERES

Lord’s mercy; 687 and although divine justice rewards glorious merits here, it is mercy that gave rise to these merits and rewards them far beyond their requirements.

[It is the Lord] Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; Who crowneth thee with mercy and compassion.

Who satisfieth thy desire with good things. 688 261. Now, given the intensity and immensity of His mercy, God did not want it to remain abstract, so to speak. If one may put it this way, mercy was doubly embodied in Jesus Christ and Mary.

Mercy consists of feeling in one's heart the misery of others as if it were our own689 and in supplementing as much as possible what our neighbor is lacking. 690 Jesus Christ, the King of martyrs, was all mercy toward us by wishing to experience all our sorrows Himself. He stripped Himself of everything and sacrificed it all to cure our evils and enrich us in every respect. And although being the Mother of God, Mary the Queen of martyrs gave birth to all the Elect in pain, on Mount Calvary, and deserves to be the Co-Redemptrix of the human race and dispenser of all graces.

Thus divine mercy, which has its source in infinite goodness, spreads across the universe in the form of two immense rivers, of which the first feeds the second, which in turn pours life, joy, prosperity, and happiness everywhere. And when you are angry, O sovereign God, at the countless errors of mortals, you will remember your mercy 691 and look at our shield, which is the Face of your Christ, and that of his Mother. 692

Ps 32:5.

Ps 102:4-5.

689 St. Thomas, Summ. Th. p; 1. 22 a. 3.

690 Ibid. 2. 2, q. 30, a,4.

691 Hab 3:2.

692 Ps 83:10.

687 688

250

TABLE DES MATIERES

262. If this is so with mercy that heals and saves, will it not be the same and even more so, with mercy that crowns?

All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth, To them that keep His covenant and precepts. 693 Paradise is the full development of the mercy of God. Mercy fixes the rational creature despite its natural incapacity, in possession of the Sovereign Good; it makes this creature capable of possessing the infinite; it rewards souls above their merits. While it is true that, so to speak, this mercy is exercised at the gate of paradise, its effects are paradise itself with all its goods.

Justice occupies only the second place; the work of divine justice always presupposes and is based on the work of mercy. Mercy appears as the root of all of God's works. 694 The third divine masterpiece, which is eternal bliss (no. 31), is therefore born of mercy and swims in the ocean of influences of Jesus and Mary. That is why around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald.

263. O Mary, it is you who form this rainbow with the holy humanity of your divine Son. Your splendors are varied enough to enlighten the Elect and all beings of the Empyrean to varying degrees, and large enough to encompass all the kingdoms of heaven and all worlds, of which you are the sovereign. Shall I say it? In a way, the universal reign of mercy belongs to you even more than to your Son. Redeemer and Savior at the same time, He is the Judge of the living and the dead. One day, the unrepentant will say to the mountains: Hide us from the wrath of the Lamb. 695 But your reign, O Mary, is wholly maternal. When you conceived the Son of God in your womb and bore Him, you obtained half the kingdom of God and

Ps 24:10.

P. 1, q. 21, a. 4 695 Ap 6:16.

693 694

251

TABLE DES MATIERES

became the Queen of mercy, while your Son is the King of justice. 696 O Jesus, while undoubtedly keeping primacy in all things, 697 you wanted your mercy to reign through Mary. Your mercy, rising above the heavens, 698 has been given to your worthy Mother to govern and administer.

The Lord is sweet to all, And His tender mercies are over all his works, 699 but through Mary.

264. Thus the holy virgin somehow presides over the immense display of divine goodness in the vastness of the Empyrean. She is the rainbow that surrounds the divine throne.

There are as many creatures who serve the glorious virgin as there are who serve the Trinity, i.e., all creatures, whether angels or men, and everything in heaven and on earth, for all things are part of the empire of God, and are subject to the glorious Virgin. 700 Therefore, nothing fails to receive her beatific influences. She is full of kindness and lovely beauty.

Mary is the rainbow that stretches around the throne of God, and is similar to an emerald, says Ernest of Prague. The splendor of the glorious Virgin in the eternal fatherland is so great, and her appearance so graceful that the angels and saints want to contemplate her. They admire her far above their heads, enjoying this view without ever losing interest but experiencing an ever keener desire to admire her appearance. 701 Let us conclude once again that as Jesus Christ and Mary constitute the immediate throne and empire of God par excellence, all that is inferior to Jesus and Mary form their throne and particular St. Thomas, Preface to the Canonical Epistles.

Col 1:18.

698 Ps 107:5.

699 Ps 144:9.

700 St. Bernardine of Siena, Pro Fest. V. M. Serm. 5. c. 6.

701 In Mariali, ch. 14.

696 697

252

TABLE DES MATIERES

empire, as well as the sphere of their beatific influences.

FOURTH MEDITATION Regardless of Their Particular Purposes and Applications, St. John’s Revelations are General and Contain Valuable Views of the Definitive Celestial Thrones 265. We have already observed in several places (nos. 69-71; 113-116; 253; 258), that nothing is more fruitful than divine language. It teaches us not only about less important and passing things but also about those that are most important and will last forever.

Everything that God does outside Himself, everything He says in time, aims at an ultimate end, which is heavenly Jerusalem and somehow gives us a glimpse of the end of ends.

Thus, considered directly, the Apocalypse is a divine light on the successive combats of the Church, the various actors who take part in this combat, and the final and glorious triumph of the army of good.

But since all the elements of heaven, earth, and hell, play a role in this formidable struggle, it gives us glimpses of the celestial thrones and glorified princes that will reign with Jesus Christ.

266. A door opens in heaven so we can see a little what is going on there and what is to happen next. 702 “To him, that shall overcome, I will give to sit with me in my throne; 703 he will have a part of my throne which is made up of all creatures, but only one part, as elsewhere it is said: You will be sitting upon thrones.” 704

Ap 4:1.

Ap 3:21.

704 Lk 22:30.

702 703

253

TABLE DES MATIERES

For me, as God, I have the same throne as my Father: a river of living water comes out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, 705 i.e., from the radiant virtue of the humanity of Christ and the heavenly virtue of Mary.

But in my capacity as a man who has conquered the world, I sit with my Father on His throne, 706 i.e., upon all creatures ruled and governed by my humanity. As a man, I have the throne of my Father only in part: As a man, the Son Himself will be subject to Him who subjected all things to Himself; 707 and the immeasurable splendor of His humanity will be the highest, largest, and noblest part of the Father’s throne.

267. The Lamb is depicted to us as being in the middle of the throne, the four animals, and the elders, with seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent throughout the earth. 708 The Lamb is in the middle of the lower throne of God because,

by His dominion, He encompasses and crowns all partial thrones. The thrones of the animals and elders come together like hills forming a mountain to compose the throne of the Lamb. Thus, the main angels are only ministers of the radiance of Christ throughout the Empyrean, on the lower heavens, and all over the earth.

The Lamb takes the book from the right hand of Him who sits on the throne. 709 Here it refers to the upper throne of God, of Him to whom the Son Himself is subject. To easily demonstrate that Christ will make His Church victorious over all her enemies, St. John depicts Him as enthroned in the highest heavens, foreseeing everything with His wisdom, disposing of all things with His power, and regulating all events with an eye on the final and complete formation of the Church Triumphant.

268. When the Lamb opened the book, the four living creatures and twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, having each one of them Ap 22:1.

Ap 3:21.

707 1Cor 15:28.

708 Ap 5:6.

709 Ap 5:7.

705 706

254

TABLE DES MATIERES

harps and vials full of odors, which are the prayers of saints. And they sang a new canticle, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: because thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God, in thy blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation. And hast made us to our God a kingdom and priests, and we shall reign on the earth. 710 For the Lamb, taking the book and opening its seals is to extend His perfect science to all actions of free creatures; it is to prepare to judge and reward them according to their value. It is clear that the Lamb, having the power to judge, reward, and punish every free creature at the end of the trial, retains this power and then reigns peacefully and forever. Thus, the four living creatures and twenty-four elders, like everything under their control, are part of the empire or throne of the Lamb.

269. The animals and elders adore the Lamb, offer Him the homage of saints, and sing His praises on their behalf of those they represent.

They are themselves the kingdom of God; Christ made thrones of Christ Himself and God. But they also reign as they are priests for God and reign on earth. As priests, they have for empire and thrones all those over whom they preside; and if they reign with more or less difficulty on the earth still subjected to the trial, they will reign fully and in the happiest way on the land of the living. The thrones of the animals are depicted as higher, nobler, and larger than those of the elders; they include and surpass the latter much like a county surpasses a township.

270. I saw and heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was thousands of thousands. 711 The Seer does not mention here all angels, but a very large number, and these angels must be most distinguished such as the Seraphim because they are around animals and elders, that is, between the area of Mary and the lower zones. So all creatures that are in 710 711

Ap 8-10.

Ap 5:11.

255

TABLE DES MATIERES

heaven, on earth, and under the earth hear the call of the angels and join their song of praise 712 and worship.

As for Mary, she is not precisely in heaven but forms the same choir with her Son (nos. 42, 43, 195, 198, 199). She is rather above the heavens, of which she is the sovereign. With the Lamb, she is the object of the songs of the Seraphim, Cherubim, and entire celestial court. 713 As one reads somewhere in an office of the Church, it is Mary who intones the hymn in honor of Jesus and who, with her voice, makes the whole city of God rejoice. The Seraphim, the other Elect, all homelands of the universe that glorify God and the Lamb resemble increasingly distant echoes of the chants of the Mother of God. Therefore, the thrones of the angelic aristocracy, if I may use this word, are bigger and more sublime than those of the animalsand elders but form part of the throne of Mary and Jesus.

271. In chapter 7:11-17, St. John seems to explain the place of angels, animals, and elders in a different way. However, all things considered, he only confirms the first explanation. Indeed, he speaks of all angels and begins with the lower parts of the throne of God instead of starting with its most sublime heights. 714 Therefore, since the order of narration is reversed, clearly the elders must appear before the animals. 715 All angels are around the throne, and also the elders and animals, that is to say, the lower angels are around the lower throne; the more distinguished angels are around the thrones of the elders; and the noblest angels are around the thrones of animals.

Ap 12:13.

St. Ephrem calls Mary Canticum ac Seraphin (Serm. De laud. B. M. V); and St. John Damascene, CanticumAngelorum (Triod. Graecor).

714 One sees this in the context because it deals with the multitude of saints in the Old and New Testaments, and not directly with their most distinguished characters.

715 As inferiors, also the animals say amen to the canticle sung by the noblest angels; and the old men adore as if to obey an invitation from on high (Apoc 5:14).

712 713

256

TABLE DES MATIERES

Accordingly, all these spirits support the whole and parts of the divine throne under the region of Mary. In short, this is the role assigned to them by Pope St. Gregory, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas (nos. 109-111, with footnotes).

272. Many other passages of the Apocalypse can be interpreted as we did in the course of this Meditation. For example, the halo that shines on the head of an angel who comes to threaten the earth 716 signifies the mercy of God always ready to receive penitent sinners but exercised through Mary.

In chapter 19:4, the twenty-four elders are named before the four animals because the prophet, speaking first about the sight of large crowds, follows the ascending order in his narration, as we said in the previous item.

A voice came out of the throne, saying: praise our God, all of you His servants and those who fear Him, young and old. 717 Mary is the one who gives this order, which is instantly repeated, from throne to throne, to the lower limits of the Empyrean. And the entire celestial court says alleluia. Here the Word made flesh is represented to us as having on the head a large number of diadems 718 because His throne is composed of all thrones inferior to His own in His quality as King of kings and Lord of lords. 719 273. What are the four animals that have such big thrones in the Empyrean? This is a serious question. The Apocalypse often calls them animals, giving them no other names, a designation that seems very significant in the visions of Ezekiel. Why such an insistence on these figures?

If it were proven that the celestial worlds are inhabited by rational creatures other than angels and men (nos. 168, 169), one could say that the apocalyptic animals are the main representatives of such species, of which only a few characteristics can be seen in man Ap 10:1.

Ibid 19:5-6.

718 Ibid. 5:13.

719 Ibid. 5:16.

716 717

257

TABLE DES MATIERES

and in our principal animals. That would be very consistent with the general pattern that the universe presents to us; for here, superior things are seen ordinarily as existing in germ in lower ones, and lower ones are found in higher ones with more perfect states and natures.

274. While tradition is silent on this point, St. John explains that Ezekiel formally calls such animals Cherubim. 720 They are named after animals because of their appearance resembling a lion, a calf, a man, or a flying church. Why do Cherubim take on appearances seemingly unworthy of them? That is a secret of the revealing God. Perhaps the context of St. John and that of Ezekiel implicitly suggest reasons for it. Indeed, these revelations are intended to instruct men, and both the forms mentioned and the word animals (animantia), are very significant. We will understand this clearly after a brief explanation of the functions of these mysterious beings.

275. They are in the middle of and around the throne of God (Apoc.

4:6); in the middle because they make up this throne in the highest secondary regions; around because with their influences, they encompass all lower parts of the divine throne. The glory of the God of Israel was upon them (Ezek 10:19), for they partially serve as a throne for that glory. But in its most sublime heights, the divine throne surpassed them: In the firmament that was over the heads of the Cherubim, was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of the sapphire stone (Ezek 10:1), and upon the likeness of the throne was a likeness as of the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw as it were the resemblance of fire shining round about him (Ezek. 1:26-27) as the appearance of the rainbow when it is in a cloud on a rainy day: this was the appearance of the brightness round about (Ezek. 1:28).

This is first the region of the Seraphim, a firmament that was above the heads of the animals or Cherubim, and was like a crystal amazing to see (Ezek. 1:22). Higher we find the rainbow or radiance of Mary. Then we see not an ordinary man but as a man seated upon all creatures as his throne. Under this sky, the wings of the Cherubim raised one against the other (Ezek. 1:23), and when a voice, that of the 720

Ez 10:15, 20, 22.

258

TABLE DES MATIERES

Seraphim, or that of Mary or Jesus was heard above the firmament...they stop and lower their wings (Ibid. 25) in an attitude of obedience and respect. This whole spectacle is not all transient or occasional but is a vision of the image of the Lord’s glory in heaven (Ez 2:1).

276. Spiritual thrones of God, the Cherubim fulfill important functions also with beings inferior to them. They have near them (Ezek. 10:9), or better, above them (v.2), four rolling wheels (v. 13), that can go in all directions and follow the movements of the Cherubim (vv. 16, 17).

They are like Cherubs full of eyes everywhere (1:18; 10:12); their extent and height are almost inconceivable (horribilis).

The movements of the Cherubim and the wheels were extremely quick (1:14, 19,20). Here the entire mobile universe that moves in the immobile Empyrean (no. 41) is designated by the rolling wheels, which are so extended and so high. 721 Full of eyes, it does not move at random because the Cherubim drive it as a very light chariot.

It is alive, so to speak (Ezek, 1:20). The Cherubs are the ones who animate it, that is to say, move it just as they are moved by the spirit of God (ibid.), and that is why the Cherubs are called animals (animantia). 722 277. There appeared on the Cherubim the likeness of a man’s hand under their wings (Ezek. 10:8; 1:8). They are the human hands of Jesus Christ and Mary, King and Queen of the universe who direct the movements of the Cherubim. The latter are only ministers of the ManGod and His Mother, and to accomplish their ministry, they receive from this twofold human cause the strength of the lion, the meekness of the calf, the wisdom of man, and the daring lightness of the eagle; hence the animal appearances of the Cherubim (1:10; 10:14; Apoc.

4:7). 723 Currus Dei (nam pluraliter dieti sunt) angelican ministeria non inconvenienter accipimus. St.Augustine, De Civitas Dei, I;20, c. 21, no. 2.

722 There are four of them to designate the four cardinal points, that is to say, the whole mobile universe.

723 Just as animals are guided by an instinct received from God, so the Cherubim only act under orders from above. It is no wonder that Cherubs govern the universe: omnes 721

259

TABLE DES MATIERES

They did not turn around while walking, but each of them went before Him, as did the wheels (Ezek. 1:9,17,19) because the course of nature must constantly move toward its end. And the Cherubim lifting their wings, were raised from the earth before me: and as they went out, the wheels also followed (10:19), and all of them stopped at the entry of the east gate of the house of the Lord, aiming at the final elevation and transformation of the mobile universe to assimilate and join the heavenly Jerusalem.

278. In the meantime, as ministers of Jesus and Mary, they direct most secondary causes to make the Church Triumphant succeed the earthly Jerusalem, destroy the enemies of the Bride of Christ, kill the beast and its henchmen, punish all malefactors, and make the saints triumph and reign (Apoc. 15:7 etc.).

279. Let us fear God, Jesus Christ, and His spiritual ministers; let us love Mary. Otherwise, the Almighty will sharpen His severe wrath for a spear, and the whole world shall fight with Him against the unwise (Wis 5:21).

CHAPTER ELEVEN Intrinsic Reasons for the Universal Role of Jesus and Mary Concerning the Universe and the Empyrean Elegit nos in ipso ante mundi constitutionem, ut essemus sancti et immaculati in conspectu ejus … secundum divitias gratiae ejus, quae superabundavit in nobis in omni sapientia et prudentia; ut notum faceret nobis sacramentum voluntatis suae … quod proposuit in eo, in dispensatione plenitudinis temporum, instaurare omnia in Christo, quae in caelis et quae in terra sunt (Eph 1:4-10).

“God chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we (angeli) sunt administratoris spiritus. Hebr. 1:14.

260

TABLE DES MATIERES

should be holy and unspotted in his sight … according to the riches of his grace, which hath superabounded in us in all wisdom and prudence, that he might make known unto us the mystery of his will…which he hath purposed in him, in the dispensation of the fullness of times, to re-establish all things in Christ, that are in heaven and on earth.”

280. As the above statements on the universal role of Jesus and Mary make no restrictions concerning time, place, people, or things, some of our readers might think they are somewhat exaggerated. For example, how could Jesus and Mary have exerted their influence on times that preceded their physical existence on earth? Is it believable that the fate of the angels depended in any way on Christ and His Mother, who did not appear until very late in the series of human generations?

Furthermore, once the King and Queen of the universe were glorified, it is hard to understand how the human and bodily radiance of Jesus and Mary would encompass and penetrate all heavens, as these two bodies, even informed by glorified souls, seem small compared to the universe and disproportional to the effects we attribute to them.

If we do not want to appear as dreamy and contradictory, these difficulties must be solved. True, we have indicated here and there reasons and points of view that provide resources in the face of these difficulties. But that is too little for a crucial subject like this, and so we believe we should devote a special chapter to it. Let us start with the teachings that St. Paul gives us in the quoted text.

FIRST MEDITATION Everything Predestined in any way was Predestined in Jesus Christ for the Glory of God and the Good of all Beings

261

TABLE DES MATIERES

281. God elected us in Christ before the foundation of the world. For God, who is eternal and whose science is infinite and unchanging, there is no past and no future. Everything is equally present in His eyes; no creature is invisible in His presence, but everything is one and exposed to His gaze. 724 For God, there are no future things, says St. Augustine, but all things are present to Him; that is why His knowledge cannot be called foreknowledge but only knowledge. 725 For God, future things are present, says Saint Ambrose, and for Him to whom everything is known beforehand, things that will happen are the same as accomplished facts. 726 This is also the doctrine of Pope St. Gregory, St. Anselm, St. Thomas. Although contingent things happen successively, says the Angel of the School, God does not know them successively as we do but at the same time and in the same glance. 727 Everything, therefore, presents itself to the eyes of God simultaneously -- both the last fact that will occur at the end of time and the first fact that took place in time. The reason is very simple: Time, along with temporal things, moves within the eternity of God, and God’s eternal and infinite science, which is indivisible, equally perceives everything that exists at any given time.

This knowledge is, therefore, such that it simultaneously knows all realities, and for it, there are no past or future realities. 728 Thus, God elected us in Christ before the foundation of the world. To say that He has seen and chosen us before the material world, or that He has seen and loved Christ before us does not indicate a priority of time but marks an order of nobility, excellence, and predestination.

Heb 4:13.

Lib. II ad Simplic., q. 2.

726 De fide ad Grat., l. 1, c. 15, al. 7.

727 1. p. q. 14, a. 13.

728 Si autem sicut in ordine temporalium creaturarum, ita apud eum (Deum) nondum sunt quae futura sunt, sed ea prevenit sciendo, bis ergo ea sentit, uno quidem modo secundum futurorum praescientiam, altero vero secundum praesentium scientiam.

Aliquid ergo temporaliter accedit scientiae Dei, quod absurdissimum atque falsissimum est. St. Augustine, De Div.q.ad Simpl. l. II, q. II, n. 2.

724 725

262

TABLE DES MATIERES

As a man, Christ is the firstborn of beings because He is the most perfect image of God, 729 the first excellence after God; then comes Mary, then angels and men, and then irrational beings from insect and atom to the stars that populate the skies. God created all things out of nothing, first for Christ and out of love for Christ, then for Mary, and then for other rational creatures: behold the noblest universal gravitation.

282. God’s purposes are unique in that they attract beings, created to achieve these ends; they have a more or less strong dose of good, more or less imitating God, who is the infinite good. That is why the better they are, i.e., the more they participate in uncreated perfection, the greater is their force of attraction. On the other hand, all finite beings receive from their Creator a constant moral or physical impulse that pushes them toward their ends, that is, toward the good proportional to them. Attraction to, and impulse toward good are two forces divinely activated to make all beings happy.

283. Either as an object of faith before the Incarnation or already made flesh, Christ has always drawn all things finite to Himself. In some way, all angels knew from the beginning (during their trial, but especially since their glorification) 730 the mystery of the kingdom of God accomplished by Christ (the Incarnation and its aftermath).

This mystery of the kingdom of heaven, says St. Augustine, revealed in due time for our salvation to unite us to angelic society was not hidden from the angels. It was hidden in God from eternity (Eph. 3:9-10) so that God’s manifold wisdom might be made known to the principalities and powers in heavenly places through the Church they formed. For the Church started with angels and our Church must unite herself with that one. 731 Therefore, the whole Angelic Church had her eyes of faith turned to Christ before enjoying the intuitive vision of God. And as the Col 1:15.

Summa Theol., p. 1. q. 64, a. 1, ad. 4.

731 De Genesi ad litt. lib. V, cap. 19, n. 38.

729 730

263

TABLE DES MATIERES

price of her faith, she saw even more clearly the multifaceted wisdom of God 732 after having been confirmed in grace, deploying herself in Christ and through Christ.

Likewise, before the state of sin, the first man had explicit faith concerning the Incarnation of Christ since this divine work was ordained to the consummation of glory. After the sin, people explicitly believed this mystery as a remedy against sin and death. 733 So the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ had to be believed in some way at all times and by everyone, 734 for there is no salvation in anyone else. 735 Here we clearly see the movement that God imprinted on all rational creatures toward Christ because God is the one who prescribes faith and the attraction that Christ has always exerted. For He is the only salvation, the way, the truth and the life of every rational creature and no one comes to the Father except through Him. 736 Now, if all irrational beings gravitate toward rational beings (which is certain), then the entire universe directed by rational beings gravitates toward Christ. Thus, before the foundation of the world, God elected in Christ not only angels and men but created the world itself for the Elect because of Christ (no. 164, 5, especially note 7).

284. God elected us in Christ before the foundation of the world so that we might be holy and without blemish in His presence. Holiness was the reason for our election and that of the angels. God did not create us to remain as secular beings in nature. He created nature for us but created us, especially for Him and His glory. And He wants us to identify our good with His glory in a particular way by attaining supernatural perfection.

He elected us in Christ as members virtually contained in the Head who is holiness itself, like God, and the concrete ideal of created holiness as a man. Our destiny is to extend Christ’s supernatural radiance like facsimiles that reproduce Christ in various degrees of Eph 3:10.

Summa Theol. 2a, 2ae, q. II, a. 7.

734 Ibid.

735 Acts 4:12.

736 Jn 14:6.

732 733

264

TABLE DES MATIERES

perfection.

“I beseech you, be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ.” 737 Those whom He knew by His foreknowledge, He also predestined to conform to the image of His Son, so that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. And those whom He predestined, He also called. 738 In the One who is His Son by nature, God saw all His adopted children, who are imitations of His Son; and His indulgences, which rest on Christ, extend far and wide in all directions upon all images of His beloved Son. Hence the importance for us to be holy and without blemish before God, that is to say, to live only for God following the example of Jesus, and not to spoil the features of beloved images of God. 739 285. To this end, the grace of Jesus Christ has superabounded in us, to redeem us, first, to deliver us from our sins, and then to perfect ourselves to the point of making us agreeable in the eyes of God, in His beloved Son (Eph. 1:6,7,8).

Since God finds us agreeable only in His beloved Son, with whom we must be clothed, 740 and whose good odor we must have. 741 Christ embraces us in His influences only to make us holy and without blemish in the presence of God, in charity, 742 to make us children of God by adoption according to the designs of the divine will 743 so that we may become praise to the glory of God. 744

1Cor. 4:16; 11:1.

Rom 8:29,30.

739 God loves his Son above all because He is the splendor of His glory and the imprint of His substance (Hebr. 1:3); He loves us only as images of His Son. Our temporal end is to resemble Jesus Christ as much as possible. Thus, being faithful to our vocation we will participate in all the greatnesses of glorified Jesus, inheriting all things with Him, reigning with Him, etc.

740 Rom 13:14.

741 2 Cor 2:15.

742 Eph 1:4.

743 Ibid 5.

744 Ibid 12.

737 738

265

TABLE DES MATIERES

286. The grandeur of all this is so unheard-of that it is impossible for us to have an idea of it without a supernatural revelation. That is why the Apostle prays that the God of Our Lord, the Father of glory, may give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation to know Him and the marvelous designs of His love for us.

The Apostle prays that the Father of glory will lighten the eyes of our heart (for it is the heart that has the greatest aspirations), so we will know hope, the hoped bliss to which He called us, the glorious riches of the inheritance intended for the saints, and the supreme grandeur of His virtue in us who believe according to the operation of the power of His virtue, which He exercised in Christ, raising Him from the dead and placing Him on His right in heaven.

To engender faith in us requires the same divine power and virtue that raised Christ and placed Him on the right hand of the Father. The Father works first in Christ by operating His resurrection and glorification, and this operation continues in us, members of Christ, to give us the life of faith and to fill our hearts with the most sublime hopes. 745 We know that a glorious and rich inheritance is intended for us once this flow of divine virtue has inundated us with the superabundance that comes from Christ. To the degree that we resemble the Firstborn, we will share His prerogative, this glorious and rich inheritance.

287. Let us hence follow Christ with our eyes to see where we will go; let us follow Him above all principality, power, virtue, domination, and every name that is named not only in this century but also in the future. The Father has placed all things under His feet; all angels, men, and worlds that make up the universe, so the entire universe is the empire of Christ. And the Father established Christ as head over the whole Church, which is His body, the complement of Christ, and Christ Even when we were dead in sin, God quickened us together in Christ … And hath raised us up with Him, and hath made us sit together in the heavenly places, through Christ Jesus, that he might show in the ages to come the abundant riches of his grace, in his bounty toward us in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:5-7).

745

266

TABLE DES MATIERES

completes Himself entirely in all His justified and glorified members. O grandeur of every Christian in Christ!

How obvious it is that Christ is present to all the Elect in the vastness of the Empyrean since the Elect are Christ Himself completed, His final extension, His full radiance! What can be more present and closer than the head to its members and the members to the head?

That is why the predestination of Christ is also our own: Elegit nos in ipso.

The mystical body of Christ is made up of angels, men, and every glorified rational creature. But in heaven, what we call mystic on earth (no. 175) will be very apparent, visible and obvious, and the celestial Church is Christ, entirely glorified in Himself and His members 746 (nos. 215, 216, 222, etc.).

288. The great Church in heaven occupies a place certainly much larger than that by the Church on earth. The entire universe was created only for Christ and His members. All the worlds that compose it have as end Jesus Christ and His Church. They either serve as trial for the militant members of Christ, as the last expiation by His suffering members, as a home for His glorified members, or to keep away those who, no longer able to live from the life of Christ, would upset and disturb His Church.

In all things, nothing exists except for Christ and His Church.

We find these insights in the riches of the grace of Christ, which has abounded in us in all wisdom and intelligence to let us know the mystery of the will of God. What is this great mystery revealed to us? It is that the Creator resolved within Himself to reunite all things in Christ in the ordained plenitude of the times, both those that are in

Christ already is everything for us here, albeit in a mystical or veiled way: Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine: you the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without Me you can do nothing (Jn 15:4-5). As the grace of Jesus penetrates, nourishes, vivifies all the faithful of the earth, the glory of Jesus will fulfill the same role in heaven concerning the Elect, but ostensibly, as it befits glory.

746

267

TABLE DES MATIERES

heaven, and those that are on earth. 747 When the times are fulfilled, and all healthy members of Christ are glorified, everything will be found in Christ and His Church: Not only all angels and men but all things, worlds, the entire universe, everything likely to participate in the life and glory of Christ. The sole exceptions are the limbo, because of its definitive naturalism, and hell, because of its unsuitability. 748

SECOND MEDITATION How all Beings Gravitate to Christ and Mary; Everything was also Predestined in Mary, Albeit Secondarily 289. As we said in the beginning, these are fundamental reasons for the universal role of Jesus and Mary concerning the universe and the Empyrean. For by nature, things have a disposition, temperament, and impulse that carry them toward the good and the best. And nothing in the finite realm is better than Jesus (considered as a man) and Mary; everything gravitates toward them.

That does not mean that natural things require the supernatural to the point of compromising its gratuitousness. Superior to nature, the supernatural cannot be deserved by it but can play the Eph 1:7-10. Translation according to Martini.

If any one abide not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up, and cast him into the fire, and he burneth (Jn 15:6). Hell is this bunch of people and things that are cast outside the beneficial influence of Christ, that is to say, into the exterior darkness (Mt 22:13).

“By these words, external darkness, the divine Scriptures indicate the prison of the malefactors (Ps. 106:10; Is. 49:9). For notorious malefactors, in Jerusalem, there was a prison built underground, dark, humid, and without any opening, which could not be more horrible...It was called Betic, or external darkness” (Gottardo Scotton, Il vangelo studiato dal parroco, Tip. Pozzato, 1886; Mt 8:5-13. Hell is outside of Paradise just as that prison was outside of light.

747 748

268

TABLE DES MATIERES

role of an end freely and lovingly desired by God to be achieved by supernatural means. That is what God decreed.

The beauties, splendors and happiness of the supernatural world, contemplated by the divine gaze before creating anything because for God everything is present (n. 281) - motivated and directed the creative act so that each finite thing received its being with such a dose of natural perfection, such properties, such tendencies, and such a habitat to exist, only in view of this supernatural good to be achieved or fostered.

290. According to the divine plan, nature exists only to serve as a subject or means for the supernatural -- just as a house is built solely for the services it must render and the well-being it provides to its dwellers. Since God made nature for the supernatural, the latter is the measure of the former. 749 Although nature is composed particularly of substances, and as far as creatures are concerned the supernatural belongs to the genre of accidents, it is essentially nobler than nature because it is a divine perfection of nature, a radiance from infinite to finite, an elevation of the finite to the divine order. And since God created and arranged all things for the divine order, for His glory and the good of finite beings, all that nature has in terms of being, tendencies and aptitudes to improve is weighed and calculated in function of the supernatural and aims toward the supernatural as its end. That is why all non-corrupt nature tends toward Christ and Mary; this is how everything was predestined for divine existence and perfection in Christ and Mary (251).

291. Everything is yours: Paul, Apollo, Cephas, life and death, present and future things; yes, everything is yours. But you belong to Christ, and Christ, to God. 750 All lower beings in nature, belong to rational creatures, but these belong to Christ, who, as a man, belongs to God. That is why the The will of God ordained nature to grace, and the degrees of nature to the degrees of grace. St. Thomas, 1 p. q. 62, a. 6, ad 1m.

750 1Cor 3:22-23.

749

269

TABLE DES MATIERES

material universe has special and less perfect provisions for rational creatures in the state of trial: it must contribute to carrying out their test. But the material universe, without losing any of its vastness, will be clothed in glory when the time comes to serve the glorified Elect; for having been created for the Blessed, it will be worthy of them. 751 And the Blessed will complete in them the human and supernatural radiance of Christ so that Christ and Mary will be more or less visible in each of them. And Christ will pour out divine and beatifying splendors also through His Mother's ministry upon all the works that came out of the hands of God. 292. O greatness of Christ and Mary! O greatness of man, angel, and all nature in Christ and Mary! Something not emphasized enough is that no benefit was ever granted finite beings without being attracted by Jesus and Mary in one way or another.

God eternally sees Jesus and Mary as His beloved, the objects of all His kindnesses and the noblest, most potent, disinterested, and faithful agents of His glorification. Accordingly, Jesus and Mary excite His creative will to draw from nothing the less perfect rational creatures 752 and all corporeal systems that compose nature to serve as an empire for the Man-God and His Mother. The two alone give the Almighty a full, entire, and adequate glorification while being at the same time the richest and most generous centers of benevolence for their inferiors. All beings are thus indebted to Jesus and Mary for their existence, and no perfection has been given to them except in view of the King and Queen of the universe. 753 293. Suarez clearly teaches and solidly demonstrates this doctrine In this regard, in a sense, one can say about the temple, with the author of Machabees 2:1: Non propter locum, gentem; sed propter gentem, locum Deus elegit (5:19).

752 Sumus creati in Christo Jesu in operibus bonis (Eph 2:10).

753 In ipso condita sunt universa in caelis et in terra, visibilia et invisibilia, sive throni, sive dominationes, sive principatus, sive potestates: omnia per ipsum et in ipso creata sunt (Col 1:16). Writing about this, Suarez says: Ubi… plane loquitur (Apostolus) de Christo ut homine, as proven by verses 18 and 20, which follow – Suarez, in 3 part. D. Thomae, q. 1, a. 4, sect. 2, n. 15.

751

270

TABLE DES MATIERES

insofar as it relates to Jesus Christ (place cited in footnote 2, and nos.

13,17,32,33 of the same section). While other theologians share several opinions on this point, it seems clear and almost evident to us that those who do not think like Suarez on this subject lack an adequate idea of the eternity and immutability of divine science. Well understood, this extremely fruitful idea, which we briefly expounded above (no. 281), suffices to dispel the chaos of divergent opinions.

In truth, for God, the existence of Mary and the Incarnation of the Word was no more future than the creation of the angels, matter, man, original sin, or other developments relating to finite things. For God, everything is simultaneous, although things succeed one another, thus generating time.

Furthermore, God knows an infinity of other possible systems more or less different from the one He drew out of nothing. If, after millions of years, God one day achieved some of those systems, He would already know them at present as real in all their parts and vicissitudes and would see them accomplished at that point in their finite duration. 754 Were this not so, one would have to say that divine science can increase as realities are produced, which says St. Augustine, would be entirely absurd and false (no. 281, footnote 4e).

294. God simultaneously knows all real things, no matter when they come to pass. Having admitted this, one solves relatively easily many theological problems of the highest importance, such as the eternal knowledge of the free acts of angels and men, the effective predestination to eternal happiness through known merits, and others concerning the destiny of the world and its relation to Jesus and Mary.

295. God, therefore, saw eternally, at a single glance, the Incarnation and the entire present system of things. He especially loved Jesus and Mary and in them the angels and other men, and then lower beings. In this system, He saw the sin of Lucifer and that of Adam, as they are real Any finite duration, whatever it is, is only as a moving point in the middle of the immobile eternity of God, and is all penetrated by the eternal God, necessarily and unchangingly knowing everything.

754

271

TABLE DES MATIERES

facts, but at the same time, He saw that Jesus, Mary, and the Saints remedied everything to save everyone with goodwill.

Accordingly, touched with love for this whole set of things because of what He saw best in it, He said and everything was, He commanded and everything came into existence, 755 no doubt successively, according to God’s will. From them on, as it were, everything was and existed. Since the entire system had to exist, the Creation of the angels, for example was no more real in the eyes of God than the last Judgment and the glorification of the just.

296. Therefore, there can be no difficulty concerning the universal role that Christ as a man always plays in the mind of the Creator vis1-à-vis everything that was drawn from nothing. As for Mary, the reasons we have explained so many times force us to admit that she shares all the excellences of Jesus, including that of having prevailed in the mind of God. Mary can say with Incarnate Wisdom, with the language that the Church lends to her: I came out of the mouth of the Most High, the firstborn before all creatures 756 because He loved and decreed [the existence of] other beings because of me. The Creator of all things commanded and said to me: He that made me rested in my tabernacle. 757 From the beginning, and before the world, was I created, 758 having excited the creative will to give me existence, and to give it to everything else because of me.

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before He made anything from the beginning from then on; I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made, that is to say, since for God time is nothing, He willed the real order of things especially for

Ps 31:9.

Ecclus 24:5.

757 Ibid. 12.

758 Ibid. 14, which is more literally suited to Mary than to Jesus Christ because Christ, strictly speaking, is not a creature.

755 756

272

TABLE DES MATIERES

me, and in relation to me. 759 I was established from eternity and from the beginning, before the earth was created, as a guarantee of the glory of the Most High and the good of all beings (no. 292).

When the Lord prepared the heavens, I was present in His mind. When with a certain law and compass He enclosed the depths...and balanced the foundations of the earth, I was with Him forming all things as an ideal that the Sovereign Artist was beginning to act upon and realize.

Nature itself has been measured, weighed, composed, and organized with a view to my Son, me, and all those who want to live from our supernatural life (nos. 290, 291). I was delighted every day in the eyes of my Creator, 760 who always knew me as the happiest of creatures: Beatam me dicent. I have always been the joy, glory and delights of my Lord, 761 for He has always seen me full of grace and by creating the world for my Son and for me, He saw that His glory was assured (292).

I therefore always rejoiced in His presence, offering to His gaze the most beautiful spectacle created, as I rejoice in all the beings of which I am the Queen, and my delights are to be with the children of men to raise them up to me and all the way to God. 297. So listen to me now, my children. Blessed are they that keep my ways and follow my examples. Hear instruction and be wise and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that hears me and that watches daily at my gates, hungry for my teachings and benefits, stands at my door with constant desire and affection for me. He that shall find me shall find the true life of nature and the life of grace, and will find salvation through me in the treasures of the Lord’s goodness. But he that shall If the text does not seem to allow such expressions, we must think about the meaning of these words: to be predestined in Mary. Besides, we are commenting on the text according to saints and to the best theologians who spoke of Mary. Cf. nos.

298, 301, 302 etc.

760 According to the Vulgate.

761 According to the Septuagint.

759

273

TABLE DES MATIERES

sin against me, neglecting my protection or disregarding my benefits shall hurt his own soul. All that hate me love death, 762 for, with my Son, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

This language is perfectly suited to Mary, although it is spoken directly by the Word and by Christ, according to the notions that we explained above (nos. 69-75).

298. So most authoritative saints and theologians see in Mary the end of all things while Mary herself has Christ as her end. Every creature was made because of Mary; the whole world was made for her. 763She is the cause of all goods (St. John Damascene); 764 the cause of things (St. Bernard); 765 the cause of the happiness of the Blessed (Albert the Great); 766 she is our end after her Son (H. Suso. c. 20 Dial. Sap.). In the divine election, the Mother was not separated from her Son (Suarez); 767 therefore, everything was predestined in Mary as in Jesus Christ. God wants Mary to be the principle of all goods (St. Irenaeus). 768 God wants all the good He gives His creatures to pass through the hands of the Virgin Mother (Richard de Saint-Laurent). 769 299. Let us conclude that the role of Jesus and Mary is so universal that without their influence, the very angels would neither have overcome their trial nor been crowned. No man or angel is holy except through Christ, says St. Gregory the Great. 770 Let us always read the name of Mary after the name of her Son because Christ is separated from His Mother neither in the divine mind nor in the realm of facts.

Just as God preserved the blessed angels from sin by His Son, says St. Anselm, so will you O Mary, flower of purity, through your Son Prov 8:36.

Propter Mariam omnis creatura facta est, propter hanc totus mundus factus est. St. Bernard, Serm. 3 in Salve.

764 Orat. 1, de Assumptio B.V.M. 765 Serm. 2, in die Pentecostes.

766 In postill. c. 1 Luke.

767 T. 2, in 3, p. d. 1, sect. 3.

768 Adv. Valent. l. 3, c. 32.

769 De laud. B. M. l. 2, p. 3.

770 I Kgs c. 2.

762 763

274

TABLE DES MATIERES

save unhappy humans from sin. You also contributed to the salvation of the angels because there is no justification except that which you looked after in your immaculate bosom; the sole salvation is the One that you delivered without ceasing to be a virgin. O Mistress, you are the mother of justification and the justified, you gave birth to salvation and saved them. 771 300. It is through Christ that was sowed, both in the holy angels and us, the germ of all spiritual fructification. 772 It is divine virtue itself, that is, Christ, who preserved the angel from ruin and repaired that of fallen man. In both cases, the same grace operated to raise one and preserve the other. The angel was secured from injury; man was healed. Christ cured man’s illness and prevented that of the angel; He was the strength of the latter and the medicine of the former. 773 Christ was the Redeemer of both angel and man by preserving the former and rescuing the latter. 774 Jesus offered Himself as a host not only for the inhabitants of the earth but also for those of heaven. 775 St. John the Evangelist, to show the unparalleled fullness and superabundant source of grace which is in Christ, said: We all have received from His fullness (Jn 1:16); that means all apostles, patriarchs, prophets and righteous souls who were, are and will be, and all angels as well. The fullness of grace, which is in Christ, is the cause of all graces found in all intelligent creatures, and this fullness is in Christ considered as man. It is the fullness of causality (efficientiae) and of the influence of grace, which belongs to Christ alone considered as Man and Author of grace. 776 These beautiful passages lack only the name of Mary. But does mentioning Christ not mean that He has a Mother? Is the Redeemer not always accompanied by the Co-Redemptrix? Is the body of Jesus, Orat. 50 ad S.V. Mariam. Justification concerns not only people who were delivered from sin to receive sanctifying grace but also those who received sanctifying grace without having sinned, such as the faithful angels and Mary.

772 St. Cyril, l. 5 in Isaias in verba Laetare sterilis.

773 St. Fulgentius, lib. 2, ad Frasimundum, c. 3.

774 St. Bernard, Serm. 22 in Cantico.

775 St. Cyril of Alexandria, Hom. 1 in Levit.

776 St. Thomas, Comment. in Joannem, Chap. I, lect. 10.

771

275

TABLE DES MATIERES

immolated as a host, not the flesh of Mary and fruit of her womb? And if Jesus is the original fullness of grace, is Mary not the derived fullness through which pass all graces of Christ to compose and flood His mystical body, made up of angels and men? (No. 206) 301. All supernatural things, says Suarez, somehow were made by and for the Virgin according to the language of the saints. Because she accomplished the Incarnation, and all other goods were made either for the Incarnation or because of it. Hence the Blessed Virgin is like a secondary universal cause very closely united to Christ. 777 302. Let us say with Suarez and Cristobal Vega: The Blessed Virgin is the mistress of all things; she influences all creatures in some way, and all creatures serve her. That is why the predestination of angels and men to glory and bliss…is subordinated to the predestination of the Virgin Mother of God. For…men and angels were not only created in consideration of Mary but also predestined to glory and grace thanks to her...because God foresaw in His prescience the merits of Christ and of the Virgin according to our way of thinking, before predestining the angels.

Hence, according to the divine disposition, the predestination of the angels is like an extension of the merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin. Indeed, the Blessed Virgin was to be the Queen of angels, and to her honor, it was supremely important that the angels obtain all grace and glory through her. Moreover, we showed above that the angels knew the Blessed Virgin during their trial; like Jesus Christ, she was for them an object of faith. 778 Thus, they were able to obtain grace by her merits. 779 303. Let us sum up this whole doctrine in a few words.

Omnia supernaturalia quodammodo per Virginem et propter Virginem facta sunt, ut Sancti loquuntur. ….. Est ergo B. Virgo sub Christo veluti universalis causa illi conjunctissima. In 3. p. St. Thomas, q. 38, a. 4, Disput. 21, sect. 3, n. 5.

778 Cristobal Vega, Theologia Mariana, no. 1523 & following, including no. 1528.

779 Cf. no. 283.

777

276

TABLE DES MATIERES

1. The Lord made all things for Himself, 780 that is, for His glory, which also is the highest good of His creatures. Hence the Church sings: gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam.

2. Jesus and Mary give God a maximum of glory in the surest way and therefore are also supremely beneficial for all beings.

3. Considering all possible systems of creatures, the Supreme Being called ours into existence because he saw Jesus and Mary there, and, after them, the elect; for every being who acts wisely wants things for the best.

4. This whole system was first arranged with Jesus and Mary in mind, and then the Elect. Just as in an organic body, everything is arranged because of the main parts. 781 5. Since for God, time does not exist, and everything is simultaneously present, the Creator directed all things minding His beloved ones, whose incomparable merits have always taken precedence, ensuring His glory and the happiness of created beings.

6. All goods given to angels, men, and lower creatures, including existence, are destined to form the empire of Christ and His Mother, compose the mystical body of Jesus, and give children to Mary so that, after proper trials and preparations God will finally be all in all things, 782 with a final display of His glory, and the greatest outpouring of His goodness.

304. O Jesus, O Mary! How true it is that all things were predestined in you before the foundation of the world! How true it is that in the ordained fullness of time, all things celestial and earthly must be united in you because everything was made to serve you and must find its good in you to find it in God. You are the sublime crowning of the entire universe, its reason for being and glory, the principle of its future

Prov 16:4.

Secundum praefinitionem saeculorum and everything in it quam fecit (Deus) in Christo Jesu. Eph 3:11.

782 1Cor 15:28.

780 781

277

TABLE DES MATIERES

transformation, source of goodness, and primary channel that will transmit all that the universe can receive from the infinite Good!

If the mobile universe is indebted to you for all goods (a truth that nevertheless must be demonstrated to mortal eyes), in the Empyrean, when the whole divine plan is achieved, the ensemble of things will clearly appear as your domain, shine with reflections of your splendors, and swim so to speak in your happiness.

THIRD MEDITATION Like all Created Persons, Things and Times, all Distances and Spaces are Subject to Christ and Mary 305. Just as everything was predestined in Jesus Christ and Mary in existence and the various degrees of being and perfection, everything was subordinated and subject to Christ and His Mother.

God created the angels and men to make them members of Christ and children of Mary. The Supreme Goodness bestowed grace and glory on faithful angels, called men to share the same benefits, and destined the lower beings of the universe, first to existence, and then to final glorification on account of the excellences and merits of the King and Queen of the universe, always really present to the eyes of the eternal God. Since everything was drawn out of nothing and organized with a view to Christ and Mary and for them, it follows that especially in the Empyrean, where their glory is complete, nothing bothers them, no obstacle stands in their way, and all creatures serve them and seek their good in them.

306. How could distances in the Empyrean, immeasurable as they are, hinder the universal role of Jesus and Mary? If everything is made for them; if they are at the height of happiness and glory, and if all the Elect are their members and submissive children, could the material universe subject to blind docility disconcert them in any way by its

278

TABLE DES MATIERES

distances and spaces? Not at all! Whoever thought so would show ignorance not only of the greatness of glorified Jesus and Mary but also of the condition of the Elect and the power of the supernatural over creatures.

307. To begin with, despite the inconceivable extension of the universe, it is certain that Jesus Christ as a man, knows it entirely in each of its smallest parts, as well as everything it has been from the moment of its creation, and everything that it will be.

It is possible, says St. Thomas, that a created intellect, which sees the essence of God, knows all that God knows by the science of vision, as all have it from the soul of Christ...We attribute to the soul of Christ, who sees God more perfectly than all creatures, the knowledge of all things past, present and future. 783 There is no blessed intellect that does not know everything about itself in the Word. But all things in some way concern Christ and His dignity, since all things are subject to Him....This is why the soul of Christ knows in the Word, everything that exists at any time...as also everything that creatures can do. 784 Therefore, let us not think that the holy humanity of Jesus Christ is so small compared to all of the worlds, for His soul encompasses them all in His knowledge, and in all their parts and vicissitudes. Certainly, this soul contemplates the divine Word with incomparable intensity, and the Word floods the whole universe with His immense light, surrounds it, and penetrates it with His divine light just as solar splendors surround and penetrate a light cloud.

The soul of Christ hypostatically united to the Word, which is also the exemplary cause of all beings, thereby acquires grandeur, energy, and lucidity such that the entire universe is too small to comprehend it. It sees itself in its divine and eternal archetypes, it understands itself and is fully satisfied only by its contemplation of God, the most perfect possible to a created being.

783 784

De veritate, q. 8, a. 4.

Sum. theol. p. 3, q. 10, a. 2.

279

TABLE DES MATIERES

308. After the hypostatic union, divine Motherhood is the most divinizing form of creature, if one can put it that way. Neither grace nor heavenly glory unites a soul to God as closely as divine Motherhood, and especially glorified divine Motherhood in the Empyrean. That is why, thanks to its ineffable union with the Incarnate Word, Mary’s intellect also sees and understands the whole universe. She sees it entirely, in itself, and in the Word. Her knowledge surely surpasses that of the angels, who nevertheless, according to St. Augustine, undoubtedly know every creature in the Word and every creature in itself. 785 309. Now the angels know the entire universe as a group, for this complete knowledge is not unique to each of them. As St. Thomas says, these blessed intellects know, in the Word, only what concerns them.

However, all created beings involve the Queen and Mother of the universe. So there is nothing below Jesus Christ that she does not know. And the countless myriads of Angels (167, footnote), and their offices, thoughts and all that concerns the human race, all that has life, all that is material, all is bare and exposed to the eyes of the Mother of the Incarnate Word, Empress of all creatures, 786 true Mistress of everything in heaven, on earth, and in hell. 787 310. In the Word, says Suarez, the Virgin sees all that God sees by His science of vision, except for the things that particularly concern Christ, 788 that is to say, all things past, present and future that are inferior to her dignity and excellence.

Your spirit, O Mary, lives forever, exclaims St. Germain; you observe everything, see everything, and your clairvoyant gaze extends to all people. 789 De Gen. ad litt. l. 4, c. 24.

St. Albert the Great, Biblia Mariae, super libr. Apoc.

787 St. Bonaventure, in Speculo B. M. V. chap. 3.

788 In 3 part. D. Thomae, Disput. 21, sect. 3, n. 5.

789 Sermo de Assumptione: Let us add with Suarez and Vega, that Jesus Christ and Mary also see the entire Empyrean and the whole universe through their bodily eyes. To us that seems eminently believable. Suarez, tom. 2 in 3m p. St. Thomae, Disp. 47, sect. 6, n.

11. Cristobal Vega, Theologia Mariana, no. 1875.

785 786

280

TABLE DES MATIERES

Since each Elect sees what concerns him, and everything is done for the Elect, all the Elect see all things together. But the Virgin Mary sees everything that each Elect person sees, everything that all the Elect see, and everything that particularly concerns her. It is proper to her state to understand, in the Word, the entire universe, and the state of every blessed and every damned person. This perfection is most suitable for the dignity of Mother of God, Mistress and Queen of all things, and nothing can oppose it. 790 311. Mary sees all things as Mistress and Queen, and no distances are an obstacle to her power or vision. Thus she exercises domination with Jesus Christ over all that exists without the slightest hindrance of distance or space. Dominatrix of all creatures, 791 mastering space, is for her a mere accident of finite and material things.

312. Now, real space presupposes bodies, and it is important to know whether there is a reasonable proportion between the body of Mary and that of Christ, on the one hand, and the material universe on the other. We present these glorious bodies as the most resplendent material stars of the Empyrean. Are we serious? The Empyrean is so vast that it contains within it all the billions of mobile worlds (nos. 21 & ff.). What are the bodies of Jesus and Mary compared to such an expanse? 792 313. Let us fix the eyes of our faith in the great mystery of the altar.

The Eucharist of the Church Militant gives us precious instructions on the heavenly Eucharist.

Suarez, loc. cit. Disput. 21, sect. 3, n. 5.

St. John Damascene, in Octoec. Graec.

792 The bodies of Jesus and Mary are glorious with glory and force next to which the universe is little. So, first of all, Jesus and Mary see without difficulty, with their bodily eyes, all that is matter and material accident. Their bodies are proportional to their souls, and their souls see in the Word all things finite. The universe was created primarily for Jesus and Mary, and it was also proportioned to their glorified senses, whose strength is the measure of the universe. Furthermore, at the height of bliss and perfection, Jesus and Mary cannot see imperfectly, as earthly kings. By the way, read the following considerations.

790 791

281

TABLE DES MATIERES

Is it not true that Paradise is the supreme perfection of all things, the full and very visible blossoming of all the mysteries that the faith teaches us, the glorified and eternal Church? Is the body of Christ not really present in the temples of the Catholic Church? The same body that is in heaven is also in our tabernacles and envelops the entire globe, so to speak, in a network of love.

Let us suppose that this divine body, instead of hiding in the shadow of mystery to favor our faith and its reception, suddenly takes on the splendors natural to its glorified state as on Mount Tabor.

Suppose it does so simultaneously on all points of the globe where there are consecrated hosts. Would our whole planet not be illuminated by the sacred body of the God-Man? Each inhabitant of the earth would contemplate Him in ecstasy and say with St. Peter: ‘It is good for us to stay here.’ It would be a sample of Paradise. How would distances be an obstacle?

314. Let us admit that one day the Catholic Church manages to convert all men and fully realize the words of her Founder: “And other sheep I have, that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.” 793 Temples and tabernacles will immensely multiply on the earth, and the body of Christ, which we suppose radiant with glory, will be incomparably more visible throughout the entire extent of the earth.

Instead of mysteries, heavenly Jerusalem now offers evidence; in it the divine plan is completely realized; it is richer than the Church Militant in everything. What is and what will be, then, its Eucharist? Oh, how we should expect to experience the greatest and most ineffable surprises in this regard!

315. To get a close idea of the state of the body of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and in heaven, let us elevate our thoughts above common physical laws, which do not apply to glorified bodies. Down here, the human body is an animal body, but it will resurrect as a spiritual body. 794 793 794

Jn 10:16.

1Cor 15:44.

282

TABLE DES MATIERES

Just as our entire soul is in each living part of our body and an angel is entirely in each point of space where he is found, so also the body of Jesus Christ supernaturally acquires vis-a-vis space a kind of simplicity that exempts it from the ordinary laws of extension and allows it to indefinitely achieve its total presence in each part of a symbol or a large number of different places. His body does not multiply. It is unique and always the same everywhere, in heaven and every one of our tabernacles. Part of a much lower order, space is the one that folds and yields; places faint, so to speak, in the presence of this glorious body hypostatically united to a divine Person.

316. The Eucharistic body of Christ, considered in itself, has its parts arranged in order and without any confusion as it is a real, organic body. But if we look around it, no space contains it, measures it, or corresponds precisely with the parts of this glorified body. This is the formal teaching of St. Thomas, Lessius, Franzelin, and the best theologians. 795 According to Revelation, says Cardinal Franzelin, it is entirely certain that the organic body of Christ with all its parts, the same body that is in heaven, really exists in the Eucharist in a non-extensive way. 796 Undoubtedly, part of the essence of each body is to require space. But a body does not have to be imprisoned in that space when its primary cause (which can eminently do whatever the secondary causes can), satisfies by itself the body’s requirement without the need for space. In this case, far from missing anything, the body is better served and more nobly satisfied.

The body of Christ is so to speak in His blessed soul, and His soul is in the Word. 797 And without multiplying His body, His soul makes it present wherever it wants in the entire expanse of the universe. 798 His

Cf. Johann Baptist Cardinal Franzelin, De Sacram. Euchar. Thes. XI, III. Ibid. Translator’s note: According to the Larousse French dictionary, ‘extensive,’ in philosophy, means “the fundamental property of a body to be located in space and to occupy a portion of it.”

797 See passage from St. Thomas below, no. 319.

798 In sanctis post resurrectionem omnino anima dominabitur supra corpus, which is even more true of the perfect soul of Christ, Sum.Theol. Suppl. q. 82, a. 1, ad 2m.

795 796

283

TABLE DES MATIERES

soul can indefinitely increase the relations of hiss body with created things without the body ceasing to be unique and the same.

I conceive this attribute, on the one hand, as a radiance of the body of Jesus so powerful that His body makes itself present at the same time in a high number of places; and on the other hand, as an act of perfect submission by the entire nature to this divine body, king of bodies. 799 I imagine the multiplication of the presence of this sacred body as a multiplication of the points of view from which we can see Jesus (as is done in heaven) or receive Him (as in the Eucharist). The consecration is an act which, by changing the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, renders all nature docile, opens one of these points of view, and produces the presence of Jesus on our altars.

317. O mystery of power and love! O Paradise began and anticipated! If we could see you clearly, we would be in heaven.

318. By multiplying a body’s relations, says Franzelin, God can make it indefinitely present to an ever-increasing number of beings, and strictly speaking, make it present to all things that exist and those that will exist when they come into existence. 800 Just as nature requires the presence of the soul in all parts of the body which are quickened by it, so divine mercy, in the supernatural order of grace, the vivifying body of Christ to be present as a principle of life in His entire mystical body which is the Church, though not in the same way as a soul is present in a body, but according to a special institution. 801 319. O Jesus, I now have an idea of the heavenly Eucharist! You are also present in your whole glorified mystical body, and much more perfectly than in your Church Militant. The vastness of the Empyrean does not hinder it at all. For distances are nothing for your body; it does not Nullum corpus erit fortius corporibus sanctorum, de quibus dicitur (1a Cor. 15, 43): “Seminatur in infirmitate, surget in virtute.” And what to say of the body of Christ? St. Thomas, ibid. a. 1, Sed contra…

800 Loco citato.

801 Ibid.

799

284

TABLE DES MATIERES

have to fit into space. Glorious bodies, and especially your body, need not be contained [in a material environment] because they receive nothing from heavenly bodies but from God through their souls. So nothing prevents your body, O Christ, from going beyond the capacity of heavenly bodies and being independent of all places. 802 You are, therefore, present even in the body throughout the Empyrean, which is your perfect Church. And just as many of your saints have been honored down here with bilocation, 803 your divine Mother, who surpasses them altogether and especially in glory, participates in your bodily independence in an excellent way and extends her corporeal radiance throughout the Empyrean. O Jesus, O Mary, set our hearts ablaze with love for you!

CHAPTER TWELVE Since Everything was Predestined for Existence in Jesus Christ, Mary, and the Elect, Mobile Nature Speaks a Language Consistent with Its Destiny and Searches for the Empyrean, which, in Turn, Vivifies It with Its Influences Si consurrexistis cum Christo: quae sursum sunt quaerite, ubi Christus est in dextera Dei sedens: quae sursum sunt sapite, non quae super terram. Mortui enim estis, et vita vestra est abscondita cum Christo in Deo. Cum Christus apparuerit, vita vestra: tunc et vos apparebitis cum ipso in gloria (Col. 3:1-4).

“If you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above; where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God: Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you are dead; and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ shall appear, who is your life, 802 803

St. Thomas, Sum. theol. p. 3, q. 57. a. 4, ad 2m.

On this subject, see Franzelin, loc. cit.

285

TABLE DES MATIERES

then you also shall appear with him in glory.”

FIRST MEDITATION The Holy Ghost, with Formal Exhortations, and all Beings of Nature by Their Present Condition, Urge Us to Seek the Things from Above 320. If everything was predestined in Jesus and Mary, as we have seen, if all things were oriented and launched as it were toward the supernatural world presided over by Jesus and Mary, if all nature was created, measured, shaped, organized to serve the supernatural, which is the noblest part of the empire of Jesus and Mary, it is clear that all creatures speak a language according to their destiny and preach to us, if we can understand them, love of Paradise, the horror of hell, and even, in a way, the place that these two very different dwellings occupy in the universe.

Insights about this subject come to us from all sides. Here, nature reaches out to human aspirations, Revelation, Church teaching, and the belief and practice of the faithful. All beings say in unison that good is in the heights, that we need to strive for it, and that the way down is the path of evil and the abyss. 804 321. Since man, given his freedom, is the being most susceptible to miss the path that leads to his ultimate end, he is more likely than others to fall. Because of that, he enjoys the invaluable privilege of the divine teaching, which unceasingly tells him: Sursum corda – lift up your heart – and makes known to him, one by one, all the means to rise. Furthermore, his Redeemer infuses in him supernatural life that makes him overcome low attractions and lift his thoughts and affections to heaven.

We will cover most of these topics in the next chapter; here we develop only the thoughts indicated in the title.

804

286

TABLE DES MATIERES

When he rises with Christ, he emerges from the tomb in which lower passions had buried him and seeks things from above, where Christ sits at the right hand of the Father. Educated, fortified, again under the powerful influence of heavenly attractions, he savors the things from above and not those of the earth. Then one can say that he is dead to the tendencies that degrade him. Being a man above all by his intellect and will, he esteems and desires only celestial goods and the means to obtain them. Thus, like his thoughts and desires, his life is hidden with Christ in God. But just as Christ will one day appear in His glory, so also the man who lives in Christ, receiving His lights, strength, and tendencies will appear with Christ in the splendors of His triumph.

322. Though eminently real and powerful, supernatural attractions are invisible to the weak and distracted glances of the world and the worldly. Animal man does not perceive things related to the spirit of God; for him, that is foolishness, and he cannot understand it because rational man must judge things with an intellect enlightened by the light of faith. 805 Because of this, the Christian life is one hidden with Christ in God. It is already a paradise on earth – a paradise begun –, and one compatible with the trial. Therefore, heavenly life does not begin when the righteous leave this world but needs only to be complemented and appear with Christ in His glory. We are now children of God but do not yet see what we will be. 806 323. By this, we see how a faithful Christian has his place both among the worldly, who do not perceive the supernatural, and the happy citizens of heaven, who understand it perfectly; we will see it face to face. Right now, I know imperfectly, but then I will know just as well as I am known. 807 The Holy Ghost Himself bears witness to our souls that we are children of God and, as such, have received the spirit of adoption, with which we cry: Abba, Father, 808 our Father who is in heaven. As children, 1Cor 2:14.

1 Jn 3:2.

807 1Cor 13:12.

808 Rom 8:15,16.

805 806

287

TABLE DES MATIERES

we are also heirs of God and co-heirs with Jesus Christ 809 and are destined to be glorified with Him and reign with Him over the entire renewed and transformed universe; for everything is for us, and we are for Christ, and Christ is for God (nos. 291, 303).

324. That is why all creatures must share our tendency toward the celestial Jerusalem, all the more so because irrational beings do not sin but blindly follow the impulse given by the Creator. In fact, creatures lively expect a full and entire manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly but by reason of Him that made it subject, in the hope that as a creature, it too will be delivered from the servitude of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 810 325. O irrational creatures that populate the heavens and earth, how lively is your expectation, love, and hope to share the independence, freedom, and glory of the children of God! Right now, even as we see you, you are no doubt tormented by these feelings and desires or behave as if imbued with them. The divinely inspired Apostle is the one who tells us so; who could doubt the truth of his claims? He does not speculate but says with confidence: we know that every creature groans and is in labor until that hour. 811 He adds that they moan for the same reasons that make us groan. Not only every creature but also us who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves waiting for the perfect and glorious adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body by the resurrection. 812 Like us, o irrational creatures, you are clearly looking for the happiness of the empyrean. Everything moves toward the empyrean, everything aspires to it and works to achieve it. That is true not only of material nature but also of us, who follow its example as if its tendency Ibid 8:17.

Ibid. 8:19-21.

811 Even the glorified Elect do not enjoy complete accidental happiness at this time. As St. Cyprien says (in the Office of All Saints), they are concerned for our salvation and their glory must increase at the last Judgment. They must still give birth to something.

812 Rom 8:22-23.

809 810

288

TABLE DES MATIERES

toward paradise were better known than our own. While irrational beings deprived of knowledge and love gravitate toward the empyrean less nobly than us, they do so with an assuredness and constancy that we should imitate. 813 326. But how does nature show us its lively and constant aspirations toward paradise? If we observe it carefully, though briefly, we see that it is in the throes of changes and continuing work. Although imprisoned so to speak within the framework of the universal harmony established by the Almighty, nature undergoes relentless internal struggles.

The unimaginable number of forms, which seem to give a kind of life to the elements and beings that compose nature, fiercely and continuously compete for the matter. The strongest prevail over the weakest, and the latter, defeated for a time but not destroyed, are satisfied with a tour in the entrails of matter, play dead, and fall asleep there. But the reign of victorious forms does not always last. One would say that they gradually wear out, and matter begins to revolt against them: a revolution. Excited by outside agents such as light, heat, or others, or by the debacle of their adversaries, the dormant forms wake up and resume the offensive. They force the former conquerors to play a diminished role and to burrow back deep into the matter. But the time also comes for the latter to reign again, and this childbirth-like labor will last until the end of time. 814 327. The entire nature takes part in this immense labor. Atoms and molecules do in their microcosm what celestial globes do in large scale.

Everything everywhere searches for the good and the best; nothing is The more a thing has required preparation and is perfect, the more forcefully the desire of matter is directed toward this thing, says St. Thomas. Now, paradise is the most perfect of all material things. Therefore, everything tends toward paradise either mediately or immediately. Hence one must conclude, the Angelic Doctor adds, that the appetite with which matter desires the form tends to the highest and most distant perfection of which matter is capable (Contra Gentiles, I,3, c.22.

814 According to St. Thomas (ibid.), the immediate end of the mutability of natural beings is to help the generation of a greater number of individuals, and especially humans, but the ultimate end of this whole work is heaven or the final glorification of Creation.

813

289

TABLE DES MATIERES

satisfied with what it has. The entire nature says with Ecclesiastes: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity 815 because everything loses what it has conquered, and nothing can conquer enough and lastingly enough to fully satisfy its desires. 816 Oh, how the Apostle was divinely inspired when he wrote that Creation is are subject to vanity despite itself, no doubt by God, who makes it participate in the trial of His children but also share their hopes, as it too will be freed from the bondage of corruption to pass into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. The ever-recurring death of a large number of lower forms, replaced by similar or different ones; the lack of perfect balance that allows nothing to rest; the continual sloshing of matter, which is naturally inert; the indefinite variations of accidental forms; the atrocious war that animals wage on each other in the air, waters, on the earth and its entrails, everything proves there are no pure goods in nature although they are sought after everywhere; creatures are subject to vanity despite themselves.

328. But if nature is found in these conditions despite itself, one must admit that it so to speak shares a kind of feeling shared with all beings, which seek a perfect good. Now, while all beings have a repugnance for struggle and corruption, all of them sigh after immutability and the peaceful possession of good. And since these tendencies never find adequate objects in nature, they aim higher and seek the supernatural.

817 Otherwise, one would have to say that nature, created by an Eccl 1:2.

Matter is insatiable for goods until it obtains the greatest good: raw material needs an elementary form like that of simple bodies; then it desires the form of composite bodies; then, that of plants; then, that of animals; then, that of man (Contra Gentiles, ibid.). But again, this is vanity for it and man, because nature wants even better.

Everything that is moved to search for good tends to a divine similarity to become perfect (Ibid). Matter, serving man in the human body, tends to resurrection. And all other matter tends to be glorified after the body of man.

817 The visible creature is ordained by God for an end that is above its natural form. For just as the human body will be clothed in a certain supernatural form of glory, so every visible creature, in this glory of the children of God, will obtain a certain renewal of 815 816

290

TABLE DES MATIERES

infintely wise and good Being, at the end of its quest always find a void, has needs greater than its resources, and that it is a work poorly done.

O God, such a conclusion would be horrible and absurd! No, this is not the case! Nature is made for the supernatural, its end (nos.

288-292), and cannot be satisfactorily explained without admitting the principle that it aspires to pass into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. It seeks paradise either in time or immediately.

Under the governance of an infinitely good and wise God, death, war, instability, unappeased hunger, the satisfaction that makes people unhappy, life at the expense of others, cannot constitute a final state of affairs. In nature, each being is seated at a joyous banquet, which, like Balthazar’s, 818 is invariably followed by most profound humiliations and pains of agony. And one must suffer this terrible fate under the strictures of inevitable violence!

O freedom, what great good you would be for all beings! O God, who loves all that exists and hates nothing that you have done, 819 you will not allow the theater of existence always to end up offering a horrible tragedy. Nor will you let discontent or despair to be the last acts of the beings you have drawn from nothing! 820 Love must end it all, as love started it all.

329. That is why reason agrees with faith to tell us that all beings share the sublime expectations of wayfaring man: subjecit eam (creaturam) in spe. Everything hopes for freedom, everything hopes for glory, everything hopes for incorruptibility, everything hopes for rest after hard work. glory, as we read in the Apocalypse (21:1): “I saw a new heaven and a new earth” (St. Thomas, pers. in Epist. Ad Rom. C. VIII, 21) 818 Dan 5.

819 Wis 11:25.

820 The visible creature is subject to vanity, that is to say, to corruptibility despite itself because this change is contrary to its particular nature, which desires its conservation (St. Thomas, loc. cit.). But all beings in nature have this desire, and so no being in nature is satisfied, as all arrive at violent change. But the visible creature is subject to this terrible vanity in hope, that is to say, in expectation of its glorious renewal (St. Thomas, ibid.).

291

TABLE DES MATIERES

Man, open your eyes; contemplate the spectacles of nature; listen to its voices telling you: We are in the state of trial just as you; our temporal mission is to instruct and serve you to reach the glory of the children of God. And when your body is resurrected, it will give the signal for a kind of resurrection of all matter. Then we too will have reached our last end, for we will be glorified to serve the glorified children of God just as we are now being tested in a thousand ways to serve the children of God being put to the test. Having been created to serve you, we cannot have a fate better than yours; but when you are gods, 821 we, your servants, will be ennobled because of you and participate in your freedom and glory.

330. Therefore, the earth and heavens we contemplate are works that God has not yet finished. 822 They are wayfaring creatures like us. While waiting for their final enhancement, they practice in their own way the recommendations of St. Paul: Seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Taste things from above and not from below...when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you too will appear with Him in glory. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth....When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall appear with Him in glory (Col 3:1-4).

331. Seek the things from above, where Christ sits: Above all, the beings we see are things that the entire visible nature desires and that strongly attract other things; perfect things that attract all that is perfectible. Nature tells us so, our hearts feel it, and the Holy Ghost reassures us. Let us lift up our hearts!

SECOND MEDITATION Jn 10:34.

Each being in nature is like a building that has waiting stones on all sides. The Supreme Architect will not fail to complete his work. Like man, the earth and the moving heavens are in childbirth-like labor under the superior influences of the supernatural and the Empyrean.

821 822

292

TABLE DES MATIERES

With Two Great Movements, All Nature Preaches the Empyrean. Doctrine of St. Thomas, St. Augustine, and Suarez. The Empyrean Is the Noblest Part of the Material Reign of Mary 332. When I put a stone into a sling and shoot it into the air, the stone faces two opposing forces that compete for it. One force holds the stone at a given distance; the other gives it a strong tendency to move away and take off. This popular image depicts the two great physical forces that govern all bodies in nature. Atoms, molecules, mountains, and stars are also subject to these laws, called centrifugal force and centripetal force, or universal gravitation. Now, just as one does not spin a slingshot and only retains the stone for a few moments to throw it more strongly and farther away, so also the Creator keeps the physical world in the state of trial to urge it toward the empyrean.

Do not believe that the gyrations of cosmic ‘slings’ have excessive and disproportionate duration, as the state of perfection to which all beings will arrive will have no end. And the millions of years they have been circulating in the search of a definitive place are like a few moments in comparison with the eternity that will follow.

333. Therefore, nature preaches paradise not only by its perpetual and intrinsic changes, ongoing struggles, failings, and persevering search for an enhancement that is presently elusive. 823 It does so also by two great movements that could not be more visible such are the properties of chemistry, physics, and astronomy, which maintain all bodies, small and large, in an overall harmonious balance. What, O Creator of heavens and earth, are these two movements imprinted on the entire lower universe? If I ask human science, it tells me that attraction and gravitation are properties with which all parts of matter seem to be gifted, and under which all matter tends toward matter.

There is a need for development and progress, which is at the bottom of everything, and which St. Thomas and Aristotle...affirmed...as the fundamental law of nature.

Albert Farges, Matière et Forme, nature of matter, 7°. But any progress, whatever it is, aims for a similar perfection. It is a state of insatiable search for the perfect.

823

293

TABLE DES MATIERES

This explanation is inadequate. The two guiding forces of nature are better conceived and expressed by a more enlightened science, one less afraid of the supernatural. We find that all astronomers (except for Kant, the dreamer) from Newton to M. Faye, including Laplace, believed it necessary to assume that matter was given the two movements of attraction and rotation at its origin. 824 These two notions are still meager because they reveal nothing about the plan or its mode of execution; they envisage nature without taking into account the main end for which it was created, which for us is the most enlightening source.

O God of goodness, please enable this theologian, who has no other merit than preferring, by your grace, sacred science to all other sciences, to see through these crucial questions with clarity, however dim. O Mary, Seat of Wisdom, direct my thoughts and my pen.

334. The Angelic Doctor, who wrote so well about God, must have written well also about His works. Starting from the notion of celestial glory, he writes: “In the reward to come, a two-fold glory is looked for, spiritual and corporeal, not only in the human body to be glorified but in the whole world which is to be made new. Now the spiritual glory began with the beginning of the world, in the blessedness of the angels, equality with whom is promised to the saints. It was fitting, then, that even from the beginning, there should be made some beginning of bodily glory in something corporeal, free at the very outset from the servitude of corruption and change, and wholly luminous, even as the whole bodily Creation, after the Resurrection, is expected to be. So, then, that heaven is called the empyrean, i.e. fiery, not from its heat, but from its brightness.” 825 A glorified and motionless heaven therefore exists in the set of created beings. It is the largest of heavens, the one that encompasses all others, as we saw above (nos. 20-24). This heaven is a real body that occupies the extreme circumference of the entire universe. 826 It is the highest of heavens: quod est maxime sursum; it is the link of all things Albert Farges, l’Idée de Dieu, p.82.

Summa Theologiae, 1, p, q.66, a.3.

826 St. Thomas, De caelo et mundo, I, 2, lect.20, n.2.

824 825

294

TABLE DES MATIERES

divine: quod est locus omnium divinorum; all men attribute to God this link, which is above. 827 Thus, one calls heaven not only the supreme sphere (the Empyrean) but all that is corporeal and contained without solution of continuity in the extreme circumference of the whole universe, i.e., all spheres of circularly mobile celestial bodies. 828 335. First and foremost, the supreme sphere is called heaven; there follow the other celestial spheres contained in the supreme sphere. 829 The supreme heaven is the largest and most perfect: It stands to reason that it is totally perfect in its kind, and that nothing of the same kind exists outside of it. This type of perfection befits the first and supreme body that contains all bodies. The empyrean would not be a perfect heaven if it did not contain all other heavens. 830 According to Aristotle, commented by St. Thomas in his work De caelo et mundo, the supreme heaven is mobile like the lower heavens, and moves even faster than the latter: motus simplex, regularis et velocissimus. 831 But in his other works, St. Thomas tells us that the highest heaven, the empyrean, is motionless because it has reached all its perfection. He attributes to the second heaven, crystalline heaven (ether), the very rapid and uniform movement that Aristotle attributed to the upper heaven.

336. According to St. Thomas, despite its immobility, the empyrean exerts a significant influence on the lower heavens and all moving bodies. In the universe, the bodies that contain other bodies are to those contained bodies like form is to matter, and like the act in

Ibid.

Ibid. I, 1, lect.8, n.16; et lect.20, n. 2.

829 Ibid.

830 Ibid. I,1, lect.4, n.10.

831 Ibid. L.II, lect. 15, n.2. Later we will quote Aristotle and St.Thomas to prove that the empyrean was initially mobile and became relatively immobile only by its glorification.

See nos. 422, 425.

827 828

295

TABLE DES MATIERES

relation to potency. 832 They exert a formative action and impart movement.

Obviously, the container is more honorable than the content; and what sets limits is more honorable than what is limited. Being contained and being limited is proper to matter, but to contain and to limit is proper to form, which is the very noble substance of the entire consistency of things. 833 The supreme sphere approaches, by its perfection, what is best (that is to say, spiritual substances) inasmuch as it becomes the universal cause of the corporeal things under it, and, moreover, the cause of their permanence. 834 The planets and lower heavens are comparable to instruments used by the supreme sphere, which is the main factor that acts on bodies. 835 This is a precious indication of the source of the general movements that we observe in nature.

337. Visible bodies, the Angelic Doctor continues, are mobile according to the state of the world, that is to say, to the state of preparation and childbirth in which the world finds itself while seeking its ultimate perfection, for bodily creatures procure the multiplication of glory.

Eventually, the movement of bodies will cease, and such must have been the disposition of the empyrean from the beginning.

It seems more probable to say that just as the highest angels exert an influence on their immediate subordinates and on the last ones, so also the empyrean influences mobile bodies, although it does not measure itself. Because of this, we can say that it communicates to the first mobile heaven (the crystalline sky that we would call the ether), not something transient and by movement but something fixed and stable, for example, the virtue of containing and causing, or

Ibid. I,1, lect.4, n.18 in fine Ibid. 1.II, lect.20, n.7.

834 Ibid, lect.18, n.6.

835 Ibid, lect. 19, no. 4. In corporibus superior sunt quasi actus (formators, motors) respect inferiorum… Omnis potential confortatur et perficitur ex conjunctio ad actum suum; unde et corpora inferior conservantur in superioribus, quae sunt locus eorum. Q. 9 de veritate, a.1.

832 833

296

TABLE DES MATIERES

something similar which is noble 836 and can be regarded as the principle of what is inferior.

338. I used to have the impression, continues the great Doctor, that the empyrean has no influence on other bodies because it is not established to produce natural effects but to be the place of the blessed. But having considered this subject more carefully, it seems to me that one must say that the empyrean influences the lower bodies because the whole universe constitutes a single system of ordered things.

This unity of order consists, according to St. Augustine, in that corporeal things are governed by spiritual beings with a certain harmony, and likewise, lower bodies are governed by higher bodies. If the empyrean did not influence the lower bodies, it would not belong to the unity of the universe, which is not suitable. As for its own effect, it seems that it consists in the perpetuity and conservation (perpetuities et permansio) that it gives the lower bodies.

The first heaven, i.e., the empyrean, influences especially by its rest; the second heaven, by its uniform movement; and the third heaven, the sidereal sky, by its varied movement.

A characteristic proper to the empyrean is that being the supreme heaven, it influences without moving, somehow reaching the order of spiritual substances, as St. Denys affirms by saying that divine wisdom joins what is most perfect in the lower orders to what is less perfect in the higher orders.

Sum. Theol. 1, p, q. 66, a.3 ad 1° & ad 2. Continere est formae, contineri vero materiae: it is proper of form to contain matter, and it is proper of matter to be contained by form. Libr. I Distinct. 37, q.2, a.1, ad 1. Hence the empyrean, which surrounds all moving heavens, also animates and pefects them in some way, as form perfects matter. The empyrean is one of the things that were created in the very beginning; it is the place that contains all things and was created entirely and, at the same time, as the material principle of formation of the lower heavens that will emerge from chaos. I, p, q.66, a 4. Ad 5. Therefore, through its formative influences and attractions, the empyrean will help either to untangle the chaos, to lead and maintain the mobile worlds, or to supply them with the forces and activities they need.

According to Aristotle and St. Thomas, in the material universe, the empyrean functions as the heart in an animal’s body, except that the empyrean, not needing protection, is outside (Libr, 2 Dist. 14, q. 1, n.1, &d 2.).

836

297

TABLE DES MATIERES

Corporeal light is the form of the first body that acts, i.e., of the empyrean, by virtue of which all lower bodies act. 837 As for this light of the empyrean, one can say that it is not condensed as in the sun nor radiates like the sun. It is a more subtle light or rather the clarity of glory, which is not of the same nature as natural clarity. 838 339. What sublime thoughts, deep insights, and breadth of vision one finds in this doctrine of the Angelic Doctor! Compared to these teachings, what are the naturalistic hypotheses of modern philosophers? St. Thomas makes everything work together, the supernatural world and that of nature, things invisible and visible, the origins of things and their present condition, their temporal and final ends, the reasons for the movements of nature and their primary sources. Placed on the heights of theology, this great man contemplates the divine plan as a whole and describes it to us with delightful simplicity. That is philosophy!

While admitting that experimental astronomy was still fledgling, as we said above (nos. 39-40), we must recognize the incomparable richness of the principles expounded by the Prince of theologians, which generate the real science of nature.

He knows that those who know things by their causes know them well. But to imprison oneself in the mobile universe to explain it wisely is to behave like a child groping in a vicious circle. If you want to know the grand springs that move visible beings, look for the things from on high; otherwise, just say there is such and such movement, play the scholar but do not claim that you are presenting science.

340. St. Thomas is far from isolated in this way of conceiving the constitution and organism of the universe. Before him, his chief master, St. Augustine, employed the same language. Here is how the Bishop of Hippo, in a sublime synthesis, reports on the origin of the movements imparted on created beings.

God uses all creatures as He will...Let us turn our thoughts to that heavenly place that is above, which is the starting point of our 837 838

Quodlibet VI, at the end.

P.I, q.66, a. 3, ad 4.

298

TABLE DES MATIERES

pilgrimages (unde peregrinamur). It is the will of God that gives His angels the ministers the speed of wind and a flaming (Ps 103:3-4), presiding among spirits which are joined in perfect peace and friendship, and combined in one will by a kind of spiritual fire of charity.

These spirits serve Him, as it were, in an elevated, holy and secret throne; they are as it were in His own house and temple (no. 211).

From there, the divine will diffuse itself through all things by certain most perfectly ordered movements of the creature; first spiritual, then corporeal; and uses all according to the unchangeable pleasure of its own purpose, whether incorporeal things or things corporeal, whether rational or irrational spirits, whether good by His grace or evil through their own will.

But as the coarser and inferior bodies are governed in due order by more subtle and powerful ones, all bodies are governed by a living spirit; and a living spirit devoid of reason is governed by a rational living spirit; and the rational living spirit that has defects and sins, by a living and rational spirit that is pious and just; and the latter is governed by God Himself. So the universal creature is governed by its Creator, from whom and through whom and in whom it is also created and established (Col. 1:16.).

And so it comes to pass that the will of God is the first and highest cause of all corporeal appearances and motions. For nothing is done visibly or sensibly unless either by command or permission from the interior palace, invisible and intelligible, of the supreme Governor, according to the unspeakable justice of rewards and punishments, favor, and retribution. 839 341. What a superb crowning of the doctrine of Aristotle and St. Thomas! In his considerations, the great African genius particularly emphasizes the supernatural note: God, the spirits, the temporal and last ends of things, celestial glory, and eternal pains. Indeed, all nature was born from, organized by, moves and seeks its final good in the supernatural.

839

De Trinitate, I. 3. Chap.4. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/130103.htm.

299

TABLE DES MATIERES

Predestined for existence in Jesus Christ and Mary (nos. 292, 303 etc.), nature groans in trial and labor only for the Elect. 840 Its condition follows and will follow that of rational creatures. Presently, it is partly glorious with Jesus and Mary, the faithful angels, and the other Elect. It is partly in the state of trial, moving with the Church Militant and other rational creatures in the state of trial, if there are any; partly beautiful and perfect of completely natural perfection, in the limbo; partly disordered as awful chaos, physically expressing the even more horrible state of the rational creatures living in it who, unrepentant for their sins, have missed their last end; partly and only transiently subjected to the trial and employed to mete out the final expiations on souls loved by God but not yet pure enough to see Him in glory.

The entire material world is disposed from the point of view of the ineffable justice of rewards and punishments, graces and retribution.

342. On the empyrean and its influences, let us quote another serious authority, Suarez, after which, in the Third Meditation, we will have all the data to judge as well as possible the attractions, corporeal movements, and tendency of all moving bodies toward glorified heaven.

Every natural body has an active force that seems to result from the perfection of its form. But in things that have no life, this force is not aimed at acting in them but on other things. Now the empyrean is a substance that owes its stability to some very perfect form in this order of supernaturally transformed things, so it does have St. Thomas reports as seriously authoritative this passage from the Works of St. Ambrose: “All the elements [of nature] laboriously fulfill their tasks. Thus, the sun and the moon do not travel without work through the spaces assigned to them. They do it because of us, and thus they will rest when we are raised in glory. The fatigue caused by this labor of nature, adds St. Thomas, does not come from movement but from frustration in the quest to attain the goal toward which nature tends. Indeed, its movement is ordered by divine Providence to complete the number of the Elect, and it does not reach its goal for as long as this number is not complete. That is why it is said that nature works and suffers like a man who does not have what he wants. But the mobile heaven will have this defect removed from it when the number of the Elect is complete. This work of nature can also relate to its longing for the future renewal that it expects from the divine disposition.” (Supplem., q. 91, a. 2, ad 6.)

840

300

TABLE DES MATIERES

some force to act. But it is not perfect enough to reach the degree of perfection of a soul, because as such, the spirit is superior to all matter, and hence its force is not exercised only in itself. This is possible only with spirits, which can cause the empyrean to take action outside itself.

The empyrean thus can and does influence other things in the real world. Indeed, its force acts by itself naturally and necessarily, unable to suspend its influence.

Nor is it likely that the heaven closest to it (the crystalline sky) is incapable of receiving its influence, which would perpetually nullify the action of the empyrean for lack of a subject capable of receiving it.

That would not be consistent with the excellent disposition of the bodies in the universe or with the very wise providence of God. Therefore, this active force of the empyrean is always in action and continuously influences other bodies. This is also the opinion of Durand, Richard, and the very authoritative Dr. Gilles Colonne. 841 343. What gives these considerations the highest solidity continues Suarez is that the current order of things by itself belongs to perfection, i.e., it directly aims to improve itself, and this doctrine is not at all objectionable. I do not deny...that the empyrean was made mainly for the perfection of the universe, with a view above all to its supernatural end, and to be the abode of the blessed. ... But since considered as such it is perfect and very active, it necessarily also influences lower 841

When St. Thomas and other scholastics tell us that the heavens are incorruptible and that divine Providence disposes of lower bodies by means of celestial bodies, all this is very true in substance, but some distinctions must be made. All movements of mobile nature really come from the incorruptible bodies of the empyrean as their first material cause, and divine Providence really disposes lower bodies, that is to say, all moving heavens and bodies that make them up, according to the highest and most perfect celestial bodies, which are those of the empyrean. In principle, the thesis that the scholastics uphold is entirely true. The only thing is that we do not regard the moving heavens as incorruptible. For us, all the great bodies of nature, subject to the law of movement, are changing. Scholastic doctrine must be completed and perfected, but not fought against. In short, everything that St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Suarez, and other great Catholic authors say about the providential government of lower bodies by higher bodies proves the powerful influences of the empyrean on all mobile nature. Cf. St. Thomas, q. 5 De Verit. n. q.9. 1, p.q. 22, a.3.q.115, a.3.

301

TABLE DES MATIERES

beings and must not lack a proportioned subject on which to exercise its power.

The fact that the empyrean is motionless relative to place does not hinder its influence at all. Although immobile, it can produce qualities in lower beings, for example, to enlighten, warm, or modify them in some way.

The empyrean does not need to be in motion to exercise its influence; it suffices for it to produce a dislocation movement in what is near it by generating qualities. Besides, if the empyrean were to move, it would not influence more than being immobile because it is entirely homogeneous (and equally active in all its lower parts).

Let us add to this reasoning by Suarez that the empyrean, which surrounds the entire set of mobile beings like a glorious firmament that crowns the universe (nos. 21-23), must act like a corporeal being that has attained its last end. It must somehow communicate its perfection without seeking it through local movement (nothing seeks what it already has) and immediately or eventually communicate that perfection to everything under its dependence, i.e., all mobile bodies traveling under its care. It therefore preserves and feeds them with a kind of physical grace and sets off their movements to go through all phases necessary to obtain their final and glorious perfection.

344. According to the same Doctor, the empyrean can influence other bodies by its light and by other means, as not all influences are exerted by light. It does not alter anything to corrupt and disorganize, but only to perfect. Moreover, who says that the crystalline sky (ether) does not shine by virtue of the neighboring influences of the empyrean? It is not surprising that we do not perceive the luminous rays of the empyrean, as they can be obstructed by obstacles in some intermediate sky or the enormous distance that separates it from us. In short, let us conclude, a priori and in general, that because of its nobility, this heaven cannot lack any active power.

According to St. Thomas, it cooperates with the perpetuity and stability of the universe. In fact, it likely influences lower things only by

302

TABLE DES MATIERES

helping other stars and heavens and by cooperating with their action.

That is why – we add – the Empyrean plays with the moving bodies of nature a role similar to the one that grace plays with wayfaring men.

Let us give Suarez the floor once again.

345. The effects of the empyrean come to us from the lower heavens, which act with more or less power and efficacy and are tempered and arranged in one way or another depending on the diverse influences they receive from the empyrean. 842 346. This shows how, under the pen of the great doctors that honor the Church, the physical world resembles the moral world. The main lines of the former are found in the latter. What invisibly takes place in souls, happens ostensibly but more roughly in the universe. Everything is part of the same plan because everything is the work of the same God. The mobile world travels with rational creatures undergoing their test. The stars of the empyrean rest in their glory with the blessed who inhabit them and communicate to their homes all they have of most beautiful and best; and the latter spread their beneficent influences on traveling bodies just as, from the high regions of the empyrean, Jesus Christ, Mary, and all the Elect make divine graces rain on all rational beings busy in their quest to conquer heaven.

347.

Thou hast given me, O Lord, a delight in thy doings: And in the works of thy hands I shall rejoice.

O Lord, how great are thy works!

Thy thoughts are exceedingly deep.

The senseless man shall not know; Nor will the fool understand these things. 843

842 843

Suarez, De opera sex dierum, lib. I, chap. V, nos. 8-17.

Ps 91:5-7.

303

TABLE DES MATIERES

348. O Mary, you are the most perfect created type who has molded and shaped the heaven of heavens. Predestined in you and your divine Son for existence and the perfections that it possesses (nos. 296-304), the empyrean is the noblest part of your material empire. It was made worthy of you only by its manifold beauties, greatnesses, lights, active virtues, and beneficial influences. It is the physical mirror that reflects your supernatural and divine excellence in the most perfect way that matter would allow. So it is easy to find in you all its characters, which nevertheless you possess to an incomparably higher degree.

349. The empyrean encompasses all moving heavens, but you are the Empress, really the mistress of all celestial, earthly, and infernal beings (St. Bonaventure). 844 It surrounds the universe with a glorious cloak of light. Still, you are the enlightenment of the angelic spirits 845 and saints in glory (St. Albert the Great). 846 Enlightenment, which by its very resplendent glory, illuminates heaven in everything and everywhere just as the sun illuminates the world (St. Bonaventure); 847 enlightenment of all heavens (St. Bridget). 848 The empyrean exerts a favorable and powerful influence on all moving bodies of nature, but you are the dispenser of joy to all creatures (St. Gregory the Miracle Worker), 849 the universal distributor of all benefits (St. Albert the Great), 850 the riches that fill all heaven and earth (St. Andrew of Crete), 851 the most accomplished power that created beings could possess: potesta consummata omnium creatorum (St. Bernardine of Siena). 852 350. O Mary, how sweet it is to have a sincere, strong, and affectionate devotion to you! Under such aegis, one feels that nothing can harm us In speculo. B. M.V. chap.3.

Ibid.

846 In Postillis, sup. chap. I. Matth.

847 Loco cit.

848 Revelations, 1.I, c.50.

849 Orat, 2, in Annunt. B. M.V. 850 Biblia Mar, super libr, Eccli.

851 Orat. 1, De Dormitione Deipara Virgo.

852 Tom.1, Serm. 61, de supern. grat et Gloria B.M. Virg.

844 845

304

TABLE DES MATIERES

in nature or society.

Empyrean influences rule all bodies; nature, men, and demons are mastered and governed by faithful angels, ministers of divine Providence. And you, powerful Virgin, hold the reins of the entire providential government. The empyrean shines under your orders and impresses lower beings as you see fit.

At the slightest sign from you, the angels, your obedient servants, chain the powers of darkness or cast them into the abyss.

What are malicious and evil men compared to the Queen of heaven and earth? You are to each of them as terrible as an army in battle array. 853 You allow them to make us exercise our virtue and thereby do us good. 854 But they cannot harm your true servants because you particularly love those who love you, and those who seek you out since morning will find you. True riches and glory are with you, as are magnificence and justice. The fruits you bear are more valuable than gold and more precious stones, and what comes from you is better than the purest silver. By your wise and celestial dispositions, you walk down here in the ways of justice and amid paths of righteousness to enrich those who love you and fill their treasures with imperishable goods. 855 In you, we find the best defense and an abundance of everything that brings happiness.

THIRD MEDITATION How the Empyrean Influences Mobile Nature 351. Let us now cover the main applications of the principles broadly conceived by St. Thomas, Saint Augustine, and Suarez so we will Cant VI, 9.

The eyes of the Lord, as those of Mary, are upon the just, and his ears unto their prayers: but the countenance of the Lord [is] upon them that do evil things. And who is he that can hurt you, if you be zealous of good? (1 Peter 3:12-13).

855 Prov. 8:17-21.

853 854

305

TABLE DES MATIERES

understand better the gravitation of mobile nature toward the empyrean.

1. From the beginning of the world, there exists a glorified heaven where bodies have attained all their perfection (no. 334), one rich in bodies and numerous systems (nos. 34-42), which encompasses all lower heavens (no. 335), belongs to the unity of the universe, and is part of it (no. 338).

How could all bodies in nature not receive some influence from this supreme heaven? A stone cast into the sea is said to displace all the water. Once you admit the existence of the empyrean and its union with the mobile universe, all explanations about the mechanism and movements of the universe are affected.

If you were to say that this is only a hypothesis, you surely would be wrong. Granted, this is not a truth of faith defined by the Church, but, says Suarez, it is a truth commonly received in the Church, and it is quite certain that immobile heaven, a dazzling abode of the blessed (no. 21) exists beyond all mobile heavens.

As we have seen (nos. 20,23,37,41), this truth, with solid foundation on Scripture, is taught by most serious authors, supported by numerous theological reasons and not at all contradicted but instead confirmed by human science (no. 4), and corroborated by many other reasons we will explain below.

We must take the empyrean into account to explain visible nature, for otherwise, we would be trying to solve a most difficult problem while leaving aside its main factor or trying to explain the movement of a very complicated machine while ignoring its primary and most powerful lever.

Since bodies naturally attract each other—a fact no one disputes--, and since what is more perfect has a powerful influence on what is less so--as everything proves--, let us admit without hesitation that the empyrean is the primary material cause of the great movements of visible nature and that all the worlds perceptible to our

306

TABLE DES MATIERES

eyes, as well as all atoms tell us: Look for the things from above, where Christ is. 856 352. 2. How does the empyrean influence lower bodies? It seeks moving bodies just as forms seek matter, and the act seeks potency. It is eminently formative and very noble; it is the universal cause of corporeal things, the main factor which acts on bodies (no. 336). Every natural body has an active force that seems to result from the perfection of its form; this force aims to act externally on other things.

But the empyrean is really corporeal, and its higher perfection only adds to its activity. This force is always in action, and therefore continuously influences other bodies (no. 342).

Forms are active principles found in bodies, while the matter is the passive principle. In visible nature, like in man, everything is body and soul. 857 Animals, plants, minerals, atoms have their form, soul, and Action etiam contrarii, quod repugnat virtuti avtivae alicujus corporis caelestis habet causam in caelo : per motum enim primum (the one caused by the empyrean) ponitur a philosophis quod conservantur res inferiores in suis actionibus; et ita illud contrarium, quod agit impediendo effectum alicujus corporis caelestis … habet etiam aliquam causam caelestem. St. Thomas, De verit. art. 9, quaest. 5, ad 15.

Thus, the two opposing forces that govern mobile nature have the empyrean as their main non-intelligent cause. For the empyrean preserves and keeps mobile things in the trial, particularly by centripetal force, which expresses temporal destiny, and as a final end, it moves lower things and attracts them outside, which is expressed above all by centrifugal force.

857 For those of our readers who are unfamiliar with Scholastic philosophy, let us explain this truth with a few examples. Who can doubt that the lion has a soul and a body? His leonine soul is what forms his body to distinguish him from a tiger, a wolf, etc. His is a soul, albeit purely animal. The walnut tree has an active principle that makes it live and vegetate, a substantial form, a soul that gives it its being and its particular characters, which specifically distinguish it from oaks, apple trees, etc. It really has a soul, although only vegetative. Every simple-bodied atom also has its active principle, which maintains its small body and gives it a certain energy; it has its substantial form, its soul, which specifically distinguishes or at least contributes to distinguishing it from every other atom of a different species. Another is the soul of the atom of gold, another that of the atom of silver, just as the lion’s soul is specifically different from that of the bear, except that the soul of these atoms is mineral. We also find a soul, form, or active principle in any compound body. When hydrogen and oxygen chemically combine and give us water, both the active forms of hydrogen and that of oxygen change state and become potency to give rise to a new active form, the 856

307

TABLE DES MATIERES

active principle. When a body attracts another, it is its soul that attracts the soul of the other, which in turn makes the latter move toward the former. These two souls especially desire the matter of their neighbor because forms are created to possess and govern matter, and each soul uses its matter as an instrument to act. This is clearly seen in man, whose soul uses the body for all its operations.

353. Now, the forms of the material beings that compose the empyrean are eminently powerful, and the glorified matter they employ to act is a marvelous instrument that could not be better to assist their action. These forms have marked preponderance over the shapes of mobile bodies and solicit all matter with less perfect forms because, as such, the current order of things belongs to perfection (no.

343), i.e., it is perfectible and constantly tends toward the best. This is clear proof, materially speaking, that there is something excellent and complete that attracts all material things to itself.

Just as Jesus Christ, Mary, and all the Blessed exert a moral attraction on wayfaring humanity to draw it to Paradise, so also the corporeal empyrean exerts a physical attraction on the traveling bodies of nature to make them ultimately participate in the liberty of the glory of the children of God (nos. 324,325). 858 354. 3. In the meantime, it maintains mobile nature while making it pass through all preparatory developments. While moving the lower heavens to make them stir up the generation of new forms, new form of water, which is the soul or active principle of this compound, which has properties all different from those of hydrogen and oxygen. The earth, the air, the celestial bodies, the great set of known nature consists of compound bodies, like the human body. The forms of compounds predominate in Creation. However, as we have said, everything here is body and soul. However, one should imagine, for example, that a mountain, a star, a pebble, or a river has only one substantial form in its mass. The atoms or molecules in each of these collective beings have their own substantial forms, so the number of forms in nature is unimaginable; and mountains, stars, etc. are immense aggregates united by accidental forms or better. By the attractive and combined radiance of substantial forms, it seems to us that all of them have desires, so to speak, greater than the bodies they inform (nos. 327,328).

858 Quanto liquid est perfectioris virtuis, et eminentius in gradu bonitatis, tanto appetitum boni comminiorem habet, et magis in distantibus a se bonum quaerit et operatur. Contra Gentiles, I, 3, c.24. Is this not the case with the Empyrean?

308

TABLE DES MATIERES

virtues, and new movements, 859 the empyrean serves as a solid basis for everything that moves. It influences particularly by its repose; it influences without moving since it is the supreme heaven, which somehow reaches the order of spiritual substances; its proper effect appears to be the perpetuity and stability of other bodies 860 (nos. 338, 344).

It is not enough to explain the movements of nature; it is also necessary to explain what provides its stability. True, everything we see does move but moves with measure, without compromising an order that we see is immutable; everything moves but in a determined environment. Like the ocean, nature is enclosed within limits and moves on a stable bottom. What is this bottom? What is the limit which maintains its unity and prevents it from dismembering and disorderly dispersing into space?

Look at a clock, this striking image of the mobile universe.

This clock moves but on a floor that is motionless in relation to it; it does not move everywhere but only where you put it. You may say that inertia, the force of cohesion, and centripetal force explain many things. But these explanations require others. What is the material cause of all its effects? What is their highest non-intelligent cause?

With Aristotle, St. Thomas, Saint Augustine, and Suarez, I find this cause in the empyrean, which happens to be the universal cause of corporeal things (no. 336) and contains most subtle bodies that govern coarser and lower-placed ones (no. 340). Thus, I find the empyrean at once the solid base of the universe, its measure, and the primary physical source of these movements, 861 and all bodies tell me: look for the things from above.

St. Thomas, ibid.

All astronomers and physicists attribute the stability of bodies to the simultaneous action of two opposing forces, centrifugal force, and centripetal force. But it is up to theology and Christian philosophy, the only philosophy worthy of the name, to indicate the causes of these two forces and the origin and duration of nature.

861 Theology does not overshadow real science in the least but nobly crowns it. Science studies and observes natural facts; theology rises to the sources and the primary source, then it draws up the genealogical tree of causes and sheds divine light on all the conquests of science. For those who are not ridiculously jealous, is there anything 859 860

309

TABLE DES MATIERES

355. We find that from worlds to atoms, all bodies of visible nature are governed and held in a certain equilibrium by two opposite forces, the centrifugal force, which tends to push far away toward the empyrean, and the centripetal force, which tends to concentrate everything, first toward small centers, then toward the center of the whole universe (nos. 25,26,34). This universal fact must depend on a universal cause or else on two great physical realities dominated by the supernatural and which, in some way, influence the entire mobile universe: paradise and hell.

As we have seen (nos. 324-327-329), changing nature shares the trial of rational creatures; like the latter, it finds itself between two extremes: the supreme good and the supreme evil. Man is attracted upward by grace and downward by concupiscence. Nature reproduces these two movements in everything, helping bring before our eyes the two capital guiding truths of human life: Heaven and Hell. The material world is thus arranged with ineffable justice, involving rewards and punishments, graces and retribution (St. Augustine, no. 340).

356. Inanimate bodies, devoid of intelligence, are not damned; they were made to instruct man and serve to reward or punish him: Behold, I make all things new…He that shall overcome shall possess these things; 862 he will arm the creature for the revenge of its enemies. 863 If one day, the bodies of nature were to be abandoned by centrifugal force, they would immediately rush over each other and turn into a horrible mass of matter. The society of bodies would be destroyed, their harmony, and what I would call their freedom would have given way to concentration and servitude that would be an image of hell. On the contrary, supposing that centrifugal force reigns alone, where would the bodies go? They would all head for the empyrean.

Now, since my physical world was made for the moral world, of which it is a kind of coarse image, I see in gravitation the law of trial, better in terms of human knowledge?

862 Ap 21:5-7.

863 Wis 5:18.

310

TABLE DES MATIERES

from which sin and the ultimate misfortune can follow. And in centrifugal force, I see a search for perfection, true freedom, the great, largest, and most beautiful of heavens: that of the immense and infinite God. Oh, how the entire nature preaches the attraction of the empyrean! What a lesson for us! The movement that carries everything outside is a physical expression of the last end of things; the one that pulls everything within is the expression of temptation and even evil. 864 But the balance of the two forces, with the rotation that constantly seeks the empyrean, reminds me of the righteous who reach their temporal end by fruitfully bearing their ordeal and are able to say with Saint Paul: I am straitened between two: having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, a much better thing for me; but to abide still in the flesh, is needful for you, for your advancement. 865 357. The “effort” of the empyrean, as we said, is the main physical source of bodily movements, but it is not easy to conceive their nature and mode of operation. However, let us say a few words taking as guides the Holy Scripture, Saint Augustine, and Saint Thomas, while promising to return to this subject in another meditation.

1. Having created heaven and earth, i.e., the empyrean and the deep, which contained the materials of moving bodies, God, by His vivifying spirit, rendered this material chaos capable of and hungry for forms.

He commanded: Be light made, and there was light; let there a firmament be made…and so it was; let the earth bring forth the green herb...trees...each according to its species, having bearing their own seed...and so it was. 866 As fallen men, we naturally tend downward like a pebble toward the ground. But authority, especially divine authority and grace, carry us upward like the earth, with its centrifugal movement, tends to take upward all that rests on it. Also, we naturally gravitate toward immediate authority in order, with the latter, to tend toward higher authority as a pebble gravitates toward the sun only by remaining attached to the earth. Furthermore, authority prevents falls just as the earth keeps a pebble on its surface and prevents it from going further.

865 Phil 1:23-25.

866 Gen I. 864

311

TABLE DES MATIERES

This is the origin of forms, that is, active principles that direct bodies. They are like divine commandments received in matter and by matter, specific impulses in unimaginable numbers, impressions which, given the desired conditions will always be perpetuated in the realm of matter; for my word which comes out of my mouth, said the Almighty, will not return to me without fruit but will do all that I want and produce the effect for which I sent it. 867 So the will of God is the first and supreme cause of the different species of bodies and their motor activities (St. Augustine, no.

340).

358. 2. Now, the supreme cause supposes secondary causes. Jesus Christ as a man, and Mary, see all things finite intellectually in the Word and see reality with their bodily eyes (nos. 307,310). The angels, their servants, see bodies and all forms and govern them under the orders of Jesus and Mary. Like the other Elect, they perfectly know the providential order and the views of the Supreme Being on the corporeal universe, and part of their happiness is to enforce that order and views. 868 The will of God first produces very harmonious movements in the soul of Jesus; His soul produces like movemens in the soul of Mary, which in turn reflect on the angels, and the angels reflect them on forms of the Empyrean, not only immaterial but also material, such as the crystalline heaven and the ether. The latter relays those movements to lower forms, which also act on one another according to their degree of power. That is how all bodies are governed by a spirit of life (St. Augustine, nº 310).

Everything that happens in nature must be attributed to an intelligent substance. 869 We must say that celestial bodies are placed by

Isa 55:11.

It is not in vain that the saints of heaven are the equals of angels, that Jesus Christ is the King and Mary the Queen of the whole universe, and that everything is done for the rational creature; indeed, the friends of God rule over hell and other finite beings.

869 St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles I, 3, c.24.

867 868

312

TABLE DES MATIERES

beings with knowledge, 870 and lower bodies are placed by higher ones (n. 340). 871 359. One might object: In that case, why do you present centripetal force as expressing temptation and even evil? Is it not also led by superior and intelligent agents? We answer that temptation is not evil.

However, it is a trial and testifies to an imperfect state from which evil can follow. This force is directed by higher beings, not toward absolute concentration, but to centers that gravitate toward the empyrean.

While aiming directly toward the empyrean by centrifugal force, small bodies are won over by the influence of larger bodies because these are more strongly drawn by energies from above. The empyrean is basically the one that causes the two forces but in two different ways.

In nature, the empyrean has ministers that resemble the authorities to which the lower creatures gravitate, always, however, with a view to their last end. 872 Evil is found in a tendency toward the Ibid., c. 23.

Higher bodies actually attract lower bodies as the ends attract what is created for them. But they also keep lower bodies at a distance so that the providential order of the trial is maintained according to the divine will and that nothing reaches glory before having accomplished the required work and produced the fruits that the Creator expects from it. They also preserve, strengthen, and excite the lower bodies so nothing languishes in inactivity, and the divine plan is carried out. Moral order explains the principles of material order. And with grandiose effects, the latter places the moral order under our senses. Moreover, moving bodies tend toward the empyrean. Having been created to assimilate it, their organization carries them there.

872 We find this idea extremely fruitful and will come back to it, God willing, in another volume, when we talk about the formation and functioning of the lower heavens in the empyrean. For the moment, let us content ourselves with a few short explanations.

The empyrean has its ministers in the mobile universe. What is done morally and religiously in human society is done physically in material nature. The number, extent, mass, and sum of active principles or substantial forms are to corporeal nature what authority is in intelligent societies.

Now let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no power which does not come from God and those which have been established from God. That is why he who resists authority resists the command of God. But they that resist purchase to themselves damnation (Rom. 13:2). Be ye subject therefore to every human creature invested with authority [whether Jewish, pagan, Christian, or whatever] for God's sake: whether it be to the king as excelling; or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of the good: for so is the will of God.... As 870 871

313

TABLE DES MATIERES

free, and not as making liberty a cloak for malice, but as the servants of God.... Servants, be subject to your masters (1 Peter 2:13-18).

These are the centripetal and centrifugal forces in the moral and social order. One really gravitates toward God only by gravitating toward the established ministers of God, or better, toward their authority. This authority comes to them from God, and we must seek the divine in the channels through which God wants to transmit it to us to raise us to our immortal destiny. So there is no salvation outside the Church of Christ.

Harmony demands this process. The ministers of God, formally considered as such, receive the divine with more abundance than individuals and must communicate it to them in proportion to their faculties and needs.

Now, we find this arrangement in the material universe. The empyrean, the largest, most influential and resplendent of heavens, is like the supreme authority in the genre of bodies. It influences the heavens and bodies that are smaller and less perfect than it, according to their mass and distance from the supreme heaven. Being at the greatest possible distance from the empyrean, hell receives no influence from it other than preservation in immobility. One would say that the influences of the heaven of heavens, like a rain of electric currents, fall on all sides on this chaos incapable of any shape and surround it like a spherical wall of flames. Now, the other bodies and the moving heavens live, so to speak, from the physical mercy of which the empyrean is the prime dispenser; docile, they keep themselves in order and do not ignite.

The sun, to give an example, is fourteen hundred thousand times larger than the earth (no. 5). It contains a fabulous number of active compounds. For their part, these are influenced according to their number by the emissions of the empyrean, by the crystalline sky, by ether. And as all forms naturally have an attractive radiance that exceeds the limits of the bodies they animate, as it is our case, they constitute an immense society. Moreover, with a powerful help from above they extend their power of attraction on the earth and direct it as superiors guide inferiors. Therefore, the earth gravitates around the sun above all because the sun receives the celestial influences more abundantly.

However, the earth moves toward the empyrean, which is its last end, to which it unceasingly tends, but which it will reach only by faithfully following the sun. Hence the balance operated by the joint action of two opposing forces that aim at the same goal and come from the same source. By this case we can judge others.

These explanations, you may say, do not explain the nature of the two opposing forces.

I answer: Let us look for the nature of these forces in beings in which it shows itself more clearly, such as men, animals, and plants. When we have a clear idea of their cravings, we will understand the movements of the universe.

My instinct is my reason, and, from a Christian standpoint, the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

By virtue of these instincts, I gravitate externally toward Happiness, toward all goods, and, internally, toward the means necessary to achieve Happiness, means that attract to myself, or which attract me, because I myself am attracted to the outside. The animal has an organic instinct. It gravitates externally, attracting to itself what he needs to maintain itself and prosper. Simple matter has forms and active principles endowed with mineral instincts. Once you explain the former, you will understand the latter,

314

TABLE DES MATIERES

lesser to stop there and not aim further, i.e., to seek immobility incompatible with its end. That is what happens with impenitence and hell. Evil is to not seek things from above, where Christ is.

Not being in the center of the universe, all mobile bodies are doubly attracted to the empyrean by the two forces mentioned. And since these bodies are at unequal distances from the interior circumference of the empyrean, the attractions from the latter are not neutralized. However, acting together to a certain extent, these two forces keep moving bodies under trial until the Almighty deigns to allow them to participate in the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Then, breaking their ties, they will look only for things from above, where Christ is, and give heavenly Jerusalem its final enlargement.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Christian Teaching Splendidly Confirms and Completes the Language of Physical Nature Concerning the Places of Supreme Happiness and Supreme Unhappiness Ascendens in altum, captivam duxit captivitatem: dedit dona hominibus. Quod autem ascendit, quid est, nisi quia et descendit primum in inferiores partes terrae? Qui descendit, ipse est et qui ascendit super omnes caelos, ut impleret omnia (Eph 4:8-10).

Ascending on high, He led captivity captive; He gave gifts to men. Now that He ascended, what is it, but because He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.

360. If the material and mobile universe does not cease to seek the including the vegetative instincts of plants.

315

TABLE DES MATIERES

empyrean, and consequently to preach it to us, what can we say about the aspirations of the wayfaring human species, the noblest known part of the mobile universe? As free as it is, it necessarily aims for happiness. Man seeks the empyrean whether he is virtuous, believer or atheist, although he may be guilty of not wanting to find it. There can be no doubt concerning a believing and virtuous man, as he formally professes not to have a permanent city here on earth but to seek the future city. 873 His life is in heaven. 874 As for the impious and incredulous, why are they always insatiable in their quest for pleasures, riches, honors, and grandeur?

Why, after giving themselves all they can and when everything seems to fulfill their desires, they cry bitterly that all is vanity and affliction of spirit, 875 that they have gone astray from the way of truth and the sun of intelligence has not risen on them? 876 Ah! It is because, while their nature sought the pleasures, riches and glory of the empyrean, they tried to satiate it with vile and ephemeral goods, hence their cruel disillusionment and affliction. Therefore, every man strongly gravitates toward the empyrean because every man seeks the highest possible good, but the maximum good is found only in Paradise.

361. To confirm the notion we gave of the empyrean, its influences and the general constitution of the universe we will take as human types those who really are human and not those who brutally violate their nature and dare say to God: Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways, 877 or pervert their minds and turn away their eyes not to look to heaven. 878 Of these fools, which depart from God and renounce heaven, will be written in the earth: 879 The depths have covered them; they are sunk to the bottom like a stone. 880 O Jesus, divine ideal of man; o Christian, who walks after your Heb 13:14.

Phil 3:20.

875 Eccl 1:14.

876 Wis 5:6.

877 Job 21:14.

878 Dan 13:9.

879 Jer 17:13.

880 Ex 15:5.

873 874

316

TABLE DES MATIERES

Savior; o Catholic Church, Church of the living God, pillar and foundation of truth! 881 You are the one who accomplishes the divine plan in the most conspicuous and sublime way. We find in your conduct, tendencies, aspirations and noble works, in eminently higher degrees of perfections, all the work, affinities, and movements of corporeal and mobile nature. While material bodies preach the empyrean in a grandiose but coarse way, you preach it to our intellects and hearts in an entirely supernatural and divine way.

However, as the divine plan and the Creation modeled after this plan shine with admirable unity, we must say that all things finite speak the same language about the grand supernatural realities. Every non-denatured being works in earnest to make them known to us. But those on the summit of Creation, the children of God and the Church, who live a divine life, are incomparable preachers. O Jesus, o Mary, o children of God, o Church, in this chapter we will thus meditate on your teachings and examples to better clarify our ideas about the places occupied by paradise and hell, and the tendencies that lead to these two ends.

FIRST MEDITATION Teachings from the Main Mysteries of Christ 362. Ascending on high, He led captivity captive; He gave gifts to men. Now that He ascended, what is it, but because He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended above all the heavens that He might fill all things.

Is this not clear? There are a top and a bottom: the top, where Jesus ascended, the bottom, where Jesus had first descended. The top is above all the heavens; in the bottom, captives groan or sigh. At the top, we are home free, we triumph, and definitely find good without any mixture of evil. The bottom is a sojourn of trial; the lower bottom has captives to be delivered; and at the lowest and last depth, Jesus 881

1Tim 3:15.

317

TABLE DES MATIERES

exerts only His power and justice as He must somehow fill all things, since everything was predestined in Him (nos. 280 & ff.).

We also see that there are two opposing tendencies, movements and forces, one that leads to heaven and above all heavens, and the other that leads down to the lower parts of the earth and into the place of captivity. These are the centrifugal force and the centripetal force in the moral order.

363. It is true that for the Man-God, downward gravitation did not constitute a personal test that could have led to evil and final removal from the empyrean. Like us, however, apart from sin, 882 He experienced all kinds of temptations to teach us to overcome our perilous trial. He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross. For which cause God also has exalted Him and given Him a name which is above all names: that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. 883 After the profound and divine humiliations that He came to suffer on earth, the place where the trial was the hardest, Jesus the Savior brought down on us from heaven, rivers of God’s mercy and supernatural graces. He reconciled all things to God, making peace through the blood of His cross, both as to the things that are on earth, and the things that are in heaven, 884 attracting to heaven the inhabitants of the earth, and attracting to earth the benevolent glances and rich influences of heaven. So God the Father, through his Son, made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light: who has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. 885 Heb 4:15.

Phil 2: 7-11.

884 Col 1:20.

885 Col 1:12-13.

882 883

318

TABLE DES MATIERES

364. The Incarnate Word descended to share the fate of sinful man in the state of trial and of the mobile universe to lift and more strongly launch everything toward the empyrean. If going up the bank of the Jordan after his baptism, the Savior drew from the water and somehow lifted the baptized world with Him: 886 did He not lift it even better when He ascended to heaven, leading captivity captive? These last words certainly have immense significance. Jesus not only led captives to heaven, as He did the souls of the Holy Fathers who awaited in Limbo the triumph of the Messias. It would have been effortless for the Apostle to write ‘the captives,’ but he wanted to express a broader and deeper thought: Rising to heaven, Jesus led captivity captive.

365. Captivity is forced detention. It is the deprivation of liberty.

Captivity leaves a person with greater or lesser hope of seeing his homeland again or recovering the free exercise of his acts. Strictly speaking, the damned are not captive but are dead to all hope. They are unchangeably fixed outside their end and unable even to rejoice in the thought that their deliverance might be possible. But all other beings deprived of liberty were in some way delivered by Christ upon ascending to heaven.

The souls of the Holy Fathers followed Him into the empyrean, and their emancipation was complete. The members of humanity still subjected to the test were delivered in the first act, as the theologians say, that is to say, the act in which the Savior broke the bonds of all tyrannies and gave mankind infallible means to recover the freedom of the children of God. Therefore, there will be no more captivity among men unless it is voluntary because this is first and foremost a question of moral captivity. Sin, death, the devil, hell, idols, and tyrants who subjugated us were attached to the triumphal chariot of Christ during His glorious ascent into the empyrean. 887

Ascendit Jesus de aqua, secum quodammado demersum educens et elevans mundum. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. In sanctum Lumina.

887 Cornelius a Lapide, ad Eph. 4:8.

886

319

TABLE DES MATIERES

As for corporal captivity, which the servants of God can incur, it is a fleeting test that fails to overcome them but leads to greater freedom of spirit and aspiration for heaven. So captivity itself was struck in the heart. Its shackles were dissolved. The friends of God have received such power over demons, the world, and evil inclinations that nothing can harm them, and everything cooperates for their good. 888 366. As for the mobile universe, it shares man’s deliverance by the fact of Jesus’ ascension to heaven. Instead of serving iniquity, it serves virtue and moves toward its final glorification. Besides, with the Body of Christ being the first resurrected body to ascend to the empyrean, the last renewal of mobile matter has begun.

Mary's body will follow the body of Jesus. A large number of Old Testament saints have already risen and are in heaven in body and soul (no. 36,3).

As the Church Militant advances in her earthly pilgrimage, it employs a larger amount of matter to make and use most of the sacraments. That constitutes a continual and progressive elevation of the material order.

The more humans multiply through the ages, the more tributes matter offers to the formation and nourishment of the human body, which must one day resurrect, is substantially united to a spiritual and immortal soul, and must be the temple of the Holy Ghost: Do you not know that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you? Glorify and bear God in your body. 889 Moreover, how many material things are the object of consecration and blessings to serve in divine worship!

367. Furthermore, thanks to the great Christian civilization, of which the first principle is: Going, therefore, teach ye all nations... 890 The spirit of truth...will teach you all truth, 891 most precious discoveries in geography, astronomy, chemistry, physics, are constantly increasing; Rom 8:28.

1 Cor 6:19-20.

890 Mt 28:19.

891 Jn 16:13.

888 889

320

TABLE DES MATIERES

and the throne of God, which is the universe, is becoming more and more proportional to our knowledge (nos. 241, 241).

Science, excited by the One who is the light come into the world 892 and by those who are the light of the world by participation,893 extends its active and successful explorations to all beings.

Christian philosophy then comes to gather, and so to speak, vivify all that knowledge by animating it with true Catholic principles.

Finally, theology, rich in divine and supernatural lights, shows the relationships between the visible universe and the invisible universe, those between time and eternity, those between movement and trial on the one hand, with the final repose of beings in glory.

Oh, how exalted all Creation is and how it works hard to glorify the Supreme Being, increasingly preparing the ever-closer new heavens and the new earth! 894 368. Stimulated by the increasing splendors of the works of God, the rational creature raises to the Most High a more and more sonorous, harmonious, and universal concert of praise, adoration, and love.

Recent discoveries have brought members of the human family closer together; distances hardly count anymore on the terrestrial globe; and although at first, this rapprochement causes surprises and even conflicts of ideas and interests, it is nevertheless a rapid route toward scientific and religious unity. Work is dependent on virtue, and general and energetic activity hastens the realization of the divine plan, especially under the influences and direction of the Church of Christ, the holiest, most universal, and most powerful of societies.

Thus the concert of love, which rises toward the Creator, becomes more united and grandiose; knowledge, virtues, and saints multiply. New voices emerge from all points of nature that sing the glory of God and add their joyful accents to the ancient harmony. The mobile universe develops and displays itself in an ever nobler fashion, having to follow the progress of the Church and truth, favor the Ego lux mundum veni (Jn 12:46).

Vos estis lux mundi (Mt 5:14).

894 We look for new heavens and a new earth according to his promises, in which justice dwelleth (2 Pet 3:13).

892 893

321

TABLE DES MATIERES

formation of the new elect, and preach the divine attributes with increasing force.

369. However, this immense work of rational creatures and material beings fructifies, especially for the empyrean. The centrifugal force takes over, and the opposing force is held captive. On the day of His triumph, the Savior did not destroy and wipe out captivity at once because it was still necessary for the trial; but He weakened it, defeated it and attached it to His chariot going up to heaven. As it were, He multiplied tenfold the energy that carries things upwards throughout the mobile universe. He gave men the means to entirely break their chains. He made resound throughout the finite world subject to the test a sursum corda of which no being can lose the powerful impression. Finally, in principle, He put to death captivity itself.

How could any force pull Him back down when He ascended to heaven, and a cloud hid Him from the eyes of the Apostles? 895 Was there any shadow of captivity left in Him? If He had despoiled the principalities and powers of darkness, exposed them confidently in open show, triumphed over them in Himself, 896 how could any beings in the lower order resist Him? Christ certainly showed Himself omnipotent over all creatures.

He proclaimed Himself the head of the body of the Church; He is the principle, the firstborn from the dead so that He keeps primacy in all things. 897 The Church, of which Christ is the head, has two states: the state of grace in the present time, and the state of glory in the future.

Yet it is the same Church, and Christ is the head of the Church in her two states because He is first in grace and glory. 898 370. Just as Christ by His Incarnation came to earth to give His sheep

Acts 1:9.

Col 2:15.

897 Col 1:18.

898 St. Thomas, comm. In Epist. ad Coloss, c.I, 18, loct. V. II. 895 896

322

TABLE DES MATIERES

life so they might have it more abundantly 899 and so that grace abounded where sin had abounded, 900 so also by His Resurrection and Ascension He is a principle of universal resurrection and glory for all that is somehow subjected to the trial: I am the resurrection and the life 901 first of all for humanity. And the Ascension of Christ is the direct cause of our ascent, which begins in our Head and must be joined by its members. By ascending to heaven, Christ forever purchased for Himself and for us the right and dignity to dwell in the heavenly abode. 902 Moreover, He went up to prepare for us the place of glory, 903 the worlds that His triumphant Church must occupy. He ascended above all heavens to fill all things with His gifts. 904 By crossing all spaces in triumph and glory to rise above all heavens, He impregnated, so to speak, the entire nature with a leaven of renewal and glory to prepare His Empire for supreme perfection and happiness. 905 But, in His sovereign wisdom, He proceeds in all things orderly and by degrees.

The natural order of things, being of divine institution, has the particularity that every cause acts first on what is closest to it and then, through that, on more distant things. For example, fire first heats the area around it and warms more distant bodies through the air. 906 The divine Savior causes the sanctification, resurrection, and glorification of rational beings, and as a consequence, implements universal renewal.

After joining human nature and glorifying His soul and body, the Man-God first acts supernaturally on His brothers through this Jn 10:10.

Rom 5:20.

901 Jn 11:25.

902 St. Thomas, 3 p, q. 57, a.6, ad 2m et 3m.

903 Jn 14:2.

904 St. Thomas. ibid.

905 All creatures are restored, and even as it were deified by Christ, since by Christ they are united to the Word of God ... man is a microsome and compendium of all creatures.

By becoming man, therefore, Christ took in all creatures. That is why his Incarnation moved them and made them full of joy, especially in the hope ... of being delivered from corruption and misery (Cornelius a Lapide, In Agg. II, 7). How wonderful this hope for Ascension day must have been!

906 St. Thomas, 3 p, q.56, a. I. 899 900

323

TABLE DES MATIERES

glorified soul and body, according to human nature. Then, with an eye on the latter and other rational creatures He acts on the set of finite beings and particularly on the celestial worlds intended to be the dwelling of rational beings. For it is appropriate for the freedom of the glory of the children of God that their habitation is supernaturally renewed, and the celestial bodies destined to be glorified make up this habitation. 907 371. Let us conclude, in general, that in principle, Christ destroyed all captivity by the glorification of His soul and body. He relieved all beings of the horrible weight that almost fatally precipitated them to the bottom of the deep under the tyrannical weight of sin. The Redeemer restored the harmony of the universe and even its primeval beauty: O felix culpa! But He operated this great work by decentralizing, and, so to speak, by strongly propelling all beings up toward the empyrean. 908 372. O mankind and mobile worlds! Now I understand your behavior and movements.

Just as men necessarily seek unlimited happiness, which Christ showed them in the celestial heights, so also the great bodies of nature roll toward the heavens of heavens obedient to the impulse that drives them toward their final end.

Just as a pebble falls to the ground because it lacks the strength to seek the empyrean, and humanity gathers around Christ to seek the Empyrean with Him; just as the earth, while traveling on its own toward the supreme heaven runs after the sun because it receives more influences from above, so also we have recourse to Mary, the

St. Thomas comments that they will be glorified only when they finish fulfilling their ministry to the wayfaring children of God. However, the mobile universe fulfills this task better after the coming and triumph of Christ than before, as we have said in previous paragraphs.

908 This decentralization does not destroy the mutual gravitation of bodies but makes all bodies gravitate better toward rational creatures by the knowledge and use that it provokes; and it makes them gravitate better toward the empyrean so that, thanks to Christ, mobile nature is making considerable progress toward its glorification.

907

324

TABLE DES MATIERES

angels and saints as great channels of grace, and recommend our destiny to them.

Just as we have through Christ the light of faith, which gives us knowledge of higher beings and worlds, firmness of hope to desire supreme goods, unitary bonds of charity, which binds us to God, and, for God to our fellow men, likewise the empyrean moves the lower worlds by its light 909 and keeps them stable despite their movements (no.354). And seeking their final balance, it unites them among themselves and with itself by enclosing them all in its bosom and penetrating them all with its influences, which they share among themselves and make them united by the empyrean, because of it and to it.

373. O nature, how beautiful and intelligible you are in the divine plan explained by the divine work of Christ! Let no one ask me what your strengths, attractions, repulsions, affinities, and movements are as if you were more mysterious than man and the divine religion.

Does man and especially a Christian, a true child of God, not have all that you have in an excellent way? His thoughts and desires are greater than your vastness. His dignity is such that you serve him as your lord, await your glorification as a reflection of his own, knowing that he is bound to dominate you entirely. You do have his needs, loves and hatreds but to a much lower degree. Just as he is sociable and gathers in societies to benefit each individual and the entire species, so your bodies seek each other, each being a good for others and the whole, and you form various systems and groups in which your individuals are at ease.

In you, our sympathies are affinities; in you, our hatreds are repulsion and struggles between elements. Finite like us, you have needs as we do. Although none of your beings is vivified by a rational and free soul, each of them is directed by an elementary soul, an active principle, a substantial form capable of seeking what it needs and fleeing what is contrary to it.

Lux corporalis est forma primi corpores agentis, scilicet caeli, cujus virtute omnia corpora inferiora agunt. St. Thomas, Quodlib. 6, in fine.

909

325

TABLE DES MATIERES

We received our soul, with its active and passive forces, faculties and tendencies, directly from the Creator. The active and passive forces of the beings that compose you, which St. Augustine calls seminal reasons, which incline your beings toward their ends, also come to you immediately from God. 910 We can do nothing in the order of eternal salvation without divine grace deserved by Jesus Christ and transmitted by Mary, angels, saints, and the Church. Likewise, although your bodies act by their natural power, God acts on all things as a first cause operates on a second cause. The active powers of lower things are only instrumental, and their effects must be attributed to higher causes: First, to the closest celestial bodies, 911 then to the second heaven and the empyrean (nos. 337,372, note 4), and finally to angels, who administer all bodily creatures as a farmer looks after his field and crop. 912 O mobile nature, o grand image of the moral world, what can I say about you? Just as all wayfaring rational creatures are in motion to form the great intelligent Church of Christ, His loving and glorious Church, so are you, fortunate nature, moving and working to form the immense premises of this Church, the earthly globe being the theater of action and home of the Church Militant. 913 374. Once again, o nature, I find that you make common cause with us.

All the noblest engines, both for you and us, are either supernatural or supernaturalized. Like our own, your first principles, last ends, and primary providential means belong to the supernatural world. But devoid of intelligence and will, and unable to share in divine filiation, your greatest aspirations are directed to form the material celestial residences (no. 21), which is the supernatural end proportioned to your St. Thomas, De Verit. q.5, a.8 ad 4, et a.9 ad 8.

Ibid, a. 9, ad 4, ad 3, et in corpore.

912 Sicut Agricola gubernat pulllationem agri, ita per angelos omnis administratio creature corporalis administratur. Ibid, a.8, ad 4.

913 So when the desired one of nations came to earth, the sky, the earth, the sea, and the whole universe were shaken (Cornelius a Lapide, in Agg. 2:7) as if seized by the powerful influences of a new form, which, being resurrection and life, came to restore, perfect, and elevate everything.

910 911

326

TABLE DES MATIERES

capacity.

Now, from these considerations, precious lights emerge that illuminate what is most intimate in your capacities, energies, tendencies, affinities, and in the laws that govern you. Faced with these fundamental and guiding realities, all human science must be silent or declare, sadly: I do not know. If science wants to see better, let it be baptized; after that, just as Valerian and Tiburtius saw the angel of Cecilia thanks to baptism, so science will see heavenly and angelic motions skillfully directing all its operations. 914 That is why, o nature, those who still look for you where you no longer are or try to explain with pure mechanics what can only be explained by vital principles and stronger influences and wills, are very naive and unhappy.

375. In our eyes enlightened by faith, you are, like us, part of the great kingdom of God, Christ, Mary, the angels, the Elect. This kingdom is governed by these superior beings from the largest to the smallest of its atoms.

First of all, it is necessary to state that all things are subject to divine Providence not only in their entirety but also their peculiarities.

915 And Divine Providence governs inferior things through superior ones not because It lacks any power, but because of Its abundant goodness, so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures. 916 Now, at the summit of creatures that receive the dignity of causality directly from God are the holy humanity of Jesus Christ, then Mary (nos. 214-229; 231-239 and Chap. 10), with the angels as their ministers and servants (ibid. and Chap. 11). After them, the glorified matter of the empyrean plays a very important role in lower material beings (Chap. 12, Meditations 2 & 3). But it does so under the motion Quamvis motus caelestis, secundum quod est actus corporis mobilis, considered as the act of the body which is set in motion, non sit actus voluntarius; secundum tamen quod est actus moventis, est voluntarius, id est ab aliqua voluntate causatus: et secundum hoc, ea quae ex motu illo causantur, sub prudencia cadere possunt. Ibid, art.9, ad 11.

915 Sum. Theol. 1, p, q.22, a.2.

916 Ibid, a.3.

914

327

TABLE DES MATIERES

and direction of the angels; for bodily creatures, even the most worthy are not provident but only active, whereas angels are provident, and their providence is universal, covering all corporeal creatures. That is why both the saints and philosophers say that all corporeal things are ruled or governed by divine Providence through the angels, who fulfill this ministry by imparting movement to the superior bodies, which, in turn, sets lower bodies in motion. 917 376. If this is so, everything is part of the Church of Christ: spirits, souls, forms, bodies, matter, the whole perfectible universe participates in the trial and glory of its Head. Her fate is to varying degrees that of Christ, who is the archetype and master of the universe. And just as the glorified soul and body of Christ rose above all heavens, every soul, form, body, moving matter, experiences, in its innermost being, ascensions 918 toward the empyrean, sighs after the freedom of Christ, and wants to belong to his Church Triumphant either as preparation, inhabitant, or place.

SECOND MEDITATION Teaching from the Examples of Christ and His Work Considered in General 377. As we have just seen, the holy humanity of the risen and glorified Jesus Christ is the first finite cause that moves all perfectible beings breaking the chains of their captivity, attracting them, making them attract others to the empyrean, and filling all things with its universal influences.

Paradise occupies all heights because the King of the universe fixed His abode above all heavens and directs to those sublime regions all that is capable of approaching them. However, before His triumph, when He descended into the lower parts of the earth, Christ went to the place of captivity and misfortune. Upon coming to earth, He 917 918

De Veritate, q.5, art. 8, in corp.

Ps 83:6.

328

TABLE DES MATIERES

approached hell, the region of supreme evil, into which we were in danger of falling, and saved us from it.

Heaven, therefore, occupies all the higher places of the universe; hell is immobile in the lowest depth, i.e., the center (nos. 2529). Moving beings and rational creatures, subjected to the test, are between the two extremes (no. 25). It is literally and absolutely true that Christ descended when He came to earth and that He went to limbo; it is also true that He rose over and above all heavens. 919 378. We will now add to the proofs of this thesis, borrowed from Scripture, theology, tradition, cosmology, and the great mysteries of the triumph and universal kingship of Christ, moral evidence that will give us most salutary lessons and help us understand even better the works of God as a whole. We will also show the place of perfect happiness and that of irremediable horrors.

379. An authoritative author rightly said: “It is a principle-based on Scripture and tradition that visible things are not only a means for man to elevate himself to God and to invisible things; they truly are images and symbols of these higher realities. Our minds do not need to recreate these symbolic relationships but only to recognize them.” 920 It is therefore not without reason that we compare physical attractions to moral attractions and vice versa, for the divine plan shines with marvelous unity, and the works that express this plan on the outside, participating in this unity, mutually explain one another.

380. However, the moral world is generally better known to us than the physical world either because we play a significant role in it ourselves or especially because this world is lit by divine lights and particularly by the great Sun of Revelation, Jesus Christ.

O what incomparable happiness (even from the point of view Hebr. 7:26.

Renewal in Christian life; a little work without an author's name but which is very good and has received a large number of episcopal approvals. See this work, p. 33, footnote.

919 920

329

TABLE DES MATIERES

of the knowledge of nature) it is to have a Man-God as Redeemer, Savior and Doctor. He is the Alpha and Omega, the principle and end of all things, 921 the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creatures, the one by whom all things visible and invisible 922 were created in heaven and earth, who governs them all through His Mother and angels (nos. 292,319,350,373)! Everything that He says or does somehow involves the universality of beings; we must be sure that His examples and teachings harmonize with all creatures and set the right tone to all things.

Although He would not directly and formally instruct us on this or that truth concerning the whole of Creation and the dispositions of beings invisible to us, He is the truth and knows and governs all things finite. His conduct, manner of speaking, gestures, precepts, advice, always radiate from faraway a light as unlimited as His science, of which we can grasp many rays (nos. 307-312).

381. Saint John very rightly expressed this inexhaustible richness of the teachings of Christ when, at the end of his Gospel, he said there are still many other things that Jesus did, and if written in detail, St. John did not think the world could contain all the books that would be written.

923

Indeed, in the created universe there is no substance, form or atom of air or other bodies, or point of space that is not closely related with Jesus Christ, in whom everything was predestined, to whom everything is subject, and who governs everything (nos. 281-288;375).

If we wrote only one word on the relations of each substance, atom, point of space, with Christ, that word would obviously occupy more space than the said atom and point of space; and if we were to do this for everyone, the world clearly could not contain all the books that would be written. This is but a very logical consequence of what theology teaches us about the greatness of Christ and the relations of matter with the body of the Man-God and His Church.

Ap 21:6.

Col 1:15-16.

923 Jn 21:25.

921 922

330

TABLE DES MATIERES

382. If this is so with an infinite number of things concerning the mortal life of Christ that the Evangelists could have written but did not, does that mean that the main features of His divine life, which appear in the Gospels, His precepts and advice, as well as their faithful observers, lack an eloquence that echoes throughout the universe? That which is done in the highest created spheres, i.e., in the world of intelligent and rational beings, cannot fail to have an impact on everything made for these beings and whose conditions anyhow follow those of higher beings both in glory and trial (nos. 36, 4 & 5; 89, 90; 113; 328-330).

383. Now, if it is possible to summarize the examples of Christ in a few words, we must say that all of them aim mainly to make us victorious over degrading and vilifying attractions, and to make us live in heaven 924 by our innocence and aspirations. It is also for this purpose that He reconciles us with God and fills us with His graces.

The Christian life, modeled on the life of the God-Man, is an apprenticeship of command and control over the human body, over man’s lower faculties, over the set of perverse people called ‘the world,’ evil spirits, perishable goods, all of nature.

This life prepares the citizens of heaven who will reign with Jesus Christ over those who turn out to be inferior in merit and glory over the damned and the entire material universe.

To achieve such greatness and elevation, during his trial, man must grow and rise according to his capacity under the celestial influences of grace, and conform himself as much as possible to the archetype of human grandeur, which is Christ; for the life of glory is not a creation, but complete fulfillment and the ineffable crowning of the Christian life.

384. What were the main characteristics of the greatness of Christ?

1. He was poor of ephemeral goods of this life and miserable according to the world. 925 The Author of all true goods and of all goods 924 925

Phil 3:20.

Ego autem mendicus sum et pauper. Ps 39,18.

331

TABLE DES MATIERES

sought to show that the non-glorified material kingdom is not worthy of man. Men should prefer spiritual and supernatural goods that lead them to perfection and to the possession of God: “And every one that has left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting.” 926 Material things were created for man, and it is not a bad thing in and of itself to possess and enjoy them. The Savior Himself used them as necessary. But it is very evil to count on them for happiness, give them importance greater than they have as simple means to acquire higher goods, allow oneself to be attracted and dominated by them, remain attached rather than use them for higher ends. In so doing, man descends and gravitates toward the depths. And because of the danger of going astray on such a common but essential matter, the Savior shows us by His example the best procedure, which consists in despising these goods and using only the necessary, as if in haste, to place one’s thoughts and desires on high.

385. 2. Another characteristic of the greatness of Christ: contempt for worldly glory. While able to be anything He wanted, He neither sought to be a great conqueror like Alexander, a great philosopher like Plato, a great orator like Cicero, a great poet like Homer, or a great artist like Phidias.

He refused all purely human grandeur as unworthy of Him and disproportionate to the desires of greatness and glory found in man’s heart and especially in a Christian heart. He sought in all things only the glory of His Father, indicating with this example the only true glory one must acquire. For this end, He reconciled heaven with earth, men with angels, men’s consciences with their destinies. Being the Son of God by nature, worldly grandeur would have looked ridiculous in Him. He sought to possess all virtues and graces, for they alone make a man truly glorious.

926

Mt 19:29.

332

TABLE DES MATIERES

Behold the sole ambition of the God-Man: aggrandize and lift everything, leading all things in the process of improvement to their supreme end. In so doing, to raise all men to become adoptive children of God; turn them into kings who will one day share His universal empire over all creatures; lead them all to the contemplation and possession of the immense, infinite God; paralyze, and in principle neutralize attractions that degrade and debase them, making them captive of lower powers. This is where the God-Man places His glory; this is the goal He wants to achieve without violating human freedom as the Lord of Hosts only admits volunteers to His service in the kingdom of heaven.

386. 3. The third characteristic of the greatness of Christ: not to seek the contentment of His body or lower faculties of His humanity. My food, He says, is to do the will of Him who sent me, that I may perfect His work. 927 His delights are to be with the children of men 928 to seek and save what was lost. 929 He accomplishes this ministry by condemning Himself to a life of embarrassment, manual work, and suffering, crowned by the death of the Cross.

Pleasures cause man to concentrate on himself. They make him selfish, obscure his thoughts and make him go down into animality, with guilt to boot. Hell and demons strongly draw toward the deep the unfortunate wretch who thus degrades himself.

By His example, the Lord taught us to search for the noble pleasures of the soul, virtue, grace, celestial glory. In order to obtain the latter, we must come out of ourselves, espouse the interests of God, promote the eternal salvation of souls, become centers of charity for our fellow men, soldiers and martyrs of truth, and men of prayer to obtain the supernatural forces to give up self and do those great things.

How decentralizing! How aggrandizing!

387. 4. Finally, the incomparable grandeur of Christ appears in the Jn 4:34.

Prov 8:31.

929 Lk 19:10.

927 928

333

TABLE DES MATIERES

power and universality of His work of restoration and enhancement.

He filled the void left in heaven by the rebellious angels. He judged and threw out the prince of this world, the demon, 930 making him fall even lower than when expelled from heaven. 931 He gave freedom and sublime hopes back to mankind, conferring on those who believe in His Name the faculty of being made children of God. 932 Heaven, earth, and hell looked at Christ, albeit with different feelings: - God, to say that He was His beloved Son; - The angels, to sing ‘Glory to God in the highest, and, on earth, peace to men of goodwill;’ 933 - The stars sent one of their own to honor His birth; - The sun participated in mourning His death; - The earth trembled and the dead rose when He surrendered His soul to God; - The lower hells were forced to bend their knee before the Name of Jesus; 934 - The sea became solid under His feet. Diseases vanished under His command; - Stones became passable like air to allow His resurrected body to pass through; - Natural bodies and spaces gazed at Him, conquered by the mysteries of His Eucharistic love and ascent to heaven; - All truths, times, places, and hearts submitted to His Church – “the spirit of truth will teach you all truth,” 935 following His command: “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the Gospel to every creature;” 936 for every mobile creature is destined to be renewed and glorified.

Jn 12:31; 16:11.

Lk 10:18.

932 Jn 1:12.

933 Lk 2:14.

934 Phil 2:10.

935 Jn 16:13.

936 Mk 16:16.

930 931

334

TABLE DES MATIERES

388. O Jesus, how great thou art! As the power of Jesus, the universality of His work, and the unity of the divine plan demonstrate, there is a close connection between the things of the moral order and those of the physical order. Consequently, since Jesus comes with power from on high to restore, enlarge, aggrandize and elevate all things perfectible, the paradise, where bodies must end after the period of movement or trial, must be the greatest, vastest, and highest place of the universe. It must be the circumference or envelope of the entire physical order (nos. 21-23, etc.), and all the more so because in heaven, the object of the essential happiness of rational creatures is the Immense, the Incarnation, God. So the most perfect place must be the one that most resembles God, however little a place could resemble the Immense One. 389. The moving universe, employed for the test, takes a second degree in terms of perfection and thus must be less extensive than the empyrean. Do not object that, strictly speaking, size is not perfection; while that is true concerning spirits, it is false concerning places. All other things being equal, a large place has more being and can be the theater of more perfections and happiness.

Jesus first went down to the place of trial: descendit primum in inferiores partes terrae, meaning that He came even lower than the moving sky and the air, and thus lower than the empyrean, to espouse and uplift our lower, earthly nature. 937 As the Son of God, He did not move locally speaking 938 because He is everywhere. But His descent signifies the inferiority of the earth compared to heaven and, consequently, the inferiority of all bodies of mobile nature vis-a-vis the place of glory.

Let us conclude that, though less perfect than the empyrean, the mobile universe, to which Christ came to humble and lower Himself and to lift us up and glorify us, is less extensive than the heavenly

937 938

St. Thomas, Comm. In epist. ad Ephes., ch. 19.

Ibid.

335

TABLE DES MATIERES

Jerusalem (nos. 20 & ff.). And it is between heaven and hell both in terms of perfection and location.

390. Furthermore, the soul of Christ really descended into hell, which is below us, to deliver the souls of the holy fathers and from there to lead captivity captive. 939 This place is indeed a part of hell as is the limbo of children who die without baptism and, in a sense, purgatory (a porta inferi erue, domine, animas eorum), for it is neither the place of the trial nor the one of celestial glory.

There are several hells, as our faith teaches, and descent is always what leads to them: descendit ad inferos. In our view, it is obvious that the infernal regions are at the bottom regarding both the empyrean and the mobile universe, especially the earth: If I ascend into heaven, you are there: if I descend into hell, you are present. 940 But we believe that hell, where eternal punishment is inflicted, a place of misery and darkness where the shadow of death dwells, where everything is disorderly and in eternal horror 941 is located in the deepest and most central spot of the universe (nos. 25, 26). In addition to the authorities mentioned in the places indicated, we have as proof the characters of sin and analogy.

391. Every sin is, first of all, an aversion to God, who is infinitely great and infinitely perfect. Therefore, it is also an aversion to the empyrean, the greatest and most beautiful of places: ‘They had nothing but contempt for the land of delight; they did not believe the word of God.’ 942 Every sin is also exaggerated attachment to imperfect creatures and, consequently, a huge contraction, an immense reduction of thoughts, affections and tastes, concentration downward toward the lesser.

That is not saying it all, for every sinner does not like imperfect creatures for themselves but exclusively for himself. From Ibid.

Ps 139:8.

941 Job 10:22.

942 Ps 105:24.

939 940

336

TABLE DES MATIERES

the proud to the lazy, all sinners are selfish people who love nothing but themselves as sinners. They are thus excessively self-centered despite the immensity of the infinite good. Besides, in their selfishness, sinners are not even clever by having somewhat broad views on their interests. They focus their thoughts and love on their least qualities, on themselves as changing and fleeting beings. And if with such affections they become fixed on final impenitence, what place is proportional to such dispositions? 943 Surely they must be removed far away from all things grand and broad, all that resembles immensity. They must not rule over anything but to be contented with their guilty selves. They must have as little contact as possible with the creatures of God and the immense Creation 944 that served only for their selfishness. And the small number of creatures that surround them (relative to the universe) will be armed to avenge God of His enemies 945 and the enemies of His works.

All this leads to the center of the universe, a region motionless in evil – something one cannot say of our moving earth, which belongs to the moving heavens in search of perfection.

There reigns great chaos between the empyrean and moving worlds, on the one hand, and hell on the other. 946 Hell is the region where there is no order. 947 This fact seems not at all suitable to the center of the earth, as chaos would not seem to be as great there as the Gospel insinuates, be it because the earth is in motion and nothing in it is firmly established forever, because there is some order among its composing elements and between its lower and upper parts, or still for other reasons that we will expound in the rest of this work.

392. The Divine Word became incarnate, we said, to lift and carry all things perfectible toward God living in the highest places, and the Moraliter considerando loca, ut premium meritorum; ad ordinem rectum pertinent, ut boni sint in nobilissimo loco, mali vero in infimo. Suarez, De Ang. 1, 4, chap. 9, no. 7.

944 Ecclus. 16:17.

945 Wis 5:18.

946 Lk 16:26.

947 Job 10:22.

943

337

TABLE DES MATIERES

kingdom of heaven. His work, entirely opposed to the work of the devil and sin, is a kind of decentralization, break in the chains of captivity, domination over centripetal, diabolical, sinful forces, and in a sense, evening over physical and natural forces 948 (nos. 324-331). The work of Christ is not limited to man and angel; it encompasses all things finite (no. 288). There are no worlds in the universe that are not part of His empire.

Consequently, hell, the counterpart of the kingdom of Christ that suffers only the effects of its power and justice, must have a proper location not only vis-a-vis the earth but also the whole universe.

According to Christian teaching, hell is the opposite of the empyrean; the last center where all degrading attractions end up; the world that rejected the beneficent action of Christ; the lowest place, deepest abyss, 949 and last world. Therefore, it is placed in the middle of the universe, under all heavens, and so to speak, under the feet of all creatures.

THIRD MEDITATION Teachings from the Doctrine of Christ and the Operations of His Grace; Doctrine of the Church; Conviction and Practice of the Faithful 393. By His principal mysteries, works, and examples, Christ encourages and helps us seek true goods in the heights as well as in lower regions of souls and the universe. He confirms all that with entirely explicit

In God, as in us, says St. Thomas, there is a kind of circulation of the operations of the intellect and will, for the will returns to the principle of the intellect. For us, the circle is completed with what is outside of us, for the exterior good moves our intellect, the intellect moves the will, and the will tends to the exterior good by desire and love.

For God, the circle closes in itself. See this whole passage in no. 794. As we can see, man is made to enjoy immensity.

949 Isa 14:15.

948

338

TABLE DES MATIERES

teachings and operations of His grace in His faithful disciples and imitators.

394. One may say that the doctrine of the God-Man is summed up in the eight beatitudes. Each of them frees man from the attractions and forces that weigh him down and raises him to the highest and most sublime. 950 Concerning the nature of the eight evangelical beatitudes, the opinions of doctors vary. According to St. Thomas, they are distinct from moral virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost, not as habit, but as act from habit … No other habits rectify human conduct (2°, q. 69, a. I°). Thus the beatitudes are not acts of virtue produced especially under the influence of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, or perfect works which, by reason of their perfection, are attributed more to the gifts of the Holy Ghost than to virtues ( ibid., q.

70,a 2). Suarez does not distinguish as clearly between the beatitudes and gifts, but proves in general that they are not acts distinct from virtues and gifts, and are not comprised in the category of habits. However, he cites four theologians, Albert the Great, Gerson, Henri de Grand and Gabriel, in whose eyes the beatitudes are acts distinct from gifts and virtues, or rather virtues elevated to the state of perfection, which produces heroic actions (Suarez, De necessitate gratiae, 1. II, c, 22, no.1). One must observe that the virtues in question here are not the theological virtues, directly related to man’s last end, nor the natural moral virtues, or cardinal virtues and those that naturally depend on them such as obedience, meekness, etc., but the infused moral or supernatural virtues, which are specifically and substantially distinguished, being supernatural as to their origin and the motives that make them act, which are founded on the faith (Mazzella, from St. Thomas, de virtus infus, nos. 48 & ff.).

From these notions and teachines, we believe we can draw the following conclusions: 1. The evangelical beatitudes do not come from a category of morally improving habits that are distant and independent of supernatural moral virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

2. From a careful reading of the context, it appears to us to result that the beatitudes are virtues and not only acts and works of virtue: gentleness, mercy, and purity of heart are obviously virtues. Can we not say the same about selflessness or poverty of spirit, zeal for justice, or for a good cause? Such is also the disposition of those who weep over the miseries of the present life and yearn for better goods. Happiness, bliss, is not so much in passing acts as in the virtuous habits from which acts emanate.

3. The usual background of these virtues is composed of the supernatural moral virtues contained in the beatitudes and in the gifts of the Holy Ghost, which are also habits.

4. Consequently, in our opinion, the beatitudes are the elite of supernatural moral virtues, those virtues which form the main lineaments of the moral face of the Christian, after the theological virtues. They are necessary for all, although to varying degrees of perfection, depending on the diversity of states and conditions.

950

339

TABLE DES MATIERES

1. Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. From the Greek text: Happy are beggars in spirit. Blessed are those who know the misery of transient and earthly goods well enough not to esteem or be fond of them, to abandon them, and earnestly ask God for spiritual goods, grace, virtues, glory, heavenly mansions.

951

The kingdom of heaven is presently theirs by right, and will concretely be so when, possessing God, the infinite good, with all the more reason they will own with Jesus Christ all the works that came out of the hand of God, gloriously enhanced and transformed. Behold how Jesus Christ detaches us from the earth and lifts us up to heaven! 952 395. 2. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the Earth. In order to be pure, one’s detachment from the imperfect goods of this world must be tested like gold with the crucible; and this test consists in humiliations, tribulations, contempt, and undergoing wrongs, especially if one is poor. Blessed are those who preserve their meekness in such situations. In so doing, they prove they really do not care for glory, happiness, riches, passing advantages of this life. They 5. They have a particular excellence among the infused moral virtues because of the gifts of the Holy Ghost that raise them and communicate to them a more or less sublime heroism, and at the same time, a special aptitude to receive and follow impressions from and movements of the Holy Ghost.

The decentralization that these virtues operate is wonderful. Through it, man raises his desires above all passing goods: he keeps his serenity when deprived of them, deplores only the losses of supernatural and eternal goods or the poverty of these goods. He is hungry for spiritual and imperishable riches; he imitates God by spreading good around him out of mercy; he purifies himself ever more to prepare himself to see and possess God, the supreme truth and good; being peaceful, he wants order and universal peace with God; and all these dispositions and perfections together make him invincible amid persecution; he prepares to be God, he becomes God, he acts in God: quia dii estis.

951 Mt 5:3.

952 Vis intelligere quis pauper spiritus sit? Qui corporale in opulentiam animae divitiis permutat; qui propter spiritum egenus est; qui terrenas divitias veluti quoddam onus excussit et abjecit, ut sublimis per aerem sursum rapiatur, ut inquit Apostolus, in nube una cum Deo per caelestia tendens. Ponderosa quaedam res est aurum, onedam et sublimia petens est virtus. Si igitur ad superna nos accedere oportet, ab iis qua deorsum trahunt inopes et egeni simus, ut in supernis versemur. St. Gregory of Nyssa, I. De Beatitudinibus.

340

TABLE DES MATIERES

do not succumb to the temptation to get angry and take revenge because they have been harmed only on things of very little importance. In their calm, they see the hand of God busily preparing, by these means, superior goods for them, as nothing can harm their true treasure here below, which is grace and love of the Divine Law. They are happy now because they have the well-founded hope of one day possessing without question the land of the living: ‘I believe that I will see the goods of the Lord in the land of the living.’ 953 ‘I cried to thee, O Lord: I said: Thou art my hope, my portion in the land of the living. 954 Gentle men will inherit the earth, and will enjoy the abundance of peace.’ 955 396. 3. Blessed are those who mourn because they will be comforted.

Although a Christian soul is sincerely detached from the ephemeral advantages of this life by the spirit of poverty and by meekness, it still has many reasons to be sad and to mourn. Its fragility makes it commit faults, and it must fight constantly; it sees God offended, feels the sorrows of exile and its condition in this mortal body in this vale of tears. But it is still happy if it cries for these reasons because it will be comforted, first, in this world by an infusion or increase in grace, a supernatural increase in strength and love of God, and a foretaste of celestial bliss; then, in the other world, by enjoying all the goods it can desire, which constitute the supernatural homeland. Again, the Divine Master is constantly aiming to uplift us.

397. 4. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be filled. We have seen how all nature is insatiable for good (nos. 325330); so is man until he enjoys infinite happiness. Yet how many people, alas, want anything but what it takes to get there!

Those at the fourth degree of the scale that leads to happiness and are called blessed are those who are hungry and thirsty for justice, i.e., those eager to increasingly conform and adjust their will to that of God; those who advance from virtue to virtue to appear in the Ps 26:13.

Ps 141:6.

955 Ps 36:11.

953 954

341

TABLE DES MATIERES

heavenly Zion; 956 those who, being just, again justify themselves, and being saints, still sanctify themselves. 957 They are filled with consolation and overflow with joy even in their tribulations 958 thanks maily to the firm hope that, by justice, they will one day be able to contemplate the face of God and have their thirst fully quenched when His glory is revealed. 959 398. 5. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. If we love God above all things out of a hunger and thirst for righteousness, we love our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God out of mercy.

This ascent to heaven is higher than the previous one because, not content with loving God in Himself we also love Him in His images; associate ourselves with His providential charity; extend the kingdom of good, which is that of God; grow to the point of rendering service to God Himself; 960 and perfect man, one of the noblest works of the Creator.

The essential character of mercy is to supplement in every possible way, according to our means, all that our neighbor lacks. O, how great this virtue is! United with charity, which is its soul and by which we love God, mercy is the greatest of virtues. 961 Thus, it will bring mercy to those who practice it. On the Day of Judgment, not only will they be placed to the right of the Sovereign Judge, but in spite of their lack of absolute correspondence to the divine ideal concerning them (nos. 48-49), they will be rewarded as if they had fully corresponded to it. The merits of Jesus Christ, the merits of Mary, and the mercy of God will make up for their lack: for the merciful will be shown mercy. 962

Ps 83:8.

Ap 22:11.

958 2 Cor 7:4.

959 Ps 16:15.

960 Amen I say to you, as long as you did it [this service] to one of these my least brethren, you did it to Me (Mt 25:40).

961 Secundun se … Misericordia maxima est; pertinent enim ad misericordiam quod aliis effundat, et, quod plus est, quod defectus aliorum sublevet. Summ. Theol. II 2° q. 30, a 4.

962 Give and it shall be given to you … for with the same measure that you shall mete withal, it shall be measured to you again (Lk 6:38).

956 957

342

TABLE DES MATIERES

399. 6. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Higher than the previous ones, this step brings man closer to heaven, to the intuitive vision of God. According to the Holy Scriptures, the word heart is employed sometimes to mean man’s intellect, at other times his will, memory, 963 imagination, 964 or all these faculties taken as a whole.

Here, ‘heart’ is employed in all those senses. A pure heart is a soul free of all error and prejudice, a will which has no more affection for sin; memory and imagination that are no longer soiled by memories or dangerous or voluntary dreams. It is particularly a soul freed from the desires of the flesh, which, raised above animality, perceives the things which are of the spirit of God, Judge of all things Who is judged by no one. 965 Those with a pure heart see God better and better here below by reason and by faith; they see Him everywhere in nature, history, in various providential arrangements, in authority, in the Church’s sacraments and Christian mysteries. They have a unique ability to grasp the highest truths. But in heaven, where the vision of God is unequal, they will see God much better than those who were less pure than them.

400. 7. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. This ascent exceeds in height all previous ones and presupposes them. Peace is the tranquility of order. Among peacemakers, faith reigns fully and quietly over reason. The Law of God reigns upon their will, intellect, imagination, memory, and senses; spiritual and eternal interests reign over material and temporal interests; the life of grace over the life of nature; consciousness reigns over man’s operations. It is the reign of God established in the soul.

All who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God, 966 but peacemakers are and will be so in an excellent way because they are proclaimed such by men of good sense, by angels, and by God. They

Segneri, Manna dell’anima, 12 November.

1 Cor. 2:9 & elsewhere.

965 1 Cor. 2:14-15.

966 Rom. 7:14.

963 964

343

TABLE DES MATIERES

will be called children of God, especially in the abode of eternal peace, where one will see and declare that they particularly resemble God. 401. 8. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. These are the most heavenly of all because, as soldiers of truth, virtue, and justice, the world cannot bear them. They, as it were, identified themselves with the true and the good so that all persecutors of the true, the good, and God relentlessly attack them.

O Jesus, how well those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice imitate you! You were the righteous One par excellence; you sought no glory, honors, riches, nor worldly pleasures. And despite your supreme disinterestedness, which left to everyone his advantages, with your virtues, you were found to be unbearable! The world is so perverse that they crucified you! Ah, how hell and its henchmen feel their empire collapse under the action of men who are truly full of the spirit of God! Behold all the forces of evil line up against them and cry out in unison: let them be crucified!

However, men thus persecuted for the sake of righteousness are blessed because: - They are most perfect images of Christ; - They are the vanguard of the army of good, which is a great honor; - They act according to God and to their conscience; - Their merit is immense: already in this life, they hold in their hand the scepter of reason, truth, virtue, and character; - To them belongs the kingdom of heaven.

As the height of all riches, the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor in spirit, but as a domain and empire, it belongs to those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice. 967 They are men born to command as sovereigns; and if here below all they meet is persecution from the wicked, they will reign all the more excellently in heaven.

967

Segneri, Manna dell’anima, 14 November, 2nd point.

344

TABLE DES MATIERES

402. Thus it is, O Jesus, that you elevate man to heaven, degree by degree. All heroic virtues, like the eight beatitudes of which you want our souls to be enamored, begin and end in the highest supernatural regions. Just as all mobile nature is governed and as if summoned by the powerful influences of the material empyrean (nos. 338-340; 351 & ff.), so also, O Jesus, through the influences of the spiritual empyrean You vivify and supernaturally lift souls to the Truth itself, to essential and boundless Beauty, all the way to the immense and infinite Good.

You begin by infusing the faith, opening before human eyes the vast horizons of supreme goods and supreme evils so that the sight of both may imprint on man his true character. Then, through the higher influence of hope, you show how these goods can certainly be acquired, and these evils certainly avoided.

In turn, the divine radiance of charity descends from the highest of heaven through your Heart and that of your Mother, o Jesus, to engender human souls to divine life, making hearts beat with divine vibrations, and beginning heaven on earth.

403. Under such powerful and favorable heavenly influences, a most splendid flowering of Christian virtues manifests itself: - Disinterest for gross and deceptive goods; - Meekness, an image of divine goodness; - Nostalgic love of grace and glory; - Awareness of the instability of earthly goods; - Merciful need to spread as much good as possible all around oneself; - Love of increasingly perfect purity of soul and body; - A spirit of peace, which seeks order, universal order, at all costs; Christian courage, a kind of divine force that no evil agent can overcome, and all other virtues derived from it.

Once again, all these virtues are ascents toward the heights 968 that contain, crown, nourish, and govern the universe, and especially The entire Law and the prophets are contained in these two commandments (Mt 22:37): You will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself (Lk 10:27). Is this 968

345

TABLE DES MATIERES

tend toward the empyrean of empyreans, i.e., God, who reigns particularly on the heavens of heavens and in whom everything lives, moves, and exists.969 (Cf. nos. 210-212.)

404. The gifts of the Holy Ghost make all these ascensional movements easier and stronger.

Fear of God, the God so great, so just and so good powerfully helps us to become detached from inferior goods, which we dare to enjoy only with discretion, for fear of prejudicing divine love.

Filial piety toward God, Father of all men, and fraternal piety toward neighbor, powerfully helps meekness, this highly social virtue.

Knowledge, which makes the ensemble of all goods and their value clearly envisioned, powerfully helps with its enlightenment to deplore the total or partial loss of grace and glory, and suggests means of reparation.

Fortitude powerfully helps to satisfy one’s hunger and thirst for justice by employing all energies to satisfy a need so acute because it helps to brave dangers and overturn obstacles.

Counsel powerfully helps mercy because everything done to one’s neighbor to please God will be returned one hundredfold in higher goods by the God of mercy, who never allows Himself to be outdone in generosity.

Understanding powerfully helps purity of heart because it puts, so to speak before the eyes of each person the divine ideal of its not the most complete decentralization that one can imagine? Man adheres with all his faculties to the immense and infinite God. He therefore grows and soars in all directions driven by the object he loves. Besides, by loving his neighbor as himself, he multiplies himself, so to speak, as many times as he has neighbors. Here again, decentralization has no limits. As for his personal good, he finds it precisely in his cosmopolitan existence, or better, in his greatness and perfection: he who finds his soul, by narrow egoism will lose it; and he who loses his soul for the love of me, will find it (Mt 10:39).

The same reasoning can be made about the Our Father, the Christian prayer par excellence. In it, each request expresses an indefinite enlargement of the human heart and mind. All of Christianity aims to uplift man and universalize him so that he finds his good in the general good.

969 Acts 17:28.

346

TABLE DES MATIERES

perfection; in the clarity of this ideal, it shows the ugliness of all faults, even the slightest; and it signals the appropriate remedies to one’s needs, found in the treasures of divine grace.

Wisdom powerfully helps to have the spirit of peace because, by making man keenly aware by superior light of the supreme reasons of things, that is to say, the divine attributes, and by giving him a taste for harmony, goodness and beauty this gift maintains or brings back in order all his faculties and puts his conduct in harmony with his temporal end according to the requirements of divine perfections.

Finally, all these gifts together powerfully help us to have this sublime dedication, this self-immolation in the cause of righteousness of which Jesus Christ and the martyrs gave us the most beautiful examples.

405. All Christian virtues, acquired or infused, the ministry of the Church, the sacraments, the divine Sacrifice on our altars, the exercises of worship, in a word, all of Christianity aims to enlarge man, to elevate him to the higher spheres, to make him a participant in divine nature 970by acquiring a very great resemblance to the immense and infinite God, and finally to confer on him, with the possession of God Himself, the domain of the entire universe in glory.

Christianity fosters the supernatural elevation of man in every sense and is, therefore, a powerful decentralization. 971 Hell, where all evil and sin end up, is a center; paradise is the set of all heights, all the happier and vaster as they are higher. The mobile universe, a place of progress and trial, floats between the two fixed extremes, paradise, and hell (nos. 25, 26).

406. The conduct and practice of the faithful, based on the Gospel, the examples of saints, and Church teaching confirm these conclusions.

The Gospel often tells us about the kingdom of heaven. It 2 Pet 1:4.

Our mouth is open to you, O ye Corinthians, says St. Paul, our mouth is open, our heart is enlarged. You are not straitened in us, but in your own bowels you are straitened. But having the same recompense, (I speak as to my children,) be you also enlarged (2 Cor. 6:11-13). All Christian influences are forces of expansion and elevation.

970 971

347

TABLE DES MATIERES

makes us continuously invoke our Father who is in heaven not only as God but also as our Father, who wants us to share the kingdom of heaven with His Son; who makes heaven our true homeland, sends us His grace from the height of heaven, and attracts us to heaven.

Before resuscitating Lazarus, Jesus looked up to speak to his Father. If He asks his Father to glorify Him, He does not do so without raising His eyes to heaven. 973 When going to heaven, He rises; when going to hell, He descends. 974 972

The glory and hosannas we address to God are directed to the heights, to the highest. 975 The bad rich man is in a place of torments, and this locality, hell, is placed far below the limbo; for the wicked rich man, lifting up his eyes when he was in torments, saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. 976 Hell is at the bottom, the other regions are stacked up above, and paradise occupies all the high places.

Satan falls from heaven like lightning; 977 one only goes to hell by falling, just as one only goes to heaven by ascending.

Evil is the prisoner of good; pressed on all sides by good, it ends up by gathering all in one central place and by devouring itself while unable to be consumed.

Good is God, and everything that most resembles God is participated good. Therefore, God has for Himself the grand set of beings; He reigns long and wide in all heights. 978 His home is immensity; His Empire are all Creations. O paradise! You are the king of places, the Jn 11:41.

Jn 17:1.

974 Eph 4:8-10.

975 Mk 11:10; Lk 19:33; Lk 2:14.

976 Lk 16:23-28.

977 Lk 10:18.

978 We look at paradise as our homeland…what delights abound in these heavenly kingdoms, without fear of dying, and with life eternal! St. Cypr. In Brev. Rom. octava Sanctorum Omnium.

972 973

348

TABLE DES MATIERES

place of all places as God is the great king of all that exists, and the Being of beings.

407. Paradise is a region of the universe; it is a place of refreshment, light, and peace. 979 It is the kingdom of heaven, made up of all already glorified heavens; and when they are renewed, all mobile heavens will be added to it. 980 That is how Christ gives His followers the heavenly kingdoms. 981 He opened the kingdoms of heaven to believers. 982 Lord, you crowned your saints with glory and honor and made them kings over the works of your hands, 983 that is to say, the universe.

What Peter binds on earth will be bound in the height of heaven, and what he looses down here will be loosed in the highest heaven. 984 How vast is the bosom in which the heavenly city receives the triumphant victors over the tyrants of this world! 985 The Most High does not live in temples made by human hands, as the prophet says: Heaven is my throne, and the earth the stepladder of my feet. What house will you build me, says the Lord, or where is the place of my rest? Was it not my hand that made all things? 986 Yes, O great God, the place of your rest will be the ensemble of all things; your paradise will be the glorified universe with the sole exclusion of the central regions.

At this moment, however, your paradise is formed by the higher heavens. Just as St. Stephen was filled with the Holy Ghost, who Canon of the Mass.

Judicium sedebit, ut … Regnum, et potestas, et magnitudo regni quae est subter omne coelum, detur populo sanctorume altissimi. Daniel 7:26-27. This greatness of the kingdom of saints will start on earth and be completed after the Judgment, when it will encompass all that is under heaven, all heavens, and the entire universe.

981 Non eripit mortalia qui regna dat caelestia. Brev. Rom. Hymne de l’Epiph.

982 Te Deum.

983 Brev. Rom. 3 ant. from the Office of All Saints.

984 In arce siderum … caeli in alto vertice. Ibid. Hymn. De l’off, 18 January.

985 Ibid. Ven. Bede, Office of All Saints, day 2.

986 Acts 7:48-50.

979 980

349

TABLE DES MATIERES

divinely strengthened his gaze, raising his eyes to heaven he saw the glory of God above the moving heavens, with Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said: Behold, I see the moving heavens open and the Son of Man at the right hand of God. 987 While being stoned, St. Stephen saw the divine clarity of the empyrean shine through the ethereal cavities of the celestial court or enclosure, which gives access to the abode of glory, 988 meaning that the gates of heaven, the empyrean, opened to him. 989 408. Hence the habit that all believers have to point up to heavenly heights when they want to show paradise and to raise their eyes to heaven when invoking God or the saints. This is practiced all around the globe, and each person looks vertically at the heights above him.

Everyone believes that paradise is above his head but in a most distant region. And since it would be absurd and impious to suppose that these pious gazes, excited and guided by the lights of Revelation, are mistaken in direction, one must conclude that paradise occupies the most sublime heights, which surround the earth and moving skies.

409. It is also the universal persuasion that hell is below, in the last depth. But where exactly in the universe? The data on this point is not as certain, but it seems obvious that hell is the opposite of the empyrean in everything, so it has to be at the center of Creation. 990 Moreover, it was prepared for the devil and his angels 991 and not for men, except those who embrace the cause of Lucifer.

As for the angels, they are scattered throughout the universe.

What the earth is for men, the universe is for the angels. 992 So when the rebellious angels fell from the sky like lightning, they also moved away Ibid. 55.

Brev. Rom. In Octava St. Stephen, resp. 7.

989 Ibid. Respons. 9.

990 Maxima distantia est inter paradisum et infernum. St. Thomas, q. 9. De Veritate, a. 9.

Paradise being the empyrean, and the empyrean being the circumference of the whole universe (nos. 20.21.23), the part most distant from it is the center.

991 Mt 25:41.

992 See above no. 373, especially note 913.

987 988

350

TABLE DES MATIERES

from the whole empyrean and can only have arrived in the central regions of the universe where everything is in disorder, and nothing deserves the name of heaven. Preserve us, Lord, from eternal death.

© Copyright 2019 - The Foundation for a Christian Civilization, Inc. Translated by Jose A. Schelini

PARADISE Book Two

Creation of the Empyrean; Angels and the Early Age Contents

Creation of the Empyrean; Angels and the Early Age. Chapter One Creation and Primary Condition of the Empyrean. The Angels Considered in General 1st Meditation. Creation of the Empyrean. Its primary condition. How Mary is a higher Heaven.

2nd Meditation. The Angels, Their Creation, Number, Hierarchies and their Hierarchies’ Reasons for Being 3rd Meditation. Differences in Angelic Hierarchies. Offices of the Various Angelic Choirs 4th Meditation. In Heaven, the Saints of the Human Species are the Equals of the Angels 5th Meditation. The Relative Number of Angels. The Various Angelic Natures. All Angels, Even The Assistants, Play Some Role in the Direct Government of the World or Men. Chapter Two The Known Seraphs 1st Meditation. Michael, Gabriel and Raphael are Seraphim

2nd Meditation. We Believe St. Gabriel Is the First of the Seraphim Chapter Three Angels and Places about Saint Gabriel 1st Meditation. Angels and Places According to Various Authorities 1. Confirmation of the Previous Doctrine 2. The Angels Know Every Place 3. Angels Move Locally and Can Influence Remote Places without Accessing Intermediate Ones 2nd Meditation. Angels Act as Glorified Beings 1. This Doctrine Is Common Teaching 2. Angels Act as Glorified Children of God Chapter Four Guardian Angels According to St. Augustine and St. Thomas; The Accidental Happiness they Experience Fulfilling Their Ministries 1st Meditation.The Guardian Angels of the Material Universe 2nd Meditation.The Guardian Angels of Wayfaring Humanity 3rd Meditation. The Accidental Happiness of the Guardian Angels of the Universe and that of Men Fulfilling Their Duties Chapter Five How Good Angels Deserve Their Happiness: The Test of Angels and Directly Related Subjects 1st Meditation. Nature of Chaos. How it Serves in the Trial of Angels and Is Instructive for us 2nd Meditation. What the Angels Knew during Their Test 3rd Meditation. Faith in the Incarnation was the Main Object of the Angels’ Test. Consequences from the Standpoint of the Accidental Happiness of the Elect 4th Meditation. rChrist as Redeemer and Mary as Coredemptrix Were Predestined before all Else and Are the Perfect Types of Angels, Men, and all Things Subject to Trial 5th Meditation. The Evil Angels’ Opposition to the Supernatural Coming of the Redeemer and Coredemptrix. Their Naturalism and Misfortune as Opposed to the Holy Angels’ Conduct and Happiness 6th Meditation. The Good Angels also Deserved Accidental Happiness by Fulfilling Their Social Duties and Governing Matter. The Evil Angels Did the Opposite 7th Meditation. Duration of the Angelic Trial

8th Meditation.The Good Angels’ Combat False Science Opposed to the Holy Ghost. Corresponding Rewards

CHAPTER ONE

Creation and Primary Condition of the Empyrean. The Angels Considered in General In principio creavit Deus cœlum et terram. Terra autem erat inanis et vacua, et tenebrœ erant super faciem abyssi: et Spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas.

In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters (Gen. 1:1-2).

Another most abundant source from which vivid light flows on our subject is the divinely inspired narration of the creation of the world. Indeed, if we are in the truth, it is impossible for the excellence and incomparable grandeur and action of the Empyrean, such as we have described them, to not figure in the divine account of the origin of creatures and to not to play a primary role in it.

Undoubtedly, the sacred writer is frugal with details because, wishing above all to instruct his fellowcitizens unable to rise very high, gives them in straightforward terms the most elementary notions of the beginning of things. However, inspired by God and a historian of the universe, Moses wrote for the entire humanity and especially for Christianity, for the Church of Christ, which should fill the earth with the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is filled with waters and covered by them.1 Because of this, let us be certain that despite their popular simplicity, the words and the entire Mosaic narrative are full of a vast, elevated, profound, multi-faceted and worthy meaning, in a word, of the Holy Spirit, which is the main Author of all the Holy Books.

411. In order to understand and explain such sublime teachings to the best of our ability, we will focus above all on their context, convinced that the best interpreter of God is God himself. The authority of the Church, of the Saints, of theologians, will serve as our guide; and we will also welcome the lights of 1

Isa 11:9.

human science and the teachings of analogy, for nothing should be overlooked when it comes to our future and glorious kingdom.

O Mary, light of all those who trust in you,2 light that brings closest to the divine light3 those who desire it; light which by generating the Splendor of the Father’s glory, dispels our darkness,4 please enlighten me about this beautiful and essential subject. You certainly see all creatures in the Word, and with your bodily eyes, you see material beings throughout the entire expanse of the universe (nos. 310, 312). You undoubtedly see the whole providential plan and, consequently, all the facts that took place in the creation and disposition of the world. Oh great Mother of God, good and compassionate Mother of men, allow a tiny ray of your immense clarity to come to enlighten my poor intellect so that I do not stray from the truth but grasp it with righteousness and abundance so that I may expound it with clarity and piety to edify myself and my neighbor. I have absolute confidence in you, o Mary, for you are the new light which has arisen for all, a light full of the light of grace.5

FIRST MEDITATION Creation of the Empyrean. Its primary condition. How Mary is a Higher Heaven In principio creavit Deus Coelum.

In the beginning God created heaven.

412. What heaven did God create in the beginning, if not the heaven par excellence, which is the Empyrean? Indeed, the firmament that God called heaven,6 which is the heaven that appears to our eyes, was made on the second day. On that day, the suns which inhabit the expanse, after being lifted out of chaos, were put in their place, although they were not yet luminous as they are now. On the same day, or perhaps the next day, the planets detached themselves from their centers, and the heavenly bodies thus multiplied; for it was on the third day that the Arid appeared, which God named Earth. We believe we can say, by analogy, that all the main planets were formed and placed on the same day. On the fourth day, the suns and planets that received their rays were made bright. This is why the sacred text calls them luminaria, luminaries, and it expressly names the sun, the moon, and the stars.7 On the second day, God placed them in the firmament of heaven to shine on the earth.8 Narrating that day’s works,9 the sacred text expresses in five verses why the Creator put them in the firmament of heaven, which is, above all, what the author wants to assert.

2

St. Bonaventure, in Psalt. B. V. St. Albert the Great, Super Missus est, chap. 53 : Lux ad divinam lucem mediatissima.

4 St. Antonin of Florence, Summa, p. 4, tit. 15, chap. 15.

5 Lux nova omnibus orta ..., plena luce gratiae. St. Antonin, ibid. chap. 5.

6 Gen 1: 6-8.

7 Ibid. 14-16.

8 Ibid. 17.

9 Ibid. 14-18.

3

413. Since divine action formed the moving heavens on the second, third, and fourth day, it follows almost strictly that in the beginning, God created the Empyrean and chaos.

Someone could say that in the first verse, the sacred author wanted to mention only creation in general, to later narrate the creation of the various beings. In that case, the Empyrean would have been formed in one of the early days of Genesis,10 as many good authors have claimed. But it seems to us that this interpretation fails to take sufficient account of the context. In fact, the inspired Author says: In the beginning, God created heaven. The creation of heaven is, therefore, the first work of the Almighty.

Time began there. This is for sure the most literal interpretation. A divine and preliminary operation preceded the work of the six days,11 and that is creation itself, that is to say, the action of drawing from nothing. On the first day, God did not create light but said: Let there be light; he draws it out of chaos.

On the second day, God made the firmament; He did not create it. On the third day, God orders the waters to gather and the Arid to appear: no creation either. On the fourth day, God said: Let the lights be made in the firmament of heaven, that is to say, let the stars become luminous. All this is formation.

414. The first verse, on the contrary, formally says that God created, that God drew heaven and earth out of nothing. Now, since the early work and that of the following six days are distinguished from each other as creation and formation, the first two verses evidently have not only a general meaning but express the first operation of the Almighty, the creation of the finite.

415. Moreover, the meaning of the second verse firmly confirm this conclusion: And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the waters.

Right after saying: In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, the Author hastens to explain what that earth was. It was certainly not the Arid, which will be formed only with the firmament and which God has not yet called Earth, but it is a mass of aqueous matter, or inconsistent like water: super aquas. It is an abyss, something vast, deep, dark, horrible. According to the Hebrew text, it is the Tohu-Bohu that all peoples later called chaos.12 Ovid expressed it very well in these verses: Unus erat toto naturœ vultus in orbe, Quem dixere chaos, rudis indigestaque moles; Nec quidquam nisi pondus iners, congestaque codem Non bene junctarurn discordia semina rerum:

10

From the creation of light.

With St. Thomas, we find that it is better to maintain that the formation of things was done successively, but that the CREATION proper PRECEDED all the genesiac days. Lib. II Distinct. XIII, art. 3, ad 3m.

12 Let us lsten to St. Augustine: “For very wonderful is this corporeal heaven; of which firmament between water and water, the second day, after the creation of light. ... Which firmament Thou calledst heaven; the heaven, that is, to this earth and sea, which Thou madest the third day, by giving a visible figure to the formless matter, which Thou madest before all days (of the Genesis). For already hadst Thou made both an heaven, before all days; but that was the heaven of this heaven (the Empyrean), because in the beginning Thou hadst made heaven and earth.

But this same earth which Thou madest was formless matter, invisible and without form ... to make all these things of which this changeable world consists” (Confessions, book. 12, chap. 8).

11

“The entire (changeable) universe presented the same aspect; this is what we called chaos, raw and confused mass. It was nothing more than a heap of heavy, inert matter, and a heap of incoherent germs of unorganized things.”

416. It is from this chaos that we see light coming out, at least partially; then the firmament or moving skies, then our earth, which is part of it, then the sun, the moon and the stars. And since, as we have seen, God did not create these bodies but only made, organized and arranged them in the form of heavens, it is clear that in the beginning, God created the Empyrean and the Tohu-bohu.13 417. The illustrious Cornelius a Lapide also supports this interpretation, which is the most natural and most in accordance with the context. After expounding three different opinions on this subject, he writes: it is supremely probable that here we must understand by heaven the first and supreme heaven, that is to say, the Empyrean, the heaven that St. Paul calls the third heaven, which David calls the heaven of heavens, and which is the abode of the Blessed, as all writers assert against Eugubinus ....

That is why, in the beginning, of all heavens God created only the Empyrean, adorned it with all his beauty, and perfected it. Angels and men were created to inhabit this heaven. This is the place which the faithful of all times call heaven. If you ask them where they want to go after this life, they immediately answer you: to heaven, that is to say, to the Empyrean, to enjoy bliss there. That makes St. John Chrysostom say: “Contrary to human usage, God builds his edifice by first extending the sky, and then by placing the earth under it: first the work, and after the foundation,” because the fabric of the world is not sidereal heaven, but the Empyrean heaven. ..... The heaven created on the first day, is, therefore, nothing other than the Empyrean.

418. The learned commentator adds that such is the teaching that Pope St. Clement received from the mouth of St. Peter, as the former states in his first book of Recognitionum. Such is also the doctrine of Theodoret, St. Hilary, Bede, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventure, William of Paris, Molina, and fourteen other authors he quotes. Finally, he says that St. Bonaventure calls this the most common opinion, and Catharinus calls it the truest one.14 419. The Empyrean, that is to say, the heaven of heavens, and chaos, the confusing set of elements that were to serve for the formation of other material beings, were therefore created in the beginning.15 But in what condition was the Empyrean immediately after its creation? Was it perfect and glorified as it is now? Was it mobile or still? On this matter, there is very little information backed up by solid 13

St. Thomas confirms this conclusion by saying that four things were created at the same time: angelic nature, the Empyrean, which is the noblest of higher bodies..., THE RAW MATERIAL that served to make all other things, and time. Libr. II, Dist. 12, art. IV, ad 3m.

Time was created simultaneously with the Empyrean, which proves, as we will see, that the Empyrean was then mobile: “Times, says St. Augustine, are formed by changes that things undergo, while species (accidentally) vary and complete their revolutions. Ibid., loc. cit.

14 Comment. in Genesis, chap. 1, 1.

15 If great writers like Suarez, St. Thomas, and others interpreted Genesis differently on this point, the main reason, we believe, was their belief in the INCORRUPTIBILITY of the moving skies. Suarez, De opere sex dierum, book 1, chap. III, n. 5, n. 6, etc. But modern scientific discoveries have amply demonstrated the truth of these words of Cornelius a Lapide: Truer is the opinion of those who admit the material identity of the (mobile) heavens and sublunary things, and who believe that this matter is corruptible, because all these bodies were made with the same materials that came out of the depths of waters. He cites serious authorities to support this argument. In Gen. chap. J, 2, toward the end.

evidence. Cornelius a Lapide says in passing that God from then on adorned the Empyrean with all its beauty and perfected it, but he neither indicates the ground for his affirmation nor the reasons why he finds it likely.

Likewise, St. Thomas writes: It was fitting that from the beginning, bodily glory also began in some body that was free from bondage, corruption and mutability from the beginning, and totally lucid as every bodily creature is expected to be after the resurrection. But the Prince of theologians deduces this bodily glory from the condition of the glory of the Angels and derives bodily glory from spiritual glory (1. q. 66, a. 3). From this, it naturally follows that the Empyrean was only supernaturally glorified as a result of the faithful angels' glorification, and this is the opinion that seems to us preferable to any other.

420. The Angel of the school also writes that, in created nature, glory must not have started at the same time as nature, for glory is the end to be reached by the operation of nature aided by grace.16 Elsewhere, he adds about the renovation of the world: The dwelling must suit its inhabitants. But the world was made to be the habitation of man and must therefore suit him. But man will be renewed by the resurrection. And the world should be likewise renovated. The universe must be improved to satisfy man’s desire. The renovation of the world and the glorification of man will be simultaneous. Strictly speaking, insensitive bodies do not deserve this glory; it is man who deserves that the whole universe be glorified inasmuch as it increases his glory.17 421. Let us set out a few more instructions from the great doctor before drawing the consequences that are of particular interest to our subject. St. Augustine and all modern Latin authors hold that the Angels were created at the same time as bodily nature, for the universe is made up of Angels and bodily creatures. It was therefore fitting that the main parts of the universe began to exist together, to show that they all also belong to the same order of things.18 All bodily creatures and spiritual creatures constitute one universe. Whence it follows that the latter were created with relations that unite them to the bodily creature, and these relations consist in that spiritual creatures preside over all bodies. This is why it was fitting for the Angels to be created in the highest heaven (in supremo corpore), called Empyrean or otherwise, as supervisors of all bodily nature.

This reasoning is especially suitable for the highest Angels.19 One assigns the Empyrean, by convenience, as a place for all good spirits and contemplators of God. Because of this, Angels are said to have been created in the Empyrean.20 The other natural bodies (which make up the mobile universe) are ordered to man insofar as they are useful in his present state of mutability. But the Empyrean is ordered to his unchanging bliss, and that is why it is the only body that is still in every way.21 422. Hence it follows that: 1. Rational creatures must have earned the glory of the Empyrean and that, therefore, it is posterior to the angelic test.

16

I. q. 62, a. 3, ad 3m.

Supplem. q. 90, a. 1; et lib. II. Distinct. 48, q. 2, a. 2, ad lm.

18 Ibid. Distinct. II, q. 1", a. 1.

19 1 p. q. 61, a. 4.

20 Lib. II, Dist. 2"', q. 231 a. 1. 2.

21 Ibid. ad 2m. Everything leads us to believe that it has only been entirely immobile since its glorification, but that previously it was mobile, responding to the mobility of the Angels before their confirmation in grace.

17

2. Since the Angels were created in the Empyrean and found themselves in a state of trial, their stay there should be proportionate to their condition, i.e., without glory, and wayfaring.

3. The Empyrean had to be glorified only as a reflection of the Angels’ glorification and to satisfy their desire. These Angels confirmed in grace and created with relations linking them with bodily creatures, enjoy seeing that all the heights of the universe subject to their government are flooded with the light of glory and await other elect.

4. Since the Angels were created at the same time as corporeal nature, it does not seem at all proper for the latter, which is in the lowest rank of beings, to have the first fruits of glory and stability in the definitive good.

5. Non-glorified Angels could hardly preside over a glorified Empyrean, and since the Angels admittedly preside over all bodies, in the beginning, the Empyrean must have been only naturally beautiful.

6. Just as the worlds that presently serve intelligent creatures in their trial are mobile and seek the ultimate perfection, so also the Empyrean must have shared an analogous condition during the angelic trial.22 423. Therefore, we can imagine the Empyrean at the time of its creation, and until the glorification of the faithful Angels, as the immense earthly paradise of pure spirits. All the beauties and natural grandeur abounded there. If God provided such a marvelous Eden for the first man and woman; if the whole earth was intended as an earthly paradise for the posterity of Adam if he was faithful to God’s law, what to say of the charms and vast proportions of the earthly paradise of Angels? They were so numerous that their multitude surpasses any material multitude,23 and so perfect, their nature elevates them considerably above human nature. If when creating things24 God had mainly in view the perfection of the universe, the Empyrean, which is like a shining envelope of all creation, and the first work that God created and formed at the same time as the Angels, must have been made beautiful and naturally perfect (n. 22).

424. The heavens and lower beings will require six days, or rather, six epochs of divine operation, that is, organization, because they will be made especially for slow-developing beings like man and other mixed and rational creatures like him. But the Empyrean was created especially for the Angels, who should inhabit it immediately. And since these spiritual beings were ready to acquire full perfection or to pervert themselves, it fitted that the Empyrean was created and formed almost simultaneously as to its celestial nature.

425. Moreover, we have said that this happy and immense angelic Eden had to be mobile. Indeed, in addition to the reasons already indicated, the Angels' ministries appear to prove it solidly. If the Lord God put man in the paradise of delights so he could cultivate it without painful labor and might keep it25 in all its beauty, the Angels, with their very active natures, should likewise cultivate and guide the

22

Suarez appears to favor this opinion when he says: The custody of the universe, mainly of corporeal things like the elements and heavenly bodies, was entrusted to the Angels before they sinned; for we believe that the heavens began to move before this rebellion. De Angelis, L 6, c. 18, n. 2.

23 1. p, q. 51, a: 3.

24 Ibid.

25 Gen 2:15.

Empyrean. That does not mean they should devote themselves to agriculture, but to works suitable for pure spirits. It is natural for bodily beings to be moved immediately, depending on the place, by their spiritual nature. So the philosophers established that spiritual substance locally moves the highest bodies.26 According to the natural order, the Angels are placed between God and us, and because of that, the common law is that they administer not only human affairs but also all bodies.27 Therefore, during their trial, they governed the bodies of the Empyrean. They moved and ruled them with order according to divinely established laws. That was all the more so since there still were no other bodies to govern, as the entire lower universe was still in the confusion of chaos.

426. Moreover, by presiding over all local movement of material things, the Angels could naturally adorn and embellish the Empyrean just as Adam could artistically beautify his happy abode and make it more fertile:28 ut operaretur et custodiret illum. God put in matter, says Saint Thomas, the seminal reasons, the germs of things, or even the powers from which many things can arise. It is up to the farmers’ care to put these powers into action to realize his possibilities. Therefore, as a farmer governs his fields’ vegetation (pullulationem agri), so the Angels govern the entire bodily creature.29 It is not that these spirits can give substantial or even accidental forms to material things more readily and immediately than man.30 All information on matter comes directly from God or from some bodily agent31 that acts instrumentally (n. 373). When moving bodies locally, the Angels can use active principles that are in matter to produce various effects. In this case, bodily nature, wielded by superior hands, engenders wonders greater than its native potential.32 427. I imagine the unfathomable multitude of Angels partially busy adorning the Empyrean with the most joyful charms. During their trial, their main task was to adore God, praise Him, pray to Him, thank Him, believe in the mysteries proposed to their faith, and abstain from the forbidden fruit, which could be excessive self-esteem. Those were easy duties for beings naturally good and ennobled by grace. Yet, created with relationships that united them to bodily beings already formed (n. 421), they spent their leisure time, so to speak, looking at the arts on that immeasurable background that was later called Empyrean. It seems to us that we must admit at all costs an analogy between the angelic trial in the upper heavens and our first parents’ trial in Eden.

428. O Mary, all the great works wrought by the Almighty are closely related to you. In you, everything but Christ was predestined into existence (n. 295 et ff.). How, then, could the Creator’s first work, the Empyrean with the Angels, be foreign to you? It is certainly the beginning of your kingdom, established first in the natural order but enhanced by the grace that the Angels had, thus aiming at a glorification that will increase with your incomparable splendors.

26

P. 1, q. 110, a. 3.

P. 1, q. 108, a. 8, ad 2m. Oportet dicere, statim a principio fuisse aliquem motum: AD MINUS secundum successionem conceptionum et affectionum in mente angelica. Q. 66, a. 4, ad 3m.

28 Remaining a friend of God, man was also to expand the earthly Paradise as humanity multiplied. The Eden adorned by God was only a divine sample of the Eden that the whole earth should become thanks to the work of man. Civiltà Cattolica, quad. 1121, p.562, year 1897.

29 Q. 5, De Veritate, a. 8, ad 4m.

30 Summa theol. p. 1, q. 110, a. 2.

31 Ibid.

32 Contra Gentiles, l. 3, chap. 103.

27

O Mary, you are a heaven higher than the Empyrean and the spirits who inhabit it. You are the heaven in which the fullness of the Godhead dwelled for nine months;33 the heaven of Him who made the earth and the heavens;34 the heaven capable of receiving God who can never be contained; 35 the heaven into which the Eternal Father sent his Only Begotten Son.36 Therefore, if the Empyrean was the heaven of the Angels, you, O Mother of God, were God’s heaven. Just as your divine motherhood is not a passing fact but enduring excellence which will have its full radiance only in glory, the entire Empyrean and all glorified Angels will be enclosed in the heaven of your splendors.

That is why you are heaven higher than heaven;37 the heaven whose height was measured only by God;38 the heaven that shines with virtues and is greater than nature’s material sky;39 the most splendid of created heavens, which includes the incomprehensible God and surpasses by its brilliance the cherubic throne of the Divinity.40 O Mary, your celestial radiance encompasses, exceeds, and somehow feeds all the radiance of the angelic choirs and the greatest saints. The radiance that you project, most powerful after the holy humanity of your Son’s, is like a sacred temple. It contains not only the entire material universe but also the living heavens, i.e., the lights emanating from pure spirits and souls as they contemplate God face to face (nos. 231 -239).

429. Thus, the material Empyrean and the Angels have been created and arranged, O sublime Virgin, according to the ideal of your future glory, which has been eternally present in the eyes of the Creator, and in which supreme wisdom has measured all things (nn. 296-303).

430. Jesus Christ and Mary, the Angels and Saints were glorified only after a journey of suffering or trial; the Empyrean must have been modeled after them and thus is unlikely to have created glorious from the beginning.41 During their mortal life, Jesus and Mary were firmly fixed in the good. Mary, however, somehow participated in human mobility by experiencing real progress, and Christ experienced bodily progress and appearance. Therefore, it was also necessary for the Empyrean, which belonged to a very inferior order as a material being, to have its time of movement and real mutability. This allowed the Angels to take care of it and to embellish it as a farmer takes care of his field (n. 426).

SECOND MEDITATION 33

St. Peter Damien, Serm. 1, de S. Joanne Apost. et Evang.

St. Andrew of Crete, Orat. 1, de Dormit. B. M. V. 35 St. Methodius, in hom. Festi Purif. B. M. V. 36 St. Proclus in orat. 8, De Transfiguratione Domini.

37 Caelum caelo altius. St. Augustine, in Sermone de Assumpt. B. M .V. 38 Caelum cujus altitudinem solus Deus dimensus est. St. Bonaventure, in Speculo B. M. V. chap. 5.

39 Caelum virbutibus coruscans, majus eo quod est in rerum natura. St. John Chrys. Orat. 7. in SS. Deipar.

40 Caelum splendidum in caeli, incomprehensum continens Deum, cherubicum Thronum Divinitatis fulgore superans.

St. Epiphanius, in Sermone De Laude V. See also above other passages which prove that Mary is a heaven, an empyrean superior to the material Empyrean, nos. 33 & 43.

41 Mary is a heaven because, just as in the beginning God created heaven, Mary was his primary work by her dignity and by "prefiguration." The learned Idiot (Raymon Jordan), De Beata V. part. 14, contempl. 11. The material Empyrean with its Angels was a figure of Mary and of her glory, greater than the Empyrean; and Mary was a figure and a proclamation of the even greater glory of Christ in heaven.

34

The Angels. Their Creation, Number, Hierarchies, and their Hierarchies’ Reasons for Being In principio creavit Deus coelum. In the beginning, God created heaven.

431. According to the teaching that seems the most probable, it must be said, as per Saint Thomas, that the Angels were created at the same time as matter. Indeed, they are a part of the universe and do not constitute a universe apart. They concur with bodily creatures to compose a single universe, as is proved by the natural relations between spiritual and bodily creatures (n. 421).42 Moreover, as the Fourth Lateran Council defined, it is a certain truth – if not one of faith -- that there is only one Creator of all things ,Who, in the beginning of time, simultaneously (simul) drew from nothing both spiritual and bodily creatures, namely, the Angels and the world.43 As we said, the Angels were created at the beginning of time, simultaneously as the world, in the Empyrean, of which they are citizens and inhabitants.44 We thus see that four things were created simultaneously: angelic nature, the Empyrean, the raw material or chaos, and time.45 The word heaven includes all this. ‘In the beginning, God created heaven.’ These four species of beings were mobile according to their nature: the Angels, concerning good and evil, which constituted their trial; the Empyrean, from the standpoint of its place and perfectibility, as it had to befit the condition of its inhabitants and perhaps also prepare, even materially, the future organization of chaos. In turn, chaos was mobile as to its place and nature. As the entire universe forms a unit, a single created and finite whole, the Tohu-bohu had to feel the influences of the Empyrean and experience, so to speak, the need to arrange itself in heavens, mirroring the higher heaven already ordered and set in motion. Finally, time was mobile because it is nothing other than the collective expression of the mobility of things, which is a new proof of the early mobility of the Empyrean.

432. Here is, O my God, the first outpouring of your power and wisdom. First, you set the extreme limits of the universe in nothingness. The Angels, with their unimaginable multitudes, hierarchies and choirs, make up the finite spiritual heavens, which are closest to the spiritual heaven of Your divine Persons and essence. After the angelic heavens, and in some way below them, are the first material heavens under the name of Empyrean or region of fire because of the lights that abound therein. Lower are the elements of the moving heavens designated by the words earth, and chaos or abyss, over which hovers Your Spirit, O my God. Love is communicative and seeks to draw the greatest wonders from this confusion of elementary materials: the Body of the Divine Word, the body of His Mother, the bodies of his Saints, and other bodies of the lower universe.

433. The Angels were created in the beginning, when God created the heaven of heavens. It would be very interesting to have an idea of their numbers, hierarchies, and various offices, the places that Mary and the Saints can and should occupy, above or in these different hierarchies, the general and specific relations of the Angels with the material universe and humanity, and, finally, their trial and the lessons we can draw from it. For now, let us look at the first of these points.

42

St. Thomas, Summa Th. p. 1, q. 61, a. 3.

Chap. Firmiter.

44 Cornelius a Lapide, Com. In Gen. c. 1.

45 St. Thomas, see above n. 416, footnote.

43

434. According to the Holy Scriptures, the Angels are innumerable. I heard around the throne, says St. John, the voice of many angels; their number was thousands of thousands.46 Daniel speaks about the Ancient of Days: a million angels served him, and a thousand millions were present before him.47 Job wonders if God’s soldiers can be counted: Numquid est numerus militum ejus?48 These passages, like many others, indicate that the number of Angels exceeds human capacity.49 435. Let us listen to St. Dionysius Areopagite: “This also is worthy, in my opinion, of intellectual attention, that the tradition of the (inspired) Oracles concerning the Angels affirms that they are thousand thousands and myriad myriads, accumulating and multiplying, to themselves, the supreme limits of our numbers, and, through these, showing clearly, that the ranks of the Heavenly Beings cannot be numbered by us. For many are the blessed hosts of the supermundane minds, surpassing the weak and contracted measurement of our material number, and being definitely known by their own supermundane and heavenly intelligence and science alone, which is given to them in profusion” by creative Wisdom.50 According to S. Dionysius, among creatures, only the Angels and the glorified Elect can have a fair idea of the number of these spirits divinely favored by intelligence and knowledge.

436. St. Thomas employs the same language in an article where the most salient passage we have already expounded. This serious authority should be fully cited, above all, because of the theological reasons he provides. After the Sacred Scripture, these reasons are the most solid proofs of our thesis.

The Angels, as immaterial substances, form a kind of multitude51 which is the largest of all, surpassing any material multitude. The reason is that, upon creating things, God intended primarily the perfection of the universe. The more perfect beings are, the more God abounded in creating them. Just as we find this abundance in the greatness of corporeal things, in incorporeal things we can find it in their numbers and varied perfections. So we see incorruptible (heavenly) bodies, which are the most perfect, surpass corruptible bodies (the earth and what it bears)52 almost incomparably. The whole sphere of active and passive bodies is very small compared to celestial bodies; hence, it is reasonable to conclude that immaterial substances outnumber material substances almost incomparably (i, q. 50, a. 3).

437. St. Gregory seems to go further still. The number of angels, says this great Pope, is finite for God, but infinite, i.e., indefinite, for wayfaring men. God can count it, but men cannot. The number of angels attending before God is relatively small, but the number of those who serve Him (ministrantium) is

46

Ap 5:11.

Dan 7:10.

48 Job 25:3.

49 Mazzella, De Deo creante, n. 268. St. Augustine says: Ad quorum (angelorum) multitudinem, ut legimus in Evangelio, omne genus humanum ad unam comparavit ovem, dicens : « Relictis nonaginta novem in montibus venit quaerere unam errantem ». Collatio cum Maxim. 14, 9.

50 The Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius the Aeropagite, chap. 14, translation by Rev. John Parker, M.A., Skeffington & Son, Piccadilly, England, 1884.

51 We say A KIND of multitude, because Angels are not material; their number is something like the multitude of forms and active principles. See St. Thomas, 1 q. 50 a. 3, ad 1m.

52 We do not admit the incorruptibility of mobile celestial bodies (n. 60), but only the incorruptibility of celestial bodies which now belong to the Empyrean. We therefore accept all the reasoning that St. Thomas makes on this point, according to what we said above (n. 35 with the note, and n. 36). But for us the incorruptible bodies are all the already glorified bodies that make up the material Empyrean, and not the mobile and changing bodies that must be renewed after the general resurrection.

47

indefinite.53 The angels ... are innumerable ... as all the prophets admit (St. Irenaeus).54 The same says St. Jerome. Like St. Augustine, St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Ambrose compare men to the lost sheep and the Angels to the ninety-nine sheep that did not go astray.

438. St. Cyril of Jerusalem has a passage that seems particularly remarkable. The number of inhabitants of a place, whoever they are, he says, must be estimated according to its size. Here we are talking about a divine work where everything is proportioned with the greatest wisdom. The ancients believed that the earth is but one point in the middle of one heaven, but that the heaven surrounding it contains as many inhabitants as its spaces. And the number of inhabitants of the heavens of heavens is beyond all estimations.55 439. We see how mistakenly some modern authors accuse the ancients of seeing the heavens only as vast and interminable solitudes without any living being or creature that glorifies God. If the moving skies are not populated like our earth with rational and irrational animals, at least the Angels are numerous enough to praise God in all material universe regions (nos. 165, 168, 169).

440. This unimaginable multitude of spiritual creatures, which fills and surrounds the entire corporeal universe, so to speak, like an atmosphere of life and activity, is divided into three hierarchies, each of which is composed of three choirs. The first hierarchy is made up of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; the second, of Dominations, Virtues, and Powers; and the third, of Principalities, Archangels, and Angels.

Any higher angelic order fully possesses the perfection of the lower orders, but the latter only partially possess the perfection of the higher orders.56 The Seraphim and Cherubim have all the elevation, steadfastness, capacity and thirst for the divine that the Thrones have, but the Thrones do not have all the knowledge of the Cherubim or the divine love of the Seraphim. Like each order and hierarchy, each angel has two roles to fulfill: receiving divine influences from above and transmitting them to lower orders and beings according to their capacity.57 For example, in terms of divine knowledge and love, the Thrones are influenced by the Cherubim and Seraphim while being unable to match them. The same happens, analogically, with the lower hierarchies, orders and individuals.

441. What makes the distinction and division of angelic hierarchies and orders? To answer this question, let us first observe that, according to St. Thomas, each angel alone forms a particular species58 and has his own office and order in things so that no two angels are equal.59 From this point of view, it is therefore very easy to explain the differences of angelic hierarchies and orders, thereby explaining the individual differences of these pure spirits.

53

Moralium, libr. 17, cap. 13, édition Migne.

Contr. Haerea. l. 2, c. 7, n. 4. V. Mazzella, De Deo creante, n. 269.

55 Pro magnitudine locorum quorumlibet incolarum aestimandus est numerus. Terra universa puncti insrar est in medio unius coeli : tantamque coelum, quod illam ambit, incolentium multitudinem continet, quantam ipsum habet amplitudinem. Et coeli coelorum omni aestimatione superiorem numérum complectuntur. Mazzella, ibid.

56 St. Thomas, 1. q. 108, a. 5, ad 6m. et in corpore.

57 That is why all individuals of the eight upper choirs are also angels, that is, messengers, because they all have to transmit something to their inferiors. St. Thomas, Ibid. ad 1m. Moreover, everyone has the mission to lift those who are inferior to him, that is to say of purifying, enlightening, and perfecting them by transmitting higher influences to them. Ibid. ad 3m.

58 1, q. 50, a. 4.

59 P. 1, q. 108, a. 3, in corp. et ad 1m.

54

442. The Angels were created to varying degrees of perfection. Since each received a dose of grace proportional to his natural capacity,60 grace greatly accentuated their differences by uplifting and perfecting nature. Likewise, when born, a large number of plants are hardly distinguishable from one another; but when fully developed, they show very considerable dissimilarities. The same can be said of animals and men. Therefore, under the action of grace, natural differences between Angels notably stand out, and even more so in the radiance of glory. We believe that this is the primary reason for the various angelic orders.

443. These different degrees of perfection also have their reason for being. To make the universe more beautiful, God made it very varied, and variety requires different degrees. To make the universe nobler, God wants every created being to resemble Him not only in the gifts of nature, grace, and glory but also in the way He operates. Just as the Creator acts as a primary cause over all things finite, He wants every limited being to act as a second, third or fourth cause, and so on. Therefore, every created being participates to a certain extent in the Supreme Being's active government and acts as a more or less perfect instrument of Divine Providence according to its capacity and the order it is in. So, although it is composed of an incalculable number of different beings, all more or less active and placed, so to speak, within the framework of a hierarchy that produces universal harmony, the entire universe is wonderfully ordered.

444. Let us observe, however, that hierarchies properly so called are something sacred. In our opinion, says St. Dionysius, hierarchy is a sacred ordination, knowledge and operation intended to reproduce as deiform [God’s form] as much as possible and to rise to the imitation of divinity in proportion to divinely infused enlightenments. ... The hierarchy aims to assimilate and unite with God as much as possible ... It perfects its followers (initiates and members) as imitations of God ... Mysteriously flooded with these dazzling irradiations, they reflect them generously on lower-rank beings according to thearchic (supernatural) laws. . . The perfection of the hierarchy’s members consists in rising with all strength to the imitation of God, becoming cooperators with God, and manifesting in themselves the divine operation with all possible splendor.61 Hierarchy is, therefore a series of intelligent beings more or less noble, aiming to perfect themselves supernaturally as much as possible by participating in the perfection of relatively superior beings and aiming to communicate their perfection to inferior beings according to their capacity and station. This perfection consists in purification, illumination, and acquisition of the supreme degree of supernatural goodness proportioned and intended for each being.62 445. “It is necessary then, as I see it,” St. Denys continues, “that the Enlightened shine with

divine light to raise themselves, through the chaste eyes of the intellect, to the habit and power of contemplation; that Enlighteners, who have a more luminous intelligence and whose function is to receive and impart light as they have greater transparency, marvelously flooded 60

Ibid. a. 4. See also p. 1, q. 62, a. 6.

Quanto aliqua agentia magis in participatione divinae bonitatis constituuntur; tanto magis perfectiones suas nituntur in alios transfundere, quantum possibile est. Sum. Theol. p. 1, q. 106, a. 4. So, the more the angelic hierarchies are elevated, the more zeal they have for the good of their inferiors.

62 The angels are PURIFIED from their ignorance about the divine plan, or strengthened to know it better; they are ILLUMINATED, that is to say, enlightened by their superiors about this plan; they are PERFECTED by the knowledge of this plan. Ibid. a. 2, ad. 1m.

61

with holy splendors, should spread their light abundantly on those worthy of enlightenment; and finally, that Perfectioners, being skilled in the impartation of perfection, should perfect those perfectible through by initiating them in the science of the sacred objects of contemplation.63 The holy orders of celestial substances ... are specially and excellently honored with the name of Angels, as the thearchy (the divinity, which is the first principle of all things) first pours out its enlightenment to them, and they transmit its rays to us.64 In the order of divine economy, the inferior rises to God through the superior, which is true not only for intelligences of high and low rank (hierarchies), but also for those of similar rank (in the same hierarchy), the supersubstantial taxiarchy (supreme Distributor of the ranks and degrees of perfection that form the order) having established the rule that in each hierarchy there would be first, middle and last orders and powers and that the most divine would become mystagogues (initiators in the sacred mysteries) and handlers of the less advanced in the progression, illustration, and communion with God.65 Having humbly received this immediate splendor at its first appearance, these holy intelligences ... liberally transmit it to their subordinates, but with less brilliance and according to their respective capacity ... They have the privilege to fertilize, vivify, develop and perfect by spreading a fertile intellectual rain whose irrigation predisposes to immortal parturitions (sublime and supernatural acts) the bosom that it moistens.66 446. The entire supernatural order is therefore arranged in hierarchies, choirs, and various degrees of perfection so that everything is variously perfected and perfects something else67 in the likeness of God, infinitely perfect type of all substantial goodness and of every beneficial operation on beings. While grace and glory have God as their sole source, neither grace nor glory is conferred on rational beings independently of secondary causes. Thus in his capacity as a man, Christ is the meritorious cause of all predestination and grace. Also a case of it, after Christ, is Mary (nos. 281 & ff., 289 & ff.). Each according to his special vocation, the Angels and men of God devote themselves to similar ministries. And the last of humans is destined not only to deify himself in some way through others’ action but also to deify others as much as possible, at least by his prayers and good examples. Pray one for another that you may be saved. For the continual prayer of a just man availeth much.68 For we are the good odor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved.69 447. Similar causal action also takes place in the abode of glory. Although every elect there, angel or man, contemplates God immediately thanks to the light of glory which uplifts and strengthens his intelligence, he receives from God this light of glory and habitual perfection in a hierarchical way. Higher 63

The Celestial Hierarchy, chap. III French translation by Fr. Dulac.

Ibid: C. IV, paragr. 2. Lumen intellectuale potest diei ipse vitor intellectus ad intelligendum ... Nihil ergo est aliud Angelum ab Angelo illuminari, quam CONFORTARI INTELLECTUM INFERIORIS ANGELI per aliquid INSPECTUM in superiori, ad alia cognoscenda. S. Thomas, quaest. 9 De Veritate, art. 1.

65 Ibid. par. 3.

66 Ibid. ch. 15, par. 6.

67 Omnes creaturae ex divina bonitate participant ut bonum quod habent in alia diffundant; nam de rationale bonis est quod aliis se communicet. Et inde est etiam quod agentia corporalia similitudinem suam aliis tradunt quantum possibile est. St. Thomas, P. 1, q. 106, a. 4.

64

68 69

Ja 5:15.

2 Cor 2:15.

created beings transmit it to lower created beings, as St. Dionysius excellently explains in the passages we underlined ( n. 445), as shown above (nos. 196, 200, 193, 246).

Therefore, in heaven and on earth, hierarchy and authority have the same raison d'être. They belong to a providential government under the Creator's supreme direction (nos. 358,359; 372-375). We can also conceive them as a teaching church compared to less educated people. Thus, a higher Angel strengthens the intellective virtue of a lower Angel as a more perfect body strengthens the virtue of a less perfect body by its closeness and influence.

Besides, the higher Angel distributes the truth—which he knows more widely and profoundly—making it proportional to his inferior’s capacity, as teachers do with their pupils. The higher Angel does not give the lower Angel a natural light or the light of grace or glory but strengthens the latter’s capacity and disposes him to receive nobler forms, grace and glory.70

THIRD MEDITATION Differences in Angelic Hierarchies - Offices of the Various Angelic Choirs 448. That sufficiently explains why hierarchies and orders are established in the supernatural world. To know more particularly how angelic hierarchies differ from each other, let us say with St. Thomas that differences should be sought in the multitude subject to each hierarchy (distinguuntur hierarchiae ex parte multitudinis subjectae).71 Since the glorified angels have very different degrees of perfection (no. 442), they cannot be governed in the same way concerning the offices they have to perform. Thus, the Angels of the first hierarchy, whose primary ministry is to assist before God, receive the first lights and impressions from the Almighty and transmit them to lower ones in certain degrees. Having done that, they also offer the Most High all the finite beings’ concerts of praise and adoration. They see the reasons for things in the lower universe in God Himself, that is to say, perfectly and universally, 72 and thus are immediately ruled by God. The Angels of the second hierarchy have a more limited ministry, which particularly concerns lower beings' government. The Dominations distinguish things to be done according to divine views; the Virtues give the various agents the faculty and energy required to achieve what is necessary; the Powers determine the mode to accomplish what is defined and prescribed. For this end, the Angels of this hierarchy see in the created universal causes, in the holy humanity of Jesus Christ, in Mary, in the first angelic hierarchy, in the most influential human wills, in the highest material causes, the reasons for things and how they must be dealt with.

Thus, the second hierarchy angels are not governed as those of the first. God immediately directs them in the performance of their offices. The third hierarchy must mainly deal with the workforce. Just as an army has generals, subordinate superiors, and ordinary soldiers; and the category of laborers includes

70

St. Thomas, p. 1, q. 106, a. 1.

71

Ibid. q. 108, a. 1.

With all their ends, which appear in the divine plan.

72

masters, foremen, and workers, so too the last angelic hierarchy has Principalities, Archangels and Angels who serve the superior hierarchies—Mary, Jesus Christ, and the Most High—in the government of the world. The third hierarchy’s members carry out only plans and orders received from the second, and God does not direct them as the higher hierarchies. Therefore, the angelic hierarchies are very different from each other.73 449. What are these reasons for the things that higher Angels teach lower ones? Saint Thomas does not say this clearly, nor does Suarez find them easy to explain.74 We will try to answer by drawing from several doctrinal points that the Angelic Doctor explains in various places.

1. To see the reasons why things are governed is not to see the divine essence, which all the Blessed Angels immediately contemplate.75 2. Since not all Angels see the divine essence with the same perfection, it follows that all do not know the divine plan equally well.76 However, as this plan must be carried out perfectly and completely, higher Angels enlighten lower ones on this point.

3° The Angels do not control people’s free wills.77 They do not see man’s thoughts and affections, which God alone knows.78 However, the material universe belongs especially to the faithful of Christ,79 and generally, to all rational creatures.80 Therefore, it must be governed according to the condition and (variable or invariable) good or bad dispositions of free beings. 81 Thus, the universe's governing mode depends largely on free and changing thoughts and affections that the Angels cannot know.

Hence, on this point, the Angels must be enlightened and illuminated either mediately or immediately by the divine light, to which nothing is unknown and from which nothing escapes. For the Angels, knowing the reasons for things is understanding the various modes in which God wants the world to be governed in various circumstances.82 It is not only knowing things as they are but also as they should be in order to have divine approval. It is also knowing and providing the proper functioning of everything, from the point of view of providential action, aiming to lead each being to its end and glorify the Supreme Being.83 It is the practical knowledge of the divine plan.

73

See St. Thomas, p. 1, q. 108. a. 1, a. 6 and other articles on the same question. The angels of the third hierarchy divinely receive the knowledge of the providential order by considering this order in its particular causes. Contr.

Gent. 1. 3, c. 80, Infimi autem.

74 De Angelis, I, 1, chap. 14, n. 12.

75 P. 1, q. 106, a. 1, ad 1m.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid. q. 111, a. 2.

78 Ibid. q. 57, a. 4.

79 St. Thomas, Comm. in Epist. ad Cor. c. III, lect. III, in vers. 22.

80 Contr. Gent. last chap.

81 Ibid. et alibi.

82 In fact, the word reason derives from the word ratum, approved. The reasons for things are therefore the conduct of things, the directions approved by God and in accordance with the divine plan.

83

In the Summa Contra Gentiles, l. 3, chap. 80, St. Thomas confirms in the most splendid manner the explanation we have just given of the reasons for things on which the angels are enlightened.

450. As we have said (no. 444), angelic illuminations consist of enlightening, purifying, and perfecting the lower ones. When it comes to glorified beings who cannot fail in their duty, illuminate says it all. In this case, the action is always in conformity with the lights.

“Bless the Lord, all ye his angels: You that are mighty in strength, and execute his word, hearkening to the voice of his orders.

Bless the Lord, all ye his hosts: you ministers of his that do his will.” 84 451. Let us now look at the tasks proper to each angelic choir. To better understand them, we will start with the third choir of each hierarchy because this choir's excellence and perfection is common to the superior choirs.85 The Thrones are about the service of God rather than the direct government of lower beings. Their capacity is so great that it cannot be fully deployed by directing the corporeal worlds and even men.86 They are very highly placed in the series of beings. The most dazzling divine splendors seem to rest on them and make them radiate on the second hierarchy, though not as strongly, for these lights are proportional to the latter’s capacity. They read the divine plan in the Word Himself. God keeps them strongly attached to Him as intellects very dear to him. In turn, they drink copiously from the divine influences to glorify God with more energy and transmit it to the lower orders.87 With the Cherubim and Seraphim, they form the highest living heaven after Mary’s and Jesus’s.

452. The Cherubim are also Thrones and have the same excellences, but surpass them in knowledge.

They see God even more perfectly. They receive the divine light with more abundance. They see more clearly divine beauty shining in the harmony of creation and have a greater knowledge of the reasons for things. Therefore, they increase the concert of praise that rises to the Supreme Being. Full of sublime knowledge, they help the Thrones themselves to see things in God, to glorify God, and to spread the good below them.88 453. The Seraphim surpass even the Cherubim in knowledge and illuminate them as the Cherubim illuminate the Thrones. However, they are distinguished above all by their ardent love for God. According to the Hebrews, the august name Seraphim means ‘Incendiaries’ or ‘Burners,’89 or better still, ‘Burning Ones.’ The first order that exists is the Divine Persons, which ends with the Holy Spirit, love hypostatic and proceeding. The Seraphim, so-called because of their burning love, have a particular affinity with the Holy Spirit.90 They rise unceasingly toward God like mighty flames. They act strongly on their subordinates with very active and penetrating fires, purifying them of the smallest stains and

84

85

Ps. 102:20,21.

Sum. Theol. p. 1, q. 108, a. 5, ad 6m.

86

Contr. Gentiles, l. 3, cap. 80, in principio.

1. p. q. 108, a. 5, ad 6m.

88 Ibid. ad 5m and alibi.

87

89 90

St. Denys, Celestial Hierarchy, ch. 7, par. 1.

Sum. Theol. p. 1, q. 108. a, 6.

kindling them with sublime fervor. Possessors of inextinguishable light, they illuminate the other angels perfectly.91 454. If Jesus Christ were not above all heavens to fill all things,92 and if his august Mother were not the Queen of all Angels93 and the entire heavenly court, we would say that the Seraphim occupy the most sublime created heaven.94 Nothing among creatures compare with the Man-God and the Mother of God in terms of union with God, excellence, or supernatural influences. While St. Dionysius and St. Thomas say that God illuminates the supreme angelic hierarchy directly, this cannot be done without the ministry of Mary and her divine Son. Before the Ascension of Jesus and the Assumption of the Virgin, God granted the Angels favors only because of the foreseen merits of Christ and the future Queen of Heaven (nos. 296-304). After that, all celestial citizens must depend on their King and Queen, and this dependence is one of the most effective causes of their glory, beneficent radiance, and happiness (nos.

190, 195-200).

As we said above (nos. 198 &200; 232-237; 247; 251; 264), Mary illuminates all angelic orders and all lower creatures. With the eyes of intelligence, she sees in the Word all the reasons for things. With her bodily eyes she even sees all things material and sensible (nos. 310-312, with notes). All illuminations that favor all Angels and Elect come from the Daughter of the Eternal Father, Mother of the Word Incarnate, and Spouse of the Holy Spirit. Mary is the Queen of all creatures and governs them effectively95 (n. 349).

455. As we have said (no. 448), the Angels of the second hierarchy see the reasons for things in Jesus Christ Man, in Mary, and the higher Angels. They are primarily concerned with the provision of divine ministries (1, q. 108, a. 6). The Powers, which make up the last chorus of this hierarchy, are tasked with preventing the violation of the universal providential order and all disturbing causes and restraining the efforts of demons. With all the more reason, the Virtues and Dominations also care for maintaining the general order but do something more. The Virtues constitute the principle of universal operation. These angels are called the Virtues of Heaven.96 They are the ones who set in motion all the springs of corporeal and mobile nature, from the regions that touch the Empyrean to the last bodies which receive some impression (nos. 358; 373-375). It is also appropriate to attribute miracles' operation to them, always in obedience to God, the higher angels, Mary and Jesus.97 The Dominations have all the Virtues’

91

Ibid. art. S. ad 5m.

Eph 4:10.

93 St. Albert the Great, Missus est, chap. 189.

94 St. Bonaventure, Cantic. Psalt. B. M. V. 95 It is true, according to St. Thomas (p. 1. q. 108, a. 8, ad 2m), that according to the order of nature, a human individual is less well disposed than the Angels to administer human and bodily things. However, the holy Virgin Mary acts as a queen and not as a servant. God is the first source of all superiority, and creatures participate in it as they draw nearer to God. The most perfect creatures, who are closest to God, are also those who have the most influence over other creatures (St. Thomas, ibid. q. 1. 9, a. 4. Who is closer to God than Mary?

96 Lk 21:26 & Mt 24: 29.

97 We agree with Suarez that the virtues of the heavens, of which the Gospel speaks, are the Angels generally considered as governors of the heavens (3 p. q. 59, a. 6. Disp. 56, sect. 3). Martini translates: The powers of heavens. The physical properties of the stars will be disturbed by a partial cessation or change of mode in angelic governance. In addition, under the leadership of the Cherubim, the choir of Virtues moves the heavens in their particular aspects. See nos. 275-278.

92

powers but form a higher choir, as they choose and determine all agents who are to carry out the providential plan98 and are inferior to them in dignity.

456. Thus, the Dominations indicate all works to be accomplished (no. 448) and appoint all agents, material or living, human or angelic, from a speck of dust to the Virtues of heaven. The Virtues strengthen and move these agents; the Powers preside over modes of action and remove obstacles. If only rational creatures in the state of trial faithfully obeyed Angelic motions to inspire and persuade them,99 the mobile world would be a kind of Paradise. It would move entirely according to the Empyrean's influences and its wise and happy inhabitants. It would be a faithful image of the upper heavens. O human freedom, how great is your responsibility! O baleful sin, how you spoil everything!

Listen, men, whoever you are: become faithful children of the Church of Christ, and you will have attained maximum happiness here below.

457. The third hierarchy members are immediately appointed to assist rational creatures in the state of trial, all lower natures, i.e., all irrational beings, and all particular causes created and arranged for the service of rational beings.100 O righteous traveler, No evil shall come to you, Nor shall the scourge come near your dwelling.

For He (the Most High) has given His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways.

In their hands, they shall bear you up: Lest you dash your foot against a stone.101 Simple angels are the immediate mentors and protectors of wayfaring man and directors of all less noble beings who serve man in any way. The Archangels are all of this, only more excellently. They preside over all things that concern faith, divine worship, supernatural and natural laws to be observed, great news to be announced, and the like.102

FOURTH MEDITATION In Heaven, the Saints of the Human Species are the Equals of the Angels 98

See most of these notions in St. Thomas, Contr. Gent. l. 3, c. 80 1, q. 111, a. 2.

100 Contr. Gent. loc. cit.

101 Ps 90:10-12.

102 Contr. Gent. loc. cit. The Principalities are archangels of a superior order, lavishing their care on cities, kingdoms, empires, republics, and above all on the Society par excellence, which is the Church of Christ. These spirits raise or lower nations, give preponderance to one people rather than another, change or maintain dynasties and forms of government. Any State which knows its interests should have special devotion to the Holy Principalities.

99

458. We have just cast a glance at the organism of the immense angelic society, which fills and exceeds the material universe. O how beautiful, grandiose, lively creation is in the eyes of faith! How nature and its phenomena are radically explained by God, by the Empyrean, by the Angels! But what will it be when, with our eyes illuminated by the light of glory, we will see all that is now for us only an object of faith!

When we contemplate all these invisible things of which God is the Creator, as well as visible things!

When we can no longer die because we will be equal to the Angels and glorified sons of God!103 459. Although according to nature, says St. Thomas, it is impossible for any human creature to equal angels, men can nevertheless, by grace, deserve a glory great enough to be associated with every angelic choir.104 There are, therefore, saints of the human species Therefore, there are saints of the human species among the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, and so on.105 But is there any man in Heaven who has his glorious seat above all Seraphim? Other than the humanity of Christ, Mary’s abode is much higher than the highest dwelling of the angels,106 so the theologians’ question concerns some human figure inferior to the Blessed Virgin. In this regard, a large number of 103

Lk 20:36.

1. q. 108, a. 8. Saint Augustine seems to espouse a different opinion when he says: Animae ... rationales ... illis superiorlbus (angelis) officio quidem impares, sed natura pares. De lib. arbitrio, l. 3, c. 11, n. 32. See also Contra Maximinum, lib. 2, chap. 25. Elsewhere he sides with St. Thomas: ln Joann. Tract. 110. n. 7. But S. Thomas himself, in his Comment. in Epist. ad Hebr. (ch. II, vv. 9-13), clarifies his thought better, which also explains perfectly the manner of saying of St. Augustine.

104

Christ, says the Angel of the school, was not lowered below the Angels because of His human nature, but because of His passion. For the nature of the human spirit, which Christ took without sin, is the greatest thing after the Trinity. Speaking in general of angelic nature and human nature, the holy Doctor continues: If one considers these two natures in themselves only, the angelic nature is more excellent and nobler than the nature of the human spirit, because the angel receives the knowledge of divine truth with a certain excellence and fullness of intellectual light, while man receives it through creatures. But if one considers both natures as free from sin and arranged for the acquisition of blessedness, the two natures are equal: "They are equal to the angels" (Luke, 20:36). However, Christ, in his human spirit, from the standpoint of the excellence of grace, is greater than the angels. His "little lowering" below the angels should therefore not be understood according to divine nature, nor even, ABSOLUTELY, according to human nature, but only insofar as He suffered according to the latter. So, if we consider wayfaring man as a child of God, that is to say as having been delivered from sin, adorned with sanctifying grace, instructed by revelation and by faith, gravitating towards blessedness under the influences of the supernatural, his nature thus perfected puts him at the level of wayfaring angels, according to St. Thomas: They are equal to the angels and sons of God, since they are children of the resurrection. It is in this sense that Andrew of Jerusalem said of Mary: The Virgin eclipses the very nature of the Seraphim; by the miracle of Divine Motherhood, she became the “first of natures,” the one who is closest to God, Author of all generations (Orat. 2. de Annuntiatione).

Therefore, the supernatural tends to equal men with angels already in this life; it makes up for the inferiority of our nature to put us in a condition as noble as that of the heavenly spirits. How precious is, then, the supernatural for us! How true it is that saints like St. Louis Gonzague and others led an angelic life on earth! How easy it is to admit that the saints of the human species are spread in Heaven among all angelic choirs! The angel who revealed the apocalyptic mysteries to St. John told him: Take care not to adore me, for I am your fellow servant, and like your brothers the prophets (Ap 22:9). This, says Bossuet, equalizes the apostolic and prophetic ministry to the angelic state. St. Greg. hom. 8 in Evang. (Bossuet, Apocal. C. 19, v. 10).

105 God, by the generosity of his grace, elevates the members (mystics) of his only Son to equality with the holy angels. St. Augustine, In Joann. Tract. 110, n. 6.

106 Suarez. De Angelis, l. I, ch. 14, n. 19.

authors share St. Thomas’s favorite opinion, adopting St. Gregory’s thinking. This Pope says that the angel who sinned most seriously (Lucifer) was the highest of all angels, which seems most likely.107 Now, given the doctrine of the saints that men are destined to fill the seats left empty by the rebellious angels, it follows that a saint of the human species must occupy the place of Lucifer and that, therefore, a saint must be higher in glory than the most sublime of the Seraphim.108 460. As for me, if I can express my opinion on this point, I hold that St. Joseph dwells in the glorious abode that Lucifer was to have deserved if he was the highest of the Angels (which I find unlikely, cf. nos. 732 & ff.). It is indisputable that the two noblest members of the Holy Family, Jesus and Mary, dominate from way up high the most sublime choirs of the Angels. What place, then, can be reserved for the temporal head of the Holy Family, if not the first after Mary’s?

Furthermore, St. Joseph was the real, very chaste and virginal husband of the Mother of God; the husband God chose from among all men for his incomparable virtues, expressly prepared for that eminent ministry by choicest graces.

This great patriarch was a very intimate and faithful confidant of God. He was revealed the divine secrets that concerned the salvation of all humanity, the restoration of angelic society, and the ennobling of the whole universe. He was the custodian of God’s dearest possession, His only Son, the object of all His kindness, and His Mother, the most perfect of creatures. He nourishes and sustains the Man-God, Redeemer of men, and King and Judge of all creation, with the sweat of his brow. This distinguished personage played an effaced role among men. He was immensely great in his humility and dedication; lived only for Mary, Jesus and God; was guided by the Most High Himself through the Angels; received only in Heaven the compensation for his sublime virtues. After Mary, Saint Joseph is the most salient antithesis of Lucifer-- the proud, selfish, creator and first partisan of naturalism, rebel Angel, father of lies, and first murderer. He was a man of faith, obedience, complete abnegation, prayer, and continuous work, who followed all motions of grace and of the Holy Ghost.

O Joseph, I salute you as the noblest of heavenly citizens after the divine Virgin. You have the angelic choirs for your throne. In glory, the Holy Family is no more divided than during the trial. In Heaven, you participate in the excellences of your incomparable Spouse and your divine adoptive Son (no. 247). Thus, o great Saint, I want you too to occupy my thoughts, affections and prayers, the sublime rank that you occupy in the abode of glory.

107

1, q. 63, a. 7 - lib. 2. Dist. 6, art. 1.

Suarez, ibid. It is by no means strange for humans to be mingled in glory with angelic choirs and even occupy distinguished ranks there. Nor is there is anything unusual in admitting that a human member of Jesus Christ is raised above the Seraphim, for: 1°. This elevation is due to grace, not to nature; 2°. The works of God commonly follow the progression from the imperfect towards the perfect, witness Jesus-Christ and Mary, who surpass all angels, the New Testament, which surpasses the Old, the complete celestial Jerusalem, which surpasses the primitive Empyrean. 3°. Men have more affinity with Jesus-Christ, the King of kings, than with angels. 4°. According to many authors, compared to the angels, men are subjected to a very long test, a test every moment, which lasts throughout man’s entire temporal life. 5°. This ordeal is very severe, as there is an internal struggle between his faculties, a struggle against the world and against the fascination of material goods, a struggle against demons, a struggle against the difficulty of learning, believing, supernaturalizing a heavy body singularly inclined towards sensible things, a fight against disease and death. The purpose of all this is to increase his merit, and consequently his glory.

108

461. The other Saints are spread in the various angelic choirs according to their different degrees of merit and particular excellences. Indeed, says St. Augustine, in Heaven, the good Angels and Saints do not form two cities or two societies, but a single one comprised of Angels and Men.109 With the Angels, says Pope St. Gregory, we form a kind of society of brethren because both were created as rational beings.110 The Gospel formally teaches this truth: ‘They that shall be found worthy of the age to come, and of the glorious resurrection of the dead ... shall be equal to the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.’111 This equality of conditions between man and Angel in the Empyrean involves and requires distributing the Saints among the various angelic orders, from the Seraphim’s to that of simple Angels. To the great Pope St. Gregory, this parity seems so absolute that in Heaven, men will be equal in number to the faithful angels. The heavenly city, he says, is comprised of Angels and men, and we believe that as many representatives of the human race as chosen Angels will rise there. The multitude of men who will ascend to heaven is believed to be equal to the multitude of Angels who remained faithful.112 462. Are there on earth any characteristics that distinguish the elect who will belong to this or that angelic choir? According to Saint Gregory,113 Saint Vincent Ferrier,114 Saint Mechtilde,115 and the notions expounded above, drawn mainly from Saint Dionysius and Saint Thomas, the answer is yes. The teaching of the Saints carries considerable weight, especially when they tell us about the society of the children of God, for they were full of the Spirit from above. In Heaven, we will see among simple Angels a multitude of people who had little religious instruction but never ceased to piously communicate their knowledge to their brothers by word and example (St. Gregory). We will also see ordinary penitents (St. Vincent Ferrer), and people who practiced corporal works of mercy, such as caring for the poor and sick (St. Mechtilde).

We can add the multitude of baptized children who die before the age of reason. Since the heavenly Church is only one, it is more appropriate to say that all those saved are raised to the angelic orders.116 Saint Thomas prefers this opinion to that of theologians who imagine a tenth choir made up of ‘less perfect’ Saints. Therefore, we must place in the ninth angelic choir all men of ordinary holiness who, like the simple Angels (no. 449, in fine, and 457), were only obedient executors of the divine will in a restricted framework.117 463. Men of great devotion (St. Vincent Ferrer), men of meditation and prayer (St. Mechtilde), men well instructed in the truths of religion, and zealous to teach them to others (St. Gregory), will be admitted to the choir of the Archangels. In the immortal glory of the Archangels will participate: Edifying and devoted teachers; good heads of families or other societies; good priests who propagate the faith, good manners, devotion, and frequency to the sacraments (no. 457) among those entrusted to them; 109 110 111

De Civitas Dei, 1. 12, chap. 1, n. 1.

Super Cant. Cantic. expos. chap. 1, in versic. 5, n. 25.

Lk 20:35,36.

XL Homil. in Evang. Libr II, Homil. 34, n. 11.

113 Loc. cit.

114 rd 3 Sermon on All Saints.

115 Revelations.

116 St. Thomas, Libr. II Dist. 9, art. 4.

117 Such are those who die in the friendship of God and who, so to speak, did not exercise any authority during their life, neither by exceptional holiness, nor by some remarkable leadership.

112

subordinate employees who make religion and order reign with true piety in all that depends on them; all those who sanctified themselves in these states, if they did not acquire, in their modest condition, eminent merits that make them rise higher.

464. Among the Principalities, we will see people who, besides the merits of the preceding categories, had a more excellent victory over the desires of concupiscence (St. Mechtilde); others who, in addition to exactly fulfilling the duties of their state, will also have done works of mercy, and especially spiritual ones (St. Vincent Ferrer); still others who, superior in virtue to the good, will have commanded them in a holy way (St. Gregory). The main qualities on earth that distinguish imitators and future equals of the celestial Principalities are signal self-control, a broad beneficent influence, and a marked ascendancy over elites. They are the faithful executors of higher wills in matters concerning the administration of cities, provinces, kingdoms, particular Churches (n. 457). Glorified, they are of a higher degree than the Archangels although they also belong to the order of law enforcers. Individual applications here are easy to do depending on state and job.

465. Even more perfect humans are assigned to the second angelic hierarchy: Those who reached a high degree of conformity to God’s will amid tribulations (St. Vincent Ferrer); those who distinguished themselves as superiors by their zeal and charity (St. Mechtilde). Those who put evil spirits to flight by prayer and authority118 will be associated with the Powers. These people stand out for their exceptional attachment to God’s will despite serious difficulties and their zeal to overcome obstacles and put up a terrible fight against demons. Remarkably, it is also up to these people to determine the mode of accomplishment of what is prescribed (no. 448). Cowards are never prudent. The elect know how to prevent the violation of the universal order and remove the causes that disturb it (no. 455). That is how they are powers on earth before being so in heaven.

In Heaven are in their place valiant men, prelates, priests, religious, laypeople who unite Catholics in disciplined and compact ranks to defend the rights of God, the Church, the family, society, against liberalism, an instrument of Freemasonry, and against Freemasonry itself, the church of Satan.

In Heaven belong: - Famous writers, powerful and engaging speakers who defeat Lucifer’s emissaries and his army of sophists, put unbelief and vice to shame, discredit the party of evil, restore faith, religion, the Church and virtue to their divine ascendant, for the high government of nations, peoples, and individuals; - Ministers of religious worship who, with prudence, zeal and recourse to divine institutions, deliver from sin and from the devil immortal souls made to reign in heaven; - Honest magistrates and judges who, in times of weakness and prevarication, maintain justice throughout the empire and treat crimes as they deserve despite any opposition; - All those who resemble these glorious agents of order, and frank and courageous enemies of disorder.

466. In the rank of Virtues, we must place: - Miracle workers and all saints who work wonders for the glory of religion, the good of souls, and God's honor (St. Gregory). People like Gregory the miracle worker, John of Matha, Vincent of Paul, Dom Bosco, 118

St. Gregory, loco citato, at n. 461.

Giuseppe Cottolengo; religious faithful to their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience (St. Mechtilde) as they worked wonders during their lives.119 - People who particularly loved and blessed their enemies (St. Vincent Ferrer) such as St. Stephen, St. Cyprian, St. Jean Gualbert.

- Men who excel at persuading and convert their fellowmen, giving them the possibility and energy to return to God or grow in perfection (no. 448), such as St. John Chrysostom, St. Anthony of Padua, St. François de Sales.

- Men who constitute the principle of universal operation (no. 445), such as the holiest and greatest popes, Peter the Hermit, Bernard of Clairvaux, and so many other men of God who powerfully influenced their contemporaries to improve them.

According to St. Dionysius and St. Thomas,120 this angelic choir, and consequently the saints who will be admitted therein, are distinguished by a superabundant force that earns them the name of Virtues. This name means manly and unshakeable strength, which is applied to accomplish all divine operations under their responsibility and receive all enlightenments that divinity bestows.121 Virtues fearlessly undertake the divine things that concern them. This operation seems attributable to their strength of soul (St. Thomas, 1. c.). With their gaze always fixed on the very Virtue which is God, they seek with all their might to mirror the image of the infinite Virtue, while spreading it on lower-rank beings in imitation of the divinity.122 467. The human Dominations, who reign with the angelic Dominations, are those who excelled in conformity with God (St. Mechtilde) by subjecting their reason to faith, their will to divine law, their flesh to the spirit, their nature to grace (St. Gregory). Such are kings, emperors, and holy pontiffs who made justice reign among peoples and nations and caused the religion of Christ to flourish by spreading it, giving it prestige and making it loved and respected (St. Vincent Ferrer). Their wise counselors also have merits equal to the heavenly Dominations; they discern how things must be done according to divine views (no. 448), elect most virtuous and capable people for top offices, pick and indicate the best means to govern people and public affairs in a holy way.

Supreme domination belongs to God alone, says Saint Thomas after Saint Dionysius. But the Holy Scriptures call Dominations by participation the higher angelic orders (as the members of the supreme hierarchy are also Dominations, although they surpass the Dominations properly speaking), by which inferiors receive gifts from God. The name Dominations means: 1. A certain freedom that raises the individual above the servile condition, vulgar subjection, and tyrannical oppression that even great souls sometimes undergo; 2. A strict and inflexible governing mode whereby the Angel does not incline toward any act that is servile or proper to subjects or victims of tyrants; 119

Ecclus 31:9.

1. q. 108, a. 5, ad 1m.

121 St. Denys, Celestial Hierarchy, ch. VIII, par. 1.

122 St. Denys, ibid.

120

3. A desire to participate in the real domain, which is in God, and possess that participation.123 These characters remind us, for example, of St. Ambrose, St. Gregory, and the glorious army of martyrs.

468. Among the Angelic Thrones will shine: - Contemplative souls and those particularly devoted to evangelical poverty (St. Vincent Ferrer); - Souls fully occupied with God and heavenly things, whose hearts were a rich temple of God (St. Mecthilde); - Souls who exercise vigilant self-control and examine themselves seriously, always imbued with the fear of God; - Who, in return, receive the gift of judging others properly; - Who, with the mind familiarized with divine contemplation, make of themselves thrones of God from which the Lord examines the actions of other persons and admirably rules all things.

What are these souls, if not thrones of their Creator? Where will they be admitted, if not among the Thrones? When such men direct the Holy Church, even the elect are reprimanded for their acts of weakness (St. Gregory). These men may have no part in the direct government of other men and things, but, full of the Spirit of God, they are inspirers and enlightenment of those who rule (n. 451).

According to St. Thomas, They are thrones of God in four ways because: 1. They are high enough to see the reasons for things in God, the Divine Scriptures, or the examples of Jesus Christ and the Saints. That means to have things done according to the ideal approved by God (no.

449 towards the end); 2. They are particularly strengthened by God in truth and good, serving Him on a solid basis. This calls to mind the greatest martyrs and the likes of St. Athanasius, St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, and all saints who shone the most for their invincible character; 3. They receive God within themselves and take to others, in some way, what we should rightly call divine truths, divine inspirations, divine wills, making them shine forth in the world just as the glory of a monarch shines from the height of his throne; 4. They are always open from above to receive God promptly and serve Him.124 They live only for God: ‘for me, to live is Christ,’125 and seek only the interests of Christ.126 They accomplish in themselves the words of St. Paul: ‘I count all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but as dung, that I may gain Christ,127 forgetting what is behind, and advancing toward what is ahead.’128 These are human thrones that mingle with angelic thrones.

123

Sum. Theol. 1. p. q. 108, a. 5, ad 2m.

Ibid. ad 6m.

125 Phil. 1:21.

126 Ibid. II, 21.

127 Ibid. III, 8.

128 Ibid. 13.

124

469. Those in the category we just mentioned who also shone with a rare divine knowledge are Thrones and Cherubim, as the higher angelic choirs have and surpass all the perfection of lower ones (no. 440).

Human or angelic Cherubim are distinguished from Thrones by the fullness of their knowledge, which is their unique character (n. 452). Although in God's sight, they are superior to Thrones in all things, in the eyes of ordinary people, they may still not present all the splendor of Thrones because they are more distant. Now, who are these humans destined for such high dignity in the heavenly court?

470. They are undoubtedly the most eminent doctors of the Church and preachers of the truth (St. Vincent Ferrer), because, as we have seen, the mediocre have their place in the lower choirs. These are men who possess true wisdom and teach it to others (St. Mechtilde). They possess it in a very high degree and teach it to a huge number of people in an excellent manner. They add a fullness of knowledge to the fullness of charity (St. Gregory); that is to say, their charity is proportional to their knowledge.

471. St. Denys and St. Thomas draw the Cherubim portrait with a firmer hand. These sublime angels are called the fullness of knowledge for four reasons (St. Thomas).

1. Because of their aptitude to have perfect knowledge and vision of God: they are created for that (St. Denys and St. Thomas).

2. Because of their capacity to absorb the waves of supreme light (St. Dionysius); and because, in fact, they fully receive these waves (St. Thomas) as they have been faithful to their vocation and to grace.

3 °. Because of their virtue to contemplate the sovereign beauty in its initial radiance (St. Dionysius), that is to say, to contemplate in God the beauty of the order of things, which derives from Him (St. Thomas). For example, the earthly Cherubim see the entire divine plan in the Incarnation of the Word; in the elect, they see all men; in the Catholic Church, all other temporal societies; in religious truths, all other truths, etc.

4. Because of their abundance of wise generosity and spontaneity in communicating to their immediate inferiors the treasures with which wisdom has filled them (St. Dionysius), in so far as, full of this knowledge, they pour it abundantly upon others (St. Thomas).129 472. Who does not see here the moral profile of these illustrious saints whose doctrine enlightens popes, councils, bishops, doctors, and higher schools? Humanity’s Cherubim are those like Dionysius, Cyril, Jerome, Anselm of Aosta, Damascene, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Isidore of Seville, and all those great for their holiness who have excelled in the world of religious truth, queen and mistress of all truth. If most of them were great pontiffs, i.e., distinguished Powers, Virtues, Dominations and Thrones, they were much nobler by their divine knowledge united to holiness than by the dignities in which they were invested. So nothing is lacking in the glory of a Saint Jerome or a Saint Thomas Aquinas, although they did not govern peoples. Indeed, it is more sublime to enlighten rulers than to govern. Even more, to shepherd shepherds is to shepherd the sheep excellently.130

129

St. Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, ch. 7, s. 1; St. Thomas, 1, q. 108; at. 5, ad 5m.

The highest places are always below great souls; nothing makes them swell or dazzle, because nothing shines brighter than them. Massillon.

130

473. The human species has members also worthy of reigning among the Seraphim. According to St. Vincent Ferrer, Saint Mechtilde, and Pope St. Gregory,131 these are men burning with divine love and ardent charity for their neighbor. Since all saints are such by charity, what distinguishes them from lower saints is not charity but an excessively great and burning charity, according to St. Thomas and St. Dionysius, whose doctrine we report here.132 The name of the Seraphim (Burners and Destroyers, n. 453) brilliantly expresses: 1. Their perpetual movement toward divine things (St. Dionysius). They have fiery properties, a flame that rises upward, and are carried continually toward God by a motion that never strays nor slows down.133 2. The ardor, subtlety and effervescence of their firm, inflexible, and permanent activity (St. Dionysius).

They are like fires that burn with extreme vivacity, penetrate all atoms of what they touch, and act with an ardor that far surpasses all ordinary fervor (St. Thomas).

3. Their energetic capacity to lift lower beings to their likeness by animating and exciting them with a similar fire and purifying them in eminently consuming flames (St. Dionysius).134 These powerful flames signify the energetic action that the Seraphim exert on their subjects, exciting them to a sublime fervor and purifying them totally by their fire (St. Thomas) as fire purifies gold.

4. Their patent, unwavering and unchanging property to receive and transmit light while pushing back and banishing the obscurity of darkness (St. Dionysius). They are resplendent fires, meaning these Angels have inextinguishable light and perfectly illuminate others (St. Thomas).

474. Are these not the hallmarks of most Prophets, especially Apostles and Evangelists? They were the men of God par excellence who received and transmitted all divine impressions. Prophets always were holy men of God who spoke inspired by the Holy Ghost.135 There appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with divers tongues as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak.136 We cannot but speak the things that we have seen and heard, said St. Peter on behalf of all the apostles,137 so irresistible was the fire that inspired them. They were constantly turned to God and divine things, always at the maximum fervor converting almost immediately vice-laden pagans into fervent saints or martyrs: that is how great assimilators they were. Worthy disciples of Him Who is the light of the world,138 they were powerful reflectors of this light139 and engendered children of light with every step and word. They were the Seraphim of the human species in this place of trial and mortality.

131

In the places mentioned, n. 462.

In the places mentioned above, n. 471, note.

133 St. Thomas, ibid.

134 Always according to the translation of Father J. Dulac.

135 2 Pet 1:21.

136 Acts 2:3,4.

137 Ibid. 4:20.

138 Jn 8:12.

139 Vos estis lux mundi. Mt 5:14.

132

Their voice resounded throughout all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.140 Are they not now in the place where perfection is complete and crowned, equals of the angelic Seraphim?

475. “You cannot come to fully understand how great the excellence of the Holy Apostles is,” Father Segneri very aptly says. “It surpasses not only that of all saints of the Old Testament but also of the New. For although grace abounded in other saints, it superabounded in the Apostles. In His beloved Son, God made us pleasing to His eyes according to the riches of His grace, which abounded in us in all wisdom and prudence.141 For God, other saints may have suffered more atrocious martyrdoms, endured greater poverty, or done greater penances than any Apostle. But merit is not measured by the harsh difficulty of works but according to the love with which one does them. And in the Apostles, this love was more intense than in any other saint. That is why, for God, they courageously faced so much suffering daily and would have faced much more and indefinitely, as needed: Who, then, shall separate us from the love of Christ?142 476. “Let no one object that an equally intense love may have reigned in the hearts of other saints, for they could not have it if God, by His grace, had not given it to them. Grace is given according to a measure; each of us has been given grace according to the measure of the gift of Jesus Christ.143 It was given to no one (except the Virgin, and probably also to Her spouse).144 It was given to no one more abundantly than the Holy Apostles, who were like twelve fundamental stones serving as bases for the Church: “God established in the Church, first of all, the Apostles.145 So, privileged in terms of grace, the Apostles were also privileged in other gifts: wisdom, piety, prudence, and so on. They had the first fruits of the Holy Ghost: ‘We ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit.’146 As you know, the firstfruits are the most substantial and appreciated produce of the fields: Israel was consecrated to the Lord and chosen to be the first fruits of his fruits (his firstborn people).147 Christ has reserved for Himself the care of these first fruits, entrusting them to no one else, to fulfill the word that God said to Aaron: “Behold I have given you the charge of my first fruits.”148 477. “You can see how the Lord was closely attached to them and loved them!149 Suffice it to observe that, if this is not a formal error, at least, as Saint Thomas teaches us, it is a temerity to assert that God united Himself more closely with any saint other than the Apostles. Therefore, it is not permissible to discuss which of them should be esteemed the greatest vis-a-vis the others, Quis eorum videatur esse major, 150 because it is up to the Lord to weigh spirits.151 It is not only permitted but a duty to give the Apostles the first rank without ceremony: “Instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee: 140

Rm 10:18.

Eph 1:6, 8.

142 Rm 8:35.

143 Eph 4:7 144 See no. 460.

145 1Cor 12:28 146 Rm 8:23.

147 Jer 2:3.

148 Num 18:8.

149 Dt 10:15.

150 Lk 22:24.

151 Pr 16:2.

141

Thou shalt make them princes over all the earth.”152 478. The Apostles, says St. Thomas, are the Church members who have obtained the primacy of spiritual graces.153 Having been faithful to the graces received, they also have the primacy of glory in heaven after the Mother of God and her chaste spouse and share the splendors of the Seraphim. As we have often said (nos. 95, 96; see particularly in note 26, no. 96, the passage from Saint John Chrysostom), the Church Militant is the faithful image of the Church Triumphant, and the Apostles occupy in it the same rank they held in the former. They illuminate the celestial choirs like the higher Angels (no. 197) and reign in glory more excellently than they had reigned during the trial.

479. We would also need to assign the Apostles the place of honor if gifts were an infallible rule to judge the elevation of saints in the heavenly orders: primum apostolos. According to St. Paul,154 immediately after them, one should place the holy Prophets, then the Holy Doctors, miracle workers, etc. The holy prophets, eminently enlightened as they even saw the future, would associate with the Cherubim, who shine above all for the fullness of their knowledge. The holy doctors, steadfast pillars of truth, would be added to the Thrones; and the other saints would be distributed between the two lower hierarchies.

480. There is only one infallible rule to judge the degrees of holiness, and that rule is the degree of union with God, the degree of charity down here, which only God can know. That is why, although we have named several saints as able to take part in this or that angelic choir, we do not intend to make a judgment on this point. We only offer examples that make more intelligible the doctrine of St. Dionysius, St. Thomas, St. Gregory without prejudice to the precedence that one saint may have over others. We do so based on analogy, on the teaching of great saints, and on principles that we see as very solid and instructive and apply to specific persons.

However, we believe that these considerations are beneficial as far as they enlighten us on the relative excellence of the supernatural gifts and the various virtues and offices that men perform in the Church.

Thus, entirely detached from the world, contemplatives choose the best part.155 Faithful to their vocation, they gravitate toward the supreme angelic hierarchy, where the splendors of charity and truth are most extensive and vivid. As such, the ministers of the high government of affairs are in a lower sphere; they participate in Dominations, Virtues, and Powers' offices.156 Likewise, the greatest popes and bishops, however brilliant they might be, never aspired to their dignities but instead endured them with resignation, witness St. Ambrose, St. Anselm, St. Gregory, and countless others. Their repugnance for what is most brilliant in men’s eyes was not due only to their profound modesty. They were also profoundly inclined to do higher studies, profound meditations, and prolonged prayer. Clairvoyance came to them from the high regions where their soul was at ease, making them disinterested in honorable distinctions, which they saw more as embarrassments and responsibilities than splendor.

152

Ps 44:17. Segneri, Manna dell'anima, May 1.

Comm. in Epist. ad Cor., chap. 12, v. 28 154 1 Cor 12:28.

155 Lk 10:42.

156 Unde Principatus et Potestates, in quorum nominibus praelatio designatur, virtutibus praeposuit (Gregorius) ...

Dionysius vero, quia virtus complementum potestatis designat, praeposuit Virtutes Potestatibus et Principatibus.

Videtur autem verior assignatio Dionysii utpote qui ab Apostolo immediate accepit. St. Thomas, libr. 2, Dist. 9, art.

1, ad 5m.

153

How great they were! As such, those more or less distinguished officials who carry out the will of rulers are called to figure among the Principalities, Archangels, and Angels.

481. How wise and good God is! He wants to measure everything by the weight of love and not by the importance of jobs. Through grace, love is everyone’s responsibility, whatever their social position may be. That is why many first will be last, and many last will be first.157 This terrible sentence is a wholesome humiliation for grandees while strongly encouraging little ones. Let grandees fear the fate of Lucifer and be as great in virtues as in their office, and let little ones aspire to the true greatness accessible to all: that of charity. When a holy soul soars to heaven, it ascends higher or lower among the angelic choirs according to the intensity of its divine love. The degree of love is its specific weight, which places it where its balance will be stable. It does not have to look for its place; all its energies and the environment it crosses naturally carry it to its final home. O charity, you are everything for man: Love is the fullness of the law;158 love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.159 As the hart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after thee, O God. My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God; When shall I come and appear before the face of God? 160

FIFTH MEDITATION The Relative Number of Angels. The Various Angelic Natures.

All Angels, Even THE ASSISTANTS, Play Some Role in the Direct Government of the World or Men 482. So far, we have given a general idea of heavenly society and the main classes of citizens who compose it. In this Meditation, we are going to study more specific questions: 1. the relative number of Angels of the three hierarchies; 2. the diversity of Angels who form the same choir; 3. the general and particular government of the world by the Angels, including the assisting Angels.

I. The Relative Number of Angels 483. As we have seen (nos. 434-439), the number of Angels exceeds all material multitude.161 But one may wonder whether this number, unimaginable to wayfaring man, is chiefly formed by the noblest 157

Mt 19:30.

Rm 13: 10.

159 Lk 10:27.

160 Ps 41:2-3.

158

Angels, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones, or primarily by Angels of the lower choirs. Pope St. Gregory and St. Denys disagree on this point because they interpret differently this passage from Daniel: millia millium ministrabant ei, et decies millies centena millia assistebant ei.162 According to S. Gregory, the thousands of thousands of Angels (millia millium) employed in the external ministries constitute an indefinite number—consequently greater than all our numbers—while the billion (decies millies centena millia) of Angels who attend before God is a determined number that indicates precisely the multitude of assisting Angels.163 Therefore, the latter would be less numerous than the former. However, we find that other Church Fathers do not share this opinion. Almost all interpreters admit that neither of these two numbers is definite and that both mean untold multitudes.

The latter designates a multitude much greater than the former: the thousands of thousands represent the Angels employed in the government of the material or mixed universe. The billion represents the Angels of the first hierarchy.

484. - Such is the opinion of St. Dionysius, who was able to draw inspiration directly from the Apostles and wrote a whole treatise on the celestial hierarchy. This is how St. Thomas understands the doctrine of St. Dionysius and supports it for the following reasons: 1. God particularly wants and multiplies what is better. According to this principle, the contemplating Angels are superior to others and hence are also more numerous. 2. This conclusion has the advantage of responding better to the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture because the billion assisting Angels is a number greater than the millions of angels of the second and third hierarchy.164 We could add that the Seraphim, spiritual natures that form the first order after that of the Divine Persons (no. 453), and serve so to speak as a transition between the infinitely great and perfect Trinity and the creatures, must compensate as best as possible by number for their immense inferiority to God. That can also be said, proportionally, of the Cherubim and Thrones.

Moreover, the more the Empyrean abounds in these noble spirits and the richer and more beautiful it is, the greater God appears.

485. It may seem that, while the higher Angels outnumber the lower ones, Jesus Christ as man, and Mary and St. Joseph, being only three in number, do not form in the Heavenly Court a suitable proportion above the Seraphim.

We reply that their glory is so great that it exceeds that of the higher Angels, however many they may be. The earthly trinity mingles, as it were, with the splendors of the heavenly Trinity. The created trinity is the closest thing there is to the Divine Persons. Naturally, there is no doubt about the Man-God or the Mother of God. As for Saint Joseph, who can worthily appreciate the eminence of his holiness? The more we meditate on the main features that distinguish this incomparable character (no. 460), the more we see him rise above the Seraphim. The more we probe the greatness of his vocation, the length and difficulties of his trial, his union with God, his close relations with Jesus and Mary, his virtue so sublime in a mortal body, the more he seems to eclipse the splendor of angelic choirs. St. Joseph’s perfection was life was a living image of the hidden life of Jesus, a life so meaningful in God’s eyes that it spanned thirty years of the Savior’s short mortal existence. St. Joseph’s life was a model for the future Queen of 161

Excedunt igitur in numero intellectuales substantiae separatae omnium rerum materialium multitudinem. St. Thomas, Contr. Gent. 1. 2, c. 92, 3°.

162 Dan 7:10.

163 Moral. l. 17, ch. 131 or, according to other editions, ch. 9.

164 1 q. 112, s.4, ad 2m.

Angels. His hidden but powerful influences engendered the interior life of Apostles and leading Saints, and was like the soul of their marvelous exterior life.

St. Joseph shone in this world invisible to mortals but closer to God. By its splendors, his virtue, elevated a full degree above that of the Seraphim, forms a kind of heaven which embraces the unimaginable multitude of the noblest Angels. What an honor for humanity! What good for us to have the Man-God as our leader! The Heavenly Court’s leading figures belong to humanity!

After and below them are ranged, three by three, other images of the Trinity, the nine choirs of Angels, and the happy humans of the second and lower orders.

However, contrary to what happens among the Angels, the Saints of the human species appear to be relatively rare in the higher angelic choirs and more numerous in the lower ones. The human trial is rough, and Christian perfection is very high. It would follow that the men called to fill the voids the rebellious angels left in heaven165 would be relatively more numerous in the lower choirs than in the higher ones. Lucifer's pride would have particularly dazzled the weakest minds, the simplest angels.166 On the other hand, the Gospel is announced above all to the poor and simple of the human species: The Spirit of the Lord ... has sent me to evangelize the poor;167 He hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.168 While the simple repopulate Heaven, how many great minds, according to the world, head toward the abyss where Lucifer presides!

II. The Various Angelic Natures 486. The Elect of the same choir are not all equally perfect or elevated. Among the same Angels who belong to the same order, we distinguish the first, the middle, and the last, as St. Dionysius says.169 True, they share certain characters that place them in the same choir, but they are not equal in everything.170 Moreover, all the Angels differ specifically from each other, and this difference comes from the various degree of perfection that brings angelic nature closer to God. This is something we find in several types of natural things.171 St. Thomas strongly supports the same thesis in the Summa Theologiae,172 Summa Contra Gentiles,173 in his Treatise on Spiritual Creatures,174 and elsewhere. But other theologians are very divided on this question.175 Let us expound on our point of view without prejudice.

487. We conceive the species as the best essential part of a being that distinguishes its essence from that of other beings. Reason or the faculty of reasoning is my species because it is my essence at its best.

165

In quemlibet ordinem (angelorum) homines assumuntur in supplementum ruinae angelicae. St. Thomas, 1. q. 63, a. 9, ad 3m.

166 Thus it is that, among us, anti-Christian sophisms deceive especially deceive superficial and conceited minds, where faith has hardly set roots.

167 Lk 4:18.

168 Lk 1:51-53.

169 St. Thomas, 1, q. 50, a. 4, sed contra.

170 Ibid. q. 108, a 3, ad 1m.

171 Lib. 2, Dist. 21 a. 2.

172 1, q. 50, a. 4.

173 L. 2, ch. 93.

174 Art. 8.

175 See Mazzella, De Deo Creante, nos. 280-285.

It also differentiates me from an Angel, who does not reason,176 and from a beast, who cannot reason.

The same happens in lower degrees with the sensitive faculty in the animal species and with life in the vegetable species. What is best in angelic essence? What distinguishes it from other created essences?

At first glance, angelic essence is pure spirituality, created noble and perfect enough to exist by itself, meaning not intended to inform a body substantially.177 This conception, which is the simplest and easiest, naturally leads us to say that all Angels form one species and differ from each other only as more or less perfect individuals of the same species. Such is the opinion of St. Bonaventure, Albert-leGrand, Scot, and other illustrious theologians.178 1. The best thing about the essence of an Angel, at least one who is not the last, is not pure spirit, which is the genre common to all Angels179 but the highest degree of essential and natural perfection an Angel received in his creation. Here below, we cannot know this degree perfectly because our ideas, formed in the world of sensible things, are not perfect enough to understand the degrees of essential perfection of pure spirituality. That makes it impossible for us to make a proper and exact definition of an Angel.180 2. Yet pure spirituality cannot be the angelic species because the Angels are not composed of matter and substantial form like lower creatures. In the human species, the reason is added to animal nature;181 in the animal species, sensibility is added to life; in the plant species, life is added to being; and these additions inform these beings. How can we conceive of such processes in beings not composed of matter and form, beings that are only subsisting forms and thus have no subject to inform? Would you conceive an Angel as matter or a subject informed by pure spirituality? That is a contradiction in terms, for spirituality is pure only as long as it informs nothing. It would be absurd to suppose that an Angel could be plant, animal, man, and purely spiritual, which would form his species. Claiming that an Angel informs pure spirituality would be equally contradictory. In that case, the Angel would be the species proper to himself, and pure spirituality would be only an inferior species. Would you say that the Angel is composed of potency and act and that, therefore, there is something in him that takes the place of matter and form? An act is real and has nothing specific; it is suitable for all existing species. Besides, this composition gives rise to accidental forms, not our case.

3. By the very fact that the Angel is a separate form, he alone constitutes his species.182 The opposite would be a contradiction because it would be a separate form that is not separate. Forms are like numbers; nothing can be added or taken away from them without changing their species, and, as the Angels are numerous, they must form as many species as individuals.183

176

Cum in Angelo sit lumen intellectuale perfectum ... relinquitur quod Angelus sicut non intelligit ratiocinando, ita non intelligit componendo et dividendo. 13 p. q. 58, a. 4.

177 St. Thomas, Q. un. De Spirit. creat. a. 8, ad 13m.

178 See Mazzella, loc. cit.

179 Lib. 2, Dist. 3, q. 1, a, 2, ad sm.

180 De Spirit. ibid. ad 6m.

181 Differentia constitutiva hominis, est rationale, quod dicitur de homme ratione intellectivi principii. Intellectum ergo principium est forma hominis. 1, q. 76, a. 1, Sed contra, et in corp., et a. 3, ad 4 m.

182 Non potest intelligi quod aliqua forma separata sit nisi una unius speciei. 1a, q. 75, a. 7: 1.

183 We are only touching on this question; the nature of our work does not allow for longer developments.

489. St. Thomas's adversaries184 claim that the Angels differ from each other only in the various gifts of grace, glory and natural qualities added to the common essence of all Angels. This opinion has many drawbacks in addition to those mentioned. Let us note a few.

1. It fails sufficiently to take into account what we would call reasons of convenience, which abound in St. Thomas. Convenience reasons are very strong arguments in cases like ours dealing with works authored by God Himself. The beauty of the divine plan certainly surpasses all our conceptions. At least the beautiful things the saints tell us must be true. And if several saints do not agree on this subject, it is only rational for us, absent concrete proofs, to prefer the doctrine of the one who has best studied the whole of religion.

2° If forms inferior to man’s potentially exist in matter and resemble multiple things of the same species somewhat as human works come out of the same machine, God is the immediate author of pure spirits and rational souls. But He formed men’s hearts one by one,185 that is to say, He drew from nothing all souls distinctly and separately.186 He did something even better for the Angels, who are pure spirits. If our souls, very different from one another by their natural perfections, have a certain tendency to stand out from the common species, albeit united to bodies,187 what to say of forms that are essentially separated? Each is a particular stream from the infinite power. The Supreme Artist does not repeat Himself in the universe's perfect heights. He multiplies corruptible and perishable individuals in a species so that, as some disappear, others succeed them and save the species. Being one of a kind, the Immortal has nothing to fear and creates this sublime and profound variety in angelic society. How fruitful is God, and how admirable!

3° The above-mentioned opinion hardly agrees with a thesis which we believe almost generally supported, that is to say, that the Angels received grace and glory in proportion to the dose of perfection of their nature.188 All authors agree that the Angels were granted grace and glory in unequal measures. Why should the angelic natures—the foundations of their various supernatural edifices—not be essentially different? Just as grace comes from the pure will of God, so does angelic nature; and just as the will of God ordered nature to grace, it ordered degrees of nature to degrees of grace.189

184

We are not talking about the partisans of the average opinion which admits several angels of the same species, because this opinion, conciliatory at all costs, does not seem to be supported by any serious argument.

185 Ps 32:15.

186 Bellarmine, Commentary on this psalm.

187 Anima ex natum suae essentiae habet quod sit corpori unibilis; unde nec proprie anima est in specie, sed compositum (humanum). 1, q. 75, a. 7, ad 3m. Formae non collocantur in genere vel specie, sed composita. 1, -q.

76, a. 31 ad 2m.

188 1, q. 62, a. 6.

189 Ibid. ad 1m.

To claim the contrary is to spoil nature, made only for the supernatural (nos. 289, 290), reduce higher creatures to lower ranks, or try to accidentally obtain what God produces essentially, in a way more appropriate to pure spirits.190 490. Let us imagine the Angels, pure spirits, as perfect imitations of God as to their nature. God is alone in His absolute unity of essence, hovering infinitely above all genus and species, immense in His substantial solitude, an infinite Ocean of essence by Himself. The Angel is dependent on the very Being Who created him and thus is limited and contingent. But the angel is neither limited nor hampered in any way by matter or by essential affinities with it. He escapes all species other than his own, forming all by himself his degree of excellence in the high spiritual regions of the Empyrean, a magnificent image of the Great Spirit whose essence is incommunicable outside.

Since each Angel is a particular degree of essence, let us imagine, if we can, the richness and variety of angelic society, a society whose members our arithmetic cannot represent because of their multitude (nos. 434-439). If nature in the highest regions of the universe is so beautiful,191 what to say of the ornaments that grace and glory add to it? Supernatural gifts are admirably proportioned to all these natures and bring out their smallest particularities with divine brilliance and glorious reliefs. Is it not the case to repeat: For thou hast given me, O Lord, a delight in thy doings: In the works of thy hands, I shall rejoice.

O Lord, how great are thy works!

Thy thoughts are exceeding deep.192 How great are thy works, O Lord!

Thou hast made all things in wisdom.193 491. As for the blessed humans who, despite having a single and shared nature, are associated with Angels whose natures are all different, one must note that grace and glory abound in them to the point of compensating for the inferiority of their essence. With such graces, their very multiple, very varied, and very long trial lends itself to the acquisition of any degree of glory. Although inferior to the Angels by nature, humans have by accident what Angels have as essence. Thus, humans particularly glorify God’s merciful goodness while Angels glorify Him, especially as Creator and Supreme Author of the

190

Manifestum est quod in omnibus individuis unius speciei non est ordo nisi secundum accidens. Q. una De Spirit. creat. at. 8. See especially all this great art 191 Ille qui perfecte cognoscit res aliquas, potest usque ad minima et actus, et virtutes, et naturas earum distinguere ... Qui imperfecte cognoscit res naturales, distinguit earum ordines in universali, ponens in uno ordine coelestia corpora, in alio corpora inferiora inanimata, in alio plantas, in alio animalia; qui autem perfectius cognosceret res naturales, posset distinguera et in ipsis corporibus coelestibus di versos ordines, et in singulis aliorum ... Si perfecte cognosceremus officia angelorum et eorum distinctioues perfecte sciremus quod quilibet angelus habet ... suum propium ordinem in rebus. 1, q. 108. a. 3.

192 Ps 91: 5- 6.

193 Ps 103:24.

supernatural. Closer relatives of the Man-God than the Angels, Blessed humans are comparatively even more favored. Besides, human society has sinned less seriously than angelic society. As a consequence, except for the first two or three places of the heavenly Court, reserved for the great representatives of the human species (because it did not invent sin), the two blessed societies are on an equal footing and even form only a single community of brothers (no. 461).

III. All Angels, Even the Assistants, Play Some Role in the Direct Government of the World or Men 492. As we have seen above, God governs the material universe and the beings subjected to the test through the Angels (nos. 109, 110; 358; 373, 375). Such services are part of their accidental happiness.

By leading lower created beings to their respective ends, these spirits pour out their perfection on others. They act as perfect beings in God's likeness, which makes them happy.194 We, too, experience this happiness when we do works of mercy: It is better to give than to receive.195 The Angels, being freed from the painful condition of the trial, which necessitates receiving, regularly indulge in the pleasure of giving. All Angels give either to the Blessed souls lower than them or to beings gravitating toward their ultimate end. The first Angel illuminates the second, the second enlightens the third, and so on down to the Angel who cares for the humblest beings. All Angels are charged with a ministry and sent to exercise it, especially for those who will receive the inheritance of salvation;196 they also exercise that ministry on things created for the latter.

493. For that reason, nothing in this visible world can be arranged without the invisible creature.197 The spirit of life, that is, the Angel, governs all bodies with a certain order.198 After God, the Angels is as it were the quickening spirit of all nature. God does some things by Himself, for example, the enlightenment and sanctification of souls. But He does others through the ministry of his angelic creatures, whom He ordained by very just laws according to their merits. Through them, He provides for everything, from the administration of birds to the scent of grass and even the number of our hairs: Divine Providence forgets nothing.199 The world needs Angels to preside over beasts, animal birth, buds and plants' growth, and other things.200 The Angels rule not only human life, says Hugues de St. Victor, but also the things made for man. St. Thomas adds that all corporeal things are ordained to man, and hence all things are ruled by the ministry of Angels.201 494. In this way, the wonders of nature receive an adequate explanation. God, Creator of forms, matter, and all finite substances, placed the active principles of things in nature. But the Angels excite and direct forms mediately or immediately, and simple matter, which has no initiative, is made to obey the forms.

Hence one has all the harmonies of the sensible universe: the compositions of the various bodies, the great attractions, the worlds’ perpetual journeys, small attractions, vibrations of atoms, animal instincts,

194

l, q. 621 a. 91 ad 2m.

Acts 20:35.

196 Heb 1:14.

197 Pope St. Gregory, 4, Dial. chap. 5.

198 St. Augustine, 3, De Trinitate, chap. 5.

199 St. Augustine, lib. 83 Quaestionum, q. 62.

200 Origen, quoted by St. Thomas, q. 5 De Veritate, a. 8.

201 Ibidem, Sed contra.

195

plant structure, the immense concert of creation. That reflects profound wisdom that cannot escape a truly human gaze. What is so astonishing about it? God and the Angels are wiser than us!

495. One might object that the defects of nature become inexplicable in this case. Bad weather, the poor fate of certain plants, and the suffering of animals testify to the good Angels’ negligence. Not so, St. Thomas replies. It is not God’s will to exclude all defects from things but to allow them. The same happens with angelic wills, which are in perfect conformity with the divine will.202 The mobile worlds and their contents are arranged for the trial of rational creatures and a glorious final renovation (nos. 324 & ff.); and the Angels rule beings for these principal ends, which we must never forget.

496. Are all Angels in charge of lower creatures' direct government, or is this mandate entrusted only to members of their lower hierarchies? On this point, there is a significant difference of opinion among the best authors. St. Dionysius,203 St. Thomas,204 St. Bonaventure, Albert the Great and others,205 share the second opinion. St. Cyril, St. Basil, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom,206 St. Athanasius, Scot, Durand, Molina, and others uphold the first.207 497. As for us, after a serious study of the pros and cons, we modestly but firmly embrace the thesis of Cornelius a Lapide, saying with him and St. Paul: All angels are spirits charged with a ministry and sent to exercise it on behalf of those who will receive the inheritance of salvation.208 Many reasons convince us of the truth of this statement. Let us point out a few with the brevity required by this Meditation.

1. Besides the teaching of St. Paul taken in its most natural sense, we have the formal doctrine of the prophet Isaias. I saw the Lord, says this man of God, seated on a sublime and elevated throne (nos. 241 & ff.); and the hem of his garments, or his glory, filled the temple (nos. 210 & ff.). The Seraphim were on the lower throne, that is to say, on that part of the divine throne that begins with the Cherubim and has the last of beings as its base (nos. 253-257).

They each had six wings, two of which veiled the face of God, and consequently their own,209 two of which veiled the feet of God or the future humanity of Christ and Mary, which they saw in the Word with profound respect and worshiped or venerated in advance as their superiors,210 and two others with which they flew, proof evident that they too are sent to exercise a ministry for those who will receive the inheritance of salvation. Otherwise, what good is having two wings to fly! At the same time, one of the Seraphim flew toward me (says the prophet Isaias), holding in his hand a charcoal of fire he had taken with tweezers from above the altar, and touching my mouth, he said to me, this coal has touched your lips; your iniquity will be effaced and you will be cleansed from your sin.211

202

Ibid. ad 7m.

Celestial Hierarchy, ch. 7 &13.

204 1, q. 112, a. 2 et 3.

205 See Suarez, De Angelis, I. 6, ch. 9.

206 Cf. Cornelius a Lapide, in Epist. ad Heb. ch. 1, v. 14.

207 Cf. Suarez, !. c.

208 Heb 1:14.

209 These two wings were extended between the luminous face of God and the face of the Seraphim. Cornelius a Lapide, in hunc loc.

210 Ibid. Tertio et optime.

211 Isa 6:1-7.

203

498. Here then is a Seraph fulfilling a ministry to a man. One of the fiercest pure spirits (n. 453), he purifies by fire; that is indeed an act that suits a Seraphim. The three pairs of wings of these sublime spirits designate the three main attributions that are proper to them and the actions they must exercise as Seraphim. The first pair veils the face of God because, abundantly illuminated from above on the divine secrets, the Seraphim only transmit weakened lights to their immediate inferiors, according to the latter’s capacity. Moreover, burning with love and possessing the maximum angelic knowledge, they sink, as it were, into the mystery of the incomprehensible God and adore Him sweetly and humbly.

The second pair of wings veil the feet of God212 or the divine attributes related to creatures, or the Word made flesh with Mary, who carried Him in her womb,213 or yet the greatest and most sublime mysteries of our divine religion. Those things take place at the same time to indicate that Seraphim do not communicate all their knowledge of these sacred issues to their subordinates; to note that some of their points are mysterious even to them; or to indicate they wisely spare inferiors from the knowledge of the divine plan’s execution with veils of greater or lesser obscurity, depending on the latter.

They had a third pair of wings to fly and flew to render services to men. They are assistants for a third of their job if one can speak thus, semi-assistants for the second third, and executors for the third, as all Angels in charge of a ministry and sent to exercise it.

499. 2. Hence we accept the commonly received distinction between assisting Angels and executive Angels but say that the former are particularly assistants, and the others are particularly executors of the divine plan. We consider the former as assistants not merely because they always see the heavenly Father’s face214 (which is common to all good Angels), but because they are perfect, more elevated, more contemplative, and thus more intimately united with God than the others.

They sing the perpetual song in honor of the One and Triune God: Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God of hosts: the earth is filled with His glory. As the Seraphim sing this hymn, the lower universe, considered a temple,215 trembles in its foundations and is filled with God’s glory,216 proof that the Seraphim, while mainly assistants, exercise influences other than mere illumination on what is inferior to them.217 500. Do the Seraphim need to move locally and fly to the place where they want to act to fulfill this last part of their ministry, that is to say, to make these influences felt? Or, being pure and glorified spirits, can they not multiply their presence in various places without traveling– which we would call flying – as we said above in connection with the glorified body of Christ (nos. 315-319)? We will consider this matter in another Meditation.

212

The fact that the Seraphim veil the face and the feet of God is not at all opposed to what we said above (n. 473) on the illuminative and inflamed action of these spirits, because, by the very fact that they love their inferiors, they must temper their excitement and lights to make them proportional to the capacity of the latter and to providential views.

213 The understanding Seraphim see in the Word the future realities which, during the test, were for them an object of faith.

214 Mt 18:10.

215 Our sacred temples are figures of the universe and of heaven. On this passage, see Corneille a Lapide.

216 Isa 6:3-4.

217 With Cornelius a Lapide, we say that certain lower angels are sent more often, but that higher angels who ordinarily attend before God are also sent, although more rarely. One can say that the former are servants, and the latter, assistants. In Danielem, C. VII, 10.

501. 3. Let us add these additional reasons: the passage quoted from Isaias is the only place of the divine Scriptures that mentions the existence of the noblest choir of Angels and the functions of the Seraphim; therefore, it is not at all the case to depart from its literal meaning; and if we admit this meaning in the first part of the text, why not admit it in the second?

God is everywhere, and the most sublime spirits do not abandon the places of honor they have in the heavenly Court when rendering some service to men. This part of their ministry is like a reflection or consequence of the former. Thus, even among the Apostles, the interior life is the soul of public life. The Seraphim, most ardent spirits in loving and glorifying God, also radiate their fires, especially on men called perhaps to equal them in glory.218 This is just and beautiful (nos. 473-478).

Dominations and Virtues are particularly concerned with governing lower angels, wayfaring humanity, and nature’s bodies (nos. 466, 467). Powers fight all factors of disorder. Principalities care especially for empires, kingdoms, and their leaders (nos. 464, 465). Accordingly, would it not be proportional for the most perfect Angels to render some immediate service to the most perfect men in the state of trial?219 If the Son of God and the Holy Ghost were both sent to men, albeit in different ways, why should the Seraphim remain immobile in their sublimity? Is it not written of them, as of all Angels: Thou makest swift winds of thy Angels, And of thy ministers a burning fire.220 502. That which have just said of the Seraphim must also be said, proportionally, of the Cherubim and Thrones. The Church Triumphant has an indirect but direct mission to fulfill with the Church Militant, which must replenish and complete its ranks. It is the Seraphim’s task to enlighten and set ablaze elite souls, who, after the Blessed, are the best and noblest creatures in the universe, and to help grace’s extraordinary operations in these seraphic souls. It is up to the Cherubim to enlighten the holiest and greatest doctors by promoting the action of grace. After God, the Thrones are to strengthen those who rise against the enemy and stand like a wall to defend the house of Israel.221 Such direct actions by contemplating and assisting Angels on the most distinguished saints of the human species does not disturb in any way the hierarchical order of the Angels, as the objects of their care are the highest and most similar to God among created beings. As assistant angels, they help to generate assistant saints; everything is done in the highest circles.

218

One might object that they do it only in hierarchical way, by employing the lower angels. We reply that if were ordinarily so, nothing prevents superiors from sometimes doing by themselves what they ordinarily do through others. This is what we see in the Church militant which is, in its hierarchy, the perfect image of the heavenly hierarchy, 219 We read about certain great Saints that they had Seraphim as guardian angels sent by God. Cornelius a Lapide, in Apoc. ch. I, 4, not far from the end.

220 Ps 103:4. St. Gregory of Nazianzus says: Quidam Graecorum apprime in Scripturis eruditus Seraphinas virtutes quasdam in coelo esse exponit, quae ante Tribunal Dei assistentes laudant eum; et ad diversa ministeria mittuntur.

Tract. 2. de Theol.

221 Ez 13:5.

503. Remarkably, the prophet Ezekiel represents the Cherubim as having only four wings and a kind of human hand under their wings.222 In contrast, the Seraphim and the Apocalypse animals have six wings.223 The Cherubim are a full degree inferior to the Seraphim. Their less perfect nature brings them a little closer to the human species. Full of divine science, which is their distinctive character, they show themselves, especially in circumstances where science is at stake.

They forbade our guilty parents from entering the earthly paradise, where they committed a sin around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.224 The Cherubim were represented on the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the Law's Tablets and on the mercy seat where God gave His oracles.225 Cherubim drive wheels full of eyes that indicate, in our view, the workings of the universe (nos. 276-278) as the march of the mobile universe supposes a great science.226 Several other Sacred Scripture passages relating to the Cherubim have the same meaning. By this, we see that the Cherubim are no more foreign to the direct guidance of lower creatures, especially man, than the Seraphim.

504. While Sacred Scripture does not give us precise information on the Thrones' ministries, we must nevertheless, by analogy, pass a similar judgment on them. The direct influences the Dominations and Virtues exert on the universe presuppose the Thrones' indomitable energy, the full science of the Cherubim, and the ardent love of the Seraphim. But at least in certain circumstances, rational creatures traveling to their end, and notably the most accomplished, are objects of the immediate attention and care of the most sublime spirits.227 Oh, how great the Catholic Church is! In it, the Man-God always dwells, even bodily. The Mother of God distributes all graces. Seraphim set elite souls on fire. Cherubim educate doctors destined to equal them. Thrones keep it unshakable. All other angelic choirs replicate her hierarchy and work to raise its members to their level. Happy are those, enlightened by faith, who correspond to their heavenly influences!

CHAPTER TWO

The Known Seraphs FIRST MEDITATION Michael, Gabriel and Raphael are Seraphim

222

Ez 10:20-21.

Ap 4: 8.

224 Gen 3:24.

225 Ex 25:16-20.

226 Ezekiel, in several places; see above nos. 276-278.

227 According to St. John Chrysostom, Cherubim and Seraphim were among the angels who evangelized the shepherds of Bethlehem at the birth of Jesus: Supernorum chororum Cherubim et Seraphim hoc est munus, Deum assidue laudare et hymnis celebrare. Ex his choris etiam in terra apparuerunt, cum vigilantibus pastoribus cantantes. Cited by Suarez after a long discussion on this subject, De Angelis, 1. 6, ch. 10, n. 47.

223

505. The Angels best known to us are St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and St. Raphael, whose solemn feasts are celebrated by the Church. With sufficient foundation, Cornelius a Lapide gives us the names of four other angels placed in the same choir as the first three and who would also have specific ministries to fulfill.

They are: 1. Uriel, meaning God’s light or fire. He enlightens men with God’s knowledge and inflames them with His love; 2. Sealtiel, which means God’s prayer. He prays for men and excites them to pray; 3. Jehudiel, meaning God’s praise. He exhorts men to glorify God; 4. Barachiel, which means God’s blessing. He gives us God’s benefits and incites us to bless and thank God. Sacred Scripture mentions seven Angels quite often in one form or another, and Raphael is one of that number: I am the Angel Raphael, one of the seven who attend before God.228 These Angels are presented to us as assistants before God, the throne, or the Lamb, while at the same time fulfilling outside missions. Everything leads us to believe, as we will see in this Meditation, that they are Seraphim, particularly Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.

506. On this point, serious authorities, such as St. Denys and St. Thomas, disagree with us. Albert the Great, St. Bonaventure, Gilles Colonne, and others do not admit that assisting Angels are sent to men.229 On our side, we have an equally respectable number of great authors, not to say a larger number. More importantly, the direct teaching of the divine Scriptures motivates our thesis. In the preceding Meditation, we quoted some names of Saints and authors we follow (n. 496). With Cornelius a Lapide, we can cite many others. St. Cyprian and St. Irenaeus stand with us. Clement of Alexandria says that seven Angels are the firstborn princes of the Angels and excel in power. He alludes to the seven assisting Angels of the Apocalypse, who indeed are sent on outside missions. Cornelius a Lapide cites sixteen serious authors as favorable to our opinion.230 St. Athanasius says that God chooses from among His Angels those He wants to send on a mission and that many Thrones spontaneously volunteer to God to be sent.231 St. Basil thus invokes St. Michael: O Michael, general of the heavenly spirits, who presides over all these sublime spirits by dignity and honor, I beg you...232 Which Angel was sent to men more frequently than St. Michael? Yet St. Basil sees him as head of all the Angels, that is to say, the noblest of the Seraphim. St. Laurent Justinian also speaks of this celestial prince: In the first spiritual combat, St. Michael was put at the head of the good spirits, as Lucifer was at the head of the bad ones.233

228

Tob 12:15.

See Suarez, De Angelis, 1. 6, c. 9, n. 5.

230 In Apocalypse 1:4.

231 See Suarez, loc. cit. n. 3.

232 See Suarez, 1. c., ch. 10, n. 22.

233 Also cited by Suarez, ibid.

229

507. No one is unaware that St. Gabriel repeatedly performed the duties of God's messenger to men. St. John Damascene says that he is the first of the Angels.234 Concerning the Annunciation, Pope St. Gregory puts it this way: The celestial spirits who announce the smallest news are called Angels, and those who proclaim the greatest are called Archangels. That is why Mary was not sent any Angel, but the Archangel Gabriel. It fitted for the highest of Angels to be chosen for this mission because it was to announce the greatest of news.235 As the Incarnation of the Word is absolutely the greatest news of all, according to the reasoning of St. Gregory, it was also necessary that the Angel who announced it was absolutely the first of the Angels.

508. That great Pope objected to the teaching of St. Dionysius, according to which the higher Angels never fulfill the role of messenger.236 He observes that, according to some Sacred Scripture passages, the Cherubim and Seraphim have done outside works. However, he does not want to claim that these sublime spirits did those works by themselves or through lower spirits subject to them for lack of formal testimonies. His respect for St. Dionysius, ancient and venerable Father, has something to do with this moderation.

Significantly, St. Gregory does not adopt his opinion on this point precisely because of the teaching of Sacred Scripture. He does find two things as certain (Hoc tamen certissime scimus ... hoc certum tenemus...): 1. Angels send other angels, and those sent are less than those who send them. 2. Those sent to us fulfill their external ministry without ever ceasing to contemplate inwardly. They are envoys and assistants at the same time, overturning the foundation on which St. Dionysius rested his way of seeing. We say ‘way of seeing’ because Saint Dionysius does not show himself affirmative on this matter.

They are sent and assist because, continues St. Gregory, however much circumscribed the angelic spirit may be, the Sovereign Spirit, who is God Himself, is not circumscribed. That is why the Angels are both sent and assistants simultaneously,237 as they travel in God wherever they go.238 509. Let us briefly explain the first of these two facts, which St. Gregory qualifies as certain, and leave the second to the next Meditation. As St. Gregory proves,239 some Angels send others, and those sent are inferior to their senders. Do we find in the divine Scriptures that other Angels sent St. Michael, St. Gabriel, or St. Raphael? No. Instead, we read that God sent them. Thus, says St. Raphael, the Lord has sent me to heal you, O Tobias, and deliver Sarah, your son's wife, from the demon, for I am the angel Raphael, one of the seven present before the Lord (qui astamus ante Dominum).240 It is impossible to state more clearly that Raphael is an assistant Angel, that God sent him, and that the higher angels can be both assistants and messengers simultaneously and, sometimes, really are. They are present before 234

See Cornelius a Lapide, in Daniel. proph.9:21.

Ad hoc quippe ministerium summum angelum venire dignum fuerat, quI summum omnium iuniabat. Homil. 34 in Evang. n. 8.

235

236

Ibid., n. 12, edit. Migne.

The Church says in the prayer of the office of St. Michael: O God, Who arrange in admirable order the ministries of angels and men, be propitious to us and grant us that those of your ministers who always attend before you in heaven may also protect our life on earth. Therefore, these two ministries are perfectly compatible.

238 Et mittuntur igitur et assistunt, quia etsi circumscriptus est angelicus spiritus, Summus tamen Spiritus ipse, qui Deus est, circumscriptus non est. Angeli itaque et missi, et ante ipsum sunt, quia quolibet missi veniant, intra ipsum currunt. Ibid. n. 13.

239 Loco citato.

240 Tob 12:14-15.

237

the Lord: Raphael was present as an assistant before God at the very moment when he spoke to Tobias: qui astamus. Everything, therefore, leads us to believe that if not a Seraph, St. Raphael at least belongs to the supreme angelic hierarchy.

510. Raphael adds: When I was with you, I was there by the will of God. Bless Him and sing His praises.241 It is time that I return to him who sent me, and who is God. Let the Angel return to God, assistant as he is, meaning that he disappeared and they could no longer see him.242 Being one of the seven angels closest to the throne of God, an assistant sent by God Himself, he is highly enlightened and offers men’s prayers to the Lord. That proves that he is like the Seraphim in the Heavenly Court and enjoys a special closeness to the King of Kings: I will disclose the truth and will not hide the mystery from you. When you pray with tears and bury the dead, when you leave your dinner to hide the dead in your house during the day and bury them at night, it is I who presented your prayer and good works to the Lord. And because you were pleasing to God, a fact known particularly by a Seraphim all aflame with love for God, it was necessary, according to providential designs, that also the Seraphim know in an excellent degree, the temptation that should test you.243 511. These passages explain two others. After the seraphic prayers of old Tobias and young Sarah,244 the Seraphim St. Raphael, having presented those prayers and made them acceptable to the Lord, was sent by God to heal them both: At the same time, the prayers of both were heeded by the majesty of the sovereign God; and the Angel of God, St. Raphael, was sent to heal those two people whose prayers had been presented to the Lord at the same time.245 Let us compare these words to those quoted in the previous item: ‘It is I who presented your prayer to the Lord.’ We will naturally conclude that Raphael is also the one who repeated before the Lord the two afflicted souls' prayers and had them heeded. In so doing, he acted like a Seraph of ardent prayer, burning charity, in the closest relationship with God. Raphael himself receives that mandate to help people so pious and full of charity. A celestial Seraph is sent as an envoy to help earthly Seraphim harshly tried because they were pleasing to God in a time of almost universal prevarication. The old Tobias fled alone from the company of perverts.246 If one reads the first two chapters of Tobias and the other places mentioned, one will see with deep emotion that the two Tobias, father and son, and their relative, young Sarah, were the true Seraphim of the human species those days. What faith! What holiness! What a spirit of prayer! What ardor, courage, dedication to doing good! How careful they were to avoid the slightest mistake! Truly if the Angels of the lower hierarchies are mainly concerned with governing all the beings of nature, and even pagan nations and individuals, whoever they are, the Seraphim alone seem worthy of leading those who have rare types of holiness. And when this consideration comes to support the most direct teaching of Holy Scripture and a considerable number of saints and great authors, all our doubts on this point disappear as if by magic (n. 502). God’s work is perfectly proportionate.

241

Ibid. 18.

Ibid. 20, 21.

243 Ibid. 11-13.

244 Tob 3:1-23. These prayers are worthy of human Seraphim assisted by Seraphim Raphael.

245 Ibid. 24,25.

246 Ibid. 1,5.

242

512. If such is the excellence of St. Raphael, whom no author, to our knowledge, places before St. Gabriel and St. Michael, what to say about these two, whom a large number of authors put on the first and second place in angelic society? We believe they are the most distinguished Seraphim, the first of the seven who attend before God. Michael is called one of the first princes of the Heavenly Court, which in Hebrew also means the first of the first princes.247 He is called the great prince, protector of the children of Israel.248 He is also depicted as Lucifer’s antagonist: ‘There was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: And they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven.’ 249 All authors rightly regard St. Michael as the protector of the Church both in the Old and New Testaments: Michael, princeps magnus, qui stat pro filiis populi tui.

Now since the Church is the Mother of all Saints, even the greatest, she should be assisted by a Seraph even worthier than that which accompanied Tobias. In the great fight that took place in Heaven, Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and conquered it. That dragon was Lucifer, the noblest of the Seraphim, converted into leader of the demons (n. 459);250 and all the faithful Angels had to take part in the fight, the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, and the loyal members of the lower hierarchies. Thus, it does not seem appropriate for the whole angelic host to follow a single Archangel, Power, Principality, Domination, or even a Throne or Cherub. A Seraph, friend of God, one of his choir's principal, was the born leader of the heavenly defenders of the good cause. Thus it is written: Michael and his Angels, as if saying, the general and his army.

Nowhere do we read that Michael was ordered or sent by some other angel. Although negatively, this also proves at least his quality as a Seraphim. Furthermore, in his dispute with the devil, we find that Michael did not rely on any Angel but on God alone: ‘When Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of railing speech,251 but said: The Lord command thee.’252 513. It seems even easier to claim seraphic dignity for St. Gabriel. He constantly appears to us as the illuminated Angel par excellence, the most aware of the divine plan, having the most connections with the Incarnate Word and the Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and earth. Let us content ourselves here with noting the expressions of Sacred Scripture from which it naturally follows that Saint Gabriel must rank among the Angels of the supreme choir.

He tells Zacharias: ‘I am Gabriel, who stand before God (qui asto ante Deum), and am sent to speak to thee, and to bring thee these good tidings.’253 If we do not want to split hairs with the divine word but seek above all the meaning as it presents itself, we must confess that Gabriel is an assistant Angel even when he speaks to men: qui asto ante Deum. In 247

Dan 10:13.

Ibid. 12:1.

249 Ap 12:7-8.

250 We speak according to St. Thomas and other authors, but later we will demonstrate that Lucifer was only a Cherubim.

251 Which gives us a fine idea of how the Angels fight.

252 Jude 9.

253 Lk 1:19.

248

this sense, the passage from Daniel that led St. Denys, St. Thomas and others to distinguish between assistant and servant Angels is as expressive as the passages from St. Luke and Tobias: “Millions of Angels served Him, and a thousand million attended before Him: millia millium ministrabant ei, et decies millies centena millia assistebant ei.254 When an Angel says: I am the Angel Raphael, one of the seven who are present before the Lord, qui astamus ante Dominum, 255 must we not conclude that Raphael is not only among the thousand million who attend before God (common to Cherubim and Thrones, as well as Seraphim) but also that he is among the seven most privileged Seraphim who occupy the first angelic positions in the celestial court?

Are we not obliged to grant the same honor to Gabriel, who also says of himself: I am Gabriel, who stands before God? 514. We could prove the same fact by the excellence of the mandates entrusted to this sublime spirit.

But we will develop this thought in the next Meditation. Let us just mention here that Gabriel is not sent by an Angel but by God alone, another indication of his seraphic dignity: ‘The angel Gabriel was sent from God ... to a virgin ... and the virgin's name was Mary.’256 Moreover, God’s direct command to Gabriel was, it seems, required in this case by the very nature and excellence of the mission.

Quoting from the eighth chapter of Daniel, Suarez says that, in another circumstance, Gabriel was sent

by St. Michael.257 This statement leaves a lot to be desired. Daniel does not speak of sending but of an invitation, a request or order: ‘I heard the voice of a man between Ulai: and he called, and said: Gabriel, make this man understand the vision. And he came and said to me: Understand, etc.’ 258 St. Michael is not named there. It is true that St. Jerome, following the opinion of rabbis in this matter, believes that the man who spoke to Gabriel was St. Michael. However, according to Martini,259 Theodoret and others see this man as the Son of God. We find this interpretation much preferable to the former, as shown below.

Furthermore, one can understand the words ‘make him understand this vision’ just as well as an invitation, request, or order. That is how we address God in the Our Father to ask for His graces. Finally, if St. Michael had sent St. Gabriel— which we do not believe—both could still belong to the choir of Seraphim, although in this case, St. Michael would have preeminence in that same order.

515. Let us end this Meditation with some important observations. 1. By maintaining that the three angels of whom we have spoken are Seraphim, we agree with illustrious commentators on Sacred Scripture who have written inspired books considered, as a whole and in detail, objects of special and profound studies. They are particularly Cornelius a Lapide260 and Maldonat, men well versed in the knowledge of speculative theology and tradition. Add to their names those we quoted or indicated above (nos. 506, 507): the Master of Sentences (Peter Lombard), Scot, Durand, Molina, Gregory of

254

Dan 7:10.

Tob 12:15.

256 Lk 1:26-27.

257 Suarez, De Angelis, l. 6, c. 10, n. 30.

258 Dan 8:16-17.

259 Comment. in hunc. locum.

260 See Cornelius a Lapide, Comment. in Apoc. I, 4; in Epist. ad Hebr. I, 14; in Daniel, VII, 10; IX, 21.

255

Valence, Salmeron, Franc, Lucas, Cedrenus, who see St. Gabriel as a Seraph;261 and Rupert, Viegas, Bellarmine, John Molanus262 and others who attribute the same excellence to St. Michael.

516. 2. The fact that the Apostle St. Jude calls St. Michael an archangel 263 does not pose a serious difficulty because, in the Arabic text, this word is replaced by ‘the prince of the Angels.’264 Moreover, the name Archangel is synonymous with great messenger, which suits a Seraphim on a mission better than any other angel. Besides, we have seen that a superior angel possesses more perfections than all angels inferior to him (nos. 451 & ff., 440, 469, etc.). Any higher Angel who is a messenger is thereby an archangel. This name does not detract in any way from the existence of a specific angelic choir, that of the Archangels, who are ordinary celestial employees that deal with faith, divine worship, supernatural laws, and give essential instructions (nos. 457, 463). The Seraphim or Cherubim receive only extraordinary missions or missions of importance and sublimity proportioned to the noblest angelic spirits (n. 502).

Just as historians especially relate most salient and remarkable events, inspired authors do not recount actions of Seraphim and Cherubim to conceal the ministry of lower Angels but to show us that all Angels actively participate, sometimes directly and personally, in the principal events that involve human society, the saints, and the Church Militant.265 A Seraph purifies the lips of the great Prophet Isaias. A Cherub guards the entrance to Eden after guilty humanity is expelled – an episode that involves the entire human race and its present test. Ezekiel’s Cherubim wisely rules the universe with unfathomable force, for the triumph of the Church Militant and the glory of the Church Triumphant (nos. 275-279); this is a general fact of paramount scope. Michael the Seraphim routs Lucifer and his rebel army and personally protects the Church. What could be worthier of a Seraph who is all love and strength? Gabriel, the Seraphim, is the Angel of great revelations. All love and light, he seems to exist only for the Man-God and His Mystical Body. He reveals the Incarnation, Divine Maternity, the birth of the Precursor of Jesus, and the number of weeks that will precede the advent of the Messias and announces the victories of the Church under the leadership of the Machabee and under the visible or invisible leadership of Him whose reign has no end.266 How seraphic is everything in this! What could be more outstanding and exceptional? The Seraphim Raphael is the Angel of exceptional holiness and benevolence, as we have seen. He does not show himself during Tobias and Sarah's whole life, but only during a journey. In ordinary cases, nothing prevents Raphael, like the other Seraphim or Cherubim, from acting mainly through their inferiors' ministry.

261

Cornelius a Lapide. Ibid.

Idem. in Daniel, XI 13.

263 Idem, 9.

264 Cornelius a Lapide, in hunc loc.

265 Dicuntur superiora agmina DEO ASSISTERE, et ab intimis nunquam recedere : non quin aliquando mittantur, sed quia rarissime ad exteriora prodeunt; neque tune ab intimis recedunt, sed Dei praesentiae et contemplationi SEMPER ASSISTUNT, quod etiam faciunt qui frequenter mittuntur. Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, libr. II, dist. 10. There is no doubt for Suarez that the assisting angels are sent and come down on great occasions such as the Last Judgment, the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, the Assumption of Mary, and the like, based on Holy Scripture: St. Matthew 25:31; Acts 1:11; Hebr. I:6. De Angelis, 1. 6; chap. 10, in fine.

266 Lk 1:33.

262

517. 3. Here I cannot help but admire once again the captivating beauty of the divine plan. The Heavenly Father acts unceasingly267 outside, in the universe; He maintains the being of things; He loves us to the point of continually giving us, in a certain way, His only Son and His grace.268 He makes His sun rise on the good and the wicked, and rain to pour on just and unjust. 269 After glorifying His humanity, the Incarnate Word, worthy Son of such a Father, is not content to prepare us places s in heaven270 and serve as our advocate with the heavenly Father.271 He wants to stay with us bodily until the end of time,272 serving us divinely not only through his Angels but also directly Himself. Our members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, Who is in us, Whom we have received from God.273 Because we are adopted children of God, our Heavenly Father has sent us something much better than his Seraphim, Cherubim, or Thrones: He sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying: Abba, Father!274 And this divine Spirit personally helps our weakness, for we know not what to ask in prayer, but the Spirit Himself asks for us with unspeakable groaning. 275 518. Is it not evident that, in all these respects, the noblest creatures are perfect imitations of the divine Persons? O Mary, all of God’s children are your children (nos. 175 & ff.). You are not their Mother to have them looked after and helped by others. How many times do you not appear to them in person, although all Angels are at your service! O Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones of the human species, holy Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs, how many times after your glorious entry into heaven have you not shown yourselves to wayfaring men, spoken to them, consoled and strengthened them, missions more suitable for Angels than Saints!276 What to say, then, of the angelic Seraphim? Let us answer with Saint Paul: Are the Angels not spirits charged with a ministry and sent to exercise it on behalf of those who will receive the inheritance of salvation?277 519. O Church Militant, O aspirants to holiness, how many resources are there for you! Aim high and fearlessly. For if Hell is alarmed and unleashed, the entire celestial society is coming to your defense: Not only Christ and Mary but also Gabriel and Michael, Raphael, and all Seraphim and Cherubim. All the countless Angels govern the universe and events for your sake: ‘We know that all things work together unto good for those who love God and are called to be saints...If God is for us, who is against us?’278

SECOND MEDITATION We Believe Saint Gabriel Is the First of the Seraphim

267

Jn 5:17.

Id. 3:16.

269 Mt 5:45.

270 Jn 14:2.

271 1 Jn 2:1.

272 Mt 28:20.

273 l Cor 6:19.

274 Gal 4:5-6.

275 Rom. 8:26.

276 See above, n. 454, note 46.

277 Heb 1:14.

278 Rom 8:28-31.

268

520. According to Sacred Scripture and Tradition, two Seraphim, St. Michael and St. Gabriel, seem to appear alternately as the first of the Angels. Yet one of the two must be superior to the other because, as we have proved (nos. 486 & ff.), all Angels are unequal in accidental and even specific perfection. Is it then Michael or Gabriel who occupies the first place in angelic society? Grave reasons are competing for both. We will explain them quickly, along with the reasons for our preference.

521. Cornelius a Lapide openly claims the first angelic dignity for Saint Michael. “1. A great number of authors,” he says, “think with great probability that by the dignity of his nature, the graces he received, and his glory, Michael is absolutely the first of all Angels without exception. We prove it first with the Apocalypse passage279 representing Michael as fighting Lucifer and his (rebellious) angels, resisting the Dragon’s pride and saying very humbly, ‘Who is like God – mi-ca-el’? Therefore, as Lucifer is the demons leader, so Michael is the leader of the angelic army that fights for God, and he occupies the first rank among the Seraphim. 2. The Church calls Michael generalissimo of the heavenly army, steward of Paradise, and celebrates under his name the feast of all Angels. 3. Michael is venerated by the faithful as rector and guardian of the whole Church as he was formerly of the Synagogue. In the Mass for the deceased, the Church also calls him the standard-bearer of Christ. Moreover, she says that he is in charge of accepting souls in heaven.”280 Besides, St. Basil, the deacon Pantaleon, St. Laurent Justinian, Rupert, Molina, Viegas, Salmeron, Bellarmine, and John Molanus also grant angelic primacy to St Michael.281 522. Serious authors adopted this opinion before, and Holy Scripture teachings, cross-checked with St. Dionysius and St. Thomas’s doctrine on angelic illuminations, seem to favor St. Gabriel much more than St. Michael. That is why we dare to adopt this opinion.

523. St. John Damascene: Let us pray with Gabriel, who occupies the first place among the Angels.282 Hesychius calls St. Gabriel the prince of Angels.283 As we have seen, Pope St. Gregory, because of the teaching of Holy Scriptures (n. 508) does not and cannot adopt St. Dionysius’s doctrine on assistant Angels claiming they would never be envoys. St. Gregory: It was fitting that the highest of Angels should be chosen for this ministry (the Annunciation) because it was a question of announcing the greatest news (no. 507). In our view, by these words, St. Gregory could not be indicating the highest Angel of the eighth choir, for that angel could not have been the highest. Moreover, this interpretation would imply that St. Gregory adopts the opinion of St. Dionysius, whereas that great Pope, while respecting the latter’s opinion, teaches just the opposite: Hoc ... certum tenemus ... et mittuntur igitur et assistunt ...

Angeli itaque et missi et ante ipsum sunt (n. 508).

The same Father carefully tells us that the denominations of angel and archangel do not designate the Angels’ nature but rather their functions. That is why he calls Gabriel an archangel because of his sublime and incomparable mission. In our case, the word archangel does not indicate an angelic nature belonging to the eighth choir rather than the first. Instead, the unparalleled importance of that mission 279

Ap 12:1.

Comment. in Daniel, X, 13.

281 Idem, ibid.

282 Clamemus cum Gabriele, qui primum locum obtinet inter angelos. Cited by Christobal Vega, Theologia Mariana, n. 1529.

283 Homily 2, De Beata Virgine.

280

demanded that it be performed by the highest of the Angels.284 St. Gregory’s thought is thus quite clear and entirely favorable to our opinion, all the more since, as we have observed, he does not adopt St. Dionysius’s view. He even established a principle by which the highest angel can be an envoy without prejudice to his dignity as an assistant. Moreover, this interpretation is according to the explicit and formal teaching of the Gospel: I am Gabriel, who assists before God: Qui asto ante Deum.285 That should not be confused with the vision of the Heavenly Father enjoyed by all faithful Angels,286 for otherwise, St. Gabriel’s divinely inspired word would be meaningless.

524. Suarez writes: Although in the standard order of grace, Providence does not employ the most sublime angels to operate external effects, at times, It likely sends these angels for issues somehow related to the order of hypostatic union or the mystery of the Incarnation. From this point of view, it is likely that Gabriel, the angel sent to the Virgin, would be the first of the Seraphim or one of the first because of the mystery's excellence.287 We have proved abundantly (nos. 283-319) that the whole universe and all events relate in some way to the mystery of the Incarnation. What to say, then, of the mandates entrusted to Saint Gabriel, which relate directly to the victories of the Church, Mystical Body of Christ, to Christ Himself, to His divine Mother, or His incomparable Precursor? Are such cases not worthy of the role of the first Seraphim? In truth, this consideration is apt to correct even certain restrictions that Suarez thinks fit to make on this subject.288 525. Marc Cardinal Viguier (Viguerius) is much more determined; he proves with eight reasons relating to the Incarnation that St. Gabriel is the first of the Seraphim. Cornelius a Lapide gives the summary of his demonstration.289 We find it correct but incomplete. We believe that a whole series of proofs can be drawn from Sacred Scripture and theological principles concerning angelic illuminations.

526. Let us remember the central notions given above on this subject: A member of the heavenly hierarchy is all the more elevated as he is a closer imitation of God and cooperates more with Him to improve others (n. 444). Angelic illuminators are all the more apt to receive and transmit light because they have greater transparency. They spread their light all around, overflowing on those worthy of it.

The perfectors perfect the perfectible by initiating them into the science of the sacred objects of supernatural vision. The inferior rises to God through the superior one. The most divine are mystagogues and handlers of the less advanced in enlightenment (n. 445). The action of superiors on inferiors gives them the power and habit of contemplation, that is, the capacity to receive the light of glory to see God intuitively, contemplate Him, and at the same time acquire the practical and necessary knowledge of the divine plan. Consequently, inferiors know how to perfectly fulfill their providential ministry concerning what moves in the trial (nos. 190; 199; 197; 445; 449).

Now, in all these respects, except for Jesus and Mary, we find no one in Sacred Scripture greater than or equal to St. Gabriel. None shows himself so fiery, so analogous to the Holy Spirit and fervent illuminator

284

Homily 34, in Evang., n. 8.

Lk 1:19.

286 Mt 18:10.

287 De Angelis, l. 6; chap. 10, n. 46.

288 Ibid.

289 Comment. in Daniel, IX, 21.

285

(n. 453). All these characters together seem to us to give a tangible demonstration of St. Gabriel’s superiority over the other Seraphim.290 527. Let us delve into detail. According to the testimony of the prophet Daniel, St. Gabriel made revelations to him on God’s behalf: Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying swiftly, touched me and instructed me.291 He unveiled to Daniel the divine plan on the occasion of a dream by Nebuchadnezzar. The mystery was unveiled to Daniel in a vision during the night...God reveals the deepest and most hidden things...and in Him the light is found.292 God instructed and enlightened the prophet through the ministry of Gabriel, the most divine of mystagogues. He showed him Christ’s Kingdom, which will never be destroyed. Unlike other kingdoms that were overthrown and reduced to powder, it will subsist until the end of time as Church Militant 293 and forever as Church Triumphant.

The reign of Christ is the end of all things for the glory of God. Everything – the material universe, angelic society, human society, and individuals – is done and arranged for the Kingdom of Christ (nos.

291-295). Therefore, Gabriel revealed to the prophet the divine plan in its main lines. The most enlightened of the angelic Seraphim illuminated the human Seraph still detained in the darkness of trial.

The latter, however, was a man of desires,294 burning with love for God and His Church, and thirsty for supernatural knowledge.295 528. The higher Angels illuminate lower ones, particularly about the divine plan (n. 449). As a prelude to the Incarnation, the Son of God, rather than a Seraphim, invites Gabriel to explain the visions: When I Daniel saw the vision and sought its meaning, behold there stood before me as it were the appearance of a man. And I heard the voice of a man between Ulai: and he called, and said: Gabriel, make this man understand the vision296 (n. 514). Albeit these words are thought to have been addressed to Gabriel by a Seraphim, in biblical style they mean a request, invitation or order. Since Gabriel constantly appears in Scripture as the most enlightened of Angels, we must conclude that he is the highest, and that no other Angel commands him.

529. That is all the more true since Gabriel, in human form, often represents the Son of God, of Whom he is the leading herald and preacher.

Says Cornelius a Lapide297 that this Angel was the type of Christ man, a quality that also raises him above all Angels. The Prophet Daniel has many significant passages from this point of view. While Sidrach, Misach and Abdenago, servants of God the Most High praised the Lord in the fiery furnace, Nebuchadnezzar also saw in it a fourth personage similar to the Son of God, who hatched the flames,

290

I will tell thee, said Gabriel to Daniel, what is set down in the scripture of truth: and none is my helper in all these things, but Michael your prince (Daniel, 10:21). Gabriel reads directly from Scripture the Truth which is the Word, and is not illuminated by any angel. Michael is only his only, his auxiliary, for external works .

291

1 Dan 9:21-22.

Ibid. nos. 19,22.

293 Ibid. 2:44; 7:18, 27; 10:14.

294 Ibid. 10:23.

295 Ibid., 6:10; 9:3-21; 10: 2-12.

296 Ibid. 8:15-16.

297 Comment. in Daniel, 10:16.

292

and this personage was an angel.298 I considered these things during a night vision, said Daniel, speaking of earthly monarchies, and saw one like the Son of man coming with the clouds of heaven toward the Ancient of days.... And He [God] gave him power, glory, and a kingdom; and all peoples and tongues shall serve him: His power is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away; and His kingdom shall not be destroyed.299 While Christ as a man did not yet exist, He was figured and represented in this circumstance: Quasi Filius hominis. By what or by whom? Behold the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying swiftly, touched me. From the beginning of your prayer, said Gabriel, I was ordered to come to you.300 ... Your words were heeded from the first day you grieved in the presence of your God and applied your heart to understanding, and your prayers made me come to you.301 Sometimes Gabriel symbolizes the Son of man. Sometimes he preaches the latter by revealing the divine plan. I raised my eyes, continues the prophet, and suddenly saw a man clothed in linen, his loins girded with the finest gold. His body was a chrysotile, and his face shone like lightning. His eyes looked like a burning lamp; his arms and the rest of his body down to his feet were like glittering brass. The sound of his voice was like the sound of a multitude.302 It is still Gabriel, not the Son of God,303 but the description presents a type of the Man-God similar to the original portrayed in the Apocalypse.304 These two passages further confirm it: Behold, as it were, the likeness of a son of man touched my lips...he that looked like a man touched me again, and strengthened me.305 530. How great Gabriel is! He has no equal among the Angels. He espoused the Man-God cause so much as to be its prophetic image. According to the best authors, his very name expresses the Man-God in several ways. Gabriel was the first to fight Lucifer, the Incarnation's great enemy. Gabriel means Godman, a man of God, God’s force or rampart; God is my citadel, God is my force, God is my strength, God has strengthened me, man-God.306 The exclamation that translates into Michael – Who is like God?!— logically comes only after the idea expressed by the word Gabriel. Gabriel, Lucifer, are divinely revealed names. Full of profound meaning, they directly describe the role, exploits, and main ministry of each of these spirits.

Before his sin, Lucifer was a carrier or propagator of light. By nature, he was one of the most perfect Angels and most richly endowed with graces. During the angelic trial, he made the lights of faith shine throughout all angelic choirs and the Empyrean. However, he had to believe in the Son of God’s future Incarnation rather than ‘angelization’ (forgive the expression)307 (n. 283). At that, his pride revolted, and he cried out on behalf of the whole angelic genre he sought to represent, and especially on his account: I will ascend to the highest Heaven, that of hypostatic union with the divinity; I will establish my throne 298

Dan 49:92.

Ibid. 7:13-14.

300 Ibid. 9:21,23.

301 Ibid. 10:12.

302 Ibid. 10:5-6.

303 Ibid. 13:20-21.

304 Ap I:13-15.

305 Dan 10:16-19.

306 Cornelius a Lapide, in Daniel IX, 21, and in Lucam, I, 19.

307 Nowhere does the Son of God takes on the nature of the angels; nowhere is it said that he espouses their nature; but it is the race of Abraham that he takes: he wants to become a man and not an angel. Hebr. 2:16.

299

above the stars of God: let a man be called Jesus, let a human creature be called Mary, let them be as exalted as they wish. I will be enthroned over them; will sit on the mountain of the covenant, at the very summit of the most intimate and sublime union of the creature with the divinity, in the sides of the north, where the mountain reaches its highest peak. In any case, by my own strength, I will place myself above the highest human clouds and will be like the Most High by the greatest possible exaltation of a created being, that is to say, by the hypostatic union with the divinity.308 531. Gabriel, whose motto is God-man, uses an entirely different language. It is man, he says, according to faith, which must be deified and personally united with the deity. Man-God alone will ascend above all the heavens and establish His throne above the stars of God; the highest point of the mountain of the covenant belongs to mankind. I firmly believe in the Man-God, and my faith has earned me my name. I am not afraid to fight against you, Sathael.309 God strengthened me. God is my strength. Although I am inferior to you by nature and grace,310 I am superior to you because of your pride and the cause I support. God, the Man-God, is my man, the One to whom I am devoted, the One I represent; and because of this faith, I am the strong one of God. 532. I imagine Gabriel illuminating the other Seraphim with this discourse, and Michael immediately crying: Who is like God?! Sathael’s words, ‘I will establish my throne above the stars of God,’ and those of Michael, ‘who is like the Man-God?’, resound through all the angelic choirs. They engage in the combat between faith and rationalism, grace and naturalism, pure and disinterested love of the truth and pride’s fatuity, between accepting the plan imagined by Infinite Wisdom or the proud creature's selfish dream. They fight fiercely on both sides, but Michael and his Angels are victorious, and the place of the Dragon and his Angels is no longer in heaven.311 Michael is the second of the Seraphim; all Angels, except Gabriel, are subject to him. So he fights alongside all those who still have not defeated Lucifer and his followers but want to hold fast to faith and truth. Hence the words Michael and his Angels.

As for Gabriel, he has already triumphed. More than a fighter, he is the representative of the good cause. He does not say with Michael, ‘Who is like God?’ Instead, he proclaims, Man alone must and will be God in Christ. No, cries Lucifer; it is I the Angel! No, replies Gabriel, it is Christ, the Man! An ideal and intimate struggle precedes the exterior and universal battle, in which Gabriel triumphs over the father of lies. Michael presides over the fight by unfolding the flag of truth and saying on behalf of all Angels: Who is like God? Michel is the generalissimo of the heavenly army, showing himself to be Gabriel’s most potent aide after God's grace.312 Gabriel represents the law; Michael represents the armed force at the service of the law.

308

Isa 14:13-14.

Hebrew name for Lucifer, from which perhaps derives the word Satan, and which means adversary of God. Cf. Cornelius a Lapide, In Isaïam, XIV, 13.

310 We are speaking here after Pope St. Gregory, St. Thomas and other writers who believe that Lucifer was the first of all angels. Cf. St. Thomas, 1, q. 63. a. 7. However, that is not our opinion. We will explain it later, in nos. 724, 725.

311 Ap 12:7-8.

312 No one is MY HELP in all this, says Gabriel, if not Michael, who is the prince of the Church. Daniel 10:21.

Michael, Grand Prince, will rise up in defense of the angelic people, first, and then of the Jewish People, then of the Christian People. Daniel 12:1.

309

Gabriel, the most enlightened of the faithful Angels about the divine plan, and the most affectionate toward the Man-God, prefigurative Vicar of the Incarnate Word, decides, orders and declares war.

Michel announces it, recruits, instructs, excites and directs the combatants. Gabriel is the Prime Minister of the Celestial Empire. To make a modern comparison, he sums up in him the ministry of instruction, which is the first angelic ministry, that of the interior, that of the exterior, that of war and any others.

Michael, one of the first heavenly princes or even the first after Gabriel, lends hand313 to the one whose very name is a profession of faith in the Man-God.314 533. From the theological point of view that concerns us, the names of the Angels are of capital importance for they are certainly inspired and revealed by God, and, much more than the person of those who bear them, they express excellence, dignity, ministry, action: Nomen officii non naturae (n.

523). But the absolute primacy that we recognize in Gabriel over all the good Angels is in no way opposed to a kind of relative primacy of Michael in relation to the Church Militant, which, it seems to us, should put in agreement all authors who treat this subject.

After the advent of the Son of God on earth, after His divine instructions, after the descent of the Holy Spirit who teaches all truths,315 after the science of God invaded the earth as waters invade the seabed,316 Gabriel's ministry became less felt, and all the more so as a type loses some of its shine when in the presence of the original. But since we must fight against princes and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of malice spread in the air,317 which Michael and his Angels drove from heaven,318 we especially call the great celestial warrior to our aid and purge these evil spirits from the air and the earth as he did in the Empyrean, and cast them back into Hell.319 These observations, it seems to us, fully justify and explain all the titles and veneration that the Church Militant Church gives Saint Michael, without harming the absolute primacy of Gabriel.

534. How beautiful it is to see the most sublime of Seraphim, his eyes always fixed on the infinite majesty of which he is the prime minister,320 and at the same time on the Man-God and His Mystical Body! How beautiful, I say, to see the most perfect and most holy of pure created spirits announce the birth of Saint John the Baptist, the Forerunner of Jesus, who will be a human angel,321 called to join one day the heavenly Seraphim (n. 474), and who will walk before the Man-God to prepare for him a perfect people, well disposed by the spirit of penance, to receive the graces of salvation!322 The head of angelic society forgets nothing that has to do with the Incarnate Word! And each of his words is a ray of light on the divine plan.323

313

Ibid 10:13.

The Hebrew word gabri means man, and, by derivation, force, master; the word el means God. 315 Jn 14:26, 16:13.

316 Isa 11:9.

317 Eph 6:12.

318 Ap 12:7-8.

319 Spiritus malignos ... in infernum detrude. Prayer said after Mass.

320 Ego sum Gabriel, qui asto ante Deum. St. Luke 1:19.

321 De quo scriptum est : Ecce ego mitto angelum meum ante faciem tuam. St. Matthew 11:10.

322 Lk 1:17.

323 Ibid. 1: 13-17. Regarding the knowledge which the angels had of the mystery of the Incarnationfrom the beginning of their glorification, St. Thomas says: Generally speaking, this mystery was revealed to all the angels from the beginning of their beatitude. The reason is that this mystery is a general principle to which All THE 314

535. How beautiful it is to see Gabriel approach the future Mother of God, sublime Queen of Angels and men! Hail, Full of grace, he says. Grace abounded in our angelic society. But you, Mary, have its fullness through Jesus Christ. The Lord is with you through the most intimate union of all after the Divine Persons’ and Christ-Man’s with the Word. You have climbed to the top of Covenant mountain as far as possible to a pure creature helped by all of God’s graces. While waiting for the fulfillment of this incomparable destiny, You are blessed among all women. You will conceive and give birth to a son to Whom you will give the name of Jesus. He will be the Savior of men just as he was, in anticipation, the Savior of Angels (nos. 283, 299, 300). He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, so clearly will His divine and eternal filiation shine. The Lord God will give Him the throne of David, His father, for God's people will always be under His scepter. He will reign eternally over the house of Jacob.

The Father will put all things into His hands (Jn 3:35), and His reign will never end. Here is the entire divine plan, all contained in Christ. Now, O Mary, if you want to know how it will be done, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the virtue of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. That is why the One born of you will be called the Son of God.324 536. O, Gabriel! O, Mary! What a crowd of great thoughts piles up in my mind when I speak of you! The immense multitude of blessed spirits bows with Gabriel, their leader, before the Virgin of Israel. The Angel’s profound humility expressed before a human creature, associates with the even deeper humility of the servant of the Lord and the Word, who annihilates Himself by taking the form of a slave325 to make us loathe Lucifer’s vice. Powerful radiation of angelic illuminations floods the earth, all worlds and all times, to give us a glimpse of the universal and eternal reign of Christ, of which we are members. By concentrating on Christ, all divine plan lines also focus on Mary, His Mother. O, what a Mother! O sanctuary of the ineffable Trinity that the universe cannot contain but contains everything! The Virtue of the Most High covers Mary with its shadow; the Holy Ghost comes upon Her; from Her, the Son of God is born. O mysteries of grandeur, love, elevation! In Mary, as in Christ, the divine plan is fulfilled (nos.

296, 299-304); and the most sublime of Seraphim comes to tell us!

CHAPTER THREE Angels and Places about Saint Gabriel FIRST MEDITATION Angels and Places According to Various Authorities OFFICES OF ANGELS relate. “For they are all spirits charged with a ministry and sent to exercise it on behalf of those who receive the inheritance of salvation” (Hebr. 1:14); which is done by the mystery of the Incarnation (1, q.

57, a. 5, ad 1m). Now, is it not clear that the angel par excellence of the Incarnation, St. Gabriel, whose particular ministry is to care for WHAT IS THE END OF ALL ANGELIC OFFICES, thereby shows himself superior to all other angels? Later (nn. 628 & ff.) we will address the issue of angelic knowledge during the trial.

324 Ibid. 1:28-35.

325 Phil 2:7.

1. Confirmation of the Previous Doctrine 537. The Angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the Virgin’s name was Mary.326 Gabriel was the one who brought Mary the happy news of divine motherhood. What does the name Gabriel mean?

It certainly means God and man: Since the One he announced was God and man he anticipates the miracle by naming it, unveiling the mystery of the divine economy.327 Know that Gabriel means man of God, says another Father. Thus, Gabriel, the man of God, is the one who had to be sent when the ManGod willed to be born.328 The envoy is called the man of God because he represented the Man-God character among the Angels, as we have said (nos. 529-533).

On these words of the Gospel, ‘Gabriel was sent from God,’ St. Bernard comments: He is shown to us as sent from God because he was not sent by another spirit more excellent than him, as is usually the case, but by God Himself. Or, it says ‘from God’, so we do not think He revealed His secret to any blessed spirit before disclosing it to the Virgin, except for the Archangel Gabriel. The latter must have enjoyed such outstanding excellence among his own that he was worthy of that name and mandate.329 Even before the fall of Lucifer, Gabriel, whom we regard as the Saint Peter of the Angelic Church, was not sent by Angel but by God alone. He was not enlightened on the divine plan by any created spirit, but only by the Word. He hid God’s secret from all Angels and men to reveal it only to Mary, his future Queen and Enlightener.330 His name and mission mean that his excellence among his own was incomparable. These are central thoughts expressed by Saint Bernard, confirming what we said in the previous Meditation on the angelic primacy of St. Gabriel.331 538. Let us say a word about the expression ‘was sent’—missus est—which highly interested holy and most learned authors. What should we understand by the travels of Angels in the material universe? If Gabriel is an assistant and leader of the Seraphim, must he, when sent, abandon the highest region of the Empyrean to come to the city of Galilee, called Nazareth? These questions concern the accidental happiness of St. Gabriel and all the Angels. It is all the more appropriate to meditate on them as they contribute to making us understand the role of space and material beings in the bliss of celestial spirits and other elect.

2. The Angels Know Every Place

326

Lk 1:26,27.

St. Proclus, cited in the Summa aurea de Laud. BVM, Tom. 1. p. 444, Migne edition.

328 Theophylactus, ibid.

329 Homil. 1. Super Missus est, n. 2.

330 The Incarnation was revealed to all the blessed angels in a general way, as Saint Thomas says (no. 534, end, note). But the particular conditions of this mysterywere not revealed equally to all angels, he adds (ibid;). It is in view of these peculiarities that Gabriel is presented to us in Sacred Scripture as the most enlightened of angels, which confirms our thesis even better.

331 The degrees of excellence of creatures are measured by their degrees of resemblance to the Man-God. Now, if Michael prefigures the glorious victories of Christ over the infernal host, Gabriel prefigures Christ Himself in His divine Person and in His two natures, which is undeniably more perfect.

327

539. Let us say first with St. Augustine that the Angels know perfectly the extent, mechanism and dispositions of the material universe. Having been created simultaneously with the Empyrean, time, and chaos (nos. 416 & ff.), they know the Empyrean as their own home. They know time as expressing their duration and their bodily sojourn’s duration. During their trial, they partly know chaos and are partly unaware of it, as happens with all objects of faith.332 Even before its realization, the entire plan of the moving universe unfolds before the Angels' eyes as they are glorified. Knowledge of the moving heaven and all that was germinating in chaos already existed in the Word of God, Wisdom engendered from all eternity. Knowledge was then transmitted to the Angels in the form of created wisdom. Then the sky was brought into existence as a material reality and a creature in its own right.

St. Augustine repeats this thought six times in the same chapter333 and instills it elsewhere.334 Nothing in our mobile universe exists without first existing in the state of ideal and plan in the angelic minds.

Therefore, the angels know the mobile worlds and their spaces even in their geography's smallest details.335 540. This knowledge is necessary for the Angels to govern corporeal nature, to which they are essentially superior (nos. 309; 338; 358; 373, 3rd note; 375, etc.), to glorify God on behalf of beings unable to do so, and to achieve part of their accidental happiness. However, what we affirm here with the great bishop of Hippo has nothing contrary to what we said on angelic illuminations. While the Angels have innate ideas and even a glorious knowledge of all corporeal beings, not all of them equally know the modes of governing these beings for the sake of rational creatures’ temporal ends and their ultimate end. So it is necessary to look at God’s supreme designs and penetrate the sanctuary of created free wills, something possible to God alone. Hence, subaltern angels' necessity to draw lights from minds better enlightened on the infinite science (n. 449).

3. Angels Move Locally and Can Influence Remote Places without Accessing Intermediate Ones 541. The Angels’ knowledge of all bodies, places, and spaces is a prerequisite for their missions in specific locations. We will now see what is meant by their local movement. Angels are spirits and hence they do not move like natural bodies. Suppose we imagine St. Gabriel as a human ambassador, leaving the lights of the Empyrean, crossing spaces like a shooting star to arrive at the Virgin Mary’s house. In that case, we form a false or very rough idea of his movement. That makes it more difficult for us to understand how an Angel can be at the same time assistant and messenger. This difficulty disappears if we acquire a correct notion of Angels' relations with places. Let us consult the Angel of the School on this point.

332

The Redeemer and the human Church were to come out according to the elements of the body.

De Genesi ad litteram, I. 2, chap. 8.

334 Ibid. 1. 4, chap. 24 & chap. 32.

335 Omnia materialia in ipsis angelis praeexistunt, simplicius autem et immaterialius quam in ipsis rebus, multiplicius autem et imperfectius quam in Deo ... Angeli cognoscunt ea (materialia) per hoc quod sunt in eis per suas intelligibiles species. Saint Thomas 1, p. q. 57, a.1. See also q. 56, a. 2, where St. Thomas explains even better his thought along this line.

333

542. Angels do not have a material quantity that circumscribes them in a place or space; they have only virtual quantity. They influence this or that body or site to a greater or lesser extent and intensity but do not occupy a place like bodies restricted in their dimensions to a limited portion of space. Their virtue and energy are measured by the Author of nature, grace, and glory, so not all of them have the same influence or power. No coarse or subtle, great or small bodies set limits on their power. Bodies contain or limit each other because of their mass and distances. Pure spirits are beyond the reach of material quantities and superior to them. Their influences are regulated only by their dosage of spiritual and supernatural perfection, and distances have nothing to do with it. An Angel is said to be in a physical place as long as he deploys his virtue there and acts there in any way, but not as he is enclosed there.336 543. An Angel is not measured by a place or has a continuity situation. These are attributes of a body set in a place as long as it has quantity and dimensions. For the same reason, one cannot say that a place contains an angel, for when attaining a bodily thing, an incorporeal substance contains the latter but is not contained by it. Indeed, the soul is in the body as if containing the body and not as contained by it.

Similarly, an Angel is said to be in a bodily place, not as contained by it but as somehow containing it.337 There is no top or bottom for an Angel, right or left, near or far. His top is his most noble operation; his bottom is his lesser operation; his right is his specialty; his left is that in which he is not so strong; his ‘close’ is what he usually does; his ‘far away,’ is what he does more rarely. He behaves with places a little like the soul to the body; he influences them without being imprisoned there. He is much freer than a soul, for a human soul is substantially united to its body and must depend, in its operations, on the body it informs. An Angel is a pure spirit and only accidentally joins bodies, dominating bodies and places from above.

544. The Angel exists individually outside the genre of quantity and situation. All bodies or places to which he applies his power or influence are, as it were, a single place. For God, whose virtue is infinite and universal, all created beings are like one finite and dependent thing, and hence a single place. But an Angel has limited power and cannot simultaneously influence all bodies and places. However, for him, all the bodies and places he influences are like a single body and place. Everything to which an Angel immediately applies his virtue is deemed his unique place even if that body or place is not continuous.338 545. Is it not clear, then, that strictly speaking, the Angel Gabriel was able to achieve his embassy in Nazareth without leaving his home in the Empyrean?

In heaven, St. Gabriel influences his abode, but his influence unites his home to Mary’s house, and he considers the two places as a single one. As we said, for him, there is no top or bottom, near or far. The angelic substance is not subject to a place as if contained in it but superior by containing it.339

336

1, q. 52, a. 1.

Ibid.

338 1, q. 52, a. 2.

339 Ibid. q. 53, a. 2.

337

An Angel's place can be divisible and even divided, larger or smaller, depending on whether he voluntarily applies his virtue to a larger or smaller body or various and even very distant bodies. For him, all of them are as a single body even if they are not continuous. The same must be said of places. Thus, in his radiance, Gabriel can encompass both his heavenly residence and Mary’s abode. An Angel is not subject to the laws of places as are bodies.340 546. Theologians are undoubtedly very divided on whether an Angel can, naturally and simultaneously, influence separate and distant places without encompassing intermediate locations with his presence or operation.341 According to Suarez, Scot and Gabriel doubt it. But Denys the Chartreux (Dionysius Cisterciensis, as Suarez says), nicknamed the ecstatic doctor, affirms it and strives to prove it. Doctors who were modern in Suarez's time commonly taught that it was repugnant to the Angels' nature.

However, Suarez demonstrates that their arguments have no value.342 But he also fights, though modestly, Denys's assertion for reasons which he sees as quite probable, some of which, according to Mazzella, are not so easy to admit.343 Suarez’s main reasons: 1. As Dionysius teaches, the Angels could occupy an indefinite number of places at any distance provided that all of them together do not exceed the greatest amount of space an Angel can occupy, which seems to exceed his natural capacity; 2. Every created substance, by the very fact, that it is one and finite, determines its place for itself not only as to quantity but also the unity of that place. So, just as it can only naturally be in a place of such extent, it can only be in one place.344 547. We say that Suarez’s first reason seems to destroy itself, and the second has no more weight than the first. It makes no sense for an Angel, a spiritual creature, to occupy only places proportioned to him as a whole, which nevertheless surpass his natural capacity. No distance or location would increase indefinitely (in infinitum) because both the material universe and angelic knowledge have limits (nos.

539-540 ). That means that for these spirits, there are no indefinite distances.

Moreover, this way of reasoning seems rather strange. If an Angel can influence two, three, or four places that are furthest from each other, why should he not encompass five, a thousand, or a million?

Every Angel has limited power. He lives in an innumerable society (nos. 434-440) of which each member has his particular attributions with the governance of the universe. In their creation, the Angels were proportioned to the real universe and not to an imaginary universe.345 The question is simply to know whether pure spirits, having to act accidentally on material space or the material world, can be hindered in some way by the extent of that space or world. For example, can they can encompass two extreme points of that space and influence both at the same time as if distances did not exist? Or must they

340

Ibid.

See Suarez, De Angelis, 1. 4. chap. 10, n. 8. & ff.

342 Ibid. nos. 9-14.

343 Una vel altera assignata, quae aliqua difficultate non caret ... De Deo creante, n. 341, 3).

344 See Mazzella, 1. c., and Suarez, l. c. n. 15 et n. 16.

341

345

Deus unamquamque creaturam fecit proportionatam universo quod facere disposuit. St.Thomas, 1 p. q. 56, a. II, ad 4m.

behave more or less like material or mixed beings who cannot reach the extremes without intermediary spaces and are obliged to face the extent of bodies and space?346 548. It seems that the very notion of pure spirit resolves this question. In this case, a spirit is pure only insofar as it does not substantially inform matter. It thus rises above the human soul, which is essentially united to a body and more or less subject to space and extension because of it. As Suarez himself says, a pure spirit determines his place not only as to quantity but also to that place’s unity. Therefore, he composes his realm with places he likes to influence as long as he does not encompass more than his virtue and his mission entail. For the Angel, that realm thus composed is a single place, although it can be two, a hundred or a thousand places for beings inferior to the Angel.

An angelic place’s unity is not the same as a bodily place’s unity. An Angel’s will and the simultaneous deployment of his activity on a place is what makes his place, as St. Thomas tells us (nos. 544, 545), and what makes a body’s place is that body’s unity of magnitude. To complete Suarez's idea, just as a created angelic substance can naturally be only in a place whose dimension the Angel made according to his power, will, and mission, he can only be in one angelic place.347 549. Someone might object: If an Angel can act simultaneously in the Empyrean and on earth, his substance must be immense. We answer that immensity is quite another thing, which is beyond imagination. If an infinite number of worlds were created and arranged outside the present universe, immensity would fill them all. But for a perfect spiritual creature to simultaneously reach two distant points in our small universe gives only a very pale image of immensity. Even if the most sublime Angel can simultaneously project his radiance and influence the entire current universe, he would still be infinitely far from true immensity as to its nature and extent.

550. Again, how to conceive the unity of the angelic substance occupying two opposite places without supposing it to be present in intermediate places?

The angelic substance is not subject to bodies, spaces, or the laws that govern them. The continuity or discontinuity of places is nothing to it. Whether a space is big or small makes no difference to it. It is and acts where it wants to be and work as long as it does not go beyond the role assigned by its nature and duty. It must consider the number and importance of the beings it governs because that concerns its limited power and office. For a pure spirit, it makes no difference whether beings are close to each other or placed on the opposite extremes of the universe. Otherwise, one would have to say that an Angel’s unity of substance depends on the continuity of places. If an Angel cannot be in two places without being in the middle, then one is conceiving him as having an extension and roughly applying to a pure spirit the notion that we have of bodies.

346

The action of the Angels on the place is comparable to their knowledge of it, for all of them are spirits. Now, says St. Thomas, nulla distantia localis impedit animae separatae cognitionum; et similiter nec Angeli....Ad eam (locutionem angelorum) nihil facit propinquitas vel distantia loci; et sic aequaliter a propinquo vel remoto Angelus locutionem. Angeli percipit, illo modo quo Angelos in loco esse dicimus. Q. 9, De Verit., art. 6.

347 Substantia angeli non est subdita loco ut contenta, sed est superior eo ut continens; un de in potestate ejus est app!icare se loco prout vult, vel per medium, vel sine medio ... Locus angeli non accipitur et aequalis secundum magnitudinem, sed secundum contactum virtutis. St. Thomas, 1, q. 531 a. 2.

It is understood that the human soul must be present at the same time in man’s head, feet, and intermediate parts because it forms a substantial compound with the body. It must inform the whole body and occupy it entirely. But an Angel is free from any substantial connection with bodies. God made him a minister to govern all accidental bodies and therefore forms his sphere of action or accidental body (if we could speak thus)348 with any bodies, he finds in nature according to his aptitude and the orders he receives. A body can be present to him just as the human body is present to the soul. As such, an Angel need not be present in any physical body, as God could have created the Angels without creating matter.349 This shows the Angels’ perfection and excellence as ministers of God.350 They govern all matter from high above and have all they want or need to do so. Distances and material magnitudes only count for things material or linked with matter; but God made His messengers spirits.351

SECOND MEDITATION Angels Act as Glorified Beings

1. This Doctrine Is Common Teaching 551. In our writing, we do not contradict in any way the three points of doctrine on this subject, which theologians recognize as certain. They are, according to Cardinal Mazzella: 1. The Angels’ real presence somewhere. 2. Their non-ubiquity. 3. Their ability to change places, that is, to move from one place to another.352 As St. Ambrose says of the Seraphim, one should understand all this in a way that conforms to the nature of pure spirits. The Seraph, says this great doctor, passes from one place to another, for he does not fill all things. The Seraph descends in a movement in keeping with his nature.353 As such, we add, he is in a place as a pure spirit.

552. Now, we heard St. Thomas say (nos. 542-544, and we believe that in this matter, the Angel of the School far surpasses who do not think like him), that pure spirits are in a place to the degree they influence that place in any way by their power and action. We believe that saying that an Angel’s substance is present in a given place and not elsewhere implicitly ascribes to him a kind of material size and extent that contradicts the notion of pure spirit. Conversely, saying that an Angel acts here and not there raises him above the laws that locally govern bodies and that his power is limited (which is very 348

Spirituales creaturae ... corpora sua quaeque possident, the bodies they accidentally rule. St. Augustine De libero arbitrio, lib. 3, chap. 11, n. 33.

349 Potuisset Deus angelos ante totam creaturam. corporalem creasse, ut multi sancti doctores tenent. St. Thomas, 1, p. q. 61, a. 4, ad lm.

350 Nonne sunt omnes, administratorii spiritus ... Hebr. 1:14.

351 Ps 103:4.

352 Mazzella, De Deo creante, nos. 332 & ff.

353 Seraphim de loco ad locum transit; non enim complet omnia. Seraphim descendit cum aliquo secundum naturam suam transitu. 1. l, De Spir. S. ch. 10.

true). Spiritual creatures were created with relationships uniting them to bodily creatures, and these relationships consist in that spiritual creatures preside over all corporeal creatures ... and the entire corporeal nature.354 Angelic substance enjoys absolute ascendancy over matter, extension, and space. Hence, the Angels’ visible relations with places are only relations of activity and influence on these places, which are merely passive relative to the Angels. Therefore, when we say that the Angels are present in some places, we must generally understand by this presence the action the Angels exert on these places, but not (if one can put it this way) an inert and adequate juxtaposition of pure spirits and matter. No incorporeal substance can be in a body or place except by its operation, which produces some effect on it.355 Someone may say: For an Angel to operate in a place, he must be there. The answer is that he is not locally there. He is there containing and modifying that place, which does not prevent him from simultaneously containing and modifying another place according to his degree of power, thus forming perhaps a much larger angelic realm than we imagine.

553. In no. 549, we sufficiently showed that the Angels do not enjoy ubiquity properly speaking.

However, everything suggests that, given each Angel's perfection, they influence more extensive places than is commonly thought.

Cardinal Mazzella cites an example of a place proportioned to an Angel, an entire house, town, or even province.356 We find the theologian Valencia’s position even more pleasing. He says that it is not believable that a small corporeal place corresponds to each Angel, but rather that each Angel can occupy a vast spot in this universe357 without prejudicing the action that other Angels may exercise there for different purposes. That is the opinion we share for reasons already explained.

Without falling into the erroneous temerity of Durand, who grants ubiquity to all Angels in the universe, we think that Gabriel, the most sublime of all (nos. 523 & ff.), is the only one that can act widely in the most distant parts of the universe. He does not do so by embracing them all simultaneously because he must have movement – missus est—but by forming his adequate locus with many places he chooses at will from the set of beings inferior to him. We believe that other Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones participate in this overall action on the universe in decreasing intensity.

554. St. Thomas says it is common law that the Angels administer not only human things but all bodies as well (n. 425). Thus, it is not surprising that the leading Angel reaches all parts of the universe, albeit one after the other. His excellence seems to demand it. If it is natural for corporeal beings to be moved immediately by the spiritual or angelic nature depending on the place (ibid.), Angels preside upon all places. Imagine what the Supreme Angel’s sphere of action must be like!

354

1 p. q. 61, a. 4.

St. Thomas, cited by Mazzella, l. c., n. 323. To maintain the contrary appears to us almost identical to say that the angels unite substantially with bodies and places, which nobody admits. However, even assuming that, the thing would still be at least doubtful according to St. Thomas, for the human soul is also an incorporeal substance.

See below nos. 764, 765; 771-773; 832.

356 Loc. cit. no. 336, 2°.

357 Quoted by Mazzella, no. 342.

355

555. Angels administer all corporeal creatures as farmers govern their crops (n. 426). It is reasonable to conclude that intangible substances outnumber material substances almost incomparably. How vast, then, is the field of the first Seraphim, who presides over the rulers of all bodies and places? How vast are the spaces under the one Who has all created spirits under His hand? (n. 436).

556. A common feature of all angelic orders is that a lower order’s excellence is contained in the excellence of the higher-order.358 The higher Angel receives the notion of truth in a kind of universal design. He transmits it to his inferiors by making it available to them and strengthens his subordinates’ intellectual capacity.359 That which all Angels can do together without their leader, the latter could do on his own because he supports them all directly or immediately: confortando lumen naturale ipsius (angeli inferioris).360 557. Second hierarchy Angels exert a universal action on bodies and spaces (nos. 455, 456). Does that not happen a fortiori with first hierarchy Angels and in particular with the top Angels? Gabriel is the Angel of the Incarnation, and this great mystery is the end of all things (nos. 521, 530 & ff.). Therefore, everything leads to the belief that the first Angel's role concerns things' universality.

Let us add that the Church Militant is modeled after the Angelic Church. As the Pope extends his authority over the whole Church, which must embrace the entire earth, so too the Church's head is the head of all men by right. Under Christ and Mary, the head of Angels likewise extends his care over all creatures under him. Being the most perfect of pure created spirits, he is incomparably apt for it. Just as in the Church, when he wishes, the temporal Vicar of Christ can do himself what he commonly does through others, so too the supreme angelic power can deploy directly throughout the universe with the perfection peculiar to the noblest angelic spirits.

558. This Angel moves like that and changes places. According to St. Thomas (n. 552), for an Angel, moving and changing places means above all to move and displace his influence. He can also extend, restrict, exercise, or suspend his influence. The angelic substance is transcendent vis-a-vis places.361 True, when an Angel moves locally, he applies his essence to the various places where he is said to move.362 We have seen the extent and condition of angelic places, shaped, so to speak, by the Angel according to his power and mission, and, therefore, places that can comprise the most remote regions of the universe.

That does not prevent the words of the Gospel from being true: The Angel Gabriel was sent from God into the city of Galilee...363 The Angel came to Mary... 364 The Angel departed from her.365 As per the 358

Sum. theol. 1 p., Q. 108, a: 5, ad sm.

1 p. q. 106, a. 1. See also n. 447.

360 Ibid. ad 2m.

359

361

Anima et quaellbet incorporalis substantia, quantum est de sui natura, non est obligata alicui loco; sed trascendit totum ordinem corporalium... St. Thomas. q. una de anima, art. 21. The holy doctor adds that bodies do not have the power to stop and imprison spiritual substances unless God gives it to them to punish guilty spirits. That is is done in hell, where fire serves as a prison for demons and reprobate souls. The punishment of the damned, whether pure spirits or human souls, is to be linked to bodies, places, or a space, without governing them. See also Contra Gentiles, 1. 4, c. 90; and De Veritate, q. 26, art. 1.

362 363

St. Thomas, p. 1, q. 53, a. 2, ad 2m.

Lk 1:26.

words of St. Ambrose, he was sent according to his nature (n. 551) into the city of Galilee, but that city alone did not form the entire place adequate to a Seraphim: He went into Mary’s home, and, having accomplished his mission, departed from her. Everything relates to the action Gabriel exerted, and nothing says that his angelic substance was not at the same time in the Empyrean and on the earth.

Besides, it seems clear that the Angel presented himself to the Virgin in a human form, no doubt animated by the Angel, so nothing in the Gospel account is not literally and adequately true.

559. So far, we have considered how angelic nature or natural properties relate to places and spaces.

From this limited perspective, our thesis could still offer difficulties if we confront it with other passages of St. Thomas and sentences of several Church Fathers. Unable to cover this entire subject without going beyond our boundaries, we will present one more theological argument and show that the Angels act primarily in a supernatural way since their glorification, which makes our opinion even more believable.

560. Like almost all other subjects he covered, Cardinal Franzelin dealt superbly well with the sacramental existence of the Body of Jesus Christ. He says that the way the Body of Jesus Christ is present is entirely analogous to the way spirits are present, and only this analogy makes it possible to conceive and explain it. We must insist on this way of understanding the Eucharistic mystery. One must conceive this presence as something spiritual and eminently superior to the physical laws that govern matter. There is as it were a kind of divine and supernatural mechanics that free a body from its natural relations with place and space and imitates the spiritual mode of existence in the manner of making itself present.366 St. Paul signaled this point of view when he said of the human body: It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body... as it is written: The first man Adam was made into a living soul; the last Adam into a quickening spirit.367 Before St. Paul, Christ had said about the Eucharist: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.368 561. What do we notice that is special in the Eucharistic Body of the Savior? It is entirely in each particle of the divided Host. It is entirely and the same everywhere: in heaven and on all discontinuous points of the earth where one finds the Blessed Sacrament. Does it occupy all intermediate spaces? Not at all.

That only affects things subject to places and corporeal laws369 but not what hovers freely above and reigns supreme over the material and natural things.

The glorified soul of Jesus can indefinitely multiply the presence of His Body in the universe; His Body always remains unique and the same. What is multiplied is not the Body of Christ, but only its relations with place and space. As we can see, places and spaces accommodate themselves to the demands of the soul of Christ and His glorious Body. Things that are independent of place or natural relations with space

364

Ibid. 28.

Ibid. 38.

366 Franzelin, De Sacram. Euchar. Thes. XI, III. 367 l Cor 15:44-45.

368 Jn 6:64.

369 Or what, being spiritual like the human soul but not glorified, is naturally made to animate a body.

365

are not multiplied as such but retain their perfect unity of singularity in their multiplied presence wherever it is.370 562. In conclusion, the Body of Christ is present simultaneously in an indefinite number of places, even very distant, without occupying intermediate spaces. Risen and glorious, His Body imitates the mode of being of spirits vis-a-vis place and space. Spirits (and especially Angels, who have no substantial connection with matter) naturally multiply their presence in different places wherever they may be, always governed by their upright will, degree of virtue, and their mission’s extent. St. Gabriel’s simultaneous action on his residence in the Empyrean and Mary’s house in Nazareth seems a tiny sphere of action for the noblest of created spirits.

2. Angels Act as Glorified Children of God 563. Let us add that after confirmation in grace, the Angels act supernaturally and as glorified spirits. All the authors that seem to deny the Angels’ capacity to cover distant places with their influence without occupying intermediate places admit an exception in which they act supernaturally as instruments of God’s omnipotence.371 Well then, even before man’s creation, these faithful spirits ceased being only angels to irrevocably become adopted sons of God and inhabitants of the abode of glory. Why, then, suppose that they act only according to their natural forces? Would this way of behaving be worthy of understanders and suitable to both their essential and accidental happiness?

In truth, the Empyrean’s lucky citizens no longer descend to this lower mode of acting and operating.

Their whole being is raised not only to the supernatural order but to the highest order—the intuitive vision of God and fullest possible perfection of a finite being. After all these considerations, it seems to us there can no longer be any doubt about the truth of the opinion we uphold.

564. O how beautiful the material universe is with its billions of worlds, a grandeur that disconcerts the imagination of mortals, and its immense harmony! How beautiful and intelligible it is when seen with eyes of faith, governed by glorified Angels that can reach all its parts from the height of the Empyrean without need to leave their habitual abode! Unlike earthly monarchs, they do not divide the universe into various regions but into different spheres of influence. By his specific power, each Angel presides over a particular virtue of the physical order. Thus, under the orders of God, Christ and Mary, all Angels govern all forms that constitute the souls of matter.

The Seraphim radiate divine love, which is the last end of all created energies; the Cherubim propagate the divine knowledge that teaches all things how to reach their end; the Thrones communicate and ensure the strength and stability necessary to achieve that end according to each being’s final destiny.

These are the primary finite motors of the universe. They do not immediately touch all things, but only what they want to achieve according to the guidelines they read in the divine plan. They do the rest through their subordinates, as all Angels, to varying degrees, love God, know God, and are firmly attached to Him. 370 371

Franzelin; 1. cit. not. IV. See also above, nos. 315-319.

See Suarez, De Angelis, 1. IV, chap: X, n. 2; Mazzella, De Deo creante, n. 341.

The influence of the primary angelic motors, either directly or indirectly, is universal (n. 556). The influence of Dominations, Virtues, and Powers also has something universal about it but is limited to lower Angels and mobile worlds. The third hierarchy Angels have even smaller spheres of action (n. 448 and nos. 451 & ff.).

565. The Empyrean is the ordinary place of glorified Angels. When not operating elsewhere, says Cardinal Mazzella, the Angels are in the Empyrean as in their place presiding over all corporeal nature and deploying their operative power ready to carry out divine orders immediately.372 Governing the material Empyrean, they govern all worlds and mobile beings moving in the vast bosom of the Empyrean or under its influence (nos. 336 & ff.). As pure glorified spirits, they can act throughout the mobile universe by traveling or staying in their celestial abode. Matter, distance and space are unable to set limits on their radiance.

566. Conclusions: 1. While remaining assistants, the higher Angels can also fulfill various missions with mortals in the different parts of creation. They can do because God is everywhere, and every act of glorified angels, and notably the highest, is an act of praise and glorification of God, and also because as pure spirits, they make their own sphere of influence and impose their laws on bodies and spaces but are not subject to them.

2, The harmonies of visible nature as a whole and in each of its parts reflect the Angels' accidental happiness. They produce that order and enjoy making all beings preach the divine attributes.

3. Imitating the Body of Christ and becoming spiritual bodies (as per St. Paul), after their glorious resurrection, our bodies, under the empire of our souls, will exert in the universe an action analogous to that of the Angels thanks to their clarity, agility, subtlety, and impassiveness. O what glory, power, happiness, wondrous beauties God is preparing for His chosen ones in heaven!

CHAPTER FOUR Guardian Angels According to St. Augustine and St. Thomas The Accidental Happiness they Experience Fulfilling Their Ministries

FIRST MEDITATION The Guardian Angels of the Material Universe 567. As we have seen (nos. 550, 16 note, 552), all Angels were created with relations that involve them with bodily creatures and even more so with wayfaring rational creatures in the trial. That is why we think that Lucifer and his Angels were guardians or partial movers of the first heaven, the Empyrean, 372

De Deo creante, n. 326, end of the second note.

while it was mobile (nos. 419 & ff.) Their prevarication and the glorification of the Holy Angels profoundly changed the universe.

The Empyrean became immobile and glorious to serve as a suitable dwelling for Angels who became impeccable and understanding. Hell was created, established in the center of chaos, and rendered incapable of becoming heaven to serve as an eternal prison for spirits eternally obstinate and incapable of governing anything according to the divine plan. The other materials from chaos were employed to form the mobile universe, a new mobile Empyrean, a new moving sky for the use of rational creatures inferior to the Angels, a wayfaring universe like the beings for whom it was destined. This universe awaits to be fixed and glorified with the confirmation in grace and resurrection of the new children of God. We do not need to wonder with St. Augustine, Suarez, and other authors, about who inherited the ministries left vacant by the rebel angels; these ministries changed with the state of the universe.

568. The holy angels, who represent the whole Church Triumphant,373 maintain the Empyrean stable and direct their influences on the mobile worlds. Their influences are the latter’s primary moving causes (nos 338,352 and 358). They govern the mobile universe and particularly humanity and the Church Militant according to the Creator's designs by their influence and direct action on the mobile universe's forms.

As ministers of God, they envelop Hell and all damned with indestructible fire barriers, and thus reign over Lucifer and the demons. The evil spirits can no longer have access to the fortified court of the Heavenly Emperor. Deserters from the heavenly host can no longer plunder the Empyrean. Although always surrounded by globes of flame, they have some freedom of excursion into the mobile worlds.

However, they never dare to approach heavenly Jerusalem, which they avoid as torture.374 For them, the light of glory would be worse than the hellish flames. With it, their iniquity would suffer more horribly than with the fires created for sin. Besides, the holy Angels so fortify the Heavenly Emperor’s court that no reprobate is tempted to approach it. Reprobates gravitate toward the depths of the abyss375 by the attraction exerted on them by the absence of good, but mainly by rejection from high regions where good reigns as master and God and His Angels tolerate no evil.

569. The holy angels also rule over evil spirits that circulate in the moving universe with God’s permission. Heaven’s Angels. St. Augustine says, have been appointed over the powers of the air and we must seek among them the causes of what happens here below. They see the fixed, eternal law that sets the always immutable and stable law without writing, words, or noise. Angels see that law with a pure heart and follow it in all things here below. All powers, from the most sublime to the least, are ordained according to this law. If the Word of God rules the highest heavenly powers, what to say of the lower, earthly powers? All the evil spirits have left, therefore, is their desire to harm.376

373

Quo nomine (angeli) generali universa illa superna civitas nuncupatur. St. Augustine De Genesi ad litt. book V, chap. 19, n. 37.

374 St. Augustine, Confessions, 1. 7, chap. 21: Ubi non latrocinantur qui caelestem militiam deseruerunt ; vitant enim eam sicut supplicium.

375 Incipient dicere montibus: cadite super nos. St. Luke, 28:30.

376 Enarr. in Ps. 103, serm. 41 n. 9.

They desire to lose man, destroy the Church, ruin nature, and change God’s entire work into chaos like the one found in their eternal prison. While it is true that a sinner’s desire is bound to perish,377 it also becomes his torture. Demons pay dearly for the temporary and limited freedom to roam mobile nature.

They must contemplate with rage the order maintained by the faithful Angels. In it, they appear as toys of good spirits, of Christ’s human friends, and even of matter, whose laws challenge and defy them.

What torments they put these proud spirits through! Each excursion of theirs earns a multitude of new defeats. If the demons harm perverse men, the latter want it; even in this matter, their sublime angelic nature depends on the wills of weak mortals. According to St. Augustine, they cannot act without receiving God’s and the good Angels’ permission every time. They are nothing but instruments of God’s wrath to chastise sinners or of His love to perfect the righteous. What an awful alternative: remain immobile in hell or come out to promote order despite himself! Such is Satan’s fate. He turned into a toy, and his seeming glory is his condemnation.378 That is the fate of all demons.

570. The entire universe—and not only demons—is subject to the Blessed Angels. These very good, holy and sublime creatures with heavenly and super-heavenly powers are so great that God alone commands them. The whole universe is subject to them. God gave angelic society the ability to contain all things through the ministries peculiar to them and indispensable to the order of things. However, Angels' society does not contain everything by its majesty, but by its attachment to God’s majesty and by devoutly fulfilling His orders; Him according to whom, in whom and by whom all things were made.379 The whole universe obeys the holy Angels. Their office is to contain all things and keep them in order.

Their multitude, therefore, contains and sustains the material Empyrean. The Empyrean is their dwelling because it is glorified. In it they behold God directly and govern the mobile universe, which gravitates in its bosom (nos. 21 & ff.; 25; 210 & ff.; 247 & ff.; 336 & ff.; 552 & ff.).

The residences of God, the Angels, and other Elect bear little resemblance to those of men on earth. The latter contain their inhabitants; the former suit real kings who dominate nature and make their spheres of influence in it. These spheres are dwellings, particularly because they enjoy the presence and action of those we call their inhabitants. Saint Augustine calls them a kind of celestial habitation. It seems to me, he says, that the Angels have a heavenly habitation where they lead a life of ineffable joys; there, immortality and incorruptibility reign; all things exist perpetually according to God’s gift and grace; it is the eternal empire of the supernatural and glory. This empire is the upper part of things.380 Consequently, the entire mobile universe is, as it were, but an appendage of the celestial Jerusalem. By the movement impressed upon it from above, i.e. from all around, the latter changes unceasingly until the complete glorification of all of God’s friends. Then, it too is glorified and gives the Empyrean its final interior extension. That is why the heavenly citizens, always bearing in mind the ultimate ends of things as they accomplish their ministries, govern wayfaring beings with so much love.

377

Ps 111:10.

Sic est fictus ut illudatur ... quae tibi videtur ejus gloriatio, damnatio est. St. Augustine ibid.

379 St. Augustine, De libero arbitrio, l. 3, chap. 11, n. 33.

380 St. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 85, n. 17.

378

571. Their supreme ambition is to complete the Creator’s rational Church and material Church. The rational Church is, to varying degrees, excellently, the temple and throne of God. She is presided over by Christ and Mary, and consecrated to God through the grace of adoption and glory (nos. 211 & ff.; 241249).381 She forms or is intended to form the heavens of heavens, i.e., the intelligent and loving Empyrean. The material Church will be composed of matter that already reached its ultimate end and awaits its final glorification. It was created first to serve rational beings subjected to the test and display God’s works, including risen man’s bodily senses and secondary faculties.

The Angels ceaselessly consult the ideal that will end up being fully realized and serves as their rule in the government of things. They can provide for a being’s transitory good only as far as the general ends permit. An angelic power presiding over a being behaves differently depending on whether he considers, so to speak, only his private right or the office concerning the being entrusted to him or whether he must act as a minister of the universal good. As the whole prevails over the part, an Angel can provide for the good of a being committed to his care only as far as the law of universality allows. A spirit’s piety is all the purer, the less attached he is to his particular issues and considers the universal law, fulfilling it with greater devotion and pleasure; for the law of universality is divine wisdom.382 The attention Guardian Angels pay to the universal order, the ultimate ends of things, and wayfaring people in the trial explains the apparent defects one could notice in nature and human societies. Since God wants a trial and childbirth labor (nos. 325 & ff.) as vestibules to heavenly Jerusalem, the holy Angels are happy to want solely what God wants and tolerate tares in the father's field to a certain extent.383 In their actions, the Angels regulate themselves to God’s good pleasure.384 572. The spectacle of nature and society’s peculiarities that displease us must not lead us to think that the holy angels do little about it. In reality, all material nature is subject to the Angels and God.385 Everything visible in this world has an angelic power in charge to care for it, as some passages of divine Scripture testify.386 Divine Wisdom appointed various governors to various things. The Doctor Angels teach that various spiritual substances preside over bodily things, although every Angel, even the smallest, has greater and more universal power than any material thing.387 This watching assignment does not hinder the celestial citizen in any way, as it does not occupy him entirely. He governs his object or human being with a view on universality, as we have said. Who among us can know the number of relationships that any being has with the universality of beings? If, according to Pascal, a pebble thrown into the ocean ends up displacing all its waters, in a certain way, the smallest being in nature relates to all beings in the universe and becomes extremely big to those who know it well. It is also noble, as it is a creature of God and gravitates toward heavenly Jerusalem (nos. 325 & ff.), 381

Certe, quod manifestum est, in Angelis habitat Deus ... Ipsa congregatio Angelorum templum Dei est ... Ecclesia deorsum et Ecclesia sursum : Ecclesia deorsum in omnibus fidelibus, Ecclesia sursum in omnibus Angelis. Sed descendit ad Ecclesiam deorsum Dominus Angelorum, et ei Angeli in terra ministraverunt ministranti nobis. St. Augustine Enarrat. in psal. 137, n. 4.

382

St. Augustine, De Div. quaest. 83, q. 79, n. 1.

Mt 13:29.

384 St. Thomas, 1 p; q; 113; at 8.

385 St. Augustine De Gen. ad litt. c. 24.

386 Id. De diversis quaest. 83, q. 79, n. 1.

387 St. Thomas, p. 1, q. 110, a. 11 ad. 3m.

383

causing real pleasure to the holy Angels. What wonders one finds in the least of beings! They surpass and confound all our scientists, but the angelic gaze grasps them in as a whole and in their causes and ends, admiring the work of infinite power and wisdom in them. While caring for these beings, the Angels also maintain relationships with all happy custodians of other beings.

573. Everything visible in this world has an angelic power in charge of it. How precious these visible things are! Admirable above all is the Church Triumphant’s universal penetration in the mobile universe and the Church Militant. This penetration is hardly visible in the eyes of pure reason but very visible in the eyes of faith. A person who does not see this clearly with his intellect feels oppressed by the sheer number and depth of nature’s mysteries. On the contrary, a spiritual man, a man of faith, who judges all things388 easily realizes in light of the highest principles the energies and phenomena offered to his eyes.

574. Nothing can be arranged in this visible world, says Pope St. Gregory, except by invisible creatures, meaning holy angels and the souls of the righteous. Just as Almighty God helps with His breath, fills rational beings, and animates and moves invisible beings, the latter fill, move, and vivify bodies of flesh and other visible bodies.389 The most intimate features of the beings offered to our observation are their forms or natural active principles, which act immediately on the matter associated with them. But they also need motors and regulators because they lack sufficient raison d’être and aim further than their nature allows, as the ends of all things are the supernatural and glory. The influences of nature alone are not adequate, for also nature is directed. Therefore, we are faced with glorified beings and God and must conclude that the Church Triumphant penetrates and invades the entire mobile universe. What leaven of renewal and glorification! On what noble foundations the natural order that we contemplate is set!

575. God is the cause of things, which makes and is not made, says St. Augustine. But other causes also make and are made, like souls and especially spirits. As for bodily causes, they are made more than they make, and we should not classify them among efficient causes as they only do what spiritual beings do through them.390 How limited is the power of wayfaring man over events, elements, space, stars! However, spiritual beings regulate and direct everything done here. O holy Angels, to you we owe, after God, nature’s constancy and order. You preside over all tendencies and natural movements and having observed this, the wonders of creation no longer surprise us. It would be astonishing if glorified immortals did not know and could not do anything that surpasses us. All things beyond our understanding and strength, in the ensemble of beings, preach the Empyrean’s presence and put us in contact with heavenly Jerusalem, which deigns descend to us in natural form: ‘I saw the holy city ... descending from Heaven.’391 It is a provocation to the faith that saves.

388

1 Cor 2:15.

St. Gregory, Dialogues 1, 4, chap. VI. 390 De Civit. Dei, 1.5, chap. 9, n. 4.

391 Ap 21:2.

389

SECOND MEDITATION The Guardian Angels of Wayfaring Humanity 576. The material, irrational universe is made for creatures capable of knowing and loving God (nos.

291, 295, 296, 320 & ff.). Thus, the Angels govern, direct, and influence it to serve rational creatures according to their various states (329). The Empyrean is immobile and glorified for the Blessed. For wayfarers subject to the test, it is mobile, changing, and trying; for a house is for its resident, not the resident for the house.

577. While performing their functions, the Guardian Angels of the material and mobile universe constantly consult the interests of rational beings pursuing their end. The Angels’ watch, says St. Thomas, is a kind of execution of the providential and divine order concerning man. Divine Providence devotes its care mainly to beings whose duration is perpetual. As for transitory things, divine Providence limits itself to ordering them to perpetual beings,392 that is to say, to direct them in such a way that they suitably serve beings endowed with reason. The whole changing universe is therefore subordinate to the destiny of the rational being.

578. We know that this statement scandalizes some unbelievers. What, they ask, are millions of worlds and infinite space made for man?! How absurd! Why don’t they say, then, that the ocean is made for seaweeds, the atmosphere for insects, and immensity for nothing! Stop, unbelievers! Your amazement belies your strange littleness. Your refusal of faith has clipped your intellect’s wings, and you dream about the lessening of man.

Is it not true that even in this exile and trial, human thought soars beyond this immensity that astonishes you? That the desires of the human heart extend beyond the expanse of the heavens? That human imagination, however imperfect, flies above all these floating worlds that confuse us? If man does such acts when he is fledgling, what will he do when, like an adult eagle that has developed all its faculties, he freely flies in the glorified heavens? Will he, then, not be greater than all things material? He will reign over matter!

The Creator, who knows man -- the noble work of His hands --, treats him according to his final destiny and already makes him served by all things that must serve him forever. Where is the scandal then, O minds shrunk by free thought?

If there is nothing better than expanse and bodily masses in your eyes, then your field, which is larger than you and your beast of burden, which weighs more than you, are better than you! You are made for them, not them for you! May God preserve us from the atrophy of free thought!

Moreover, as we said above (nos. 168, 169), rational creatures, other than Angels and men, can populate the stars, and in this case, those stars would be for them like the earth is for us, and all stars for all intelligent creatures.

392

1 p. q. 113, a. 2.

579. Therefore, the Angels of nature work mainly for our fellow men and us, and from this general point of view, all of them are, in a certain way, our Guardian Angels. Moreover, each of us, righteous or sinner, is entrusted to the care of a special Angel, his own Angel: Singulis hominibus singuli angeli ad custodiam deputantur.393 Like grown men, little children have their heavenly custodian. Take care not to despise one of these little ones, says the Savior because, I tell you, their angels in heaven unceasingly see the face of my Father Who is in heaven.394 A child directly relates to the members of the Church Triumphant. From this standpoint, he is great, noble, and powerful. Great is the dignity of souls, says St. Jerome, since each has, from birth, an angel custodian. Every day, Angels offer to God the prayers of those who should be saved by Christ. Thus, it is dangerous to despise those longing for the eternal and invisible God through the Angels’ good offices and ministry.395 580. What are the main effects of the Angels’ watch? This beautiful passage from Exodus summarize them: Behold I will send my Angel, who shall go before thee, and keep thee in thy journey, and bring thee into the place that I have prepared. Respect him, listen to his voice, and take care not to despise him, because he will not forgive thee when thou sin, and My Name is in him. But if thou hear his voice, and do all that I tell thee, I will be an enemy to thy enemies and will afflict them that afflict you. And my Angel shall go before thee.396 581. He is God’s envoy to us. The Heavenly Father is so good that He does not neglect even the care of a sparrow.397 He cares so much for us, worth more than many sparrows that all the hairs of our heads are numbered.398 God assists and protects us above all through his Angel: God’s Name is in the Guardian Angel. A name indicates the thing named. When God’s name is in someone, God and His manifold attributes and operations are in that one and act through him. God’s goodness, wisdom, mercy, power, justice, holiness, providence are exercised through the divine minister in whom God’s name. Oh, how noble Guardian Angels are! Oh, how fortunate is a man guarded by Angels!

582. Our good Angel walks before us to prepare us and show us the sure way. He suggests holy thoughts, excites us to do good, provides us with opportunities for it, recaptures us, encourages us, and instructs us.399 He walks before us next to God, offering Him our prayers and good works, mixing them with his own and thus making ours more effective (Tobias 12; Apoc. 8). He helps us attract from heaven all graces that are the principles of all good; he arranges persons, things, and events for us, so we fulfill our temporal mission and arrive at our eternal destiny.

583. The guardian angel keeps safe us on the way; watches over our health and our innocence; helps us convert if in sin; fights our spiritual and physical enemies; and governs nature’s beings so they are useful to us and do not harm us, as the stories of Tobias, Jacob, Daniel and so many others show.

393

St. Thomas, ibid.

St. Matthew, 28:10.

395 In Matth. XVIII, 1. 2 Comment.

396 Ex 23:20-23.

397 Lk 12: 6.

398 Ibid. 7.

399 Mazzella, De Deo creante, n. 45.

394

584. He brings us into the land that has been prepared for us, leading us to the faith, to the Church, to our state in life, to our desired degree of perfection, to our abode in heaven.

585. He does not forgive us when we sin, for our greatest evil would be impunity, cause of hardening.

The best service he can render to us is a friendly and merciful punishment intended to bring us back to order, duty, and happiness.400 586. Let us present some remarkable thoughts borrowed from St. Augustine and St. Thomas. The proper order of our profession of faith, says the great bishop of Hippo, requires that we profess the Church immediately after the Holy Trinity, passing from the Inhabitant to His house, from God to His temple, from the Creator to His city. Here the Church is to be taken in all her integrity and encompass not only her wayfaring members on earth (the Church Militant) but also her part in heaven, which has been united with God from its creation. That immutably happy part is comprised of the holy Angels and assists its wayfaring members as appropriate, as both will have the same eternal fate and already are one Church, united by the bond of charity, and wholly established to worship the same God.401 Perfected by the supernatural and forming the Church of God, the rational creature is greatest and noblest after the three divine Persons. It is also the most beautiful abode of God, Who is spirit, His holiest temple, and richest city next to which the material Empyrean, glorified as it is, is but a shadow or reflection. The various members of this Church are linked to one another by charity so that the happy members of the Church Triumphant are members of the Church Militant, and the latter invoke and honor the former. How great the Church is, and how beautiful! The entire universe, glorified or mobile, is but the field in which the intelligent Church of Christ is deployed.

587. To acquire beatitude, the supreme good, we need the Angels to favor us with sincere benevolence.

Rather than making us their subjects, they need to announce to us the One under whose government we must be associated with them in peace.402 God makes all that He has drawn from nothing converge toward the salvation and glorification of rational beings. Each thing, indirectly or immediately, contributes to this great work according to its capacity and destiny.403 As intelligent and glorified beings and distinguished executors of the divine plan, the Angels can render outstanding services to us in this respect. God, Who wants nothing useless in the place of perfection, demands that the Angels deploy their capacity to help us and that we use their good offices. He thus honors secondary causes and obliges all His Church’s members to have charity, the most divine of virtues. That is why the Angels do not treat us as servants but as brothers and future equals. All their ambition consists in penetrating us as much as possible with divine influences so that, finally raised to their level we may constitute with them a single and forever happy society. To this end, they aspire mainly to enlighten us.

400

See Cornelius a Lapide, in Exodus ch. 23. v. 20, the various cases in which Angels helped men according to Scripture. The author adds that each man’s Guardian Angel behaves in the same way.

401 Enchiridion, chap. 56.

402 St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, 1. 10, ch. 26.

403 All beings participate in Providence. St. Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchy, ch. 4, n. 1.

588. St. Augustine calls the Angels the organs of Heaven: God directed to earth the organs of heaven, that is, the heavenly Angels, through whom divine revelations are ordinarily manifested to us.404 God is accustomed to speaking to the mobile universe mobile and particularly to wayfaring humanity through the Angels. Accordingly, our ancestors in the faith received the law through the Angels' ministry,405 before God, in the fullness of time, spoke to us through his Son, Whom He made heir of all things.406 St. Dionysius says: God first pours out His enlightenment to the Angels, the rays of which they transmit to us. The law, as theology attests, was given to us through the Angels.407 Before as after the law, the Angels guided our illustrious fathers to God.408 At times, the Angels did so by prescribing their conduct,409 returning them to the right path of truth from the errors of a profane life,410 unveiling to them, as interpreters,411 the sacred orders412 and secret visions of supermundane mysteries413 or divine predictions.414 589. The purpose of the Angels’ watch, says St. Thomas, is to enlighten us on real science, which is the principal and ultimate end of their ministry.415 They enlighten us by offering us intelligible truths with realistic images to make them proportional to our capacity and strengthen our intellect through contact with their strong spirit. In part, they even contribute to give us faith. Our will’s inner movement, which makes us believe by perfecting our free will, comes only from God; but human apostles and mainly Angels present to our intellect the truths to believe. Man’s natural reason comes immediately from God but can be strengthened by Angels. When man contemplates the spectacle of nature and reasons according to the impressions that he receives, the truth that appears to his mind is all the higher and more sublime the stronger his intellect is. The Angel strengthens man to acquire greater knowledge of God through visible creatures; this help can be very real without man realizing it.416 590. Oh, how much vain science one finds in today’s world due to the proud folly of ignoring the supernatural! Vain are all men, especially the so-called sages, who do not base their science on the knowledge of God: In quibus non subest scientia Dei; who, seeing finite goods, could not understand the existence of the One who is the supreme good; and who, when contemplating such works, do not know the One Who is their Author.417 Instead of seeing themselves as geniuses, they should deplore their conceptions' weakness, which condemns them to crawl. The truth that appears in the mind of a contemplator of nature is all the higher, the more powerful his mind is. Thus, if their intellect is unable to see either God or the Angels, their talents are way below those of the mediocre. Despite their culture 404

Annot. in Job, 38, toward the end.

405

Acts 7:53.

406

Heb 1:2.

Gal 3:19.

407 408 409

Acts 7:53.

Gen 22:12.

Acts 10:3.

411 Dan 7:16.

412 Ibid. 10.

413 2 Cor 12:2.

414 Mt 2:13. St. Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, C. 4, n. 2 415 P. I, q. 113, a. 5, ad 2m.

416 P. 1, q. 111, a. 1.

417 Wis 13:1.

410

and erudition, they place themselves in the lowest rank of human society.418 They belong to the category of people who have much more memory than judgment. If they had faith, how suddenly they would grow! The first principles would render fertile their lively and cultivated, but warped and light intellect. The supernatural would give them what they need the most. By His grace, God would strengthen their will; the Angels would bring truths to their minds, which would be rectified, and give their intellects tremendous force to understand these truths and deepen them. Men of study, men of science, devotion to the Guardian Angels is an excellent resource for you; do not neglect it.

591. Besides instruction, the Guardian Angels render us all kinds of other services. Their custody has a great number of other effects. For example, they ward off demons and prevent anything that would be harmful to our bodies and souls.419 They love our spiritual souls, which resemble them, are created in the image and likeness of God, have the same nature as the soul of Christ, Head of all creation, have their same eternal destiny, serve as a transition between the world of spirits and that of bodies,420 and thus summarize the whole universe. The Angels also love our bodies, to whose formation they probably contributed when God was shaping Adam’s body421 and to whose renovation they will contribute on the day of resurrection.422 In their eyes, our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost,423 members of Christ,424 most accomplished masterpieces of the material order over which they preside, and most direct final causes of the existence of mobile worlds and their future glorification.

592. The Guardian Angels of man and the universe also regard us as the main objects of their love after God. The former rule nature for the sake of the rational creature in the trial; the latter follow step by step, or rather precede and protect, every rational creature. We posit that a large number of effects in the universe’s mobile bodies cannot be explained by their bodies’ natural actions or by the sole influences of celestial bodies. A few examples are the drought and rain brought by Elias’s prayer,425 the plagues of Egypt, the miracles that took place at the Savior’s death, and countless others.

That is why, in our opinion, it is necessary to admit that the Angels preside immediately not only over heavenly bodies but also over lower bodies.426 When nature is favorable, the earth is fertile, and the air healthy, the Angels regulate things according to divine kindness. When the elements are wrathful, and plagues are unleashed, God’s wrath is acting on guilty creatures through the Angels. God’s will regulates the Angels’ actions, and they carry out His judgments on various kingdoms and persons.427

418

For if one be perfect among the children of men, yet if thy wisdom be not with him, he shall be regarded as NOTHING (Wis. 9:6). We overrate too many misguided talents.

419 St. Thomas, p. 1, q. 113, a. 5, a 2 .

420 Because, although essentially spiritual, they were created to be substantially united with bodies, which SHAPE man.

421 Ibid. 1 p. q. 91, a. 2, ad 1m.

422 Ibid. and Q. 110, a. 4, ad 1m.

423 1 Cor 6:19.

424 Ibid. 15.

425 Ja 5: 17-18.

426 St. Thomas, 1 p. q. 110, a. 1; ad 2m.

427 Q. 113, a. 7.

593. O Holy Angels, why do we think so little of you? You fill nature and are more numerous in human society than men as some distinguished persons have several Guardian Angels. Yet, material things make us lose sight of your helping presence in this place of trial. Heavenly Jerusalem excitedly watches over us; the glorious Angels, our future fellow-citizens, accompany us in a friendly way. Why not invoke them more often and with more fervor? If we only knew a little better how to deserve their affection, God would work even miracles in our favor with their prayers.428 Sadly, because of our forgetfulness, distractions, and faults, we often oblige our celestial custodians to punish us when they would rather reward us.

According to Saint Thomas, the Angels’ happiness is in no way disturbed by the men’s sins and by the punishments inflicted on sinners.429 But we believe that the great doctor’s statement refers to the essential, rather than accidental, happiness the Angels enjoy. We believe that accidental happiness would be greater if, instead of serving the supreme justice that punishes, they could serve only the mercy that forgives and the kindness that distributes pleasant benefits. With good reason, authoritative authors recommend that we not upset our guardian Angels.

594. One might wonder if the Angels in charge of our care throughout our lives are as if exiled, during all this time, from the material heavenly Jerusalem, which would seem to be highly inconvenient. We answer with Saint Thomas: Although an Angel sometimes leaves the person entrusted to him, locally speaking, he does not abandon him as far as his care is concerned. Although the Angel is in Heaven, he knows what is happening to his protégé and needs no time to travel; he can immediately be on the earth.430 Moreover, we have seen that an angel can apply his influence to two or more places, however distant they may be (nos. 546 & ff.). So also on this count, we must say that relations between the Empyrean and our globe are continuous.

595. To which hierarchies and choirs do the Guardian Angels belong? There would be a lot to say on these points, but for the sake of brevity, we will only say a few words. Higher Angels are likely appointed to the custody of those God has predestined to a higher degree of glory.431 However, although they sometimes receive missions to fulfil (nos. 506 & ff.), the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones should not be placed among Guardian Angels.432 Their mission is nobler and more universal. They are the models of 428

St. Thomas, l p; q. 110, a. 4, ad 1m.

Q. 113, a. 7.

430 Ibid. a. 6, ad 3m.

431 Ibid. a. 3, ad 1m.

432 Thus, the authors think that Saint Raphael was not the guardian angel of Tobias, but an extraordinary heavenly envoy. However, serious authorities hold that Mary had, from birth, St. Gabriel, one of the princes of the heavenly court who stand before the throne of God, for guardian angel. Father Justin Mieckow, Lectures on the Litanies of the Blessed Virgin, 380th lecture II, cites in support of his opinion, Saint Ildephonse, Eusebius of Emissa, St. Peter Damien and St. Bernard. “In fact, it was very suitable,” he adds, “that this glorious Virgin, who was to be the Mother of God, not be entrusted during her life to the care of an ordinary angel but to the assiduous care of one of the seven principal ones, one of those who surpass all others in the Heavenly Court. This is how Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, from the height of the Cross, entrusted to one of his main disciples, the one he loved the most.” Far from fighting this opinion, we say, on the contrary, that the exception proves the rule. In our eyes, it is proper that the Mother of God, the future Queen of Angels and of the whole universe, was kept during her pilgrimage by the highest of the Seraphim.

429

spiritual masters, doctors, and defenders of the truth, and as such, are not necessarily charged with particular administrations. Divine love, knowledge of God, and unshakable attachment to God are the main objects of their care, assiduously rendering homage to the King of kings.

THIRD MEDITATION The Accidental Happiness of the Guardian Angels of the Universe and that of Men Fulfilling Their Duties 596. At first glance, it may seem that these spirits' condition is not something to be envied. Blessed as they are thanks to the intuitive vision of God, they have to govern the sun, moon, stars, ether, atmosphere, people, animals, plants, and minerals. To immortal spirits, that kind of life would seem singularly undignified and monotonous. Now, looking at this subject in light of a more educated reason and especially in the light of faith, we will quickly change our opinion and envy these sublime spirits' happiness.

597. Imagine the mobile universe and the Empyrean immersed in the immense Ocean of the divinity.

Everything exists or floats in God, the eternal and essential beauty; in the Trinity, one finds the supreme harmony; in the Being, infinite perfection and beatitude. In such an environment, what can be like the life of creatures who no longer have to undergo a test and enjoy all divine excellence to the fullest degree that their beings, enlarged by glory, can receive? In truth, whatever their secondary operations, they are always inebriated with the Infinite Good and, therefore, necessarily find their happiness in doing whatever they do.

Happiness is the complete satisfaction of the being who experiences it. Happiness cannot be judged adequately by that being’s kind of occupation. Thus, a swallow that incubates its eggs is happy in its small voluntary prison even though it is free to fly through the skies. Thanks to love, it is fasting and losing weight but feels happier in its nest than flying through the air. What, then, can one say of the holy Angels who are incapable of suffering and have a love incomparably more intense than any mobile being? They care for the beings entrusted to them, seeking the final glorification of the universe and the rational creatures subject to the test. They carry out the divine plan, a wonder that never ceases to delight them. While keeping their dear ones protected, they can change places as they please or influence very distant areas (nos. 54; 6 & ff.).

598. Furthermore, as we have seen (n. 436), the Angels are so numerous that they surpass any other multitude, including that of matter. Therefore, Guardian Angels continually enjoy the innumerable society of their fellow Angels scattered throughout the mobile universe. As I speak with a friend of mine, his Angel converses with mine and the various Angels who take care of this place, people and things, form a most friendly and happy society, unhindered by material obstacles (which they completely dominate). This society, superior to distances and space, joins with the angels directing the stars, the atmosphere, the ether and forms a single community with all Angels in both the mobile universe and

Empyrean. So we see how great the Guardian Angels’ accidental happiness can be while accomplishing their ministries. Their essential bliss is an inexhaustible source of all secondary happiness.

599. Moreover, in addition to their happiness as members of the immense angelic society, they find the purest joys in their functions. The Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones, who are also guardians of the universe in a general and lofty sense, ceaselessly draw from Jesus Christ and Mary the lights necessary to govern the mobile universe. They transmit these lights to the second hierarchy, which immediately takes care of the top management of things (nos. 448, 455, 456). Accordingly, until the day of Judgment, the Supreme Angels always receive new divine revelations on the world's disposition and particularly on the salvation of the predestined.433 They have the twofold pleasure of knowing ever better the divine plan and teaching it ever better to their inferiors. They have the pure joys of the highest intellects and the greatest hearts, which draw abundantly from the primary sources and then nourish those supposed to instruct and direct common men.434 600. It seems that since they care for rational beings, the Guardian Angels of wayfaring man should be superior to the Angels that govern stars and the entire material mobile universe. However, if we look closer, we soon find that while governing the material universe, the Dominations, Virtues, and Powers also fulfill the role of superior Guardian Angels with humanity.

Dominations choose from among the Angels subject to them, agents most suited to carry out the providential plan in human society and nature. Virtues feed and direct all of these agents’ energies and those of the other beings they direct. Powers determine the mode of accomplishing what is prescribed and prevent the disturbance of order (nos. 448, 455).

Who does not see that these Angels are even more useful to us than those who accompany us step by step? For the sake of the rational creature, they direct the great bodies of nature, preside over physical forces, watch over causes to produce the right effects, and prevent disorder. They also preside over our immediate guardian Angels and watch over us from above. They have all the excellence that our Guardian Angels have and higher, more powerful, and general virtue. Their pleasures are similar to those of the first hierarchy’s Angels: to fill themselves with good from the source immediately superior to them and communicate that good to what is below them.

601. Moreover, the mobile universe governed by these Angels has two ends: to help beget the elect and prepare itself for the final glorification, to complete the material heavenly Jerusalem after the Judgment. These good spirits take great pleasure to direct the general causes to produce these two vital effects. What a charming mission they have, and how advantageous for us: powerfully contributing to increase the number of God’s worshipers and members of heavenly society; promoting the fruitfulness of Christ and His Church; preaching the divine attributes to all nature and converting it into a school of 433

St. Thomas, P: 1, q. 106, a. 4, ad 3m.

When saying that the Angels of the first hierarchy transmit their lights to the second hierarchy, which immediately takes care of the top management of things, we are speaking after Saint Dionysius and Saint Thomas.

But we believe to have demonstrated sufficiently above (nos. 274-278) that the Cherubim have the top management of the mobile universe. For this end, they no doubt receive from the Seraphim illuminations ablaze with love, and in turn, they illuminate the Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, etc. What we say about this subject in the next item must also be understood in this sense.

434

true science and piety; governing irrational creatures to join and assimilate the Empyrean just as the mobile Empyrean was once set in the glorious state through the work and perseverance of the good Angels (nos. 419, 420 & ff.).

602. Similar to Angels are distinguished men that make their country great and strong, feared and admired, prosperous and happy; make excellent laws, instill fear in the wicked alone, entrust jobs only to capable and conscientious persons, provide moral and material well-being everywhere, and prevent disorder. They are more beneficial to individuals than those who only render personal services and exercise a limited influence. Likewise, and even more so, the second hierarchy Angels have universal care and are universally beneficent. They are nobler custodians than the others, and the more they spread the good, the greater is their delight.

603. Let us consult St. Augustine and St. Thomas to know in greater detail what the Guardian Angels’ accidental happiness consists of. According to St. Luke, their joy can increased with the salvation of those entrusted to their ministry: “So I say to you, there shall be joy before the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance.”435 This joy belongs to their accidental reward, which increases until Judgment Day.436 Christ did not die for the Angels, says Saint Augustine. Yet, all human beings redeemed and delivered from evil by His death also benefit the Angels, somehow returning to their friendship after the enmities that sins had placed between men and the holy Angels. Redeemed men also repair the losses that angelic society suffered from the fall of demons.437 Angels and men, says St. Augustine, make only one living city of God, one living and divine sacrifice, one living temple of God. One living city of God because God, by His choicest influences, lives more particularly in His angelic and human elects than in the material heavens, which, in their glorification, receive less abundant and noble influences. One living and divine sacrifice, because this intelligent and holy society ceaselessly burns with love for God and His glory and happily considers itself as a perpetual holocaust offered to the infinite God, happier to exist to praise God rather than to enjoy Him. One living temple of God: God is to Himself His temple infinitely holy and infinitely worthy of Him, but He also has a living temple which is His perfect image, receives the best of His influences, and shines with His purest glory. It is composed of the God-Man Jesus Christ, His Mystical Body, Mary, the Angels, and the righteous who are part of humanity (nos. 210 & ff.). The Angels and men are only one living temple consecrated to the true God because they form only one social body of which Jesus Christ is the head and the life.

This temple is formed as it were of three naves: the middle one, largest and highest, which is the Church Triumphant; the one on the right, which is the Suffering Church; and the one on the left, which is the Church Militant. The latter, says St. Augustine, gathers mortal men wayfaring on earth like mortals who must eventually unite with the immortal Angels.438

435

Lk 15:10.

1 p, q. 62, a. 9, ad 3m.

437 Enchir. ch. 61.

438 De Civit. Dei, 1. 12, chap. 9, n. 2.

436

604. By this, we see that the Blessed Angels’ ministries are useful to them and are part of their bliss. It is proper to perfect beings to pour out on others the perfection they possess.439 In so doing, they complete and perfect their society and the kingdom that must belong to it -- for example, the material celestial Jerusalem. God does not need messengers and ministers, as He knows and can do everything. Yet, He has messengers for us and for them. Indeed, it is good for them and according to their nature and substance to obey God, attend before Him to consult Him on the good of inferiors, and carry out His divine precepts and orders.440 As spirits, they are born superior to matter and able to dominate it. As glorified spirits, they have all the aptitudes to serve God promptly and faithfully both in the order of nature and in the supernatural order.

Therefore, to enjoy governing the moving universe and keeping rational creatures traveling towards their end is part of their innate tendencies.

605. The Angels’ most ardent desire is to serve God as He wishes. They cherish Him much more than themselves because of His ineffable excellence and because He is the inexhaustible source of their happiness. They know that God, in His generosity, wants to raise His Only Son’s mystical and human members to become equals of the holy angels by His grace.441 They know that God promised to make us equal to the Angels.442 However, at present, the Angels do not thirst for happiness as we do; they feast on truth, light, and immortal wisdom. Their bliss is such that, from atop the heavenly Jerusalem, far from which we now travel, they look upon us, wayfarers, and have pity on us. At the Lord’s command, they run to help us return to our common homeland and finally meet them there at the divine source of truth and eternity.443 All Angels and sublime Virtues help us proportionally to their sublimity (pro sua sublimitate), according to the will of God Who even deigned to send His only Son to earth for our sake.444 Let us believe that the good Angels and their excellent divine ministries have only one main goal: making us love God with them.445 606. If the righteous here on earth are not satisfied unless they inform each of their actions with the pure intention of pleasing God, what to say of the glorified Angels, who are consummated in perfection?

If to live is Christ, as St. Paul said,446 with all the more reason, for immortals, to live is God. Their supreme principle of action is the Act itself, Life itself, the substantial and infinite Love. The first principle of everything they do is their charity for God. Therefore, in their beneficence they want to imitate God, His Christ, and Mary. God, Who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.447 His Christ, Who loved us and gave Himself for us as an oblation and sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness.448 Mary, who only 439

St. Thomas, p. 1, q. 62, a. 9, ad 2m.

St. Augustine, De Gen. ad litt. lib. 5, chap. 19, n. 37.

441 St. Augustine in Joan. Tract. 110, n. 6.

442 Lk 20:36.

443 St. Augustine, Enarrat. in psalm 62, n. 6.

444 Id. De divers. quaest. 83, G7, 7, 445 Id. De Vera Religione, chap. 55, n. 110.

446 Phil 1:21.

447 Jn 3:16.

448 Eph 5:2.

440

existed for her Son and us (nos. 173 & ff.). These are the Holy Angels’ dispositions toward us whether they habitually assist with God, govern all nature, watch over us or direct beings inferior to us that must serve us.

607. It is manifest, says St. Augustine that the precept which obliges us to love our neighbor also obliges the holy angels who render us so many merciful services, as it is easy to see in a significant number of passages of the Scriptures. How could they do otherwise, after Our Lord, the Man-God Himself, wanted to be considered our neighbor? Jesus Christ, Our Lord, likened Himself to that Samaritan who helped a man stripped, covered with wounds, and left half-dead by thieves.449 God has mercy on us because of His goodness; we must practice this virtue with one another because of God’s goodness. In other words, God pities us so that we enjoy Him, and we pity one another to help us enjoy Him.450 The blessed spirits drink without measure from the ocean of divine goodness, and we are their neighbor.

The Angels are established in heavenly mansions, immortal and happy. They share the joy of their Lord and Creator, whose eternity consolidates them, whose truth sets them free from all uncertainty, whose grace made them holy. It is only natural for them, so enriched, to mercifully cherish us miserable mortals so that we too attain immortality and happiness. With them, we form the only city of God, of which we are the wayfaring part, and they are the helping part.451 608. The Angels observe the precept of charity all the more gladly because in heaven, they live on charity, and the excellence of their nature drives them to do good in the likeness of God, Christ, and Mary. All creatures, says St. Thomas, have participation in divine goodness that consists of pouring out on others the goods they have, for the essence of good is to communicate itself to others. Hence, even bodily agents imprint their likeness to others as much as possible. Consequently, the more some agents participate in divine goodness by their perfection, the more they strive to communicate it to others as much as possible. St. Peter gives this advice to those who participate by grace in divine goodness: “May each of you put the grace he received at the service of others, as good dispensers of God’s multiform grace.”452 With all the more reason, the holy Angels, who fully participate in God’s goodness, lavish on their inferiors all that they receive from God. However, given their lower capacity, their inferiors do not receive these gifts as excellently as those in a higher order.453 609. The Lord Jesus Himself said: it is happier to give than to receive.454 Well then, the holy Angels give all they receive from God to their inferiors, while these can only receive part of it. How great, then, is the charity of the Holy Angels! How happy they are to exercise it! How they imitate God, Who gives Himself entirely to His rational creatures in heaven although these, being finite, are limited to their

449

Lk 10:30-35.

De Doctrina Christ. l. 1, c. 30, n. 33.

451 De Civit. Dei, libr. 10, chap. 7.

450

452

1 Pet 4:10.

P. 1 q. 106 art. 4.

454 Acts 20:35. Actus ministerii quo Angeli ministrant AD PERFECTIONEM GLORIE IPSORUM PERTINET; cum per hoc maxime ad Dei similitudiuem pertingant, quod Dei cooperatores efficiuntur, ut Dionysius dicit. St. Thomas, Libr. II, Dist. V, q. 2. art. 2.

453

capacity! The immortals’ abode stands out for a superabundance of all good. What a contrast with the parsimonious and miserable state of present life!

True images of heaven, the Church, the Apostles and all wayfaring saints also give the world more than it can receive, showing that they belong to a higher order. They enjoy the eight evangelical beatitudes, as each of them can say with Saint Paul: I am filled with consolation, I overflow with joy in all our tribulations.455 If we in the Church Militant Church can use this language thanks to the possession and exercise of divine charity, which of us can have a precise idea of the happiness the Holy Angels find in accomplishing their ministries, after having been delivered from all trial?

610. Let us summarize and complete the main factors of the Guardian Angels’ accidental happiness.

Here is why they are happy to take care of moving creatures, especially us.

1. God has given His Angels a specific command concerning us, to guard us in all our ways.456 2. We are a very salient part of the Church of God, of which they are the other part, and after God, they love nothing so much as His Church.

3. Charity is their heavenly life, and everything leads them to exercise and deploy it.457 4. With our salvation, we restore the ruins of angelic society, filling the voids left by the rebellious Angels, probably giving rise to new places in the renewal of the universe, thus completing the greatness, beauty, and harmonies of heavenly Jerusalem.

5. Our salvation multiplies the Holy Angels’ friends and friendships.

6. Jesus Christ, head of the Church, and Mary and Joseph, the Church’s noblest members (no. 460), are among us. For this reason, despite our nature’s inferiority, we enjoy an incomparable supernatural nobility in the eyes of the Holy Angels.

7. Our supreme destiny must merge with theirs to eternally praise and contemplate the same God. Our ranks must mingle with all their levels from the choir of simple Angels to that of the Seraphim (nos. preceding and following no. 473).

8. As mixed beings, we form the transition uniting the world of pure spirits to that of perishable forms and matter. Thus, we sum up and constitute the immediate end of the entire sensible universe governed by the Angels and are the noblest beings under their care.

9. The fixation and material glorification of the moving universe will reflect our bodies’ resurrection just as the material Empyrean was set and glorified as a reflection of the faithful Angels’ confirmation in grace and glorification (nos. 419-430). Thus, according to the divine plan, the Angels see our salvation as the cause of wayfaring nature’s definitive ennobling. The latter is like a field that these blessed spirits cultivate with pleasure (n. 426).

455

2 Cor 7:4.

Ps 90:11.

457 This exercise of charity and beneficence belongs to the perfection of their glory, as St. Thomas tells us.

456

10. The Angels see in the future renewal the ultimate completion of the house of God, the temple of God, the Creator’s material city, which will be worthy of its glorious inhabitants in all respects.

11. Our salvation completes the demons’ defeat and the triumph of the Holy Angels that sided with humanity (nos. 531, 532).

12. The Angels are thus associated with the sublime ministry of salvation, which God entrusted mainly to his only Son, to His Mother, to the holy Apostles.

13. The office of guardians of mobile nature and of rational creatures in the state of trial, which the Angels must fulfill, allows them to extend their society throughout creation. It enables them to admire the latter’s grandeur and beauty; acquire an ever greater understanding of its perfections; and lead it to its temporal and final ends. They thus glorify God throughout His work while waiting for risen humanity to join their sublime concert of praise forever.458 611. To arrive at this happy term, let us strive to deserve the Holy Angels’ protection. If we want to gain the benevolence of good Angels, says St. Augustine, let us take care to resemble them by their goodwill.

That makes us be with them, live with them, and serve God with them, although we cannot see them with bodily eyes. The more miserable we are by weakness and dissimilarity of wills, the more we distance ourselves from them, not physically but by merit. We do not separate ourselves from them because we dwell on earth and are laden with the flesh's weight, but because our heart is unclean and our wisdom earthly. Let us get our spiritual health back, and we will become what they are. In the meantime, we approach them by faith if we believe that we, thanks also to their favors, will be beatified

by Him, Who beatified them.459 Resembling them by goodwill, purity of heart, Christian wisdom, firm faith in future happiness are good ways to making them favorable to us and attaining their bliss.

CHAPTER FIVE How Good Angels Deserve Their Happiness: The Test of Angels and Directly Related Subjects

612. To maintain unity on the subject of the Angels, we have considered the mobile world organized after the creation of the Angels and the Empyrean, the glorified Angels, the beings under test marching toward their ends, and the Guardian Angels placed at the service of Divine Providence to realize the divine plan. We must now finish explaining the text that served as the starting point for this book and also contains very precious notions on the causes of the glorification of the Holy Angels and the 458 459

In tam immensa creatura. Ecclus. 16:17.

De Civit. Dei, lib. 8, chap. 25.

Empyrean. We find exciting everything that concerns the first historical period of Paradise. Therefore, in this chapter, we will see what the earth placed within the mobile Empyrean resembled. It was formless, empty, inconsistent like water, bottomless, and covered with darkness like a mystery dear to the Holy Spirit: Spiritus Dei ferebatur super acquas. We will consider the Angels’ ministries with the mobile Empyrean and chaos; the duration of that state of affairs, which is the duration of the angelic test; the Angels’ natural and supernatural knowledge during their test; the main causes, and the finite causes of the good Angels’ glorification, and the final demise of the bad.

FIRST MEDITATION Nature of Chaos. How it Serves in the Trial of Angels and Is Instructive for us

613. It is admitted, says St. Thomas, that four things were created simultaneously. They are the Empyrean, corporal matter, which we believe is referred to as earth, time, and angelic nature.460 The Empyrean formed in a natural state and was movable to serve suitably the Angels’ test (nos. 419 & ff.).

Angelic nature emerged from nothing simultaneously as the Empyrean, which was its abode (n. 431), or better still, its Eden (nos. 425-427). Time was the expression of the successive movements of the Empyrean and angelic operations. There was movement as soon as things started, at least according to the succession of conceptions and affections of the Angels.461 Corporeal matter, called shapeless earth, also springs from nothing under the same word that gave being to the Angels and the Empyrean, potentially containing the presently moving heavens, our Earth, and the central region of the universe, which we believe to be hell. The first beings created are among those having general relations with things.462 However, by Empyrean, we mean the place that contains all things,463 which exerts powerful influences on all bodies in its bosom (nos. 336 & ff.); its relations are therefore general.

We have also seen that the Angels are the ministers of Divine Providence to lead all beings to their ends.

There is nothing created that fails to interest them. For its part, chaos must have relations with material beings that will emerge from it and with the Empyrean and the Angels; for the entire universe forms only one set, each part of which concerns the whole (n. 338).

614. To understand as well as possible the early Empyrean and the first ministries performed by the Angels, we must therefore study chaos and see the role it played during the angelic trial.

615. As we have observed (nos. 413-418), the shapeless earth was nothing but chaos, that is to say, a confusing set of materials destined to form the lower heavens and their contents. We will now add new weight to our assertion by examining the nature of chaos to deduce the consequences that mainly concern our subject.

460

1, q. 46, a. 3.

461

1 q. 66, a. 4, ad 3m.

462

Ibid. ad 4m.

Ibid. ad 5m.

463

616. All simple bodies were created at the same time as the Angels: At the beginning of time, the Creator brought simultaneously from nothing the spiritual creature and corporeal creature (n. 431). A large number of simple bodies was immediately employed in the formation of the Upper Heavens, that is, the Empyrean. The other part, like a waiting stone, remained in a state of chaos. The latter is what the sacred writer referred to as tohu-bohu, the hustle and bustle: formless and empty earth, an abyss covered with darkness, a water-like inconsistent mass. Matter exists for intelligent creatures. That is why angelic society, the first part of the Church of God, enjoys the first portion of matter arranged in the form of heaven. Simple bodies were fashioned into compound bodies, and the latter made into heavens to offer a suitable abode for created spirits and present an object for their activity. At first, the other part of matter remained unorganized to serve as an exercise for angelic virtue or to indicate that the lower heavens and their inhabitants, slower to develop than the angelic nature, would only gradually form or serve the other part of the Church of God. 617. We said that chaos contained only simple bodies. Indeed, it does not seem possible to conceive it otherwise or to give a more natural interpretation of the biblical account. Chaos was formless. That does not mean that it did not contain any form. As matter is essentially composed of an active principle and a passive principle (form and raw material), it is impossible for matter to exist without form, just as it is for form to exist without matter. If chaos’ matter had existed completely without form, one would have to say that higher causes like God or the Angels made up for the defect of bodily forms. Although this is not impossible, it would be at least very unlikely.

Would the raw material supported by God or Angels and deprived of its essential active principle be matter? We believe that would be a kind of ontological contradiction. It is undoubtedly appropriate for Angels to govern formless matter as extrinsic agents. Now, if it is a question of making up for defects in forms essential to matter, how could the Angels, which are essentially separate forms, accomplish that role? Their nature would not lend itself to it. It is impossible for them to stoop down to become substantial forms of matter or anything of the sort.

As for the Author of nature, He can undoubtedly do anything that does not imply a contradiction. But His very perfection prevents Him from realizing impossibilities. That is why, from the moment that He created matter and that it exists as matter, it must necessarily have all that constitutes the essence of material being, that is to say, the material principle and the formal principle, the passive principle, and the active principle. The mere fact of the existence of matter proves its complete actuality and form.

Therefore, we conclude that chaos was not devoid of all form but only of higher forms, as it really was chaos.

618. This affirmation also retains all its force, whatever the opinion one adopts on the first elements that constitute bodies. We agree with most scientists that atoms of simple bodies are the primary elements of matter, and that prothyle does not exist. In other words, there is no such thing as a matter that could become a simple body by merely changing forms. In this case, chaos contained only simple bodies, and each atom had its form— that of gold, iron, sulfur, and so on.

With some authors, we believe that only one of the simple known bodies – such as hydrogen – is the material base common to all bodies. Still, it is formed and variously modified by the various active principles. In this case, chaos would have had at least the primitive form of hydrogen: Super acquas.

If we adopt the opinion that some distinguished physicists see as the most probable, which admits that the ether is the unique material principle of bodies so that all atoms, whether homogeneous or heterogeneous, would result from different concretions of the ether, we would have to admit the form of ether in chaos. However subtle and imponderable the ether may be to us, it nevertheless is matter and must be composed of parts with molecules or atoms, each of which has its active principle or form.

Therefore, ‘chaotic’ matter could not do without elementary forms.

619. Besides, a careful reading of the first two verses of Genesis confirms our conviction. In the beginning, God created Heaven and earth. This heaven is the Empyrean (nos. 412-418), and by the very fact that it is Heaven, it exists not only with elementary forms, like chaos, but also organized into compound bodies and arranged with art. About the earth, created at the same time as the Empyrean, one could make the same reasoning about heaven if the sacred Author did not go on describe their profound differences: The earth, he said, was void and empty, and darkness covered the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved over these waters.464 The Author’s antithesis helps us to understand the two opposite terms better. If the earth was void and empty, the Empyrean was a solidly established and richly adorned body system. If darkness covered the face of the deep, a particular light shone in the regions of the first Heaven. That is all the more so as it seems that the Empyrean could not be naturally beautiful and artistically organized without some light.

The light made when God says fiat lux springs from chaos and illuminates the mobile universe. If the Spirit of God moved over the waters to fertilize and prepare them to organize into compound bodies and heavens, this divine Spirit did not act the same way on the Empyrean, which was already ordered and moving towards its end.

620. When the Scripture tells us that the Spirit of God moved over the waters, that is to say, on the fluid materials of chaos, it presents the Holy Ghost as warming this mass and communicating a kind of life to it. That is the meaning of the Hebrew word merachephet, translated into Latin as ferebatur. Let us listen to Cornelius a Lapide on this point: According to St. Basil, Diodorus and St. Jerome, this term indicates the act of birds incubating their eggs and warming their young. Arabic texts say, “fly about, acting like birds; found itself with wings. The Chaldaic version says, [He] “blew on it.” That is the action of giving warmth, delicately caring for, animating. The Holy Spirit did not move over the waters by a local movement but by His sovereign power, which encompasses everything. He did so like an artist who focuses his will and idea on the works he is about to do, says St. Augustine (1.1. De Genesi ad litt. c. 7.).

By His will and power, which produce a breath of invigorating heat, the Holy Ghost therefore brooded 464

Augustinus dicit, quod ubi Scriptura in principio terram et aquam commemorat cum dicitur, Genes. 1, 2 : Terra erat inanis et vacua, et Spiritus Domini ferebatur super aquas ; non ideo nominatur terra et aqua quia jam talis erat, sed QUIA TALIS ESSE POTERAT. Ergo aliquando materia prima nondum habebat speciem aquae vel terrae, sed tantum habere poterat; et sic materia informis formationem praecessit. St. Thomas, De potentia, q. 4, art. 1, Sed contra, 8. Despite St. Thomas’ restrictions (ibid. ad sm), in the words of St. Augustine, it is clear that this Father did not see the waters of chaos as having the same nature as our waters. See below n. 624

the waters, so to speak, inoculating them with a prolific force to produce reptiles, birds, fish, plants, and also the lower heavens. That is why the Church, on the day of the blessing of fonts, sings the Holy Ghost: “I was moved over the waters to make them fruitful.”465 621. Asleep in their corpuscles, the forms of chaotic atoms had no more vitality than needed for the simple existence of each atom. They were like the rudimentary life of a chick whose egg has not yet experienced the action of heat. No development, progress, or influence from the outside. Today, If we consider nature's beings, we see them all living in some way and acting in their environment. After a fashion, man takes possession of all nature. The animal moves and takes what suits him from here and there. The plant extends its roots into the earth, and its stem, branches and leaves up in the air to grab what it needs to grow and multiply. The mineral atom exerts an attraction on what surrounds it; that is its life. Its soul, that is to say, its form, has a radiance greater than the limits of its body. It has something of the insatiability of the human heart. It, too, wants to draw matter from neighboring atoms whose forms have the same need and the same greed. Hence matter’s tendency to incorporate matter and form compound bodies. Everything in nature is sociable, although gaseous atoms do not seek to unite unless they enjoy some freedom.

In many cases (of chemical combinations), forms penetrate each other intimately to the point of modifying their matter—which becomes common—and changing the properties of the two beings converted into one. That is the material type of a perfect society, where several souls assemble, leaving the command to another who is the authority. As we see it, the law of progress obliges all wayfaring beings to associate and give themselves masters to reach a higher perfection. The more elementary the forms, the more they are willing to surrender to forms of compounds, plants, animals, man. So, as we saw above (nos. 326-331), the entire visible nature preaches that our world is transient and aspires to definitive and final perfection, which will be the complete Paradise.

622. In [the early] chaos, there was nothing like that. Every atom was isolated and dormant. There was No affinity in action, no social life, no forms superior to those of simple bodies, no influences from outside forms, no movement, no heat. Still, by producing movement and some vital heat, the Spirit of God was a prelude to developing this mass of germs. At that time, as we will see below, it does not seem to have very appreciable effects, as it sought to make that state last for a while. In so doing, it clearly manifested to the Angels that it had designs to realize with this chaos and would carry them out, especially by movement and heat.

623. At any rate, we find this interpretation in perfect agreement with tradition, admitting only forms of simple bodies at that point. According to the opinion we presently hold, says St. Thomas, matter was not called formless because it lacked any form or because it had only one potential form to become all forms, as ancient naturalists supposed (they admitted only one principle), or because it had a single form virtually containing several forms, as happens in mixed bodies (compounds); it had various elementary forms in its various parts. However, that matter was called formless because forms of compound bodies (mixtorum) had not yet arisen in matter. However, now as then, elementary forms are capable of producing forms of compound bodies. Moreover, the arrangement of elements in the 465

Comment. in Gen. ch. I, v. 2.

chaos was not yet susceptible to generate compounds.466 All atoms were so mixed that those with a mutual natural attraction could not associate because of the intromission of antipathetic atoms, although elementary forms had some activity and some inclination to associate. Everything in the tôhou vâbôhou was in disorder, and nothing could seek order based on its own vitality.

624. Although St. Thomas openly upholds the existence of elementary forms in chaos, one must recognize that the elements he admitted were not our simple bodies, discovered later by chemistry, but bodies that were considered simple at his time: earth, water, air, and fire.467 He added to these the fifth essence, which, he says, formed celestial bodies.468 Despite this difference, the thesis is the same because we are not talking about the number of simple bodies, not fixed even today but only of their existence in chaos to the exclusion of compound bodies.

625. St. Thomas summarized the teaching of most Church Fathers on this point. St. Augustine, he says, finds that the second verse of Genesis means raw material under the name of earth and water.469 We admit this but add elementary forms, as do other saints.470 Those Fathers understand by “earth and water" the world’s very elements existing in their own form. They say that during the first production of things, matter was in the substantial forms of the elements. However, for Saint Augustine, there were no successive Genesis days, and certain things had over others only a priority of nature and not of time.

In turn, the other Fathers teach that things were created in a state of confusion and then, at a later time, organized successively471 over various days. We opine likewise regarding chaos and the compounds that came out of it. As for the Empyrean, we have seen that it was created and organized from the beginning (nos. 412-418).472 626. However, the Empyrean itself, like the Angels and all creatures (n. 430), was also subject to the law of progress (nos. 425-427). Undoubtedly, God could have perfected His work immediately after creating it, or even created it completely perfect. But, says the Angel of the School, the donor's liberality does not consist only in giving promptly but also in spreading His blessings in order and in due time. This is why, to preserve the convenience of order, in the beginning, God arranged creatures in a kind of imperfection so they would gradually come to perfection.473 627. Several moral consequences flow from these considerations. Let us point out some of them.

1. If everything is not perfect in the world we inhabit, if the mixture of good and bad, evil and wicked, create a kind of chaos, it is because the divine plan, as in the time of the angelic trial, is under execution.

It is foolish to accuse God’s wisdom and providence of anything. The faithful Angels deserved their glorification, that of the Empyrean, and (in part) the unraveling of chaos by their good use of grace.

466

De Pot. q. 4, a 1, ad 13m.

1 p. q. 66, art. 1, ad 2m.

468 De Pot. ibid. ad 2m.

469 1 p. q. 66, a. 1, .ad 1m.

470 St. Basil, St. Ambrose and St. John Chrysostom. Ibid. in corpore.

471 Ibid. q. 74, a. 2.

472 De Pot. ibid. ad 8m.

473 De Pot. ibid. ad sm.

467

Likewise, we must seek and deserve the improvement of human society and the glorification of our bodies and of the mobile universe.

2. Despite a seeming disorder that scandalizes God’s enemies and the ignorant of the Almighty’s designs, the mobile universe abounds in reasons to praise and glorify the Supreme Being, as it did during the test of created spirits. Where wast thou, said the Lord to Job, when. . .the morning stars praised me together, and the sons of God were overjoyed at the sight of my works?474 These morning stars, then mobile worlds of the Empyrean, and all the children of God, Angels happily and faithfully undergoing their trial, did not falter on their journey because of the mysterious chaos that existed at that time.

Lucifer and his followers alone encountered a stumbling block in God's ulterior designs. The faithful resigned themselves to understanding later what they did not understand but believed. Oh! How wise they were, for faith is not only an element of the test but its quintessence!

3. In chaos, simple bodies had no sociability. God’s ordering word was necessary to put these bodies' affinities into action to make compounds and heavens. Thus, every natural compound and heaven preaches God. The order of the world is one of the best proofs of a Sovereign Artist's existence. Besides, each of us must be fully convinced that without God, the order cannot reign in us or society and that charity, the supreme affinity, is the height of well-being and happiness. In a human society not directed

by Christian charity, which presupposes the other virtues, real well-being is only a utopia because in it God does not say His fiat. Reduced to their own strength, individuals tend to focus on their anti-social egoism, represented by the state of simple bodies that composed chaos.

4. As the Holy Ghost hovered over the waters, that is, over the primitive chaos, to infuse warmth, affinities, principles of order and sociability in them (n. 620), so also the Apostles, after having received the Holy Ghost, converted pagan chaos into a Christian world made in the image and receiving the Empyrean’s life-giving supernatural influences. Oh! If the world knew the sublimity, excellence and divinity of Christianity it would be ecstatic before so many lights, beauties and benefits; it would acquire the true science that makes humanity happy, sanctifies and saves.

SECOND MEDITATION What the Angels Knew during Their Test 628. Although chaos contained only simple bodies, juxtaposed pell-mell by extrinsic forces, unrelated and without affinities in exercise, the Angels knew all compound bodies and mixed beings destined to emerge from the chaos and form the mobile universe. These ideas were infused into them at the very moment of their creation as beings destined to rule over other beings as ministers of God. Created with relationships linking them to all material beings, according to Saint Thomas, as we saw above (n. 567), they received all the natural capacities required by their ministry, including knowing the things they should direct and look after. St. Augustine and St. Thomas say that, before receiving its concrete organization, the moving universe existed in angelic intelligence in an ideal state and the form of wisdom 474

Ubi eras ... cum me LAUDARENT ASTRA MATUTINA, et jubilarent omnes filii Dei ? Job 38:4-7.

(n. 539 with notes). Therefore, the Angels could not reasonably be mistaken as to the destination of chaos. They were to regard it as the set of materials destined to compose new heavens similar to the Empyrean, to be used by new rational creatures that also figured in their ideas.

629. Theologians unanimously teach this magnificent doctrine. Saint Thomas excels at summing up the data of the highest science. He says that the things that preexisted in the Word of God from all eternity flowed from Him in two ways. In one way, by imprinting themselves in the angelic mind, and in another way, by existing in their own nature. They passed into the Angels’ minds when God engraved in them the likenesses or images of the natural things He made. But from all eternity, there existed in the Word of God, not only the reasons or real notions of all spiritual creatures and bodily things. The Word of God imprinted on every angel, all reasons for all things corporeal and spiritual. An Angel knows himself through the speculative idea that he received with other ideas. He also knows himself through the real nature that constitutes his being. But he knows other things, spiritual or bodily, only by speculative ideas and reasons that God imprinted on him. Thus, everything that exists or will exist outside of God also has, besides its real being, an ideal and intellectual being in the angelic spirit, which is like a mirror representing the images of all finite beings.

630. Had God resolved to create a universe different from the existing one, He would have started by imprinting the ideas of that other universe in the angelic minds. God made each creature proportioned to the universe that He decided to make. Therefore, if God had resolved to create more Angels than their present number, or more numerous species of things, He would have imprinted in the angelic spirits a larger number of intelligible species. Likewise, an architect intending to make a bigger palace would first make larger foundations. It follows that for God, these two things—adding beings to the universe and innate ideas to the angelic intellect—are part of the same process.475 631. How beautiful this doctrine is! How it exalts the material universe! First of all, this universe has been in the mind of the Word from all eternity, undoubtedly related to the Incarnation and destined to form the material empire of Jesus Christ, in Whom everything was predestined to existence (nos. 280 & ff.). By creating heaven and earth, that is to say, the Angels, the Empyrean, and chaos, God then made all things derive from the Word and gave them a real and substantial being in conformity with the eternal ideas that were their exemplary causes. Now, as the noblest of these creatures were pure spirits destined to glorify God and rule over all lower beings, God gave them with their existence the knowledge of all beings so they could glorify God immediately after their creation. So, all existing beings, even matter and simple bodies, would have ‘priests’ to praise God in their stead, and the world’s order would begin, from then on, to march uninterrupted in all its integrity.

632. God was so pleased for intelligent creatures to know nature and use that knowledge to worthily fulfill their priestly ministry in creation that He simultaneously drew the Empyrean from nothingness and organized and photographed it onto the angelic minds.

633. The Angels also knew one another and the elements of chaos, as well as the Empyrean. According to St. Thomas, this knowledge is a kind of foundation upon which rested all matter and the entire

475

P. II q. 56, art. 2.

material order. Having made everything for His glory, which is at the same time the good of created beings, God made all things so that they might be known and serve for His glorification. Hence, the knowledge of things is a final cause or foundation of their existence. We can see how gross the error of materialists is. For them, there is no ideal universe in the Word, in the Angels or in human knowledge. If everything is matter, nothing knows. No science exists! And yet they claim to erect altars to science! If their science is nothing but an acid, a mechanism or particular secretion, why this religion? Would acid or secretion have divine superiority over materialists?

634. But a believer sees everywhere how matter reflects the spirit. The heavens, the earth, everything that strikes one’s senses are expressions of the Word's ideas, of angelic ideas, and must generate ideas.

Thus, a musical concert starts from spirits and ultimately addresses spirits. Matter is only a means, an intermediary. It floats in the world of spirits that it is supposed to serve. This role, much inferior to that of spirits, elevates and ennobles matter. It is a divine language. It is photographed in the Angels who direct it. It teaches us on behalf of God and His Angels and its inertia is an indisputable testimony of its fidelity to fulfill its mission. Oh, how ignorant or obtuse are men for whom matter has no religious or spiritual significance!

635. God made each creature proportional to the universe He set out to make. We do not share the opinion of certain theologians who claim that Angels have innate ideas of all purely possible natural things—for example, all ways that God could create but never will476—because the Angels would be excessively disproportionate to our universe. To a greater or lesser extent, their nature would have what it should for the glorification due to their merits. Moreover, the Angels received infused ideas to govern real things or real beings rather than direct what will never come into existence.

636. Leaving aside these exaggerations,477 we have enough to admire in this infused and natural knowledge the Angels had during their trial of all real creatures or those to be realized. How God took care of His glory! How generous He was on pouring benefits on His first intelligent creatures!

Let it no longer be said that God is not glorified in the full extension and in all places of the universe if the stars are not inhabited. We easily forget about the Angels. If even in their natural state the Angels knew all creatures and could praise God for them, what to say after their glorification? Never and nowhere has the natural order existed without pontiffs who made incense rise to the Creator.

Besides, the earth offers its contingent of worshipers and singers of the divine perfections, and all men are called to fulfill the same office more perfectly in the celestial homeland. Let us not be disconcerted by the expanse of the universe, which contains multiple beings, for all that is proportionate to the Angels' natural virtue and will be proportional to our faculties as they attain the peak of perfection in heaven. For now, it is part of our trial to see what seems to be a puzzle through a mirror; but then we

476

See on this subject Suarez, De Angelis, l. 2, chap, 13.

Just as we know possibilities that will never be realized, for example, a chain of mountains fully made of gold and a thousand other similar things, we must admit that also the Angels knew some, thought not all ‘possibles’ not bound to come into existence. We will come back to this topic later.

477

will see face-to-face.478 The material universe will only have achieved all of its ends when it is glorified, and this glory will come as a reflection of the final and total glorification of God’s children.

637. One can wonder with St. Thomas Aquinas if, by the fact that they have infused ideas of all things created or to be created the Angels know these things in their particulars and individuality or only generally and in their cause. St. Thomas says that since the Angels had to direct the things of nature, they know them in detail. Since man knows many beings in their individuality, it would be incongruous to not grant this knowledge or an even higher knowledge to the Angels. The latter are perfect images of God, and so they see individuals and universal natures, with their material sides and forms.479 It is true, however, that all Angels do not know various individuals in the same way. The higher Angels, with greater capacity to understand, group together in a relatively small number of ideas the knowledge of a large number of individuals; for the more perfect the knowledge, the more it approaches the simplicity of divine science. Conversely, lower Angels need more numerous ideas to know things; they are unable to see them from high enough.480 We must add with Suarez481 that the lower Angels have a real but imperfect notion of all that is superior to them, but adequate knowledge of what is equal or inferior to them. Accordingly, they have particular ideas only of what surpasses them and more or less general ideas of what is below them.

638. These considerations will help to determine the knowledge that the Angels, during their trial, could have of the Man-God and His glorious Mother. Here we need to resolve a serious difficulty that spontaneously comes to our mind. It seems that if the Angels had infused ideas of all created beings and those to be created, they must have known the future also by their natural strength. Yet, such knowledge cannot be the attribute of any creature but can naturally be suitable only to God. We answer that all theologians deny that Angels have a natural knowledge of the future that depends on free causes. Nevertheless, we must grant the Angels the infused ideas of all creatures, even future ones. The authors disagree as to the way of reconciling these two statements.482 We chose the opinion that seems the best founded.

639. We saw above how the Angels need to be enlightened on the practical knowledge of the divine plan (n. 449) because this plan’s execution depends on God’s free will and partially also on the free wills of creatures. Now, only God knows free wills always and perfectly; they are a secret for all finite beings.

If the Angels do not know what people are thinking in their hearts, with all the more reason, they do not know divine decrees that have not been supernaturally revealed to them. Consequently, they could not have known with certainty the future regarding the unraveling of chaos. However, since they had the infused ideas of all creatures, past, present, and future, one must conclude they had only speculative but not practical knowledge of the future.

478

1 Cor 13:12.

1, q. 57, a. 2.

480 1, q. 55, a. 3.

479

481

De Angelis, 1. 2, c. 14, nos. 15 &16.

482

See Suarez, loc. cit. chap. 11.

They intellectually saw all of those beings as possible. Naturally speaking, they could have a hunch about those beings and presume their realization but not know it clearly. Along with the infused ideas of the beings that God would create or bring out of chaos, they also had infused ideas of many beings God destined never to enjoy existence and to be nothing but pure possibilities. That is why, unable to distinguish between pure possibilities and others, they were unable to know the future concerning only concerns things that will come true. As soon as God said: Fiat lux, faciamus hominem and the rest, without changing their infused ideas of light and man, the Angels added the practical knowledge of these things to speculative knowledge they already had; their knowledge did not change but was completed and perfected.

640. We believe that this is the meaning of these words of St. Thomas: The angelic intellect, like all created intellect, does not have the perfection of the eternity of God, which, being simple, is present in all time (in the future, past, and present) and encompasses it. . .That is why a created intelligence cannot know the future in its practical and concrete entirety. . .Although the species found in the Angel’s mind, considered as such also relate to present, past and future things, beings, be they present, past or future, are unrelated to species because the nature of present things makes them resemble species found in the angelic spirits, and so they can be known by those species. But future things do not yet have a real nature that equates them with a species, and therefore cannot be known through these species.483 The Angels’ infused ideas are like photographs the Creator made before the originals that they depict.

They are mixed with many other photographs of originals that will never exist in nature. Therefore, there being no other data, they cannot be used to acquire sure knowledge of the future. Thus, a man’s photograph does not tell us, by itself, whether that man is alive or dead but only that he existed. Angelic ideas, having preceded the formation of the mobile universe, do not say that the objects they represent will be real but can only become so.

641. Therefore the Angels, by virtue of their natural forces, had no knowledge of the future. However, It seems to us that nothing prevented them from having a more or less probable understanding of it. St. Thomas says that forasmuch as it exists in its cause, the future can be known by us also. And if, indeed, the cause be such as to have a necessary connection with its future result, then the future is known with scientific certitude, just as the astronomer foresees the future eclipse. If, however, the cause be such as to produce a certain result more frequently than not, then can the future be known more or less conjecturally, according as its cause is more or less inclined to produce the effect.484 Now, the Angels saw the natural magnificence of the Empyrean unfold before them. They knew that all compound bodies and the higher heavenly systems had as their first elements simple bodies similar to those that formed chaos. They found that all the Empyrean contained all the space needed for new heavens and that chaos could provide all the materials necessary to form lower heavens. Therefore, seeing formless chaos, they could easily assume that God’s wisdom had not said its last word on that confused heap of matter, particularly since everything was then in a state of transition. The Empyrean was moving toward its end, and the Angels were undergoing their test. It sufficed to be intelligent to 483 484

1, q. 57, a; 3. See also book II Dist. IV, q. una, a. 2., ad 4m; and Suarez, De Angelis 1. II, cc. 9, 10 &11.

1, q. 86 a. 4.

understand given the general progress, the outcome of that transitory state would very probably bring the unraveling of chaos, the formation of new worlds, and the existence of new rational creatures, all of which already figured in the angelic intellect in an ideal state.

642. There is more. During their trial, the Angels were not left to their natural strength. According to St. Augustine, God gave them both nature and grace simultaneously. Grace supernaturally fortified their faculties, and a divine revelation analogous to that which we now enjoy considerably widened their field of knowledge. With St. Thomas, let us say that their faith was much more far-sighted than ours is now.

Their contemplation, says the Prince of theologians, was higher than ours. Being closer to God thanks to their spiritual nature and its corresponding supernatural gifts, they could know more clearly than us a larger number of truths touching on divine mysteries and effects. Hence their faith was not seeking God from the same degree of estrangement as ours; for by the light of wisdom, God was more present to them than to us, although He was less present to them than He is to the Blessed through the light of glory.485 643. God’s resemblance naturally found in the angelic spirit is like the species by which the angelic intellect is informed to know God.486 After God, the Angels are the noblest and most perfect spirits.

Seeing themselves and knowing that God infinitely surpasses them in perfection, they have an idea of God far superior to ours. Like the angels, we were created in the image and likeness of God, but with a much lesser degree of fidelity.487 Angelic nature is a kind of mirror that represents God’s likeness more clearly than the human soul.488 If we add the graces proportional to the superiority of angelic nature a divine revelation that further increases their vast and vivid lights, we will easily understand how much the Angels’ knowledge during their trial surpassed our present understanding.

644. If, thanks to Revelation, we know many supernatural things during our trial, we who are inferior to the Angels by nature, what to say of the extent of the Angels’ knowledge when working on their salvation? Their symbol of faith certainly was no less rich than ours. St. Thomas says that all the Prophets knew about the mystery of grace by divine revelation was revealed to the Angels much more excellently.489 That is true of the holy Angels, adds Suarez. But St. Thomas’s proposition is also true of the Angels during their trial; for the Prophets had this knowledge during their mortal life. Generally speaking, the Angels, even before their glorification, must have been more perfect than the Prophets.490 645. It follows that, in their state of innocence, the Angels believed in at least all the principal mysteries we believe. Moreover, fortified by faith and Revelation, their gazes extended more or less into the future. They knew the mystery of the future Incarnation of the Word. All Angels somehow knew from the beginning the mystery of the kingdom of God, realized by Christ, but especially after they were

485

2a 2ae, q. 5, a. 1, ad 1m.

L. 2, Dist. 4, art. 4, ad 2m.

487 Quia imago Dei est in ipsa natura Angeli impressa, per suam essentiam Angelus Deum cognoscit, in quantum est similitudo Dei 1, q. 56, a. 3.

488 Ibid.

489 1: q. p7, a. 5, ad am.

490 De Angelis, 1. 5, chap. 6, n. 4.

486

beatified with the vision of the Word. However, not all Angels knew this mystery entirely or equally.491 That depended on their degree of virtue and faith, as knowledge of Revelation now depends on us or on the use we make of grace.

646. From the principles have exposed above (nos. 380 & ff.; 294 & ff.; 299-304, notably nos. 302; 530532), it follows that the Angels, during their trial, believed in the future Incarnation of the Son of God, in the future Divine Motherhood, and, therefore, in the future existence of mankind and the lower heavens. As we will see below, the rebellious Angels were cast from heaven, particularly for having sinned against this faith out of pride and envy, for seeking to be independent from the grace of the Man-God and His August Mother’s salutary influences.

647. Some instructions that served as object lessons added to the Angels’ lights of faith and their natural lights. The Scripture tells us that the Spirit of God lovingly hovered over chaos. This phenomenon must have been very perceptible to the Angels. It was a fact of public notoriety if one can speak thus, even more than the Holy Ghost's descent on the Apostles. The Spirit of the Lord hovered continually over chaos: ferebatur, fovebat. This conduct of the Spirit of God was extremely significant.

That divine Spirit, which had adorned the existing skies,492 that is to say, the Empyrean, focused His affections on the formless chaos! The Angels’ creation, the Empyrean’s creation and formation, the distribution of grace to the first intelligent creatures seem to have cost Him nothing: In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth, and that says it all for this period. But chaos is carefully described as formless and empty, while darkness covers the face of the abyss. Although nothing in it seems beautiful and attractive, the Spirit of God shows a kind of marked preference for that confused cluster of material elements.

That was more than sufficient to demonstrate to the Angels, naturally so enlightened, and also illuminated by grace, the future existence of the Man-God, Mary His Mother, the human race, and the lower heavens. Just as Isaias, St. Peter and St. John prophesied that after the Judgment the universe will be renewed and new heavens and new earth will be formed, so also the Angels, generally more enlightened during their trial than our Prophets during theirs (nos. 642-644), must have clearly seen the future realization of the noblest part of the divine plan. Lights abounded for them, at least as they now abound for us. Let us see what they ended up with, using their free will tested under the influence of grace.

491

St. Thomas, 1, q. 64, a. 1, ad 4. Elsewhere, St. Thomas says: «Potest dici quod Angelus ante confirmationen, et homo ante peccatum, quaedam de divinis mysteriis MANIFESTA COGNITIONE cognoverunt, quae nunc non possumus cognoscere nisi credendo». 2a 2ae q. 5, a. 1. Now, what could interest the Angels more than the mystery of the Incarnation? Therefore, if we believe in this mystery, one can say that the Angels believed it better than we did, and even, in a sense, that they had a natural knowledge of it fortified by faith.

492 Job 26:13.

THIRD MEDITATION Faith in the Incarnation was the Main Object of the Angels’ Test Consequences from the Standpoint of the Accidental Happiness of the Elect

648. As we have seen, during their test, all Angels must have believed in the future Incarnation of the Word. Suarez says that this doctrine is the most probable or even the true one (vera sententia).493 It rests on many reasons the distinguished Doctor too modestly calls conjecture as if a genuine opinion believed by far as the most likely could have had such weak bases. We frankly believe that most of the reasons that Suarez gives in support of this thesis are very solid,494 and we could add others of great weight.

From St. Paul's formal teaching, among other things, it seems obvious that everything was predestined to exist in Christ (and in Mary); and that God intended all rational creatures to be a cortege of members of Christ. Therefore, all gifts that God gave His creatures and all salvific graces are related to Christ as their final, exemplary, and meritorious cause495 (nos. 280-288; 289-304).

Accordingly, the Angels could not obtain grace and be saved without Christ, without being in a relationship with Christ, which could only take place by faith. How can we suppose that the Angels, so far-sighted by nature and grace, were unaware of Christ as their immediate end, the exemplary cause of their nature and holiness, and the meritorious cause of the graces they received? Moreover, to admit an angelic trial, one must also admit faith as an element of that test, and hence to also admit Jesus, the Author and consumer of the faith. 496 Jesus is undoubtedly the head of Angels, men, and all creatures.

The Angels could not save themselves without faith in Jesus Christ, nor could Old Testament Saints. The Chief had to preserve the former and redeem the latter (nos. 299, 300). Finally, drawing from Suarez for most proofs of this magnificent thesis,497 let us recall a whole category of seemingly new proofs that have already been the object of our meditations (nos. 522-536). They are particularly St. Gabriel’s name and ministries.

649. Let us repeat with the Prince of theologians a truth that dominates the whole question: the Angels’ contemplation during their trial was higher than ours. Being closer to God, they were able to know more clearly than we are a larger number of truths about the divine effects and mysteries. God was more present to them through the light of wisdom than to us (n. 642). However, all Angels did not know the mystery of Incarnation equally or perfectly (n. 645).

493

De Angelis, Tom. II, 1. 5, chap. VI, nos. 9-34.

See Suarez, ibid.

495 See Cornelius a Lapide, Com. in Epist. ad Ephes. chap. I, v. 22, and Suarez, Tom. 1, in 3 p. Div. Thomae, Disput.

42, Sect. 1, num. 6. Quaest. 19.

494

496 497

Heb 12:2.

Loc. cit.

650. These words help us resolve the most serious objections that could be raised against our teaching.

St. Paul writes to the Ephesians: “To me, the least of all the saints, is given this grace...to enlighten all men, that they may see what is the dispensation of the mystery which has been hidden from eternity in God, who created all things, so that the manifold wisdom of God may be made known to the principalities and powers in heavenly places through the Church, according to the eternal determination that he made, in Christ Jesus our Lord.”498 Some authors conclude from these words that the Incarnation was unknown to the Angels during their trial, but this conclusion seems very illegitimate.

Apart from St. Augustine’s good interpretation (n. 283), which is very favorable to us, St. Thomas also finds in this passage from St. Paul a meaning that does not affect the Angels’ knowledge of the Incarnation.499 The great doctor even goes so far as to say that, concerning divine things, the Angels are never enlightened by men.500 651. I have received the grace, he says, to enlighten all men on the dispensation, that is to say, the circumstantial realization, the detailed and complete accomplishment of the mystery hidden in God from the beginning of time. This mystery was hidden in God only in part, namely, concerning the dispensation or realization accompanied by all its circumstances. A holy mystery is partially hidden in God because of its obscurities, but it does appear to some extent by the very fact that it is mystery or sacrament; otherwise, it would be nothing but a secret.

That mystery has been hidden in God from the beginning of the ages because it is mysterious, it was an object of faith for the Angels under trial; and because not all glorified Angels have known perfectly or equally since their glorification, all that was to accompany the unfolding of the incomprehensible riches of Christ in the world. The Angels saw reality correspond more and more to the ideal they had in mind, and their knowledge became complete as Revelation brought new lights to the Apostles and the Mystical Body of Christ developed under the fruitful action of the Holy Ghost. They were generally aware of the divine plan. Still, they only saw it precisely as it realized itself, displaying its relations with all finite beings and God, Creator of all things, His wisdom, and the endless aspects that such a great mystery presents.

652. Moreover, while the Apostles’ revelations are to enlighten all men on the realization of the great mystery of Christ, they do not address the inhabitants of the heavenly Church as universally. According to St. Paul, on this point, he addresses only the Principalities and Powers, and consequently, the lower hierarchies. The Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations—the four choirs of most enlightened Angels—and Virtues are not named here.

The Powers determine the mode of accomplishing what is defined and prescribed, and remove obstacles; the Principalities rule empires and human societies concerning the Church, a divine society, which is the end of other societies (nos. 448; 455-457). Thus, these Angels can learn from the divinely inspired Apostles, something concerning the divine plan's execution. On the sacred things that the

498

3:8-11.

P. 1, q. 117, a. 2.

500 Ibid.

499

Angels contemplate in the heavenly homeland, we can agree with St. Thomas that the blessed Angels are never enlightened by mortal men (n. 650). But when it comes to the execution of the divine plan, which depends on an infinity of free causes (n. 449), one must say that the Angels, especially those of the lower choirs, learn from everyone who speaks and acts formally under the influence of the Spirit of God. It is also easy to admit that the Powers and Principalities are at the service of the Apostles to fight demons and make everything benefit the Church. All Angels are spirits charged with a ministry and sent to exercise it on behalf of those who will receive the inheritance of salvation (n. 518). How difficult is it to admit that the Powers and Principalities, when exercising their ministry, draw inspiration from the divine preaching of the Apostles, future Seraphim of the human species (nos. 473, 474)?

653. As the doctor of the Gentiles explains elsewhere, from the beginning of time, the mystery of the Incarnation has been hidden in God only from the natural intellects of men and Angels, especially the Principalities and Powers.501 The Angels had glimpses of faith but only had a practical knowledge of the divine plan as it was realized (nos. 639-642) according to the eternal Predestination in which they believed and which God made in Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

654. For us, there is no longer any doubt on this point: all Angels must have believed in the future incarnation of the Word. The same mystery was also the main object of their test.

“If Christ was revealed to the Angels by faith from the first moment of their creation,” says Suarez, “it is certain that he was proposed to them as the leader to whom they were to submit, and in whom they were to place, after God, their hope and faith; for it is in this way, and for this purpose, that faith in Christ is ordinarily required from God’s friends. AS Rupert indicates above, the highly probable teaching of the most serious authors is that as Christ was revealed to them, the evil Angels sinned out of pride and envy against human nature. St. Jerome writes: Any dissension between among visible creatures and among invisible creatures, which predated the (mobile) world and later arose in the world, had to do (pollicebatur) with the advent of God (and gave notice of it). Therefore, it is even more plausible that the holy angels merited in Christ and through the Christ, in Whom they believed.”502 655. Everything leads us to believe that the incarnation of the Word was the main object of the good Angels’ fidelity, as it was the main reason for the revolt of the bad. We have already interpreted a magnificent passage from the Prophet Isaias in this sense (nos. 530-532). It is well to glance at scriptural teaching on this point. The prophet cries out: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? how art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations? And thou saidst in thy heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the

501 502

1 Cor 2:6-16.

In 3 p. Divi Thomae, Q. 19, Disp. 42 :, sect. 1, n. 6.

mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the most High. But yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, into the depth of the pit.” 503 656. Interpreting this passage, Cornelius a Lapide writes: “I affirm that in parables we first find the truth of the parable itself, either of the story or the thing told. In the second place, the truth of the thing signified by the parable which is its literal meaning. Likewise, one finds in the words of Isaias the description in parable form of Lucifer’s splendor and fall. But its literal meaning relates to the pomp and downfall of Balthazar. The context and the Fathers unanimously teach us that this is the meaning of this passage. For example, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Cyprian, Tertullian, St. Athanasius, and others.” 504 657. Here we are well-grounded on Scripture and tradition. The language reported by Isaiah was Lucifer’s, and the crime it expressed caused the noblest of the Cherubim to fall. The King of Babylon imitates iniquity and participates in Lucifer’s sentiments and in the Rebel Angel’s fate. Although he was a man, he tried to pass himself off as a god and wanted to be treated as such. He was coveting the dignity of the Man-God. But to no avail. He was cast far from his grave like a useless trunk; covered with his blood, he was among those slain by the sword and interred like rotten bodies:505 an authentic human image of Lucifer.

The two sought to rise to a pinnacle of grandeur and stop only at divine sublimity. Both were cast to the last degree of vulgarity and abjection because of pride. If pride, malice and crime could exist as an ideal, Lucifer would be its embodiment; the first rebel would necessarily be the model of all others. Pride and guilt are only a greater or lesser deprivation of good. Yet the greatest fault is to play the role of exemplary cause of all faults. Lucifer, the greatest culprit, is somehow mirrored by all culprits, and especially by those closer to him in perversity. That is why all proud persons particularly reproduce Lucifer’s story.

658. Let us examine the characteristics of angelic pride in more detail. Lucifer was naturally one of the noblest creatures (n. 459). He was bright as the dawn. Through the proper use of supernatural gifts, he brought light to others and would become the most potent factor in the splendors of the Empyrean. By failing to love the truth, he met a stumbling block in his very lights. By Divine Revelation, Lucifer became aware of the future existence of a man-God and a woman who would be the Mother of God. He saw this Man’s predestination to be the head of the entire intelligent Church; that everything was created in Him and for Him; that He would be the King of all things after the Almighty; that all Angels should therefore bow and worship Him and recognize His Mother as their Queen.

He said in his heart: I will ascend to heaven; I am already in the Empyrean, but since there is an even higher heaven which will be lost in the divinity, a more sublime heaven reserved for the Man-God and His Mother, I will ascend to this very heaven. I will establish my throne above the stars of God, above 503

Isa 14:12-15. Dicitur Isaïae 14 in figura diaboli : « in coelum conscendam , etc. » quod non potest intelligi de coelo empyreo, quia ibi creatus est; et sic restat ut intelligatur de coelo Sanctae Trinitatis (St. Thomas, L. II Dist. V, q. 1, a. 2. Sed contra). It is the hypostatic union with the Word.

504 505

Comment. in Isaiam proph. XIV, 12.

Isa ibid, 19.

this man and this woman, however brilliant they may be, for an Angel must surpass in dignity any representative of the human species. While greatness comes only from God and from the degree of union that we have with the supreme Greatness, I myself will sit on the mountain of the covenant. I am the one who will have the most intimate of unions with the divinity, the hypostatic union; it is proportional only to the excellence of my nature. If a man is to achieve it, if a woman is to serve as a preparation for it, at least I will share this incomparable glory so that I will have the precedence over them: I will ascend above the highest clouds, I who, unlike men, have nothing bodily. It befits no one more than me to have the most perfect resemblance to the Most High. So I will establish my throne in the north, where the hill reaches its greatest height.506 659. We find it impossible to give this passage a more natural and adequate interpretation. Ezekiel speaks in the same vein with even more detail. While the passage is literally about the King of Tire, he is considered a faithful imitation of the demon or Lucifer, to the point that many expressions designate Lucifer more significantly than the proud king.

Son of man, we read in Ezekiel, mourn greatly for the King of Tire and tell him: this is what the Lord God says: You were the seal of resemblance to the Most High (a likeness well engraved and very faithful).

You were full of wisdom and perfect in beauty; you have been in the delights of God's paradise; your clothing was enriched with all kinds of precious stones. . . The most excellent instruments were prepared to celebrate the day you were created. You were a Cherub with extended and protective wings; and I established you in the holy mountain of God, and you walked in the midst of the stones of fire, or precious stones with which you were adorned. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created until iniquity was found in you. By the multitude of your merchandise, your inner parts were filled with iniquity, and you sinned; and I cast you out from the mountain of God, and destroyed you, O covering cherub, out of the midst of the stones of fire. For your heart was lifted up with your beauty; you lost your wisdom in your beauty. I cast you down to the ground, before the face of kings, so that they might look at you and your shame.507 660. Is it not Lucifer who, before the existence of the soul of Jesus and that of Mary, was a magnificent likeness of the Most High as to the nature and richness of graces given the Angels at their creation?508 Who other than him was more full of wisdom and perfect in beauty, while his innocence preserved him?

Far more than the King of Tire, he had been in the delights of God’s Paradise, the Eden par excellence, immensely larger and more beautiful than the earthly paradise; of the Paradise created in the beginning: In principio creavit Deus coelum; of the Empyrean, the largest and richest heaven, splendid and immense earthly paradise of the Angels.

His garment was enriched with all kinds of precious stones. Lucifer, a carrier and reflector of light, appeared to the eyes of the lower Angels as the most resplendent and varied beauty next to God. Most 506

Allusion to the temple of Jerusalem, which is a testimony to the alliance between God and His people, and which is built on the highest hills of that region, Mount Zion and Mount Moria, which are on the north side.

507 Ez 28:11-17.

508 Of all the Cherubim, Lucifer was the one who most resembled God. He was one of the most perfect of the Angels who would succumb to temptation. He was the seal of resemblance of the Most High as long as he could be a winged cherub. It is also as such that he was perfect in his ways on the day of his creation.

excellent instruments were prepared to solemnize the day he was created. Many angelic voices were to honor him as their ornament, glory, and benefactor after God. One could and should solemnize his creation, for an Angel is not born in original sin like the sons of Adam, but simultaneously in nature’s purity and the splendors of sanctifying grace. He was a cherub with extended and protective wings because the whole angelic society regarded him as a distinguished representative of God by his authority, lights, beneficence and perfection.

He was thus established on the holy mountain of God and walked adorned with the richest spiritual and supernatural adornments. . .He was a Cherub with extended and protective wings, perfect in his ways on the day of his creation. That was much truer of the Angels than of innocent man, and truer of Lucifer than all other Cherubim and could not be seen in the King of Tire. In the multiplication of his trade, his bowels were filled with iniquity, and he sinned: Lucifer's trade was most extensive and multiple: he had very close and frequent relations with God, he enlightened and directed all the Cherubim, Thrones, and all lower hierarchies. In a way, he presided over the Empyrean and received tributes from all sides.

By his superior natural lights and rich supernatural gifts, he extended his sights and hopes far into the future, as he was in the process of development.509 But he sinned. Amid the brilliance of his position, his heart filled with pride. In his beauty, he lost wisdom and was overthrown and driven from God’s mountain, that is, from one of the highest conditions a creature could occupy. His brilliance and beauty were the occasions of his fall.

661. Why, Lucifer, did you say: ‘I will ascend to hypostatic union heaven’? You made yourself a prophet without divine inspiration, one not interested in the truth but in your glory; and you were a liar from the beginning. You had also said: ‘I will establish my throne above the stars of God -- of course, not above the other Angels and the worlds of the Empyrean, as you already dominated all that,510 but above Jesus and Mary, whom you knew by faith as your superiors. Despite this teaching of your faith, you added: ‘I will ascend above these highest clouds because they have something material and I am all spirit; and I will resemble the Most High more than Jesus and Mary.’ Your heart filled with pride in the radiance you projected, rather than in grace, humility, and confidence in God. In your beauty, you lost wisdom; enchanted with yourself, you refused to understand that God can make his completely gratuitous grace abound if He so wishes; and that no created nature, however beautiful, can claim to have hypostatic union with divinity and divine motherhood. Your speeches were only about supernatural elevation and greatness, without a single mention of grace.

O first Pelagian, the first supporter of naturalism, you were the enemy of the supernatural even as you claimed to be the holiest being after God. In a flagrant contradiction, you did not hold on to the truth.

While your faith taught you the Incarnation of the Word and divine motherhood, truth was not found in you because you said of yourself what you should have said of Jesus and Mary. Rejecting the light of faith, you told lies and became a mendacious liar and the father of lies.511 You, the god and first model 509

When at times we assume that Lucifer was the first of all Angels, we are mentioned the opinion preferred by St. Thomas. But we favor another opinion, which we will explain later, nos. 724, 725j 732-734.

510 Same observation as above, n. 660, 2nd note of this item.

511 Jn 8:44.

of unbelievers, rationalists, modern Pelagians, who puts science above faith and nature above the divine, were overthrown before the face of kings who are God’s children and men of faith; you were cast into Hell, into the depths of the abyss.

662. Lucifer, through his lies, became a murderer from the beginning. The Savior told the Jews: You have the devil for your father and want to fulfill your father’s desires. He was homicidal from the beginning and did not remain in the truth.512 The Jews fulfilled the desires of their father, the devil, by pursuing their hatred, slandering and crucifying the Man-God. While in the Angels’ terrestrial paradise, this father of deicides sinned thus sinned against the Incarnate Word, Whom he was to adore by faith.

The Jews are imitators of the devil, and the devil sinned like them. He was as homicidal as it could be. By rejecting the Word's incarnation, he annihilated Christ’s humanity in desire. For, as a man, Christ exists only in the Word and through the Word so that Christ’s humanity would never have existed if it had not at the same time been created and taken by the Word. Therefore, refusing to admit the Incarnation was equivalent to having a homicidal desire, Christ’s suppression as a man, a goal which deicidal Jews also pursued.

663. By not wanting the existence of Christ's humanity, Lucifer also rejected Mary. Like her divine Son, the Virgin would never have existed had she not been destined to become the Mother of God. All theologians seem to agree on this point, and theological reason would easily prove it. Thus, the devil's homicidal desires had Mary and Jesus as their object. Unsatisfied with raising his throne above the stars of God, Lucifer wanted to raise it above those star’s ruins, as he was a homicide from the beginning. At the same time, in desire, he erased the existence of Jesus and Mary from the divine plan. For Mary could not become Mother of God except through Christ’s humanity.

By suppressing the two great leaders of humanity as much as possible, Lucifer would also deprive humanity of its raison d'être and drive it into nothingness along with Jesus and Mary. He was so homicidal as to annihilate humanity! As far as he was concerned, other probable consequences would be the existence of no other heaven except the Empyrean, and chaos would endlessly remain in its early confusion. In his beauty, Lucifer lost wisdom; nothing but his foolish selfishness could persuade him that chaos as such must be and was one of the ultimate goals of divine wisdom.

664. Let us add with Suarez513 that the Incarnation of the Word is the object of angelic pride, which Sacred Scripture, Tradition and theology most clearly present to us. The theological reason seems incontestable and exceptionally strong. It is hardly possible, in our eyes, for the revealed truth to be absent at the convergence of the most remarkable and beautiful rays of divine lights while present in uncertainty and vagueness. That would be not only a defect of Revelation but also a kind of deception, which would be absurd.

665. The conduct of the rebel Angel’s human imitators firmly confirms our teaching on this point. As the deicidal Jews had the devil as their father, so also unbelievers, materialists, positivists, liberals, more or less concentrate their hatred around the Man-God and the divine manifested in humanity. The divine512 513

Ibid.

De Angelis, 1. 7, chap. 13, n. 27.

human element scandalizes and irritates them. They want to be only men and yet superior to Christ, the Church of Christ, and God’s children. The liberal says: ‘I take what pleases me from the world, science and Christ’s work, and discard the rest.’ Christ and the Church would serve him, but neither command him nor be served by him! Other rebels regard all things divine as laughable myths. Faith, grace, adoptive divine filiation, sacred and religious authority, all things modeled after or recalling the Word’s Incarnation, provoke scornful denials. They say: ‘we are more than that; we are progress, science, light; we are above the highest clouds; we have established our throne above the stars of God.’ They are homicides because they strive to deprive humanity of its higher life, grace and glory. The truth is not in them; they are liars and fathers of lies; they lost wisdom in their beauty and are cast among animals deprived of understanding.514 If they remain unrepentant, they will be cast down into hell, into the depths of the abyss.

666. O how clearly the incarnation of the Word, with its consequences, appears as the main object of both the angelic and the human trials! Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.515 Whoever believes in Him (the Son of God) is not condemned, but he who does not believe is already condemned because he does not believe in the name of the Only Begotten of God.516 The whole trial of intelligent creatures, Angels and men, comes to having faith in the Son of God Incarnate; and just as both are saved by living faith, both are damned without it.

667. Let us now look at the Holy Angels’ and Blessed humans’ accidental happiness under a new aspect.

Their reward is proportionate to merit and greatness and reproduces their characteristics. He who is poor in spirit here below will be one of the greatest owners in heaven (nos. 394, 395); he who suffers persecution for the sake of justice to extend the realm of truth and goodness will have an exceptionally vast empire in heaven (n. 401); and so on with other conquerors of heavenly bliss. Now since all will have excelled in faith in the Incarnate Word and love of the Man-God, albeit to varying degrees, they all will reign with Him over all works from the hands of God, each according to the degree of his past faith and love.

St. Thomas tells us that Christ presides over the administration of every creature. Christ’s soul rules all things. Christ is above every creature. He is our head, and therefore, what was given to Christ has also been given to us in Him (nos. 217, 218). What to say of the happiness, even accidental, of the holy Angels and Blessed humans? They see, admire, and love Christ’s empire in all created things—an empire that has also become theirs: conregnabimus. 517 They see in all matter a kind of reflection of the Body of Jesus Christ, for which all matter was primarily created. They contemplate in every soul an image of Christ’s soul. They see in every form a resemblance of the most sublime of forms, which is the soul of the Incarnate Word. At every moment, they see things tending to a final glorification that will be nothing but Christ having reached His complete development as far as His soul, body, His intelligent Church and His material Church are concerned (nos. 214, 215, 288, 376).

514

Ps. 31:9.

Mk 16:16.

516 Jn 3:18.

517 2 Tim 2:12.

515

O how much the Angels and Blessed love all intelligent creatures, all other creatures, and the whole order that presides over them. For them, all that is Christ being fulfilled, Who and is their life: Qui omnia in omnibus adimpletur.518 Mihi vivere Christus est.519 They deserved their glory above all by their love for Christ. Now in glory, everything provides them with ineffable pleasures and heavenly contentment.

FOURTH MEDITATION Christ as Redeemer and Mary as Coredemptrix Were Predestined before all Else and Are the Perfect Types of Angels, Men, and all Things Subject to Trial 668. How sublime the mystery of the Incarnation is! If some divinely enlightened mortal could examine and describe it to us with all its characteristics and scope, he would give a complete history and description of all beings that make up the universe, and even, if we can speak thus, of God and His activity. We dealt with it at length in a previous chapter (nos. 280-296) and have just said a few words about it. Let us now complete these considerations to learn about the angelic trial’s secondary objects and the kind of happiness the Angels deserved in this regard.

669. According to St. Paul, God elected us in Christ before laying the foundations of the world so we might attain holiness.520 God had His eyes fixed on Christ, considered as Man-God before creating the Empyrean and the chaos, the material foundations of the world, and creating the Angels, its foundations in another respect. Before the foundation of the world, the Lamb without spot or stain was already known and foreseen,521 not as all things that were to come true were known and foreseen (for in this case the Apostles’ words would have no meaning), but in a way specific to the Man-God alone. In our sequential way of reasoning, God first decreed the Incarnation of the Word. Then, because of the latter’s planned existence, He extended His decree to Angels, men, and all rational creatures destined to be members of Jesus Christ and His universal Church; then to the Empyrean and chaos, both of which, after necessary preparations, were to become the material abode of Christ and His members.

670. There can be no doubt about this doctrine insofar as it concerns the New Testament men. Before laying the foundations of the world, among all possibilities, God chose us in Christ so that we might be holy, that is to say, conformed to Jesus Christ, of Whom we are to be members. The Apostle adds: God predestined us by an effect of his goodwill to make us his adopted children through Jesus Christ. And in the next chapter,522 he reinforces this thought by saying that we were created in Jesus Christ to sanctify ourselves by good works. What could ‘created in Jesus Christ’ mean other than we received our existence for Jesus Christ’s sake, because of Jesus Christ, to form an escort to Jesus Christ, become members of the body of which Jesus Christ is the head, and complete Jesus Christ by composing His Church?

518

Eph 1:23.

Phil 1:21.

520 Eph 1:4.

521 1 Pet 19:20.

522 Eph 2:10.

519

671. St. Paul also applies to all men, including Adam and Eve, all Angels and other rational creatures that can exist in the universe other than Angels and men, all beings that make up the entire universe, what he said about our existence due to Christ. From the immense heavens to the smallest speck of dust, every finite being was predestined for existence in Christ, because of Christ, for Christ. The Apostle of the Gentiles could not have expressed himself more clearly on this point, and he was anxious to instill this doctrine in the faithful.

672. He first tells us that he sees Jesus Christ as a man by whose blood we have been redeemed;523 a man who pacified all things on earth and in heaven through His blood on the Cross;524 a risen man who was the first of the dead.525 He affirms that, thus considered, Christ is the visible image of the invisible God, and that He undoubtedly was born before all creatures in the divine thought and decrees: “primogenitus omnis creaturœ.” This cannot suit the Word taken absolutely, for the Word is not a creature. All things were created by and in Him (in ipso) in heaven and on earth, both visible and invisible, whether Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, or Powers: “Omnia per ipsum et in ipso creata sunt.”

Everything was created by Him as God, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He also created everything as a man in the sense that he motivated the creation of all things by His excellence. He was the finite exemplary cause on which God measured and modeled the universe. Nothing was created or arranged except with Him in mind so that God’s glory and the good of finite beings would have a sure guarantee and a necessary complement.526 God decreed the Incarnation of the Word by a pure effect of His love; it is grace par excellence, gratuitous grace in all respects. But He decreed other things because of the requirements of the Incarnate Word. While He freely bestowed His graces on the beings who receive them, they were due to the Word made flesh, whose reality was always present in the eyes of the Creator.

Nothing was created except as a procession for Christ, and everything was directed towards Him. God made use of Christ's ideal humanity to create and order other beings whom He fashioned after that ideal and related to it. That is true particularly of man, according to the famous phrase of Tertullian, translated and reported by Bossuet: “In this mud which God molds (when creating the first man), He intends to give us a vivid image of His Son, who is to become a man.”527 673. As we said (n. 667), everything is an image or likeness of Christ. All things are part of the Man-God as a procession of honor is part of the idea of king or emperor, as a procession of members comprises the idea of a leader, and a procession of lower creatures contains the idea of the Firstborn of creatures.

With ineffable dignity, Mary is in this procession as His Mother, Angels and men as His members, brothers, servants, extensions of His body, soul, and radiance. All celestial bodies and spaces are in it as premises of His Church Militant, Church Penitent, and Church Triumphant. Even Limbo and Hell are in it 523

Col 1:14.

Ibid. 20.

525 Ibid. 18.

526 We say a necessary complement from the point of view of the perfection that God wanted to find in His work.

527 Quodcumque limus exprimebatur, Christus cogitabatur homo futurus. Cf. Bossuet, introduction to the first sermon on the Nativity of Mary.

524

as theaters of His justice, as these places exclude from the heavenly homeland anyone who died without being a living member of Christ. In the procession are also the ungodly and damned as members to be quickened by Christ or witnesses to what one can find outside and despite of Christ: Everything was created by Him and in Him.528 He is above everyone by His dignity and predestination, and all things subsist in Him, continues the Apostle. They are preserved by Him, for Him, and because of Him. Why would this statement specifically concern the Son considered as God? Things do not exist more in the Word than in the Father and the Holy Spirit. But all things subsist in Him considered as man because Christ’s humanity is the primary object of the Divine Will after God himself; and by wanting the subsistence of that humanity, God also wants, because of it and for it, the subsistence of all that belongs to Christ. Christ is the head of the body of the Church . . . so that He is the first in everything: “ in omnibus ipse primatum tenes.” O teaching as sublime as indisputable! After God, Christ has primacy in all things; and it pleased the Heavenly Father that all fullness should dwell in Him. 674. O angelic spirits, Mary, Adam, all you creatures who compose the universe: what graces and gifts have you not received from the Creator! Well, Christ alone is the fullness of all these graces and gifts.

How large, numerous and varied are the goods you are looking for! Christ has them all at the same time.

Their very fullness resides in Him so that you can receive nothing but from Him and through Him, and you must all say with St. John: We have all received from His fullness.529 675. Little does it matter that countless things were realized before Christ’s humanity, as we saw (n.

281), because everything is equally present in God’s eyes. Moreover, as a rule, rational beings must shape the present time according to their future ends. For example, we build a temple for divine worship not yet practiced there but will be when the temple is finished and consecrated. During their trial, all finite beings must model their lives as per the requirements of their ultimate, future ends. All created beings' movements aim to acquire a good or escape from future evil. It is then no wonder that God, the supreme model of all beings, and especially rational beings, oriented everything from the beginning toward the future Christ and His members.

If St. Paul’s teaching had not been formal on this point, right reason, and especially theological reason, would suffice to convince us of this capital truth. O ineffable greatness of Christ! By Him and in Him was everything created in heaven and on earth, all things visible and invisible. . .He is the firstborn of creatures as to His humanity, which set the tone for all finite beings joining the concert of creatures. In God’s mind, He is above everyone, and all things subsist in Him because He is the reason for all things.

He is the first in everything; it pleased the Father that all fullness dwelled in Him. O ineffable grandeur of Christ! We will only know it well when, seeing God face to face, we will see all the works of His hands.

The splendors of Christ will eternally surpass our understanding and continually offer us new aspects to contemplate, for He is the Man-God, and His greatness is lost in infinity.

676. After that, how easy it seems to answer the question that some authors raise. Would the divine Word have incarnated, they ask, had Adam not sinned? We answer that nothing would have existed 528 529

In eo etiam ut homine condita sunt universa. Suarez, De Incarnat., in 3 p. divi Thomae, Disput. V, sect. II, n.15.

1:16.

without the Incarnation of Word according to the divine plan. Like that of the rebellious Angels, Adam’s sin is part of the plan that God called into existence, just as a shadow is part of a picture. While God did not put these shadows in the picture Himself, He knew that the freedom of Angels and man would place them there once created under these conditions. He also chose this plan over all others, seeing in Christ, the plan’s pivotal part, a remedy for all evils, and a source that would make grace superabound where sin abounded.530 We may find something about the entire divine plan seemingly left to chance because of the free will that God created and introduced into it, and brought out of nothing and arranged all lower things thanks to its nobility. For God, nothing has ever been uncertain. He predestined Christ as Redeemer because He saw angelic and human failings in His plan. That is why asking whether the Word would have made Himself flesh had Adam not sinned is to ignore the real divine plan and embark on conjectures about a purely possible plan; it is pointless. If one removes an essential part from a plan and replaces it with a different one, the whole is modified and is no longer the same. Here we speak only about the real divine plan, which the Creator intended from all eternity. This plan includes the fall of the rebellious Angels and man, and the divine permission for this fall, destined to be superabundantly repaired by the Man-God. 677. The Lamb without spot or defilement was foreseen as immolated, that is, Redeemer,531 before the foundation of the world.532 It is useless to object that the Redeemer assumes the existence of sin and that sin was foreseen before the Redeemer, for that is just a play on words. In the eternal knowledge of God, Who knows all things simultaneously, the words ‘before’ and ‘after’ have no meaning relative to succession. However, they express the order of excellence: Christ is the firstborn of creatures because He was the main object of God’s desire, whereas God willed other beings only for and because of Christ.

Therefore, God willed both innocent and guilty Adam for Christ and because of Christ; and God always wanted Christ as Redeemer because the Creator always wanted the Man-God. Whoever says ‘Man-God’ says the greatest universal good of all things after God. In a system of beings where slavery and death will become real through the abuse of created freedom, He cannot fail to be Redeemer and Savior. That is why the infinitely wise and good God would not have allowed the sin of the Angels or the sin of the first man had He not set His eyes on the Cross at Calvary and on the superabundance of goods that sin was going to bring.533 If all created things have Christ as their immediate end, why should permitted sin not have the same end? Is it not a real decrease in the finite good? How can we suppose that Supreme Wisdom allows it in its plan except with a view to progress and improvement while maintaining the freedom to do well?

Besides, facts speak louder than arguments. The Word only took the flesh to be offered in sacrifice as a

530

Rom 5:20.

Ap 13:8.

532 Pet 1:19-20.

533 God, observes Suarez, wanted to make the Patriarch Joseph the prince of Egypt, and because of this He allowed him to be sold by his brothers. To say that Joseph was elevated because he was sold would be a bad reason; the cause of his elevation would be far from adequate, for sin does not produce elevation. But it is reasonable to say that God uses the sin of a few to honor the persecuted and allows sin from this standpoint. So, it is the Redeemer Who dominates the divine plan; sin is subordinate to the Redeemer. See Suarez, loc. cit., n. 16.

531

Lamb. Christ indisputably showed Himself to men as predestined by God from all eternity. How would it have been unworthy for Him to be born in an inferior condition? What other predestination of Christ can we find in the divine Scriptures?

678. Therefore, the whole divine plan hinges on the Redeemer. A huge light emerges from this observation. Everything is subject to the trial: Angels and men, the original Empyrean, and the mobile world after the fiat lux. Nothing created was placed into any other condition. Why is this if not because everything, from August Mary, Mother of Sorrows, to the last atom that moves in search of its end must bear the characters of the Cross of Jesus (n. 327)?

Upon creating, God could have made the rational creature impeccable and established all irrational beings on their final state. He did not want to do so. Should one accuse His goodness of being flawed?

Far from us such a thought! Rather, let us admire His deep wisdom coupled with unparalleled goodness.

O my God, “Thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things which Thou hast made: for Thou didst not appoint, or make any thing hating it.”534 Thou wantest all thy creatures to be happy according to their possibility, just as Thou art happy Thyself.

Thou, O my God, owest Thy happiness to Thyself. Thou art happy on Thy own. Should Thy happiness be borrowed, Thou wouldst not be divinely happy. Therefore, it is supremely wise, and it is a trait of infinite goodness, O Supreme God, that Thy creatures resemble Thee in this respect. As they are finite and produced by supernatural work, they need Thy help and Thy grace to operate divinely in Thy likeness.

Yet, while thus helped and elevated, in order to resemble Thee, they must owe their happiness also to themselves. They must therefore conquer it through a trial even at the risk of losing it through their fault. The greater the peril, the more Thy creatures will owe their happiness to themselves by overcoming the trial, and the happier they will be in Thy likeness. This is why the plan that seems most beautiful to our cowardice and laziness is, in reality, less beautiful, less good, and less perfect than that which the Creator chose.

679. It is futile to object that, according to this plan, many people will perish. God does not want anyone to perish, but that all have recourse to penance535 or the mortification of the cross. Moreover, the divine plan was not imagined and fashioned to favor the unwilling and unrepentant, but the predestined ... who have had all of God’s thoughts from eternity...and to whom all His designs lead.536 God Our Savior wants all men to be saved 537 by merit. The more merit His chosen ones acquire, the better His designs are accomplished, and the better His happiness will be imitated in heavenly Jerusalem.

Hence the usefulness of the wicked and of persecutors , who, unfaithful as they are to God’s grace for their misfortune, nevertheless give the Saints an occasion for a remarkable increase in glory and happiness. So, once again, the plan which includes the trial, the possibility and even reality of sin, is, after all, more perfect than a possible plan where everything would be fixed in the good with no need for rational beings to work energetically for the acquisition of this good or to risk losing it. The examples 534

Wis 11:25.

2 Pet 3:9.

536 Bossuet, 2nd sermon for the feast of all Saints, 1 point.

537 1 Tim 2:3,4. by their own merit or, at least, by merit borrowed from Jesus Christ and the Saints.

535

of Jesus Christ and of Mary, whose souls were confirmed in grace, do not conflict with our general affirmation. For sin was also, for them, a most fruitful occasion to merit. Moreover, neither would have existed simply to save themselves; on the contrary, they were predestined to be the greatest good of everyone and everything after God. 680. Wherever I turn my eyes, be it the succession of ages or the totality of things, I see the shining features of the divine Redeemer and His glorious Cross. I notice everywhere the violent travails of the trial, similar to the impetus that God put in His creatures to carry them higher and make their happiness more similar to the Supreme Being’s. The Lamb was thus slain from the beginning of the world, not only in anticipation, but also in its members, Angels and men, and in the other creatures made for Him, the mobile Empyrean, and the traveling heavens that emerged from the chaos.

All these beings were or still are peccable or wayfaring and this universal test can only have as an exemplary cause the trial par excellence—the work and passion of the Man-God. That is why nothing outside of God escapes the influence of the Redemption, be it to preserve from sin or to liberate from it.

Mary and the faithful Angels were preserved by virtue of the Redeemer’s intended merits. The first man was preserved during his innocence, but after the fall he was delivered, along with his posterity, always through the merits of the Redeemer. The irrational universe participated and participates in this double fate until it is ultimately freed as a whole from the bondage of corruption to pass to the freedom of the glory of the children of God (nos. 324-330). Only Hell, where no redemption penetrates, is excluded from this benefit.

681. The simple fact that angelic and human fallibility was not prevented from the beginning by confirmation in grace, and the simple fact that all things began and begin with a trial testifies to the existence of an infallible guarantee in the divine plan, which ensures the glory of God and the good of created beings. God does not launch His work at random. He is too wise to allow a wobbling state of affairs of people and things without some sure guarantee of order and stability. This is all the more so since He knew about the future existence of sin from all eternity. O Christ the Redeemer! Thou art that guarantee and surety. It is with His eyes fixed on Thee that the Creator drew heaven and earth from nothing and said, ‘Let us make man.’ It is again with eyes fixed on Thee that He made them mobile and fallible to allow greater breadth to progress and merit, provoke more sublime virtues, increase the glory of Thy Church Triumphant, and communicate more abundantly to Thy dear rational creatures the happiness with which Thou art happy by Thyself.

682. These considerations help us to resolve easily any difficulties that someone could raise based on Sacred Scripture as interpreted by St. Augustine, St. Thomas and other serious authors. The Son of Man, they could say, came to seek and save what had perished.538 Therefore, if man had not sinned, the Son of Man would not have come. Christ came into this world to save sinners.539 The only reason for the coming of Christ the Lord is, therefore, the salvation of sinners. If you eliminate disease and injury, medicine is no longer needed. What comes from the will of God alone without being due to the creature, says St. Thomas, can only be known to us through the teaching of Sacred Scripture, which 538 539

Lk 19:10. l Tim 1.

manifests the divine will. Now, as Holy Scripture everywhere mentions the first man’s sin as the reason for the Incarnation, it is more appropriate to say that God ordered the work of Incarnation as a remedy against sin, so that if sin had not been committed, the Incarnation would not have taken place.540 683. We accept these teachings of divine Scripture all the more readily as they further confirm our assertions. We only allow ourselves to modify conclusions drawn from Sacred Scripture that do not seem to agree with it. It is indisputable that Christ came to earth to save sinners, but He came as a surety to men, Angels and every creature. According to the real divine plan, if Adam had not sinned he would have benefited from the ‘preserving’ Redemption, as did the faithful Angels and Mary. Adam, like us, was elected in Christ541 before the foundations of the world were laid to achieve holiness and then confirmation in grace.

Because of His goodwill, God predestined Adam and us to become His adopted children through Jesus Christ by the Redeemer’s intended merits. Like us, the first man was created in Jesus Christ to sanctify himself through good works. For Christ is the firstborn of creatures; everything was created in Him in heaven and earth. He is before all, and all things subsist in Him. He is the head of the Church's body, of which the Angels and our first parents were only members. He is the first in everything, and all fullness resides in Him so that the innocence of the good Angels and Adam when still faithful was but participation in that fullness, and after sin, so will salvation. In God’s eyes, the Lamb was slain from the beginning of the world. He was called to fill with graces the Angels and early humans subjected to the test by the merits of this sacrifice.542 Nothing obliges us to restrict the meaning of the word “eternal,” which says the whole duration of things and more.

684. This interpretation has the merit of bringing together all Sacred Scripture passages on this subject.

Suffering Christ, Redeemer by shedding His blood, is the head of the Church's body and her principle.543 The Church has two states, that of grace and that of glory, and it is the same Church; and Christ is the head of the Church according to its two states because He is the first in grace and the first in glory.544 He is the head of Angels and men as Christ and as susceptible to suffer, for the Angels during their trial, and our first parents in the earthly paradise needed and possessed grace since they were members of Christ and His Church.

If God put all things under Christ’s feet, and if Christ is fulfilled in all wayfaring things under test,545 is it not clear that all this is done according to Christ’s predestination, and all things’ predestination in the real and suffering Christ? If the Creator resolved to unite in Christ all things in heaven and on earth546 in

540

See St. Thomas, Sum. 3 p.,. Q. 1, a. 3.

Who says Christ, says the Man-God considered susceptible of suffering, and mortal. The same observation applies to the following passages.

542 Note these words of St. Paul: “May the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great pastor of the sheep, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the blood of the everlasting testament, fit you in all goodness” Heb 13:20,21.

543 Col 1:14,18.

544 St. Thomas. See above, n. 369.

545 Eph 1:22,23.

546 Ibid. 7-10.

541

the ordered fullness of time, was everything not oriented toward Christ as He was seen on earth and conversed with men?547 In a plan entirely dominated by Christ, with all things arranged for the moral, suffering, and later triumphant Christ, one should not look for conditions or assumptions that would change the state of Christ Himself.

685. Moreover, tradition also covers this point, as seen above (nos. 299, 300). St. Irenaeus adds: God first predestined animal man to be saved by spiritual man; for since the Savior already existed, others had to be saved lest the Savior saved nothing.548 Saint Cyril expresses himself even more clearly: Christ is the first foundation laid before us, and we are all built on Him. That happened in God’s foreknowledge before the beginning of the world so that, by divine command, the blessing should precede the curse, the promise of life should precede the condemnation to death, and the liberty of adoption preceded slavery to the devil, so that, by triumphing over its evils, human nature might regain its former dignity by the grace of Christ, Who had constituted man in goodness. The same Father adds that Christ, our Creator, and foundation of our salvation so arranged things before the beginning of the world that we could rise in Him if we were to fall.549 This is Surety par excellence!

686. Suarez says that while this teaching is likely correct and can easily be supported, he is still not entirely convinced about it.550 With all due respect for this great man, his reasons persuade us less than the numerous passages from Scripture and Fathers that we have quoted. Let us summarize this doctrine in a restricted framework.

1. The Creator drew everything from nothingness and arranged everything mainly in view of His glory— Universa propter semetipsurn operatus est Dominus.551 His plan necessarily aimed at this goal because, although the Infinite needs nothing, it must have, when operating outside, a motive proportionate to its infinite will, which exceeds all that is finite.

2. By wanting His glory, the Creator wants the good of the beings He created, for whether under trial or in its final state, nothing can be happy except by glorifying God. 3. Since glorification is the end that God proposed in all His works and entire plan, it must be obtained at all costs and have one or more infallible guarantees, which the Creator wants second only to His glory.

He wants them more than anything because it is a question of His glory, which is also the good of all finite beings.

4. Essentially, these guarantees Jesus Christ, and secondarily, by participation, His august Mother Mary.

Both are impeccable; Jesus because of the hypostatic union, and Mary as that union’s most direct

547

Bar 3:38.

Libr. 3, c. 33.

549 Libr. 5 Thesaur. C. 8. See Suarez, De Incarnat. In 3 p, divi Thomae, Disp. V, sect. 3, n. 3.

550 Ibid. no. 4.

551 Prov 16:4.

548

reflection. The two absolutely guarantee God’s glory and the good of created beings. They have in superabundance what the latter lack and advantageously make up for their various shortcomings.

5. God wants this whole system as it appears in His foreknowledge. He wants it for Jesus and Mary and because of them.

6. Out of love for Jesus and Mary, and to honor them, the Creator disposes and orders all beings in their likeness and wants all beings to participate in their destiny for the glory of God and their own good.

7. The trial is the best means to achieve God’s glory and the good of beings as it causes an increase in merit and consequently in reward and happiness. Thus, the Supreme Love, directed by Supreme Wisdom, predestines Jesus and Mary to mortality and suffering, not for its own sake or as a good in itself but because of the merit and happiness that will derive from it. That is why, as their models, all lower beings are subject to the test.552 Rational creatures are fallible and unreliable, and this fallibility gives rise to greater merit and happiness.

God, who sees all things simultaneously and from all eternity, knows perfectly well that fallibility will degenerate into fall and sin for a certain number of creatures. Yet He also knows: That His plan contains most effective remedies; that Jesus and Mary remove all obstacles to those who want good; that work and struggle produce the greatest merits glory; that by this means, the happiness of the faithful will increase in an unprecedented manner to the point of making them happy, in certain respects, by procuring the closest resemblance to God; that Jesus and Mary will be Redeemer and Coredemptrix, formally acquiring infinite merits and immense radiance, bringing to the highest degree of splendor, the glory of heavenly Jerusalem and the happiness of the Elect. As for the wicked ones’ demise, which takes place in an ocean of graces and benefits that they despise, it will be owed only to themselves, all the more so as divine law formally prohibits all sin. An excellent and unique plan in which created freedom aided by grace produces so many wonders and high perfection—especially facing fallibility and sin— should not be modified for the sake of voluntary enemies of merit and the divine. While their malice will destroy them, it will powerfully help to improve the elect and to increase the brilliance of their glory.

That is why God does not use His omnipotence to make sin impossible but employs His authority and grace to forbid free beings from committing it. He derives a greater good for His glory and friends in His sovereignly wise love if they disobey and sin. O how this plan is worthy of God and His exquisite Love

552

Here we find the reason for the angelic test, the human test, the unpredicted fallibility of the rational creature, and the test of all things: Those whom God foreknew, He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son; that He might be THE FIRST BORN amongst many brethren. Rom. 8:29.

If we suppose that all the Angels remained faithful, that Adam and Eve were not tempted and did not fall, and all other creatures were fixed in their final destiny, we change the entire divine plan and set out searching for an infinite number of other possibilities that we can neither affirm nor deny. When Scripture tells us that the Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil (1 Jo. 3:8), and the like, these merely affirmative expressions do not say what is would have been done in an entirely different situation. Scripture also says that Jesus came so that His sheep might have life and have it MORE ABUNDANTLY (Jo. 10:10), which is true of all life, of the natural life of Angels and men, the life of grace, recovered spiritual life, and the life of glory. Christ is not an appendage of the universe nor a simple restoration agent, but the keystone and reason for ALL THINGS.

and infinite Wisdom! No impenitent person will benefit from it. But every unfortunate sinner or man of goodwill who turns to Him or aspires to perfection will find boundless mercy and love.

8. Although Jesus is impeccable and Mary confirmed in grace, they are also the types of everything that moves under trial. They are steadfastly fixed in grace as sureties of divine good and finite good. But despite this privileged condition, their mortal life is the culmination of a trial.

They are favored for God’s sake, for us, and for them. But they are also served with tribulation, suffering and bitterness. These trials are all the more poignant for them as they clash with their innocence, perfection, and absolute enmity for sin. O Angels, O men! If you want to understand the divine plan, consider it in Jesus and Mary. God wants merit to give glory, provides a trial to increase merit, and rewards greater merit with greater glory. As for sin, the Almighty willed that it should not be found in your models so that you might understand how seriously He forbids it. Yet He used His authority and grace to forbid but not prevent it so that, if sin were committed, Jesus and Mary would cause greater glory to flow back to God, enable Saints to gain a more brilliant victory, and increase happiness in the heavenly homeland.

Let no one doubt that the ultimate and supreme trial is that the Man-God experienced, like us, all kinds of temptations apart from sin;553 that He appeared to us an object of contempt, the last of men, a man of sorrows;554 and that God’s Mother is the Queen of martyrs. That is why, in the divine mind, the early condition of Angels and men was only an imitation of Christ and Mary. We can say that everything is born in the trial because so were Jesus and Mary. A disciple is not above his Master, nor is a servant above his Lord. Suffice it for a disciple to be like his master and for a servant to be like his Lord.555 687. While these considerations are perhaps too broad, they seemed to us necessary to judge the whole angelic trial properly, as well as the accidental happiness that the faithful Angels derive from it.

FIFTH MEDITATION The Evil Angels’ Opposition to the Supernatural Coming of the Redeemer and Coredemptrix. Their Naturalism and Misfortune as Opposed to the Holy Angels’ Conduct and Happiness 688. As we have seen, the divine plan is one of supernatural redemption, preemptive redemption, liberation from the temporary trial willed by God for a greater good, and humanity’s deliverance if they fell into sin. While innocent, all Angels believed in the future Man-God, Whom they considered as their leader, guardian from the fall, and final liberator from the trial. As a leader, He was their society’s

553

Heb 4:15.

Isa 53:3.

555 Mt 10:24, 25.

554

guarantor before God,556 hence His functions as Preserver from fall and Liberator from the trial through graces of which He was the meritorious cause.

The Angels could not ignore this great mystery of their faith that guided them during their trial. They had innate knowledge of all things (nos. 628, 630), and hence of the suffering and mortal humanity of Christ and Mary. They were more informed than we about the effects of divine mysteries (n. 642), and received a more excellent revelation of the mystery of grace than human prophets (no. 644).

689. As a consequence, according to the divine plan, which they knew by faith, they were to consider themselves as living in trial after the example of Christ and Mary, needing Redeemer and Coredemptrix’s grace to persevere and triumph as Christ’s worshippers and devoted servants of the Queen of Angels.

The precept: May all the Angels of God adore Him557 is better suited to wayfaring Angels than to glorified Angels. Therefore, their entire wayfaring life and ministries should aim at preparing and establishing the reign of Christ by saying, as we do, ‘Thy kingdom come,’558 to sanctify God’s Name worthily.559 690. Lucifer and his followers prevaricated by refusing to conform to the divine plan's provisions. They did not sin out of ignorance but because they preferred their own plan over the one that God chose, established, and revealed. Let us listen to the Angel of the School on this point.

The ability to sin is inherent in all finite nature because nothing created is in itself its own rule. The divine will alone is the rule of its act because it is not ordered to a higher end. On the contrary, any created will has no rectitude in its act unless it is regulated by the divine will, to which belongs the determination of the last ends. The Angel did not sin by wanting as good things which would have been bad in themselves, because he was not seduced by passions or inclined to evil by habits; he sinned by his free will, focusing his choice on things that are good in themselves but willed independently of the established order, measure and rule, so that the fault leading to sin is found only in the choice made in consideration of the chosen thing. Such would be the case of people who would like to pray but do so disregarding the rules drawn up by the Church.560 This sin does not imply ignorance but only ignoring things that should attract one’s attention. This is how the Angel sinned, by turning his free will toward his own good without bothering to conform his action to the rule which is the divine will.561 691. The rebellious angels did not want a trial from which they could only emerge victorious through Revelation and the Redeemer’s grace. They aspired to be like the Almighty in that He does not need mankind nor the divine associated with it. They thus sinned out of pride and envy without considering the divine plan’s requirements. They refused to gravitate toward Christ and Mary, whom God had 556

The fallen Angels will be replaced by Elect of the human species, and Christ will be, with Mary, the restorer of the ruined angelic city.

557 Heb 1:6.

558 Mt 6:10.

559 Ibid. 9.

560 Oh how fruitful these observations would be in moral applications! How many believe themselves to be good without obeying the Church, without exactly fulfilling their duties, without fidelity to the established rules! Such was the criminal will of the rebel angels.

561 1, q. 63, a. 1.

established as source and channel of all graces. They wanted to be like the Almighty, perhaps even to directly receive His supernatural help. But they did not want to be like Christ and His Mother or be subordinated to them. Such dependence weighed on their pride and was the quintessence of their trial.

They should have said to God: Father, if possible, let this chalice pass far from us, but let thy will be done and not ours.562 They failed to do so and, by breaking free from Christ, they violated the divine precept: Let all his Angels adore Him. Theirs is the attitude of all unbelievers, free thinkers, and enemies of the Catholic Church. They profess to want humanity’s good and progress but cannot bear to be told about Christ, divine law, a divinely instituted Church, and about real and immense progress through Christianity. They set themselves up as sole judges of what is good or bad without worrying about conforming their action to the divine will. In so doing, they clearly show that they have the devil for their father and want to accumulate their father's desires.563 They all say of the Man-God: Crucify him!564 They employ the same homicidal language against the Church because she is the divine-human society, and in her, they persecute the Incarnation and Redemption. It is the revolt of the evil Angels reproduced in humanity!

692. O how different was the conduct of the faithful Angels! Not content with looking for good things as such, they sought what pleased God and fit His plan. Each of them could say in imitation of Christ: As for me, I always do what pleases Him.565 Following Gabriel, the prefigurative Vicar of the Incarnate Word (nos. 529-532), they boldly spoke out for the Man-God and the supernatural coming from God through humanity. That was the Almighty’s will, and His word must overcome all loathing. By their obedience, humility, and disinterestedness, the holy Angels triumphed over the trial and attained the highest degree of knowledge and wisdom that wayfaring beings can generally achieve. While there is no wisdom, prudence, or advice against the Lord,566 in Him are found all advantages simultaneously.

People’s intellects become clearer; their conduct is regulated; general good and individual goods are obtained; God is worthily glorified; we discover the secret reason for the trial’s incomplete happiness and prepare ourselves for eternal happiness.

Accordingly, the good Angels saw in the divine plan with uprightness and took pride in conforming to it.

In so doing, they sanctified themselves and contributed to the formation of new heavens by unraveling chaos; applauded humanity’s creation; prepared the Empyrean’s glorification with their virtues; fought and defeated the partisans of narrow selfishness and disorder; formed a wise government of the universe under the Supreme Being; and became the happy spirits who incessantly see the Heavenly Father’s face and fill creation with their concerts and beneficent influences.567 693. One must have deserved a lot to enjoy inner happiness. To enjoy all things, one must have somehow merited all things. That is what the holy Angels did by attaching themselves to the Incarnate 562

Mt 26:39.

Jn 8:44.

564 Mt 27:23.

565 Jn 8:29.

566 Prov 21:30.

567 See how much this plan, realized by faith and obedience, is superior to that dreamed by Lucifer and his own. Let rational beings be wary of all things they find good but which might not be in accordance with the divine will.

563

Word and Redeemer, Who, after God, is the greatest universal good of all beings. By choosing Christ, they longed for the His Church’s human part and all worlds that would later come out of chaos. By following the light of faith and adhering to the Redeemer, they accepted life as a trial to progress in Christ, hoping for deliverance, renewal, and the final glorification of all things following the example of the risen Christ.568 That is how they enjoy God and all that exists outside of Him because they believed in Him Who came from God and was to come into the world.569 O Jesus, whoever truly loves Thee loves all things; whoever is not for and with Thee is assuredly the enemy of all creatures. The only way to conquer the greatest essential happiness and accidental happiness in the heavenly homeland is to excel in Thy love as much as possible.

694. Blessed, Lord Jesus, are those instructed in Thy love; they come to all riches of perfect understanding and knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and Thine, O Christ Jesus, in Whom all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.570 Illuminated by Thy splendors, they rise above nature and thirst only for supernatural goods, of which God has established Thee as the only source for all creatures. In Thee, they find the way to ascend to supernatural life and glory, the truth that guides them surely and the life that animates them from above as they rise. O how inspired they are to take Thee as their light, Thou Who art hypostatic Wisdom whose charity can never be extinguished! All good things come to them with Thee, and they receive innumerable riches from Thy hands. They rejoice in all things because Thou, O Wisdom in Person, walkest in front of them.571 695. According to the real divine plan’s economy, to be in the supernatural world is to adhere to Christ by living faith. Conversely, to turn away from Christ is to fix oneself in naturalism and move away from both the temporal and eternal end that God assigned to intelligent creatures. Naturalism is the sin of Lucifer and his Angels. Unfortunately, it is also a dominant sin in the human race. The devil, says St. Thomas, unduly desired to be like God because he craved to achieve his supreme bliss by his own strength, bypassing the supernatural happiness that comes from God’s grace. If he desired God’s likeness given by grace, he wanted it by the forces of his nature, rather than by divine help as God had established. St. Anselm (c. III and IV, lib. De casu diaboli) says: the devil desired to have what he would have achieved had he not fallen. But in a way, these two things are only one, for in both cases, he wanted to obtain the final beatitude by his own strength, which God alone can do.572 Instead of praising the Incarnate Word as the good Angels did, he and his followers focused on themselves and swelled with pride.573 In a process inspired by pride, they reasoned about the intelligent creature’s ultimate end without and against the light of faith, as God alone can determine that end. Consequently, they fell into the most formidable pitfalls that plague Angels and men: rationalism and naturalism. They found plenty of 568

See nos. 324-327; 366-371.

Jn 16:27, 28.

570 Col 2:2 & 3.

571 Wis 7:10-12.

572 1 q. 63 a. 3.

573 Ibid., A 6, ad 4m.

569

pretexts for it. Angelic nature, they seemed to claim, is first after God. In any case, it is through it that the supernatural must radiate over all finite beings. Its excellence means that it can do without humanity. A hypostatic union of the Word, wholly spiritual, is only proportional to the angelic nature. If the supernatural shine in this way, we accept it, but if it comes to us through a nature inferior to ours, we prefer to move toward our end on our own. After all, our present life is charming. Far from resembling the Man-God's laborious and suffering life, it offers us natural happiness that will always increase with progress.

696. Listen now, sophists! Should we reject the plan freely established by God, Supreme Wisdom, and His Revelation, and reason only with our natural lights? Does the Being of beings not know your nature and needs? Can the hypostatic union of the Word—grace par excellence—have any proportion with anything created? Is it not eminently free both for Angels and men? Do you not consider the supernatural a divine enhancement superior to your nature, qualities, and progress? If God makes it a precept, who are you not to submit?

If you find this difficult, think that these very difficulties constitute your trial and that you must suffer this passion, as the Redeemer, to attain bliss. Infinite Love, united to infinite Wisdom, does not want His creature of choice to enjoy only mediocre goods forever. If you refuse to see life as trial and preparation for a life of a higher order under the influence of grace, your reason and faith have failed. You ignore the Supreme Love which gave you being and beauty and pretend to ignore that Supreme Wisdom and Supreme Authority are inseparable from Supreme Love. O madness, deception, and tyranny of one’s illdisposed will over one’s intellect! The words of your mouth are iniquity and guile: you did not want to understand that you might do well.574 Do you want to ruin the perfect divine plan because of difficulties posed by your pride?! Do you want to tighten and shrink within the confines of your narrow and foolish selfishness, your destiny’s most sublime part, which contributes the most to the good of all created beings and brings out most vividly the shine of the Creator’s glory? Think about it! Christ’s supreme conquest, which motivated all things, is the intuitive view of God and the accidental happiness that goes with it. If you disdain it, you turn your aspirations toward nothing! Do you want to redo the creation and shape the divine plan as you wish?

O proud disturbers of order, enemies of every being, greatness, happiness, and meaningful beauty, you justly should be cast from heaven. Even the natural Empyrean is too big and too beautiful for you. As you focus solely on yourselves, disorderly tending to upset everything, the only abode proportioned to you is the center of chaos, maintained for you under the name of Hell.

697. Such is the final term to which naturalism in one’s affections and thoughts leads! Naturalism is heresy and sin par excellence. It is a horrible depreciation of divine attributes and all finite beings’ good, activity, number, perfection, and destinies; in a word, of the entire divine plan. By aiming formally and exclusively at an inferior good, a naturalist takes a downward direction contrary to the impulse the Creator gave His works. At the terminal point, if God’s omnipotence did not lock him up in the place of disorder, he would encounter chaos and return to nothingness. He must remain imprisoned in that place

574

Ps 35:4.

forever, not only as a requirement of Justice but to show what a creature can do without the grace of the Redeemer. By contrast, the Blessed will appreciate even more the immensity of God’s goodness to them, for everything is arranged for the Elect.

698. Through the notion of opposites, naturalism and the sad final fate of the bad angels help us to contemplate a new side of the glorified Angels’ accidental happiness.

By clinging to the Redeemer, we have already seen that they deserved the whole creation and now rejoice in all things (nos. 693, 694). It is necessary to observe the nature and qualities of this rejoicing.

The Angel is made to govern mixed or material beings. He has innate ideas of all these beings and even beings equal or superior to him (nos. 628- 633). He finds great pleasure contemplating God’s works, many of which are even greater than those we know and are hidden from us mortals, as we see only a small number.575 But the entire set of finite beings unfolds before the Angels' eyes and is the ordinary field of their activity (nos. 567-575).

If we blind earthly travelers are enchanted with nature, what charms does it not have for spirits that see it in its entirety and cross it in all directions! But this merely natural enjoyment is still relatively very little unless you add supernatural knowledge and feelings. The eyes of faith, which further supernaturalize already extensive and perfect angelic knowledge, see all things in their higher reasons, with the sublime relationships uniting them to one another and all of them together in God. They thus constitute an immense and varied mirror of the Supreme Being’s infinite perfections. That is why nothing is small in the ensemble of things. They are, so to speak, divine archetypes incarnated in the likeness of the Word made flesh. As for the Angels, the principal object of their faith is reproduced in all degrees of perfection in the various individuals that make up the creation and especially in creation as a whole.

There is more: the Angels’ knowledge and affections are glorified. The veils of faith have been removed.

As it were, the immense ocean of Divinity, which they contemplate in the open, is the luminous element in which they see all things floating. Their contemplation sometimes focuses on the divine plan considered metaphysically and sometimes considered in reality. According to St. Augustine, this is their morning knowledge and evening knowledge.576 They see all creatures in the Word and themselves; they see them in the splendors of Christ’s humanity, in the radiance of Mary and all the Blessed, as parts of the same whole in which some have already acquired glorious perfection while others are in the process of attaining it.

They experience a divine enjoyment augmenting the heavenly Jerusalem every day by regularly cooperating to add new members to the Mystical Body of Christ. In so doing, they continually push the mobile worlds toward assimilation by the Empyrean. For them, except for Hell and Limbo, everything is Heaven already formed or in the process of formation. Albeit in a way mysterious to us, they permeate with heavenly influences all wayfaring beings under trial. O, if only we could see clearly their influences in the universe and especially in the Church Militant, we would believe ourselves in the vestibule of glorified heaven. Our trials would seem nothing more than a painful but fleeting dream. The Holy

575 576

Ecclus 43:36.

De Gen. ad litt. 1. 4, chaps. 24 &25.

Angels, freed from all narrow naturalism and on the wings of supernatural glory, focus their affection on all beings and find great secondary enjoyment everywhere.

SIXTH MEDITATION The Good Angels also Deserved Accidental Happiness by Fulfilling Their Social Duties and Governing Matter. The Evil Angels Did the Opposite 699. We have just seen that the good Angels deserved all things by adhering to the Redeemer and His divine Mother. Their adversaries, sticking to naturalism, made themselves enemies of the Redeemer and all creation. A very probable consequence, to say nothing more, is that the Angels’ trial, considered as a whole, was affected by their different dispositions toward its main object—the Redeemer.

The faith, opposed to naturalism, is a fundamental that must enlighten and guide the faithful's entire conduct. That is so true that a person who lives by faith fulfills not only his obligation to believe but also all his moral obligations. Conversely, although obliged to believe, one who lives by naturalism fails to fulfill all obligations that flow directly from faith. Whoever observes the whole law, says St. James, but violates one point of it becomes guilty of all577 because to break that point, he had to trample underfoot the principle on which all its other points are based.

This must be especially true of the rebellious Angels, as they failed not just on any point of the law but on the capital point on which all others depended: Christ the Redeemer. They should worship Him as the head and ultimate and exemplary cause of all creatures and the meritorious cause of all graces. By ignoring the relations that things should have with Christ, the bad Angels could no longer fulfill their social duties or ministry concerning the government of matter; their acts failed to attain their true goal or lacked the grace of Christ, which they rejected.

700. We thus believe that one must accept the opinions of the Holy Fathers and good authors who attribute to Lucifer and his followers a large number of different sins due to pride. As often happens in theology and philosophy, one should not regard various ways of thinking as opposed but expressing different sides of the same thing. Therefore, it is rather a question of bringing them together as much as possible under a shared and elevated principle under which they are all true, rather than considering them as clashing ideas of men professing the same faith and morals. In our opinion, this is the present case.

St. Thomas says that demons' envy and pride include all sins deriving from these vices.578 Hence the Holy Fathers and theologians attribute to the evil Angels, besides pride and envy, arrogance, presumption, ambition, vainglory, impatience or anger, hatred, avarice or selfishness, impiety, some infidelity, etc.579

577

2:10.

1, q. 63, a. 2, ad 3m.

579 Cf. Suarez, De Ang. libr. 1°, c. 15.

578

701. We find that partisans of angelic rationalism failed particularly two duties: preaching the faith to their fellows and guiding the mobile Empyrean to exercise a formative action on chaos. Both failures were due to opposition against the Redeemer, Mary, and humanity.

702. The teaching of Sacred Scripture seems formal and expressive on the first point. Saint Paul teaches that all Angels are spirits charged with a ministry and sent to exercise it on behalf of those who will receive the inheritance of salvation.580 They were established not only as ministers of God in general but also apostles, superiors having to enlighten inferiors, as amply explained above; and as they formed a society during their trial, God commanded each of them to take care of his neighbor.581 It is indisputable that all wayfaring Angels should practice charity toward their neighbor, virtue that includes apostolate to do them good. With St. Thomas, we say that all creatures have this participation in divine goodness, which consists of pouring out the good they have on others.582 Lucifer and his Angels, the dragon and his followers583 did precisely the opposite. They afflicted angelic nations,584 preaching revolt and rationalism. As their social relations multiplied, they filled with iniquity and sinned (n. 659). Makers of disorder, they terrified the Empyrean, spread terror in those kingdoms, and chased their inhabitants.585 Angelic revolt is the type of all crimes that have pride as their primary cause, and pride, the principle of all sin, turns a creature’s heart away from its Creator.586 Furthermore, a great fight took place in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; the dragon and his angels also fought, and the dragon’s tail took with it one-third of the stars.587 What could this fight between pure minds be if not the struggle between the apostolate of good and the apostolate of evil? What could the swooping by the dragon's tail be if not a result of the apostolate of iniquity?588 703. This struggle between the defenders of good and the partisans of evil also happens in human society with such tenacity that it makes us consider another side of the holy Angels’ merit and accidental happiness. All blessed spirits who exerted an influence on their inferiors or equals during the trial contributed to strengthening their fidelity to God, perseverance, and salvation, preserving them from the fall as ministers of the Redeemer or Preserver Whom they considered as their leader and model by faith. That is why they love their inferiors as spiritual fathers love their children. In turn, the latter acquire an affection for their superiors as fathers in the faith and signal benefactors.

The glorification of the blessed and their intuitive vision and enjoyment of the infinite Good eminently perfected this mutual charity they practiced during their test out of love for Christ. Consequently, the holy Angels now find indescribable contentment and joys in their mutual society and common union

580

Heb 1:14.

Ecclus 17:12.

582 See above this passage and others, n. 608.

583 Ap 12:7.

584 Isa 14:12.

585 Ibid. 16,17 586 Ecclus 10:15.

587 Ap 12:3-7.

588 See Suarez, proofs drawn from Church Fathers, De Angelis, book 7, chap. 17, nos. 15 & ff.

581

with Christ and God. In glory, all traits of the virtues practiced during the trial are raised to the highest degree of perfection.

That is another reason why these blessed spirits display so much care for the Church Militant and her children and are able to say with Saint Paul: We preach Christ, admonishing every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.589 In heaven’s immortal charity, they know how excellent it is to have zeal for the good, and especially for the salvation of neighbor.

704. Other than fulfilling their social duties, wayfaring Angels had to properly govern the existing heavens to predispose chaos, by their influence, to form lower heavens primarily for Christ and Mary, and for the rest of mankind and any other rational creatures, if any. While these assertions cannot be proven as firmly as most preceding ones, they seem to flow naturally from general principles taught by theology. Let us recall some thoughts of St. Thomas on this point.

705. According to St. Dionysius, solar rays contribute to the generation of visible bodies, give them vital impulses, nourish and make them grow. These are their noblest effects on lower things. Divine Providence produces all other effects through heavenly bodies.

The first thing in a genre is the cause of things that come after it in the same genre. Heavenly bodies are the first in the genus of bodies, and their movements are first among corporeal movements. Therefore, they are the cause of the bodily things that happen here below.

The sky plays in the world the role that the heart fulfills in an animal. An animal’s heart governs all its limbs, and God governs all lower bodies through the sky.590 We believe that the Empyrean exerts an influence on lower bodies because the entire universe constitutes a single order of things. In this single order, bodies are definitely governed by spirits, and lower bodies are governed by higher bodies, as St. Augustine says. It follows that if the Empyrean did not influence lower bodies, it would not be part of the universe's unity.591 All creatures compose a unit of the same order592 or belong to the same plane.

706. Let us apply these principles to our subject. After the creation of Heaven and Earth, the Empyrean was in motion, and chaos occupied its center (nos. 412-430). The Angels presided over the movements of already formed nature according to the mandate they had received, which was according to their nature (ibid. & nos. 567 -577). Since the universe forms a single whole, and the Empyrean is the first existing sky in its genus, which plays in the universe the role the heart plays in an animal, it had to influence chaos and somehow predispose it to form other skies similar to itself. All things that come from God relate to one another and God. Hence the need to admit that all things belong to the same

589

Col 1:28.

Quaest. V De Verit. a. 9.

591 Quodlib. VI, q. 11, art. 19.

590

592

Libr. II Dist. 21 q. 11 art. 1.

single world.593 Est ergo corpus coeleste causa omnis alterationis in his quae alterantur. Alteratio autem in his inferioribus est principium omnis motus : nam per alterationem pervenitur ad augmentum, et generationem, etc. Contra Gentiles, 1. 3. chap. 82, n. 7.

That is why all simple bodies that composed chaos must have received some disposition to be subjected to Empyrean influences and a certain tendency to form composite bodies and heavens. It was an angels' office to favor predispositions in simple bodies, still confused with each other, so they would tend to organize themselves. At their creation, spiritual creatures were arranged to govern every corporeal creature594 and, therefore, also chaos.

707. That is why we do not find Durand’s opinion strange. For him, the spirit of God carried over the waters was an Angel moving those waters, meaning the crystalline sky and other heavens. The Hebrews, Theodoret and Tertullian understood by ‘spirit of God’ a wind stirred up by God. These opinions do not clash with the Holy Fathers' shared belief that that spirit was the Holy Spirit Himself.595 These opinions are all consonant, for the Empyrean, complete in its kind, had an atmosphere. Its movements naturally produced wind, especially with the temperature difference that must have existed between the fully formed and complete Empyrean and the still cold and motionless chaos.

Besides, it was an important ministry of the Angels to rule the Empyrean in its dealings with chaos and to help maintain and enhance the unity of the material universe. Finally, the Holy Spirit was the main cause of these movements of the Empyrean and the Angels' supernatural work, as it is characteristic of hypostatic Love to preside over all affinities, all honest loves, and all works that require grace to merit eternal life.

708. As we said, chaos was composed only of simple bodies and consequently contained in act only the forms of simple bodies. However, most chaos was meant to be used to form compound bodies and lower heavens. Now, the forms of compound bodies must have somehow derived from angelic spirits.

Let us listen to the Prince of theologians on this point. The compound agent, which is body, he says (in our case, the Empyrean), is moved by the spiritual created substance, as Saint Augustin says. Hence, bodily forms derive from spiritual substances not by producing them directly but by setting in motion movements that cause these forms to produce compound bodies. The forms in matter come from the Angels through movement. . .and originally from the divine intelligence, which contains the reasons of all things. . .Heavenly bodies produce the forms in lower things through movement.596 We fully concur when St. Thomas says there was no passage from potency to act in the first production of the bodily creature and that the corporeal forms that existed were produced immediately by God alone.597 All the Empyrean’s forms and all forms of simple bodies that composed chaos come from God alone as the first production of bodily creature was creation properly so-called. It is expressed thus: In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. As for the fiat, which God repeated several times, it 593

1 q. 471 a. 3.

Ibid. q. 611 a. 4.

595 See Cornelius a Lapide in hunc loc.

596 11 q. 651 a. 4.

597 Ibid.

594

means that God alone ordered the production of light, the firmament, etc., but not that the Empyrean and the Angels had no causality in the formation of already existing matter. The world’s unity, angelic ministries, and the other reasons above lead us to think the opposite.

709. We conclude that the good Angels favored with all their power the transformation of chaos because of Jesus Christ, Mary, and the rest of humanity;598 and that the evil Angels, murderers from the beginning (n. 663), selfishly aspired to maintain the status quo as a direct result of their pride (n. 700 ).

As we see it, there is no doubt that the rebel Angels were the types of degraded humans who wage war on the supernatural.

The latter praise the so-called progress, which would lead nowhere, but abhor Church teachings on the resurrection of the flesh, the Church Militant’s final transformation into Church Triumphant, the glorious renewal of the universe. They refuse to help establish a future kingdom of God, Christ, Mary, and the Saints, fulfilling the wishes of the devil, their father,599 and of the rebellious angels, their brothers.

Together, they are bitter enemies of the immense, universal and divine progress that will enable the final contemplation of God’s work in all its excellence.

710. Conversely, the faithful Angels, models of humanity’s true believers, worked actively for the divine plan’s total realization. By their virtues, they laid the foundations of the secondary happiness they enjoy in the immensity of creation. As their trial ended, a display of divine power crowned their desires and labors and marked the defeat and condemnation of their enemies. The fiat lux was the triumph of the good Angels and the final demise of the bad, as the Lord is near those who call upon Him. . .in truth. He will do the will of them that fear Him; he will hear their prayer and save them. The Lord keeps all them that love Him, but all the wicked He will destroy.600

SEVENTH MEDITATION Duration of the Angelic Trial 711. Theologians admit that the Angels' trial lasted a short time, but no one has attempted to indicate its approximate duration as far as we know. We seem to find data on this point in analogy, theological reason, and Sacred Scripture. In our humble opinion (this seems clearly marked in the sacred context), the angelic trial lasted for the duration of a period of Genesis.

It reads: “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.” He gave existence to the Empyrean, the Angels, chaos, and time (nos. 412 & ff.) The text goes on to say: “But the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the waters.”

598

This affirmation could be corroborated by all the passages where St. Thomas says that the material universe is made for man and in particular for the Elect. So, the elements that were in chaos aimed at the forms of compound bodies and so on, down to the human form, which is the noblest of the lower forms (L. 2 Dist. 1, q. 2, a. 2 and alibi). Therefore, iIt is clear that the Angels enemies of man ran counter this final tendency of the elements of chaos, while the Angels friendly to man favored it.

599 Jn 8:44.

600 Ps 144:19-21.

These expressions and manner of expounding events describe a state of things and operations that lasted for a very appreciable part of our material time. Work was done successively on chaos as the Spirit of God warmed and fertilized it, also using, as we said, the influences of the Empyrean and the ministry of the Angels. Then we read: “And God said: “Be light made.” Here we see the passage from one era to another. True, the early epoch's account does not speak of evening and morning, nor is that epoch called day like the subsequent epochs. But this difference is explained by the nature of things and their mode of formation.

712. God Himself created and organized the Empyrean, at least in its essential parts. Thus, there was light, which plays such a significant role in the formed worlds and explains very well the opinion of St. Basil. He admitted the existence of light before the fiat lux, but outside and above the chaos.601 The first epoch did not distinguish between evening and morning. Besides, we would not know why night would have succeeded day in the Empyrean. The largest and most beautiful of the heavens should be the most illuminated and therefore ignore evenings, mornings, or nights.

Furthermore, we see that each Genesis day is made of successive operations that gradually increase the perfection of works in a journey from evening to morning, from less perfect to more perfect. For example, God says: Let there be light. And there was light. After producing light, God divided it from darkness and called it ‘day.’ Every day would see one or more analogous operations, as the lower heavens were made progressively every day and not just in six days.

The same did not happen with the Empyrean, the Angels, and chaos. Their creation and formation were simultaneous. God created and fashioned them all at once—the Empyrean as Empyrean, Angels as Angels adorned with grace, and chaos as chaos. So to speak, these things were born and persevered in their midday. And this state lasted throughout the first epoch and underwent only accidental variations due to the Angels’ work and Empyrean influences on chaos. Hence, the denominations of day, evening, and morning in no way detract from the duration of the period that preceded the six days of Genesis.

713. In our view, many other reasons favor this interpretation. Let us outline them briefly.

1. Several passages of Sacred Scripture, reported above (nos. 655-660), have a meaning that coincides with what we find in the first two verses of Genesis.

How are you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who rose in the morning? .... You, who wounded the nations; who said in you5 heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the most High!602 Lucifer showed himself successively as a star that rises in the morning. Each apparition produced a deceptive glare which plagued nations. So to speak, he contracted the habit of saying in his heart: “I will go up .... I will establish .... I will sit .... I will be .... Just when? Not now. When in the future? When I will have persuaded all the Angels [to follow me]; when we have reached the height of progress by our own strength; when the light is made in chaos by the effect of natural progress, to increase the kingdom of 601 602

See Cornelius a Lapide, Comment. In Genesis, I:2.

Isa 14:12;15.

the Angels, or better, when it is confirmed that chaos will last eternally in this state, as the Angels and the Empyrean suffice to the beauty of the universe.

714. 2. Significant in the same sense are Ezekiel’s allusions to the rebel Angels’ leader. The prophet represents him as having been in the delights of God’s paradise as a Cherub with vast and protective influences. He was established on God’s holy mountain like a monarch, walking among sparkling stones, meaning he had time not only to commit sin but also to fill himself with iniquities and multiply these iniquities (n. 659).603 This description makes us think of a certain lapse of time comparable to a life of trial rather than a fleeting moment.

715. 3. St. John’s words further confirm that: “And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: And they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven.”604 According to St. John, this fight is the type waged between the Church Militant and her enemies. It is not a day’s business but that of an entire life of trial, as Job said: “The life of man on earth is a warfare.” 605 Such was the life of wayfaring Angels. Their combat was great not only because of the number of combatants but also because of its fierceness and duration. Michael and his Angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his Angels fought as well. It was not an action or two, but a series of actions; a life of combat.

716. 4. In our opinion, many authors suppose that the Angels’ trial took place in the blink of an eye because they confuse the angelic moment with the human moment. The angelic moment is an Angel’s uniform, good or bad disposition of will, which can last indefinitely. Our human moment, caused by the succession of things, is rapid and even imperceptible. Suarez says that the angelic moment has a nature different from our moments and can coexist with part of our time and even with an infinite number of our moments. 606 Therefore, there is nothing extraordinary in saying that it lasted until the formation of light and formed a primitive epoch. We believe this is also the best way to interpret St. Justin and St. Irenaeus. According to Suarez, the two affirmed that Lucifer only sinned when he tempted men. Instead of declaring this opinion as obviously false, as the distinguished doctor does, we find it too broad and admit it in so far as it makes the angelic test last until the Fiat lux, 607 which excludes error.

717. Several theologians also favor this conclusion to a certain extent. Scot, Gabriel and Salmeron think that the Angels could still convert after their sin and that God gave them time to do so. Salmeron says that the Angels were cast down from heaven only after God, in His goodness, had invited them and waited a long time for them to do penance. Suarez finds this adverb, for a long time, very new and singular. It is undoubtedly so, as this doctor extends its duration until after the six days of Genesis.608 But

603

Ez 28:13-18.

Ap 12:7,8.

605 Job 7:1.

606 De Angelis, 1. 7, chap. 18, nos. 22 & 23.

607 Ibid., chap. 21, n. 11.

608 See Suarez, ibid. 1. 8, c. 1, nn. 4-6.

604

all novelty and singularity disappear if we admit that the epoch of the angelic trial preceded the other six epochs. This is entirely fitting with the account of Genesis.

718. 5. Let us give additional reasons that might be called theological reasons. As we have seen (nos.

668 & ff.), the Divine Redeemer and the sublime Coredemptrix are the perfect types of all beings subjected to the test. We know how long their lives of suffering and deprivation lasted. Yet, strictly speaking, a single painful moment suffered by the Man-God and His divine Mother would have sufficed to accomplish the work of Redemption. However, God regulates all things with measure, number and weight.609 Redemption's work takes a long time to accomplish and extends through the ages until the worlds' renovation. God, Who created time and is eternal, is in no hurry.

O my God, Thou gavest the evil Angels leeway to do penance,610 although Thou knewest their race was wicked, malice was natural to them, and their minds could never change.611 Thou wilt will not forgive the Angels who have sinned612 because they will not repent. But neither wilt Thou disturb the majesty of Thy works. The mobile Empyrean will travel to the time set for its glorification as our mobile worlds steadily follow their journey for thousands of centuries despite men’s sins. Thy mercy is magnified even to the heavens;613 Thy mercy is above Thy judgment’s severity;614 and if all Thy ways are truth and justice, they are also mercy,615 waiting even for sinners who will never come; and this, because Thou art good.

If, presided over by Thy mercy, Thy governance allows sins to multiply and accumulate, it also gives rise to multiplication and accumulation of merits; and thy faithful Angels will embellish heavenly Jerusalem all the more as they counter the ‘apostolate’ of evil with the apostolate of good.

719. 6. God certainly took much more into account the good Angels’ increase in merit than the (later) perversion of the bad ones, as He would only have allowed the latter because of the former. If human saints, who usually acquire merit over many long years, are destined to join the angelic orders because of their perfect virtues (nos. 459 & ff.), why should the good Angels not have had time to multiply their merits? Were that not so we would not have been called to become equals of Angels but to surpass them.

Let us add that, even if the good Angels had been confirmed in grace after their first act of formal adhesion to the Redeemer and Coredemptrix, it would have been very fitting for them to advance for some time in the way of good without having to fear sin, having Jesus and Mary as models. Are they not the most accomplished beings after the Savior and His Divine Mother?

720. 7. The rapidity of the Angels’ understanding and decision-making is attenuated and compensated in several ways.

609

Wis 11:21.

As with the first inhabitants of Palestine, later.

611 Wis 12:10.

612 2 Pet 2:4.

613 Ps 56:11.

614 Ja 2:13.

615 Tob 3:2. “The Lord is sweet to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works” (Ps 144: 9).

610

The angelic Church is analogous to the human Church. Revelation increased from Adam until the death of the last of the Apostles, and divine truths will increase in brilliance unceasingly until the end of time.616 Accordingly, Revelation must have reached the Angels by degrees. Besides, one of the Angels’ most important ministries is to enlighten their inferiors on executing the divine plan (n. 449). Hence among the Angels under trial, there was something that corresponded to the epoch of Patriarchs, that of Prophets, and to the evangelical and apostolic times. Considering the unfathomable number of Angels (nos. 434-438) and their different species, are as numerous among them as individuals (nos. 486 & ff.), we can easily conclude that it took time to persuade that immense crowd of free beings to opt for good or bad.

Moreover, the Angels, so enlightened on the divine mysteries, according to the expressions of St. Thomas,617 could not, like Adam, expect to benefit from Redemption after their sin. They knew that their test was final, and, therefore, the enormity of their responsibility tended to slow their determination.

Everything also suggests that God arranged all things in His goodness so that the Angels would not decide lightly.

Nor should one suppose that they were so quick to plunge into evil. Free will, says St. Thomas, does not behave the same way toward good and evil. It is naturally ordered to good, whereas evil is unnatural to it.618 How then could such a large part of the Angels, possessing such varying degrees of natural perfection and supernatural gifts, have suddenly cast themselves into evil, repugnant to their nature?

721. 8. Therefore, I imagine the angelic trial as having lasted an entire epoch. As it were, it mirrored a complete civilization with its beginnings, progress, defects, and final crisis, all proportionate to the angelic nature and the mode in which the Angels received existence.

Angelic society existed simultaneously as a whole. In this respect, it is very different from human society, whose individuals successively propagate by generation. That is why mankind’s trial extends through thousands of years as its members appear on the stage of life. But each one’s trial is reduced to his life span. Since angelic lives were simultaneous, it seems their trial was more or less equivalent to that of a human generation. Hence, the Angels’ life during their trial was modeled after the Man-God's temporal life, as He is the supreme model of all creatures.

722. 9. Would one say that this is a tremendous amount of time for natures as active as the Angels?

We do not pretend to figure the number of years their ordeal lasted. However, for the above reasons, we believe their trial lasted a very considerable time. Angels and men were predestined to occupy the same degrees of bliss, and so they must multiply and enlarge their merit in much the same way.

If the Angels are incomparably quicker and more active than men, one must conclude that their trial was proportionate to their faculties and the graces they received—a test worthy of them. While men are very differently gifted in nature and grace, their trial’s duration is generally the same. Had the good Angels been given the possession of supreme happiness after their first supernatural act of obedience 616

Urgente mundi fine superna scientia proficit, et largius cum tempore crescit. St. Gregory the Great, Moral.

See nos. 644 & 649.

618 Book II, Dist. 3, q. 2, a. 2, ad 2m.

617

and charity, it would hardly be possible to explain the immense variety of their rewards, which are the same as those of chosen men.

EIGHTH MEDITATION The Good Angels’ Fight False Science Opposed to the Holy Ghost; Corresponding Rewards 723. As we have seen, the Angels formed a kind of Church Militant during their trial. That huge society, where they quickly shared feelings in their created freedom, soon had its struggles to fight. Their main object of discussion was the future Man-God. He was Redeemer to come as king and head of all creatures; was the meritorious cause of all graces; the guarantor of God’s glory; the good of all beings.

After God’s glory, He was the primary reason for the creation of the Angels and the Empyrean, and for the future unraveling of chaos. He was the divine-human crowning of all works of the Almighty. Filled with pride and fanaticism, Lucifer and his own revolted against this sublime object of their faith and undertook a heretical apostolate. They willfully sinned after receiving the knowledge of the truth.

Despite their faith’s teachings, they rejected Christ, the cause of all graces and salvific repentance. As a result, they no longer had a host to expiate for their sins but only the terrible expectation of judgment and the ardent fire that must devour the enemies of Christ.619 To reject the Man-God definitively is to reject all goods forever. Woe be to those implacably hostile to the Son of God! According to St. Hilary, to deny Jesus Christ's divinity is to sin against the Holy Ghost, a sin the Gospel calls irreversible. The sin against the Holy Ghost consists, says this Father, in denying God’s omnipotence and Christ’s divinity. Just as God became man through Christ and man will be deified through Him, God forgives all sins except those we mentioned.620 We believe that by fighting especially the Man-God, the rebellious angels committed all sins against the Holy Ghost for the entire duration of their trial.

1. Presumption, because they wanted to do without the grace of Christ.

2. Opposition to the known truth because they had notions of all external works of God, and their faith further enhanced that knowledge.

3. Envy of a neighbor’s grace because they wanted neither the existence of Christ and humanity nor the increase of God’s grace in the world, as St. Thomas put it.

4. Obstinacy in desiring a smaller sum of good even to their prejudice despite the divine will, for the wicked pleasure of depriving other people and the whole world of what is best.

5. Impenitence, that is, the firm intention of never repenting.

619 620

Heb 10:26,27.

Quoted by Cornelius a Lapide, Comment. In Matth. chap. 12:31.

6. Despair of obtaining God’s forgiveness, a dreadful crown of so much perversity.621 O sad life of the proud Angels during their trial! O execrable model of the greatest human wickedness!

These were the enemies that the Angelic Church Militant had to fight.

724. Led by Lucifer, the first heretic, they formed a kind of counter-church, as do the Catholic Church's enemies today. This leads us to believe that, like all social conflicts, the struggle’s duration was quite long. The revolted Angels' history seems to be more or less the history of heretics. It is unfortunately too long but significant.

Never has a heretic occupied the first place in the Church. Every divinely instituted religious society is presided over by an infallible authority whose depositary may sin as a person but not as a leader and official teacher. Hence, Lucifer was not the first of the Angels but only one of the highest. If we assumed the opposite above (nos. 530, 531, etc.), that is the opinion of Pope St. Gregory, St. Thomas, and other respectable authors. We prefer St. John Damascene's opinion, which St. Thomas respects, although he is somewhat favorable to the former.622 For St. John Damascene, Lucifer was far from being the highest of Angels. Other serious authors share his opinion.623 We agree that he was one of the first, but not number one. We even think that he was only a Cherub.

725. Lucifer’s name, which means light-bearer, or son of dawn or morning star (literally, from the Hebrew helel), son of dawn or morning star, is an even more solid reason. This name was certainly revealed by God as were Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael. It designates a specific Angel’s office. The son of the dawn is less than the dawn, and the bearer of light is less than the source of light. Gabriel was the prefigurative Vicar of the Incarnate Word and, as it were, the angelic Pope (nos. 530-533). As such, Gabriel was the dawn, the first radiance of the sun of righteousness that would rise for all creatures.624 Lucifer was the carrier, propagator of this light, a kind of ambassador of the angelic Holy See. He was not the dawn but its son and principal envoy to all angelic choirs.

His brilliant knowledge was more than his love of God. He was a Cherub with extended and protective wings, as Ezekiel says (n. 659). Like a Cherub and even the noblest of the Cherubim, in his hierarchy, he was the perfect likeness of God, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. The Cherubim are distinguished by the fullness of their knowledge (nos. 452, 471) and hence by their beauty. Lucifer's heart was lifted up in his brightness; he lost wisdom in his beauty. We see his crime repeated with deplorable fruitfulness on the pages of human history. ‘You will be like gods, knowing good and evil.’ O knowledge of a misguided Cherub, you cast poor humanity into evil and engendered all heresies. Is it not in your name that today’s humans have become so generally incredulous, rationalistic and bitter enemies of the divine? This is almost obvious proof that your first inspirer is a rebellious Cherub, certainly not a Seraph burning with love of God (nos. 453, 473).

621

See St. Thomas, 2a 2ae, q. 14; at. II. 1, q; 63, a. 7.

623 See Suarez, De Angelis, 1. 7, chap. 17.

624 Mal 4:2.

622

In all Lucifer descriptions, one finds only brilliance, beauty, light, wisdom, but no love, none of those traits which distinguish the Seraphim.625 If he was full of wisdom, it was before his fall and limited to his office. Again, that wisdom did not prevent Solomon, the wisest of men, from plunging into grievous errors.

St. Stephen was full of grace, had irresistible wisdom,626 and was filled with the Holy Ghost627 without occupying the first place in the Church. If Lucifer the Cherub was established on the holy mountain of God, he was there only as a Cherub, above the Thrones, but below the Seraphim. The Most High tells him, again calling him a Cherub: ‘I have driven you out of the mountain of God, and I have lost you, O protector Cherub, amid the precious stones with which you were surrounded’ (no. 659). Therefore, Sacred Scripture seems quite clear on this point. Why deviate its meaning?

726. Isaias’s words fully agree with this interpretation. For this prophet, Lucifer was resplendent in the morning. As a still innocent Cherub, that was his knowledge before turning from Angel of light into Angel of darkness and Satan.628 He smote the angelic nations with plagues as false knowledge now plagues nations. He said in his heart: ‘I will ascend to Heaven: I will reach my end by myself; I will establish my throne above the stars of God, above the Seraphim, above Gabriel himself, for I will sit on the mountain of the covenant, not just on any point, but on its highest point. Above the highest clouds, I will ascend above Him whom Gabriel represents in Angelic Society, above She whom Gabriel will greet as full of grace, above these future leaders of all creatures, called clouds because of their humanity.

I will be like the Most High, who has no superior (see nos. 655, 656). O independent knowledge, here you are fully described in your model. The more one looks at you, the more clearly one sees that you are not a Seraphim's image but that of a proud Cherubim, Lucifer. For you, the Church of God, Mary, Christ, and the supernatural are either nothing or are below you. The great religion of science is everything!

You ignore the virtue and excellence of the ardent Seraphim, who have everything you have629 but whose lights shine with God’s love. If they do not take a more ruthless attitude towards you, it is because they are Seraphim, ablaze with love.630 But with their eyes constantly turned to God, they say to you: May the Lord, infinitely just and good, command you.631 Since you despise our enlightenment and authority and place yourself above us and even above the Incarnate Word that we represent and serve, we call upon you the judgment of Him Who is above all things and Whom you want to resemble by your independence. You will soon feel how effective the Seraphim's prayer will be.

625

In sacra Scriptura, says St. Thomas, nomina quorumdam ordinum, ut Seraphim et Thronorum, daemonibns non attribuuntur : quia haec nomina sumuntur ab ardore charitatis, et ab inhabitatione Dei, quae non possunt esse cum peccato mortali. Attribuuntur autem eis nomina Cherubim, Potestatum et Priucipatuum, quia haec nomina sumuntur a scientia et potentia quae bonis malisque possunt esse communia. 1, q. 63, a. 9, ad 3m. The sacred Author could have designated a Seraphim who had become guilty, but did not do so.

626 Acts 6:8,10.

627 Ibid. 7:55.

628 2 Cor 11:14.

629 See no. 453.

630 When arguing with the devil, Michael did not dare to condemn him with words of curse. St. Jude, 9.

631 Ibid.

You will fall from Heaven like lightning.632 Heat with light is more powerful than light alone; nor is light real and complete without warmth. You will lose your balance for lack of love, will not remain in the truth,633 and will be cast into the abyss.634 727. The intellectual struggle between roughly one-third635 of a countless society and its other two thirds is not the affair of a moment or day. We see that in our Church Militant: the fight on earth lasts as long as humanity. Among the Angels, it lasted the entire duration of a trial life, which supposes many actions. By this, we can get an idea of the distinguished and varied merits acquired by the good Angels, who fought the good fight and kept the faith awaiting for the crown of justice.636 No one is crowned who did not legitimately fight.637 Ordinarily, the victory prize, eternal life, must be achieved during an entire life of trial. Because of the condition of spirits, in angelic life, each good angel had to fight, as it were, all bad angels successively and one by one while placing themselves in consonance of ideas and feelings with all other good Angels, by charity, and submission to their superiors. Undoubtedly, Angelic hierarchies and choirs were instituted and established upon the Angels’ creation. These hierarchies are sacred (n. 444) and, therefore, religious. The ministries of these sublime creatures are their duties of state, and so the Angels must have done them from the first moment of their existence. All angels differ specifically from each other (nos. 486 & ff.) and constitute as many different natures as their countless individuals. Thus, it is easy to imagine the difficulties and complications of their test.

They have numerous social relations, multiple and grandiose religious worship, and a very active and extensive apostolate in their society. They must govern this society and the already formed heavens, exert influence on chaos, and practice virtues with many intelligent beings different from one another by grace and by nature. They must direct and even perfect the existing universe (n. 426) according to the divine plan’s requirements, to their natural lights, their faith, and the enlightenment hierarchically received from on high. They must take part in the gigantic intellectual struggle happening among them, which no human set of books would suffice to recount. What a trial, and how worthy of those great spirits! What a glorious victory for the good and terrible defeat for the wicked!

If men should hope to one day be the equals of Angels in all degrees of beatitude, they doubtless owe it to the merits of the Man-God and His Mother, both of whom are also human, much more than their own. What glory and happiness that means for us! O greatness coming from our beloved Savior and great and sweetest Mary!

728. The good angels' fight consisted mainly in refuting false and proud science contrary to edifying charity for the entire duration of their trial.638 Envious of the supernatural, its partisans seek to limit and reduce the divine plan to natural proportions and the narrow ideas of creatures; in a word, they rebel 632

Lk 10:18.

Jn 8:44.

634 2 Pet 2:4.

635 Plures angeli permanserunt quam peccaverunt. St. Thomas 1, q. 63, a. 9.

636 2 Tim 4:7.

637 Ibid. 2:5.

638 l Cor 8:1.

633

against faith. By opposing the deceptive lights, the good Angels enlightened lower spirits and exercised an apostolate of salvation with them. Therefore, having taught many the way of righteousness, they will shine like stars for all eternity.639 God rewards them by showing Himself to them face to face and a makes them see in the Word, through the light of glory, the reasons for all things, and His plan’s sublime magnificence. As it were, He calls them to share in His providence and employs them to lead all wayfaring persons and things under trial to their ultimate end. As glorified children of God, they govern the material universe and illuminate men with even more zeal than they did other Angels in the past. They let men know divine truths and wills, strengthen their intellects, suggest them wholesome thoughts, make them understand nature’s language about God, grasp the strength of the reasons to believe,640 and fill men with all kinds of goods.641 They also increase their accidental happiness as they spread more bounty upon creatures and further enlarge and enrich the heavenly Jerusalem.

729. Did not the good Angels also fight against false beneficence and deceptive love? If so, would we not be led to believe that Lucifer was a Seraph? Based on many reasons, as mentioned above (n. 724), it seems that he was only a Cherub. It is a common opinion that wayward Angels existed among all angelic choirs. Since Lucifer was their leader, it appears that he had to be a Seraph to preside over the unfaithful Seraphim, albeit in evil.

However, it is abhorrent to see Lucifer as the highest Seraphim and head of the entire angelic Church while Scripture only assigns him a secondary role. He transgressed God’s will in a divinely established religious society, and only a small part of the Angels followed him. Most clung to the Authority.

Therefore, at a pinch, he could be a Seraph of the fourth or fifth order, inferior to Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and others but superior to some Seraphim he might have won over to his side. In this case, Scripture would call him Cherub only to indicate one a Seraphim closest to the choir of Cherubim or to note that he chose to become a Cherub by wanting to abound in knowledge rather than love. This last interpretation is from St. Thomas.642 730. Whether Lucifer was a member of the first angelic choir or the second (we will say our final word about it in a moment), for sure, the faithful Angels had to fight his false benevolence and perfidious love. Temptation always offers a seeming or real good, but neither the good one should want, nor its appearances. Deep down, temptation seeks to make one pick from outside the good. It is perfidy masked as love. Lucifer, who was so enlightened, could not fail to know the harm he was doing to his victims. How could the lower Angels protect themselves against such learned, skillful, and seemingly affectionate seductions from above and by a high authority? That shows how great their virtues were, how much strength they had to muster to cling to God’s revealed truths firmly, and how they closed

639

Dan 12:3.

See St. Thomas, 1, q. 111, a. 1.

641 Tob 12:3.

642 1, q, 63, a. 7, ad 1m.

640

ranks around the undoubtedly infallible supreme angelic Authority to ensure the salvation of all Angels of goodwill.

They had to practice the eight beatitudes, from poverty in spirit to suffering for the sake of justice, in a manner proportionate to pure spirits. Since they were in the state of trial, they had to fight evil and the wicked, as all virtues corresponding to the beatitudes are required for salvation even if they were not fallen beings. Again, if men are called to be equals of Angels in all degrees of happiness, the Angels must somehow have been our equals as far as merit is concerned.

731. Whether created a Seraph or Cherub, Lucifer’s revolt made him the type of false science and false love.

We poor humans, assailed on all sides by a so-called science that overthrows all principles and alleged beneficence that ruins and dissolves our society, should take this as a warning. Let us beware of what led one-third of the angelic society to perdition and invades minds and hearts under Lucifer’s inspiration. May the rebel Angels’ fate serve as a lesson for us, and may that of the faithful Angels serve as encouragement.

In a sense, this first society of intelligent beings has already gone through its last judgment. All its members, good and bad, have simultaneously and solemnly received retribution proportionate to their merits. Some received the various degrees of eternal beatitude; others, the multiple doses of eternal punishments. O humanity, according to your works, for you are reserved the same beatitude and the same punishments. Take the side of Lucifer and his Angels, and you will have your share of the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his Angels.643 Take the side Gabriel, Michael, and all good Angels, and you will share their destiny in the heavenly homeland and be equal to them.

What does it avail you, free-thinkers, rationalists, materialists, sybarites devoid of faith and obedience, to mock or call into question such solid and important teaching? Your moral state attests that seduction has already won you over, and that should make you tremble. Have you a science more wonderful than Lucifer’s? If his science lost him, will yours save you?

You praise your honesty and beneficence; Lucifer’s surpassed you to the point of drawing a large following to his criminal cause. They were all smarter than you and yours. Where did they end up, and where will you end up? O blindness, O willful perversity! Are you not aware that the possibility of doubting or avoiding Revelation, preferring one's will and ideas to those of God and the divinely established Authority, is part of the trial and poses a formidable danger for you? Please be careful then.

What is wrong with submitting to God and His representatives? Are we to fear excessive virtue when eternal salvation depends on virtue, and every degree of virtue will be rewarded? Do not become guiltier than the rebel Angels. By sinning, they damned themselves. If knowing how pride and seduction condemned the evil Angels, you imitate their behavior during your test, what will be your fate?

732. To close this Meditation, let us explain how we see the hierarchical place Lucifer occupied before his fall. Despite the difficulty exposed in no. 729 we hold that he was only a Cherub, although the 643

Mt 25:41.

noblest of the Cherubim. To object that this Angel could not be called Seraph, for lack of ardent charity, and that Scripture only called him Cherub for this defect does not appear to agree with the sacred text.

Almost all writers rightly admit that Ezekiel, in chapter 28, painted depicts the King of Tire with Lucifer’s features. As we have said (n. 659), this is so true that several of the prophet’s expressions can only fit the proudest of Angels.

Ezekiel's account calls Lucifer a Cherub when he was still supposed to be innocent and represented as such. ‘You were, doubtless before your sin, the seal of the likeness of the Most High. You were full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were a Cherub with extended and protective wings. . .You were perfect in your ways on the day of your creation, until iniquity was found in you. . .And I cast you out from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, protecting Cherub. . .Ezekiel gives him the same title before and after his sin because sin does not destroy the guilty one’s nature.

Each Angel is specifically different from any other, as we have seen (nos. 486 & ff.), and hence, with all the more reason the Cherubim are specifically different from the Seraphim. In this case, it is not easy to transport these denominations from one angelic choir to another.

Moreover, the Holy Ghost would not have lacked terms had He wanted to deplore a Seraph’s defection.

He could have chosen a thousand varied expressions such as: For if my enemy had reviled me, I would verily have borne with it.

And if he that hated me had spoken great things against me, I would perhaps have hidden myself from him.

But thou a man of one mind, my guide, and my familiar, Who didst take sweetmeats together with me: in the house of God, we walked with consent.644 733. A closer examination of the passage from Isaias above (n. 655) further confirms our opinion. The words: ‘You Lucifer, so resplendent in the morning, son of the dawn, bearer of the dawn, morning star’ call to mind the idea of a Seraph. However, the following words indicate that he is a subordinate Angel wishing to ascend where he is not, rise above others, and sit on the covenant's mountain, doubtless because he holds a lower position. Furthermore, the light of dawn alone is not the ardor of charity, which is a Seraph’s hallmark.

He said in his heart: ‘I will ascend to heaven.’ Which heaven could be higher than the Empyrean, where he already was? St. Thomas replies: In the Holy Trinity’s heaven.645 That was Lucifer's supreme aspiration, but he still had others. ‘I will establish my throne above the stars of God, I will sit down on the mountain of the Covenant, beside the Aquilon; I will ascend above the highest clouds, whereby I will be like the Most High,’646 he said.

644

Ps 54:13-15.

1 p. q. 61 a4 ad 3m.

646 Isa 14:12-15.

645

He was below the stars of God. He was not on the mountain of the Alliance; there were clouds higher than him. These words should not be understood in a purely material sense because, by their nature and ministries, the Angels, and especially the most distinguished, presided over the stars, mountains and clouds of the Empyrean. Lucifer aspired to bring down those higher than himself in dignity and rule over them.

Therefore, he had superiors among the Angels and was vexed to see them on the covenant mountain and in greater intimacy with God, characteristic of Seraphim. He wanted to be enthroned on those stars of God and ascend above those highest clouds. We believe that were the Seraphim, Mary and Jesus Christ were the objects of Lucifer’s proud jealousy. Ezekiel says twice that he was a Cherub, confirming the other reasons we have expounded, so there is no doubt that Lucifer played a secondary role in angelic society.

734. How can Lucifer, then, be the prince of demons? If a few Seraphim prevaricated like him, how can he command those superior to him in nature?

To resolve these difficulties, let us remember that Hell is a land of misery and darkness where the shadow of death dwells, and everything is without order, in eternal horror.647 God’s justice and the cruel tyranny of their companions in torture continually crush the nature and aspirations of its inhabitants. If Seraphim took part in the prod Cherubim’s rebellion, in Hell they are punished where they sinned, as you become the slave of the one who defeated you.648 This disorder is usually found in all sin. When human reason revolts against God or authority, animality revolts against reason and ends up enslaving it; one loses the precedence one should have over inferiors. Any kingdom divided against itself will doubtless be sorry, but Hell is precisely the height of desolation. Divided against himself, Satan sees his infernal kingdom subsist649 maintained by the rigors of divine justice. In it, a violent disorder is in its proper place.

The damned, naturally inferior to Lucifer, are not subjected to him as a ruler. Hellish order is to command and subject rebels, not to obey them. No culprit has the right to dominate, and Lucifer exercises his empire in the realm of pain as the most criminal of the damned. Everything is upside down.

Not even matter fulfills its natural role there. Created solely to serve intelligent beings and placed as a servant at the bottom of the scale of beings, matter in Hell is an agent of punishment. Neither demons nor reprobates can do anything against its irresistible force. Here, spirits that one would not imagine could be imprisoned, and bodies made to dominate all bodies are enclosed behind impassable flame barriers. Those who disregarded God’s supreme empire rightly should endure the least beings’ rule forever. “Divine zeal will take armor, and he will arm the creature for the revenge of his enemies, and the whole world shall fight with him against the unwise.”650

647

Job 10:22.

Pet 2:19.

649 Lk 10:17,18.

650 Wis 5:18,21.

648

733. Blessed are the faithful Angels who placed the supernatural and God’s will at the top of their concerns and esteem! They were not seduced by dazzling, deceptive lights. They understood that the only sure lights flow from the divine hearth with ardent and sublime charity. If any doubt reached them, they dispelled it with love. O God, Thou hast deigned supernaturally to reveal Thy plan to Thy elite creatures. They should correspond to Thy infinite kindness, not through discussion, but grateful submission. A mind that does not love Thee does not understand Thee. It proceeds not from the higher ranks where love dominates but is born subordinate. By saying, ‘I will ascend, will raise my throne above the stars,’ it clips its wings and begins a steep descent.

O God, Thou are infinite truth and infinite good. In Thine essence, supreme truth and good are the same. Anyone who seeks the truth but not the good in Thee will not find it, as both are together. Those who love Thee, find Thee. They understand Thee enough to obey Thee, humble themselves before Thee, and obtain salvation from Thee.651 Thy faithful Angels equally sought the Supreme Good and Truth. That is why they glimpsed the depth, beauties and price of the mystery that Thy Spirit accomplished when hovering upon the waters. O my God, they came into unison with Thy Divine Spirit, which is Thy hypostatic love. By clinging to goodness and truth and being docile to the inspirations of Thy Spirit, they earned a vast and sure knowledge of Thy plan and made themselves its worthy executors.

Thou glorified them as children affectionate to their father. They became like gods652 for the universe, as divinely good as they were divinely enlightened. O God of love, Thou would not entrust Thy creatures’ destiny to beings who, lacking supernatural love, would not know how to direct them toward the true good.

JAS started 7 October 2020; finished 30 January 2021. Revision ended 18 February 2021.

651 652

Prov 8:35.

Ps 81:6.

© Copyright 2019 - The Foundation for a Christian Civilization, Inc. Translated by Jose A. Schelini

PARADISE Book Three Contents Infinite heaven and its relationships. Overview of created intelligent heavens, their relationships, and the higher material heavens CHAPTER ONE Infinite Heaven and Its Relationships with Created Beings and Possible Beings.

1st Meditation. Infinite, Supreme Heaven, and Creatures’ Main Relationships with it According to Sacred Scripture 2nd Meditation. Continuing the Same Subject According to Sacred Scripture 3rd Meditation. God Is Everywhere in the Universe. His Continual Action on His Creatures I. First Look at God’s Ubiquity II. The Triple Way in which God is Everywhere III. The Scriptures’ Magnificent Language on This Subject 4th Meditation. Holy Trinity’s Heaven – Its Immensity and Visibility for the Blessed, and Essential Vitality 5th Meditation. Influences of the Holy Trinity Heaven on Creatures 6th Meditation. Infinite Heaven or God’s Immensity According to St. Augustine 7th Meditation. The Infinite Heaven or God’s Immensity According to St. Thomas Aquinas I. St. Thomas’s Formal Teaching II. St. Thomas’s ‘Controversial’ Teaching

8th Meditation. Remarkable Language of Several Church Fathers; Observations on Some Theological Opinions 9th Meditation. Examining Father Knoll’s Personal Opinion CHAPTER TWO Quick Glance at all Created Heavens and Their Influences 1st Meditation. By Its Radiance, the Glorious Humanity of the Word Forms the first Heaven After that of the Divine Persons l. This Holy Humanity Is Above All Heights and Created Spirits to Fill All Things with Its Gifts II. The Presence of Christ’s Glorious Humanity Somehow Extends to All Times and Places 2nd Meditation. A Synthetic Glance on Mary’s Heaven and Those of the Leading Blessed I. These Heavens Considered Mainly from the Doctrine of St. Thomas II. The Same Heavens Considered from Other Data 3rd Meditation. Summary Table of Influences Exerted by the Heaven of the Incarnate Word l. As the First Predestined Heaven II. As a Principle of Existence, Life, Light III. As the Cause of All Adoptive Divine Filiation 4th Meditation. More Manifest Influences of the Same Heaven According to Great Principles and Early Prophecies 5th Meditation. Ancient Theophanies Were Manifestations of the Heaven of the Incarnate Word l. Ancient Theophanies According to St. Augustine Il. The Same Theophanies Seen by Other Fathers and Authors III. How We See These Theophanies Based on the Principles Expounded in this Book IV. Several Other Cases Where it Seems that God, or Rather the Word, Appeared Himself 6th Meditation. Last Glance at the Heavenly Influences of the Incarnate Word I. Other Influences Exerted by this Heaven before the Temporal Birth of Jesus Christ Into the People of God II. Influences the Same Heaven Exerted on All Peoples before the Coming of Christ Ill. Brief Considerations on this Heaven’s Influences since the Savior’s Birth 7th Meditation. Summary and Confirmation of the Main Ideas Expressed in This Work l. Overview of All Heavens

II. The Whole Universe Is a Temple of God, Who Has Worshippers Everywhere. We Form a Society with the Entire Universe, All of which Is Christian III. Christian Friends of God Are the Future Kings of the Universe. Special Relationships between Higher and Lower Heavens lV. The Place of Hell and the Influences It Exerts By Its Envoys. The Need and Way to Overcome these Influences. Prayer to Mary.

BOOK THREE INFINITE HEAVEN AND ITS RELATIONSHIPS OVERVIEW OF CREATED INTELLIGENT HEAVENS, THEIR RELATIONSHIPS, AND THE HIGHER MATERIAL HEAVENS

CHAPTER ONE INFINITE HEAVEN AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH CREATED BEINGS AND POSSIBLE BEINGS Respice de Sanctuario tuo, et de excelso cœlorum habitaculo, et benedic populo tuo Israël, et terrae quam dedisti nobis.

Look from thy sanctuary, and thy high habitation of heaven, and bless thy people Israel, and the land which thou hast given us (Deut. 26:15).

736. Usually, the more one studies a subject, the more one understands it. But when that subject is Paradise, the ultimate end of all created things, insights seem to spring up from all sides, and even things we have already know acquire a new degree of splendor. Should we constantly return to what

has already been written to modify it by rigorously bring together all authorities who speak about the same point of doctrine and compile a treaty properly speaking? While it would be desirable, as a researcher and contemplator of my findings, I allow myself certain freedom favorable to study and meditation.

I hope, however, not to fall into tedious repetitions. Our subject is eminently interesting and we can only know it with certainty through divine Revelation and writings about it. Given its exceptional importance and the increasing number of insights, we are confident that we will be moving forward and the reader with us rather than turning around the same spot.

737. This book’s substance must be a summary made up of testimonies not yet cited or fully explained in the earlier volumes. This overview will force us to give more relief to certain parts of our most important subject and which we only broached quickly. Here, the details more fully meditated will be reduced to proportions easier to grasp. We intend this third volume to give us a clearer picture of the heavenly Jerusalem and the universality of things than found is in the previous studies and meditations.

First, we consider the immense, eternal and infinitely perfect Heaven, who is God. Then, Christian Heaven or Christ and of Mary’s heaven—the most perfect image of divine Heaven—for the love of which the Supreme Being resolved to become Creator. We then address the Empyrean with its angels and the whole material universe, which is also entirely Christian except for its central regions. The Empyrean is nothing but a divine temple, partly finished and consecrated by the light of glory and partly in construction, consecrating itself every day as many newly elect souls reach their supreme destiny. Then we will look at the sad final stay of those who want to isolate themselves from universal Christianity and end up in the vast City of God’s central prison. Then, we will address celestial and infernal influences on wayfaring beings under test, from which the rights and duties of wayfaring rational creatures emerge.

And finally, the means to employ and procedures to follow to conquer the kingdom of heaven.

738. The text at the head of this book seems to contain all these subjects very summarily. It is a simple but sublime prayer that Moses said on behalf of the people: Look to us, O God, from thy sanctuary, the place thou dwellest in the highest heaven, and bless thy people of Israel and the land thou gavest to us.

The Hebrew reads: Look down from the lofty abode of thy holiness, Heaven, and bless thy people, Israel.

The home of God’s holiness is above all God himself, Who is His own temple in an excellent way (no.

210). He is Heaven itself by His immensity and Being itself by His aseity. Moreover, by creating Heaven and earth, He formed a high habitation in Heaven, a sanctuary other than Himself: the Empyrean with its inhabitants. God created a sanctuary for Himself. Therefore, it is a holy and sacred dwelling. In it, the supernatural abounded from the beginning through Christ, through faith in Christ, hope in Christ, and the charity of Christ, to Whom Mary was associated.

Empyrean and chaos were created as in this atmosphere, as it were, and the angels breathed its air as soon as they emerged from nothingness. This is the first heaven after the eternal, immense and divine Heaven. The created spirits who rose against this disposition of the Supreme Being were cast into the center of chaos. Because they tried everything against the most luminous, beneficent, largest and most beautiful of the finished heavens, it turned into their hell, a dark and fiery dungeon. By looking at Himself in the abode of His holiness—the sovereign heaven—God knows and predestines the Man-God, the Mother of God, and their heaven, supernatural heaven. And by looking at this second heaven in His eternal knowledge, He goes on to decree the existence of the other heavens, their inhabitants, and destinies. That is why the second heaven is the blessing par excellence: it is the Man who exists and lives

in the Word, with His ocean of lights and graces. 1 By projecting His splendors in all directions (marking the limits of the universe), He effectively begs for the existence of other heavens and beings. And the most potent and gracious radiance of this Blessing will be poured out on the people of Gabriel, the people of Israel, and on the whole Mystical Body of Christ. 2 All other beings without exception will share that according to their degree of nobility, for everything was created in Christ: In ipso condita sunt universa (nos. 292, 293; 671 & ff). The Empyrean emits its vital influences on the mobile universe, and all graces come from above as motions that produce order and push towards good.

From the last depth in which it finds itself, Hell, animate or inanimate, also has a sphere of influence that extends all around itself as much as possible. It is the most formidable danger that threatens wayfaring beings. Rejoice O heavens and you who dwell there because Satan has fallen from heaven like lightning 3 and freed you from his presence. But woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has come down to you full of anger into his new and dreadful home, 4 and you have the most wicked of neighbors. Hence the wayfarer’s double need to follow the influences from above live heavenly blessings and push back influences from below, which are deadly. These two thoughts summarize all the means and methods for salvation.

FIRST MEDITATION Infinite, Supreme Heaven and Creatures’ Main Relationships with it According to Sacred Scripture 739. Great is the Lord, and infinitely praiseworthy; and His greatness knows no bounds. 5 God’s greatness expresses the infinity of His perfections and consequently His immensity, which does not and cannot have limits. Is it credible, asked Solomon when still the wisest of kings, that God truly dwells on earth?

For if the heavens and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less can this house I have built? 6 Before beginning to build this wonder of the world, the glorious son of David likewise asked: Who then can be able to build him a worthy house? If heaven and the heavens of heavens cannot contain him, who am I that I should be able to build him a house? But it is only to burn incense in His presence. 7 Divine worship is the purpose of our temples, and God manifests His presence there in a special way through the homage He receives and the graces He grants. But no believer imagines that these holy The Lamb is the book of life in an excellent way (Apoc. 21:27), which perfectly explains the expression’s other meanings. The elect are BLESSED by the Father because they are living members of Christ, Who is the supreme Blessing and grace.

2 Blessed be God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with all spiritual and HEAVENLY blessings IN CHRIST, as He elected us IN HIM BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD (Eph. 1:3-4).

3 Lk 10:18.

4 Ap 12:12.

5 Ps 144:3.

6 3 Kgs 8:27 & 2 Chr 6:18.

7 1 Chr 2:6.

1

houses circumscribe the immensity of the Most High and can enclose Him as an ordinary house encloses its inhabitants. From this standpoint, God has only one temple: His immensity, that is, His boundless essence, which is all spirit, and infinitely simple (n. 210).

740. That is why, compared to God, the moving skies we contemplate and the heavens of heavens that form the Empyrean and whose height defies our gaze are just as small as our sacred temples. The Infinite is infinitely far from the finite, whatever degrees of being the latter possesses. However, the heavens and the Heaven of heavens admirably contribute to give us an accurate idea of the immense and infinitely grand Heaven. They indefinitely widen the sphere of our thought, which, having crossed all spaces proportional to its flight autonomy, will say: I have advanced nothing so far because Infinite grandeur only begins where all my strength falters. Seized with amazement, at a loss for words and beside ourselves, we will then silently adore His boundless Grandeur. Added to His simplicity, this is the most perfect knowledge we can have of divine immensity here below.

741. God is called great, says St. Dionysius, because of His own greatness, which He communicates (shares) in all great things, spreads and extends infinitely from the outside to all greatness, embraces all places, exceeds all number, crosses all limits. This magnitude is without term, without quantity, without number, and its incomparable excellence bursts into the absolute and supremely vast unfolding of its incomprehensible amplitude. 8 In the light of these texts, it is clear that we must not confuse God’s immensity with His ubiquity. When we assert that God is everywhere, we only indicate that all points of the created universe are simultaneously in His presence, and our mind's sight does not extend beyond.

Everywhere means all places. But there are no places outside of creation, and the expression everywhere ceases to exist at the extreme limits of the universe.

What is there outside of these limits? Is there nothing but pure nothingness? There certainly is the nothingness of all finite beings, whatever it is. Since God created nothing outside the universe, there are no creatures outside of it. Does that mean that the universe floats in absolute nothingness? God forbid, for absolute nothingness has never existed, and as long as something exists, nothingness is absurd and impossible. 9 O Supreme Being, Thou art the first foundation of what exists. This foundation is eternal from the standpoint of time, immense from that of space, infinite as far as participated goods are concerned, all by itself from the standpoint of the origin of beings. Compared to other natures, it is the Spirit par excellence, infinitely remote from any composition; compared to the energy of finite beings, it is almighty.

O great God! Thou art immense. The Ocean of thy Being extends infinitely and in all directions outside the universe that Thou hast created. Our universe does not at all have absolute nothingness as its vital medium, which would imply a horrible contradiction. Thou, O my God, art the infinite ocean of being, good, great, beautiful, that lovingly surround the universe, penetrate it with thy essence, support it with thy power, protect it with thy presence, and art in it everywhere just as thou art in all purely possible places outside of it.

Divine Names, ch. IX, § II. Absolute nothingness would exclude God himself and limit His immensity. It is therefore inadmissible. Moreover, nothingness is said only in relation to creatures, all of which participate in it more or less by the fact that they are limited. But it would be strange and contradictory to mean by it the exclusion of the VERY BEING. The infinite Being is infinite in all respects, and therefore, even in magnitude. So it is impossible to admit that there is absolute nothingness outside the world. The Being itself is both there and in the universe.

8 9

742. - O great God! How can thou be both in concrete and imaginary places? In the latter, thou dost nothing outside thyself, since nothing created exists there. Conversely, in the former, thou deploys thy power by making things and places, in which thou deploys thy presence by being thoughtful and helpful.

Thy essence is there as first Being and first cause; the beings there are caused by thee and rest on thee.

Thou wouldst therefore only be active with finite beings, which thou created. Everywhere else, in endless and merely possible places, thou wouldst only have the intrinsic activity of thy essence. In this case, how to explain thy perfect immutability and sovereign simplicity?

743. O perfection essential and eternal; it is precisely thy absolute immutability and simplicity that explain everything. Being simple, thou art entirely both in the concrete and imaginary ‘everywhere.’

Thou doest whatever thou wantest in both. Fulfilling thy will, our universe and all possible places exist outside of thee so that nothing stands in the way of thy simplicity.

When creating heavens and the earth, thou issued an eternal decree, and no change took place in thee.

In the eternity that preceded things coming out of nothingness, thou wanted things to come out of nothingness at one point in the possible duration, and they started to exist. Thy creative act is eternal. It is now as present it always has been and includes the circumstances it always has, for it is necessarily wise, powerful, and eternal. O Father of lights and everything that participates in being: in thee, there is no change, no shadow, or alteration. 10 Variations are characteristic of things other than thee. They are relative nothingness, limited to their existing being; time, which is a moving image of immobile eternity; space, which is contingent like all that it contains; created spirits, which move from power to act because they are not pure act and perfection like thee, great God. 744. There is nothing wrong with admitting that God is real in both existing and imaginary spaces. So there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that God is just as real in imaginary spaces as in existing spaces. While it is true that nothing there corresponds to His presence, He is present there to Himself. It is the case of saying with Esdras: Thou alone, O Lord, hast made heaven and the heaven of heavens and all the host thereof: the earth and all things that are in it: the seas and all things therein: and thou givest life to all these things, and the host of heaven adoreth thee. 11 “The Heaven of Heavens, the Empyrean, is the highest, most vast and excellent Heaven, and the heavenly hosts are all the angels and stars.” 12 All these beings worship God, that is to say, fulfill the duty that arises from their very existence. The good angels do so with knowledge and love, recognizing that they would immediately be absorbed into the dark ocean of relative nothingness without God. Beings deprived of intelligence adore the Creator through rational beings by their presence in the world of realities and by their passive and absolute obedience.

745. God is absolutely alone outside the universe. That is why the Heavens of Heavens cannot contain Him. It is not only because matter and finite spirits cannot serve as a container for the Supreme and infinitely simple Being. It is not only because the very Being itself exists alone while every participating being can only exist through Him—the Supreme Being necessarily contains everything that is or can be other than Itself because He overflows on all sides and infinitely. As St Dionysius tells us, He extends and

James 1:17.

2 Esdras 9:6.

12 Cornelius a Lapide, in hunc loc.

10 11

spreads infinitely outside of all grandeur because His size is boundless and beckons His incomparable excellence in the absolute and supremely vast blossoming of His incomprehensible amplitude.

The Lord is great and infinitely praiseworthy, says the holy King David; all the gods of nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Praise and magnificence are before Him; strength and joy are in the place where He resides. Offer the Lord the glory due to His name. Adore the Lord in his magnificent sanctuary. Let the whole earth tremble before His face, for it is He who gave the universe solid foundations (Martini). May the heavens rejoice, and may the earth shudder with joy. 13 746. The Lord is great. As St. Thomas says, He is the fullness of being. Now, the whole extent of the universe and space belongs to being and must be found eminently in God. What is eminently found in God is infinite in Him: Everything attributed to God is His essence. 14 Therefore, God is also infinite in that perfection that eminently comprises expanse and space. This perfection is not precisely His power because it does not directly concern the extent, and here we are not speaking of God considered as a cause. But this perfection is its essential magnitude, which would entirely fill a universe infinite in extent if that universe could exist. 15 Yes, the Lord is great also from this point of view; His expansion is absolute and supremely vast; His amplitude is incomprehensible.

747. The Lord made the heavens. Praise and magnificence are before Him. He made the Heavens so great and in proportions so far beyond the reach of our mortal gazes (among other reasons) to form the best possible idea of His greatness. He wants that by looking at His skies, we say to ourselves: How baffling! What then should we think of the Creator’s immensity? We do not see an end to God's work, which does have an end, so God clearly has none. The finiteness of creatures brings our thoughts to the Creator’s infinity. Praise and magnificence are before Him, between His infinite greatness and us. His works’ relative immensity attests to His absolute immensity and makes it shine before our weak eyes.

The universe’s unity and continuity, which makes it a single harmonious whole, celebrate the divine Being’s unity and simplicity. The immense God is entirely and simultaneously in every point of the universe and imaginary spaces. That which is divisible but united preaches the indivisible and supremely simple unity of the first principle of cohesion of various beings. And God teaches us through that magnificence.

Look at these heavens unfathomably vast and populated; contemplate this order which regulates everything from atoms to worlds; admire all these beings’ various movements and the intense vitality that animates them. All this forms a single universal harmony. All these voices compose a single concert!

O, God! Praise and magnificence are indeed before thee. It is up to us to see thee behind all that. The things thou hast made from the creation of the world show us thy invisible perfections, as well as thy eternal power and divinity. 16 My God, the heavens thou hast made render thy vastness visible to us.

748. Strength and joy are in the place where He resides. He resides first in Himself, and His infinite essence is the only place proportionate to His size and nature. God was alone before creating the universe, says Tertullian. He was on his own, in His place and all things. 17 Saint Augustine expresses 1 Chr 16:25-31.

St. Thomas, 1, q. 40, a. 1.

15 Ibid. q. 8, a. 4.

16 Rom 1:20.

17 C. Praxed., C. 5.

13 14

himself in the same way: Where did God live before making heaven and earth? He lived in Himself; God is in God. 18 Heaven here is formally immense. It is infinite, entirely spiritual, and yet substantial. It is eternal and unchanging. Its unity is not the result of extrinsic wisdom and strength but is essentially simple. As such, it is the first source and model of all unity. Heaven is by itself and necessarily what it is; nothing can change its kind or raison d’être, let alone the necessary foundation of all that exists or can exist other than itself. O Heaven of heavens par excellence [God], I adore thee in thy eternal and unchanging immensity.

Strength and joy are infinitely in thee. That is why, despite their terrifying masses and weights, billions of celestial bodies easily roam through space like shiny soap bubbles. Thy strength penetrates and surrounds them. They do not know where to fall because thou art the Infinite Heaven. Why should they be afraid of lacking a base and sinking like a stone into a bottomless ocean? Thou art more solid than they are, O Being Itself. In a sense, the more material they are, the less being they have and the lighter they are. It is impossible to imagine a firmer foundation or environment than Being itself. Thou art the supreme base, O my God, intrinsically necessary and eternally immutable and immense. From this point of view, it is absurd for anything to waver.

In this respect, contingent beings are not contingent. As such, possible beings have always been necessary, as has their very foundation. If finite beings can tremble and falter, it is only because thou wouldst like them to. They were created because thou wanted it. 19 If they wear out like a garment or if thou changes them like a garment and they pass away, it is because such is thy will. But thou remainest the same. 20 The supreme foundation of the universe is unwavering; the divine Heaven has always been and always will be unable to change in anything. Strength is in the place where thou resides; thou art that strength; thou art thy own place. Some Church doctors rightfully say that by thine immensity thou art the place of all places: locus locorum. Not that thou hast something material and materially extensive, but because every place real or imaginary is necessarily In thee.

749. In addition to strength, God also resides in joy. The Being is essentially happy as He lacks nothing and has boundless and unshared good. O happy fate of creatures! They are in the Good and Great, in joy and strength. All finite beings were created for happiness, and just as the Sovereign Being has regulated the degrees and doses of participating beings and determined places and spaces, the essential and infinitely happy Being has also granted happiness proportional to the nature and capacity of every finite being. That is why we attribute joy even to insensible beings. The stars, says Baruch, have given light in their watches and rejoiced. They were called and said: Here we are: and with cheerfulness, they have shined forth to Him that made them. 21 Furthermore, we know that the entire wayfaring nature aims at a final renovation and glorification that will bring a crowning glory to its beauty, harmony, and what we can call its bliss (nos. 324 & ff.) because everything floats in the Good, Strong, Immense.

750. Offer the Lord the glory due to His Name. Adore the Lord in His magnificent sanctuary. Let all the earth tremble before His face. The intelligent and free creature fully harmonizes with Being itself, the essential Good, the Immense, the Sovereign Force by exactly accomplishing its duties. If the physical world's joy consists of obedience and order and produces the sumptuous and magnificent spectacle that In Psal. 122, no. 4.

Ps 148:5.

20 Ps 101:27-28.

21 Bar 3:3-35.

18 19

it offers us, with all the more reason, a rational being must freely resort to the same procedures to achieve moral harmony with the Supreme Being. For the more nobility a being has, the more he must act perfectly and divinely; and, therefore, his conduct’s harmony must be more sublime than that of nature’s bodies.

Since dependence is the first characteristic of all things finite, an intelligent being’s first duty is to adore the Being of beings. The former eternally depended on the latter as a possible; it now depends on It as an actual being. And dependence, for everything other than God, is what aseity is for God. The notions of contingent, finite, compound, etc., are posterior to the idea of dependent, as a non-necessary being exists only because some free will created it; it is finite because a cause circumscribed or limited it; it is composed because someone composed it. An intelligent being must recognize this first moral and, at the same time, ontological truth. Believing that one suffices unto oneself when one is obviously finite is both the greatest of crimes and the most insane madness. Conversely, recognizing one’s dependence is truth and humility, the primary virtue of finite intelligence. If the latter adds a feeling of love and gratitude toward his being’s Creator (from Whom he also depends through his heart), you have adoration, the most fundamental and sweetest of duties.

751. Worship the Lord in His magnificent sanctuary. O men, all hasten to the sanctuaries erected in honor of the Most High, to the very good and very great God: Deo Optimo, maximo. By worshiping, you enlarge yourselves: you understand the philosophy of your being, your thought flies into the infinity of divine essence and immensity, your heart expands enough to love the infinite greatness, you become greater than all material heavens and shape in yourselves by faith, hope and especially charity. This divine filiation will make you kings of the universe and living images of Immensity itself, Being itself, Beatitude itself. O what charms the act of worship has! It seems that by doing it, one humbles oneself, but it is only an act of righteousness and loyalty. By making it, one feels oneself broadened, strengthened, uplifted, and filled with immortal hopes.

732. Our magnificent sanctuaries, temples, churches are so many images of the universe, especially the Empyrean, where God shows Himself especially through His completed works or glory. By gathering and worshiping God in our holy places, we do with intelligence and love what all beings in the physical universe necessarily do. We stand in unison with the citizens of heavenly Jerusalem, the most magnificent and largest created sanctuary. And we prepare to enter the ever-glorious Sanctuary of divine immensity, the only temple fully worthy of God, the heaven of the Most High.

753. Let all the earth tremble before His face. That does not mean shaking or undermining the earth's mass, as God has given the universe and the earth solid foundations. It means that all men who inhabit the earth must obey these commands by the Lord: Call together the people unto Me, that they may hear my words, and may learn to fear me all the time that they live on the earth, and may teach their children. 22 The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. 23 This virtue, which makes man know and taste superior goods, and especially the infinite good, begins to act and appear when the person fears God. Thus the Lord, who is all love for us, cries out: Who will give humans such a mind, to fear Me, and to

22 23

Deut. 4:10.

Prov. 1:7.

keep all my commandments at all times, that they and their children may be happy forever! 24 This fear of God, which makes man docile to the Creator’s will, is a natural effect of worship.

God is so great! He gave us our being, a sublime destination, and rules of conduct. As it were, our life embodies His desires and ordinances. Of us, He demands faith, so let us believe. He who believes and is baptized will be saved: but he who believes not shall will be condemned. 25 He wants to lead us through His Church; let us obey the Church as Himself: Qui vos audit, me audit: et qui vos spernit, me spernit. He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me. 26 He demands that we have recourse to His sacraments under penalty of depriving us of supernatural life: If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. 27 Let us draw waters with joy out of the Savior’s fountains. 28 He orders us always to pray and never tire of praying, 29 so let us always be animated by a spirit of prayer.

754. By practicing the fear of God, we also respond to the prophet-king’s third invitation: Offer the Lord the glory due to His Name. Universal harmony is the glory due to God’s Name, to the very Almighty, Eternal, Immense Being, Goodness itself, and infinite Beauty. This harmony is like a splendid radiance of all divine perfections along with the good of all created beings. Only a free wayfaring creature can escape this sublime harmony, interfere with it, or restrict it. On the other hand, if that creature glorifies God’s Name, the whole harmony of the universe is augmented, enhanced and glorified. Look at the supreme region of the universe, the Empyrean. How illuminated it is with the light of glory! How it resembles divine immensity by its grandeur! How beautiful and delightful everything is! Well then, all these effects are produced by the moral harmony of the faithful angels. God glorified these docile and obedient spirits, and as a result, the reflections of this glorification glorified their abode. Later, to enlarge that abode, God organized the chaos and made new heavens and free beings so that their moral harmony, also rewarded, would reflect on the moving universe and glorify it as the Empyrean. The rational creatures are cosmopolitan; their thoughts and desires are greater than the material universe; they participate more widely and excellently in God’s immensity through their spirituality. These elite creatures make all worlds and spaces share their fate.

A person who rebels against God becomes his own enemy, consolidates part of the chaos in disorder, and condemns that portion of matter not to form heavens. In so doing, he builds at the center of creation the burning city of isolation, darkness, and pain. Conversely, if mindful of his own good he faithfully adores, fears and glorifies God, he extends the heavens as it were, sanctifies worlds and spaces, conquers them like kingdoms, and propagates in the universe the glory that embellishes the Empyrean. By forming the intelligent and spiritual celestial Jerusalem, he composes the material celestial Jerusalem from all worlds and spaces that spread out in all directions far from the central regions. O how great is a being who adores God by thinking and loving the Infinite! O how great is the being who fears God by obediently receiving all motions of the Almighty, motions that ultimately deify him: Vos dii estis, making him capable of governing the whole unintelligent universe! O how great is the

Deut. 5:29.

Mk 16:16.

26 Lk 10:16.

27 Jn 6:54.

28 Isa 12:3.

29 Lk 18:1 24 25

being who glorifies God. By knowing and reaching the last end of all things, he will be glorified himself and will flood with his glory the immeasurable system of the universe: tam immensa creatura! 30 755. It is the Lord who gave the universe a solid foundation. May the heavens rejoice, may the earth quiver for joy. As we said, God is the foundation of foundations, the necessary Being, Infinite in perfection, greatness, strength, and goodness. He gave Himself to all things finite as a solid foundation by creating and preserving them. Moreover, He also wanted the universe to have solid secondary foundations. The Empyrean and the faithful angels are glorified forever and serve as the basis of our moving heavens and earth. As ministers of God, they attract and move the traveling worlds, the small by the large, the heavy masses by immaterial forms, and the forms by themselves (nos. 351 & ff.). This gigantic ship filled with moving beings floats in the luminous ocean of divine immensity with definitive and indestructible walls. Alas! How miserable our comparisons are in the face of such a reality! O ship built by a divine hand, if only I could better describe you!

God extended the heavens like something very thin and light, like nothing: extendit velut nihil um coelos.

He spread them out like a tent that serves as a dwelling. 31 They are like a brilliant cloud suspended in the divine atmosphere and formed to be the habitation of countless more perfect beings and others seeking perfection. May the heavens rejoice, may the earth tremble for joy. May the glorified Heavens rejoice because they will be extended and completed. Let the earth tremble with joy like the moving heavens because they must join the glorified heavens. May the inhabitants of both experience even livelier jubilation, as the many wonders existing and in preparation are made for them. All the splendors of the physical universe when it reaches its end will be like crumbs falling from the table of the Immortals. It is not in vain that the great God of heavens, earth and immensity made a double covenant with men; in the Old Testament, it was a close covenant; in the New, it is an ineffably cordial and intimate alliance!

See O men that the Lord our God owns heaven, the heaven of Heavens, the earth, and all that it contains. Yet the Lord loved our fathers and made a close covenant with them. 32 Christ, to Whom the Father gave all things: Omnia mihi tradita sunt a Patre meo, 33 abides in us so that we abide in Him (Jn 6:57); and the three divine Persons come and make their abode in us. 34 Why does the Most High show us this loving condescension? Why does the Creator ally Himself so strongly with His loving creatures if not to elevate them to glorious participation in His infinity, eternity, and immensity: Rege eos et extolle illos usque in aeternum? By His indescribable goodness, we are now children of God but do not yet see what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is. 35 We will be like thee, great God! Therefore, we will reproduce all thy features in us as faithful and vivid images.

Thou art holy, and we will form a perfect harmony with thy will. Thou art all-powerful, and nothing in the material universe will resist our power. Thou art immense, and by our agility, we will be present in the most distant places in the blink of an eye. Thou intimately penetrate all created beings, and flourish Ecclus 16:17.

Isa 40:22.

32 Deut 10:14-15.

33 Mt 11:27.

34 Jn 14:23.

35 1 Jn 3:2.

30 31

infinitely outside of them; and we, thy happy and worthy children, will glorify them with the reflections of thy glory. Our glory will surround them like an atmosphere of life and happiness. O, great God, we will be like thee because then entirely docile to thee, we will be unable in thy presence not to assimilate ourselves to thee: because we will see thee as thou art.

No sooner wilt thou appear to us than our intense love for thee will draw our eyes into thy immensity.

We will see it in its entirety, although not completely. 36 Thy power will penetrate us with a prodigious force. We will shine with thy light as an incandescent iron shines like fire. We will be so expanded by the filial and affectionate contemplation of thy greatness that the universe will be only a kingdom proportioned to our aptitudes and a city suited to our numbers and tastes. It will be but a temple, a house, a feasting hall, a tabernacle. While its proportions will not be reduced (glorification diminishes nothing but perfects everything), God’s children, ‘the gods,’ will participate so much in their Father’s immensity and other attributes that material creation will seem small next to their greatness.

SECOND MEDITATION Continuing the Same Subject According to Sacred Scripture 756. Certain theologians who profess to be Thomists do not share all our views on divine immensity.

They even believe they are doing well in combating our doctrine by claiming that it does not give a sufficiently exact and perfect idea of this attribute of the Supreme Being. As for us, free from any systematic preoccupation, we find that the divine Scriptures and Church Fathers, notably St. Augustine and St. Thomas, favor our thesis if we take their teachings in their integrity. In our opinion, those Thomists confuse God’s immensity with ubiquity and ubiquity with the demonstration of this divine attribute, as expounded by St. Thomas.

Moreover—also a serious drawback—they do not take in their most literal sense the various passages of Scripture that tell us about God’s vastness. In this chapter’s last meditations, we will consider the doctrines of St. Augustine and St. Thomas on this subject. But let us first devote a few reflections on various scriptural authorities that corroborate those we quoted previously. They present to us the Most High as higher than the Heavens, and consequently, as extending infinitely without the imperfections of material extension; as filling the universe with His essence, substance, and not only with His power, which nevertheless sustains and moves finite beings. We will then add two meditations on the Holy Trinity that help give the divine Heaven an exceptional feature. In this meditation, let us limit ourselves to this thought: God is higher than the heavens.

757. O Lord our Lord, how admirable is thy name in the whole earth! For thy magnificence is elevated above the heavens. 37 Jehovah is the ineffable name that designates God as Supreme Being. Our Lord expresses the Creator, Master, Support, and Engine of finite beings, especially intelligent beings. God’s Name indicates His 36 37

According to St. Thomas.

Ps 8:1.

virtue, power and influences on His creatures. That is why we baptize in the Name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, that is to say, by the virtue and power of the one and triune God. But why is the Name of God especially admirable in the whole earth? It is because His glory, as St. Jerome says, or His Majesty, as Martini translated, is higher than the heavens. Nevertheless, He also displays His bounties and magnificences on earth: For I will behold thy heavens, the works of thy fingers: The moon and the stars which thou hast founded.

What is man that thou art mindful of him?

Or the son of man that thou visitest him? 38 758. The Creator’s glory and majesty transcend the moving heavens. They shine in the Empyrean and the created spiritual or angelic Heavens. They always go beyond the finite heavens until they identify with the infinite Heaven. Thus, the Empyrean and its blessed inhabitants joyfully navigate in the boundless ocean of divine majesty and glory. The Immortals contemplate and possess the Infinite. This infinite perfection could not lack the majesty and greatness that would encompass an infinite universe if it existed. Otherwise, I could imagine a God greater than the Lord, which is absurd. I cannot, O God, have any doubt on this point. Even my weak reason proclaims thy immensity. However, the universe is measurable, and the angels run through it all and see its limits. Wouldst thou be immense if thy essence only existed where there are finite beings?

It is true that thou art immense by nature, and that, as an infinitely simple Being, no compound being could measure thee. But immensity does include the idea of absolutely unlimited grandeur and excludes absolute or even partial nothingness. If thy substance really were only where the universe is located, we should say that outside of it resides absolute nothingness, a total absence of any being, including the divine Being! What a monstrous idea! In this case, oh my God, one might wonder if you thou existed before the creation of the world! For if thou art only where there is something finite, then thou were not before creation, as thy power had still done nothing! Who could accept such reasoning? Thou art essentially immense. Thy vastness is always the same whether there are places and spaces or none.

Therefore, it is not an attribute that would come from the inability of creatures to measure thee. The possible space where thou placed the universe in creating it did not exist before creation, and yet thy essence was there as the foundation for the possibility of space.

Thou were not present in space because space did not exist. But thou were present there to thyself, which was necessary for thee to be present in space during its creation. Otherwise, it would be necessary to say that thy power made thy presence in the place at the same time as the place itself, whereas, to speak precisely, by creating the place thou put it in thy presence. Thy power caused the place to be in thee rather than thee in the place. For thy power has nothing to do with thy presence (which is is necessary, eternal, immense, indistinct from thyself, independent from all things finite), but only with the possibilities it realizes and the limited beings that it puts in thy presence by creating them.

Couldst thou not, my God, create a thousand other worlds besides the existing one? Who could deny it?

In that case, thou wouldst extend thy presence and expand thyself to fill all those worlds. Wouldst thou 38

Ibid. 4-5.

still be the pure and infinite act in all respects? If thy presence depended on thy power, then thou might not be present to thyself. Thy power would multiply thy presence by multiplying finite beings. How false these conceptions appear! All authors admit that thou art everywhere in a repletive way, that is to say, entirely in all places and in each part of each place. If thou were to annihilate all things finite, which thy absolute power can do, would thy presence be modified after all finite things had returned to nothingness? Not at all, because thou are absolutely independent of them. Hence now that the finite exists, thou art the same in imaginary spaces. Thy absolute transcendence over spaces and places obliges us to consider them as having been called from nothingness and placed in thy presence or as disappearing from thy presence to enter nothingness without affecting the immutability and universality of thy presence.

Creation is an act of thy power calling finite beings to participate in thy presence as realities. Hence thy presence is the necessary, immense, and eternally pre-existing foundation of places and spaces. If thy power made the heavens so vast and extensive, was it not so they would preach to us thy fundamental immensity? All thy works are imitations not only of thy potent activity but also of thy sovereign Being.

Thou art; they exist. Thy power must have modeled them after thy essence, and they must imitate thy being’s immensity to their extent. That is why, if thy essence were not immensely diffused when making the heavenly expanses, thy power would be doing something that thy Being would not have necessarily and eminently!

Thou hast substantially and infinitely everything that finite beings have as being or accident. Thy heavens’ present extension is at least an accident; thou hast thy extension substantially and eminently.

Among finite beings, that extension is the multiplication and association of juxtaposed points that form its contiguous and positive space. In thee, it is perfectly simple, uncircumscribed, non-associable with anything finite or variable that can be extended, restricted, added, or divided. The material extension is not something active but passive under the action of thy power, which holds together what can otherwise be taken apart. Therefore, it is not made in the image of thy power, which is active, but in the image of thy immensity, which is a necessity of thy nature and not a result of thy activity, if we can speak thus. Thou art entirely everywhere (and not just some attributes such as thy power); thou art everywhere by thyself and not by accident so that raising different hypotheses about thy presence will avail nothing but always result that thou art everywhere. 39 What would it matter if thy power had still not created anything? Thy being does not depend on thy works, and thou art entirely present in everything and all possible spaces. If thou shouldst create a universe for thyself, it would be placed in thy presence but would be infinitely overwhelmed by it. If thou shouldst create a thousand, they would more fully participate in thy presence, but would be only accidents in your presence; accidents outside thy Being, which consequently would not cause thy vastness to vary in any way. If thou allowed thy creatures to fall back into relative nothingness, that would not affect thy infinite presence in any way: Per se convenit esse ubique alicui, quando tale est, quod, qualibet positione facta, sequitur illud esse ubique. Et hoc proprie convenit Deo. 40 Behold, O great God, how I conceive thy immensity. Thy divine Scriptures give me this idea, and I must beware of too many subtleties in reading them, for there are many mysteries that thou hidest from the wise and

39 40

St. Thomas, 1, q. 8, a. 4.

St. Thomas, Ibid.

prudent and revealest to little ones. 41 Grant me the grace to always be one of those little ones when searching and meditating on thy delightful truths.

759. It is now easy to understand the meaning of these divine words: The Heavens of heavens cannot contain God; God is higher than the Heavens; the glory of God rises above the Heavens. But in the inspired writings, we find even more explicit teachings. O Israel, cried the prophet, Baruch, how great is the house of God! How extensive is the place of His domain! It is vast and has no limits; it is high and immense. 42 This passage deals first of all with the immeasurable expanse of the universe. But, as Cornelius a Lapide admits, and as the prophet's expressions indicate, God’s immensity is also designated and represented there as exceeding the limits of creation. How great is the house of God, and above all, the immensity which is God's own temple (nos. 210 & ff.).

How extended is the universe, the place where God dominates! The universe is vast; God is boundless; the universe is elevated; God has no end. The Lord did not choose those famous giants of colossal stature who were masters in war from the beginning, neither did they find the way of wisdom, and so they perished. Who has ascended to Heaven to obtain wisdom? 43 Lucifer and the other rebellious angels, the first types of these giants that the people of God exterminated, used to be in the heights of heaven, the Empyrean. The giants of heaven and earth were banished from the promised lands in heaven and earth. But the celestial one is particularly vast and elevated. And yet, what is it compared to the immense Lord, whose essence has no limits? The created space reminds us of the divine vastness because the creature preaches the Creator. The vastness proclaims the Immense.

760. Do you claim, asks Job, to know the Almighty perfectly? He is higher than Heaven: what will you do? He is deeper than Hell: how can you know Him? His measure goes beyond the earth and extends beyond the sea. 44 His measure is without measure. He is higher than the sky, which has measure. He is deeper than Hell, which He sustains. He is infinite in duration, which constitutes His eternity, and infinite in magnitude. Because of His infinite duration, one says that God always is; that is to say, He exists at all times. Because of His infinite greatness, He is everywhere, that is to say, in all places. 45 We conclude that God is eternal insofar as He infinitely exceeds time by His duration and immense as His presence infinitely exceeds places. It is not possible to imagine time outside of God’s permanence.

He is also everywhere, and one cannot imagine any location outside of Him. He can only be infinity.

Being infinite, God alone can be everywhere. 46 Here we can clearly see that God’s immensity is the infinity of His Being (St. Thomas) considered in the blossoming of His essence. According to a quote from St. Dionysius, that blossoming is absolute and supremely vast, that is to say, infinite, with incomprehensible amplitude. This Father, so versed in divine things, affirms the same elsewhere: Even the affirmation of His presence in all beings remains below His limitlessness, which comprehends and exceeds them all. 47

Mt 11:25.

Bar 3:24-25.

43 Bar 3:26-29.

44 11:7-8.

45 St. Thomas, 1. 1 Dist. 371 q. 2, a. 1.

46 Ibid., A. 2.

47 Divine Names, c. III, no. 1.

41 42

761. This helps us understand the sublime truth of Sacred Scripture’s simple language. In it, we read that heaven is God’s throne, 48 that the Lord says: heaven is my throne, 49 that he who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by Him that sits in it, 50 that heaven is God’s throne of majesty. 51 Is it not evident that a king seated on his throne is above his seat? Without deviating from our primary focus, we must observe the infinite difference between the immortal and invisible King of the ages 52 and the poor kings of the earth. The God of gods, Lord of lords, 53 King of kings, 54 King of glory, 55 Eternal King, 56 rises above human monarchs at least as much as the heavens and the universe exceed in greatness our kings’ thrones and sphere of influence. Yet, that is still too little. Our kings are kings only by their authority and representatives in their kingdom. Their person occupies only one point. But God is present with His whole being at all points of space, just as our soul is entirely present in every part of our body.

Mortal kings depend on what is under them in a thousand ways. Without food, they die; without subjects, they are no longer kings; their will cannot command without their souls being linked to their bodies. God alone is an absolute king and absolutely independent of any matter, subject, or space.

Earthly kings share the surface of the small terrestrial globe, so poor and small they are. But the universe is the place of the divine domain, and divine majesty radiates infinitely beyond, in all directions.

That is why the Supreme Being’s infinite, all glorious and spiritual sphere envelops His created kingdom in His immensity and love. As the Spirit of God once hovered over chaos to warm it up and make it fruitful, thus the Most High, like a bird incubating its eggs and warming its tender chicks, thrones and seats on the universe, the object of His affections. Therefore, if we can speak thus, creation’s element and medium is God’s immensity, the Being Himself, Goodness itself, Truth itself, Beauty itself, Bliss itself, Infinity in every aspect. O intelligent creatures, how sublime your destiny is! You will find your supreme happiness in the limitless ocean of all goods. He is the Infinite, divine, and true heaven of your intelligence and heart. I am your infinite reward, says the Lord to both Abraham and us. 57 The glorified universe will be nothing but the field where will be deployed our secondary faculties, incapable of seeing and possessing God directly. However resplendent with supernatural radiance and arranged for happiness, finite goods will play only the role of pleasant accessories. Our bodies, memory, and imagination will be delighted more by influences from cognitive and loving faculties than by the indescribable beauty of an entire universe transformed into Paradise. O God of love! Give us the grace to victoriously cross our short trial. Deign attach minds to thy divine truths so that one day we may contemplate thee in thy immense splendors. Bind our hearts firmly to thy holy will so that, by reigning here below over us despite all obstacles, thou mayest make of us in heaven the best portion of thy kingdom: Fecit nos regnum et sacerdotes Deo, et Patri suo. 58 O marvel! We are God's lot, and God is our

Mt 5:34.

Isa 66:1.

50 Mt 23:22.

51 Wis 9:10.

52 1 Tim 1:17.

53 Deut 10:17.

54 1 Tim 6:15.

55 Ps 23:8.

56 Jer 10:10.

57 Gen 15:1.

58 Ap 1:6.

48 49

lot! The Lord's portion is His people; Jacob the lot of His inheritance. 59 Thus, remaining faithful to God, each one of us can say: The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup...

A lot has fallen to me in excellent places, So my inheritance is magnificent. 60

THIRD MEDITATION God Is Everywhere in the Universe. His Continual Action on His Creatures I. First Look at God’s Ubiquity 762. The upper and glorified heavens are not isolated from the lower heavens and our earth. They pervade with their influence all that the latter contain. Even more excellently, the infinite Heaven, whose immensity is uncircumscribed, fills, sustains, and moves all creation. God is not far from us. We live, move, and are in Him. 61 In this respect, all creatures share our condition, according to the words of Jeremias: “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” asks the Lord. 62 God is not far from us and does not act on us only by His operation and power, but His very Being is present. We live, move, and are in God Himself, in ipso, not just under His influences.

It is true that to demonstrate God’s omnipresence, we must have recourse to His operations, for God is spirit and cannot be seen with our mortal eyes. But the visible effects that He produces prove both His presence and power. What is God’s power if not His very essence operating outside? If we move from the work to its cause, we immediately encounter the divine essence, which is that very cause.

Considered in God, the divine operations are nothing other than God; if we consider their outside effects, they are only pure creatures. So, what intermediary is there?

763. Someone will object that when speaking of God’s essence and attributes, we must admit rational distinctions. That is what we admit and teach by saying that the divine power is divine essence considered as operating externally. Thus, we agree with our objectors if it were only a question of proving God’s ubiquity. But we go further by adding that since God’s operation is wherever there are beings, so is His essence. By the rational distinction, we consider the divine essence in two respects: as operating outside, that is, God’s power, and simply as God’s essence, that is, His substantial being. Now, it is God’s very essence that operates outside. Therefore, His essence is present wherever He operates; otherwise, God would be acting from a distance and would have done without His immensity. Another consequence, we believe, is that God’s operation, not being distinct from His Being, would be distinct Deut 32:9.

Ps 15:5-6.

61 Acts 17:27-28.

62 Jer 23:24.

59 60

from It or at least considered as such since the former would not necessarily lead to the latter, which is a contradiction.

Our distinctions are useful and even necessary to reason correctly. But once having made good reasoning thanks to them, we can rely on it to make another. Thus, from the omnipresence of divine power in all finite beings, which owe their existence to that power alone, we must conclude that God’s very being is omnipresent.

764. What we are saying does not contradict what we said above with St. Thomas, which we do uphold (n. 552). There, we spoke about pure spirits’ active relations with matter and places, their operative presence in the material world, their absolute transcendence vis-a-vis the laws that govern bodies, and concluded that an angel is indeed in such and such place but is not there locally in the manner of a body or subject to space requirements. The Prince of theologians does tell us that no incorporeal substance can be in bodies or places except by its operation, which produces some effect there. But we understand that as a kind of imprisonment or limitation of spirits in places which is incompatible with the spirits’ ascendance over matter. Spirits are there because they operate there, but are not inside as in a container, nor constrained or limited by material walls. They rule over matter and places and are not limited by things entirely subject to their power and belonging to a much lower order. However, by the fact that they act on bodies and places, they are substantially there. They are there as masters and not as slaves, as modifying space and its contents, but not as measured by things that can only measure matter.

765. As we see it, this interpretation expresses St. Thomas’s thinking, which he explains in the same sense and very clearly. With St. John Damascene, he says that the angels are where they operate. They operate in a place and therefore are in that place. The Empyrean was filled with angels as soon as it was created. Now, the Empyrean is a material place, and thus the angels are in a material place. The angels are not in a place in the same way as bodies. While some contact must exist between a place and what is there, there are two kinds of contact: a bodily one, which consists in joining the terms of magnitude (as a vessel’s interior and the water enclosed in it join together the terms of their magnitude) so the two bodies are in that place in a sort of commensuration with that place. The other is a contact of influence (contactus virtutis) whereby spirits can reach bodies but in a different way. Contact between spirits does not require quantity commensuration.

That is why the angels are in a place, but not by commensuration or circumscription. Just as a body touches a place only by its "dimensional" quantity, that is to say, its measurable surface, it is nevertheless in that place according to its substance. 63 Likewise, although an angel touches a place according to his virtual quantity or measure of energy, the place serves as a measure of the body, which it contains by commensuration. Hence, being in a place is to be measured by that place. But being in a place through contact of influence, as do the angels, is not to be measured by the place because this mode does not require commensuration. Absolutely immutable things are not measured by time; however, we say that they are in time as present in time. So we say that God was yesterday and will be

A body’s substance is just as entirely in its outer parts bordering with the outside as in its internal parts; therefore, the body’s substance has vis-a-vis the place the same presence as the body. But considered as such, the substance is not something measurable by the place. Applying this comparison to our case could not be easier.

63

tomorrow; likewise, we can say that an angel is in a place—not that he is measured by the place, but as present in the place (sed quasi praesentialiter loco assistens). 64 766. In our opinion, this magnificent page by St. Thomas wonderfully explains other passages of his that present various difficulties to many theologians. One can see their diverse views in Mazzella. 65 We find St. Thomas eminently more intelligible, simpler, more sublime and exact than many of his commentators. In him predominates that common sense which does not seek subtleties and seems to employ the very language of things. According to him, contact through influence does not exclude the immediate presence of spirits in the places where this contact happens but only excludes the commensuration of spirits by places. Divine operation on creatures always supposes God’s substantial presence not only according to plain common sense but to St. Thomas’s formal teaching, as we have seen. 66 We will come back to this subject in a future meditation.

767. Thus, there is no longer any doubt that we live, move, and are in God, in His very substance, in the Ocean of Being. Evidently, no creature is part of God, Who is very simple and supremely exalted above His works. But the One Who is, the Supreme Reality, is as it were the necessary element for the existence of all participating realities, the vital element of all that lives, the active element of all that acts.

“We are in Him,” says an illustrious commentator on Sacred Scripture, 67 “as in a container and divine place. For, as God is the age of ages (by His eternity), He is the space of spaces and the place of places without which no place exists nor can exist. Just as every being flows from God’s essence and all time and duration flows from His eternity, so all spaces and places flow from His immensity. Thus, God is like an immense sea that extends through infinite spaces in which the world and all its contents swim like a sponge in the ocean, according to the words of Saint Augustine (1. 7, Confessions, C. 5).”

768. Cornelius a Lapide adds: “We are therefore in God as in an infinite ether; we live, move, and dwell in Him. He penetrates us with His essence and substance; He penetrates our whole body and soul, all their recesses and secrets. We cannot get out of Him because He is everywhere, and since He is immutable, He is always wherever He has once been. St. Paul meaningfully says: We live in him, not by Him, to show that God is the efficient cause of our life. He is not only His local and material cause, but He provides us with all matter of life and bodily essence as the sea provides everything to fish. But He does so in an eminently superior way. God created matter out of nothing and, so to speak, continually creates it by preserving it, while the sea receives the already created matter from God and supplies it to the fish.

“Thus, as fish live in water by natural sympathy and dependence and cannot live out of it, we live in God to the point that we cannot live outside of Him. In the absurd case where God would not be in us or in the place we are, we could not exist or subsist there. Just as our substance depends on God’s substance, 64 65

Libr. 1, Dist. 37, q. 3, a. 1: Utrum Angelus sit in loco.

De Deo creante, nos. 323-330.

Note that when speaking about the contact of influence of spirits on places, Saint Thomas considers these spirits’ active relations on these places. But we must not confuse these relations with the SIMPLE PRESENCE of spirits, as our adversaries do. St. Thomas carefully distinguishes these two things in the passage quoted. So if we want to be authentic Thomists, let us follow St. Thomas without waiting for him to call us each time he deals with this matter.

67 Cornelius a Lapide, in Act. Apost., C. 17, v. 28.

66

our existence in a place depends on God’s presence in that place like a ray depends on the sun and an embryo on its mother, as a bird depends on air, as man depends on respiration, as the body lives from the soul, and is, exists, and is moved and supported by it. Just as we can say of the soul that we are, live and move in it, with all the reason we can say the same of God. He is the soul of our body and the soul of every soul, present to every soul, vivifying, moving, and sustaining it.

“See how we are physically united to God. We must be united to Him also morally so that every time we inhale air we attract God, think of God, invoke God, in Whom we live, move, and are as in our air. We live, move and are in God as in a circle that circumscribes and surrounds us. This led Empedocles to say: God is a circle whose center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere ... God is like our soul and life, according to St. Augustine (Serm. 18, de verbis Apost.): Our soul is the life of our body; God is the life of our soul.” 68

II. The Triple Way in which God is Everywhere 769. One can sum up these considerations in a few words: God is everywhere by His essence, presence, and power. This statement (which we explained several times) presents certain aspects we still have not mentioned and seem proper to describe. God is equally everywhere by His power, essence, and presence. In our human reasoning, we say all that God is everywhere to designate His Being and presence more directly than His power. When piously preparing to meditate, a believer begins by placing himself in God’s presence, which certainly is a very logical process. Walking in God’s presence means practicing all virtues; forgetting God’s presence indicates affection for vice. Thus, godliness speaks the same language we used about the immensity of God. 770. God is everywhere by His essence. His physical essence is His actual Being. His metaphysical essence is the first thing we conceive of His Being, from which flow all the other divine attributes. God is everywhere in His essence in these two ways. His Supreme Being is immense and all participating beings rest on Him and ‘swim’ in Him. He is alone His own sufficient reason, substantial existence and reality (if this word is not inappropriate when speaking of God). Therefore, He is by Himself that everywhere. We conceive this as the deepest and most solid basis of all things finite and all possibles.

771. He is everywhere by His presence. Some might imagine that the divine essence, being supremely simple, is comparable to an indivisible point whose infinite power would radiate everywhere. This idea is erroneous. By seeking to avoid attributing to God a divisible extension, we would deny Him the infinite greatness that eminently contains all material extension and space. That is why we reject this false conception of the divine Being by professing that He is everywhere by His presence. If our soul, a spiritual substance, is entirely in every part of our body and through its whole extent without being divisible, why would we find it strange that God is present in the entire universe and beyond? Why would it be difficult to admit God’s indivisible greatness, which is the supreme type of all greatness, which in turn is communicated to all great things, as St. Dionysius tells us (no. 741)?

68

Id., Ibid.

Why does the human body not take the proportions of a mountain, a tree, an elephant, if not mainly because the soul’s substantial form determines its dimensions and extension proportionately to the soul’s requirements? 69 While secondary causes undoubtedly influence the relative size or smallness of the human body, the soul primarily regulates the body’s maximum and minimum size and configuration. Consequently, the soul, simple as it is, has an eminent and indivisible extent in which the body participates by its dimensions. To it, the body mainly owes its unity, species, and compounds’ cohesion. Let it not be said that all this is due to the soul’s virtue and activity and not to the soul itself, for the soul is substantially whole in every part of the body. Therefore, we must attribute to its substance what we attribute to its energy. Its substance is the source of its energy and is present wherever its energy is. Furthermore, the form of the body is not the power of the soul but the soul itself.

772. We can reason in much the same way about the presence of angels in places, although these spirits are not substantially united to bodies. Only their nature and will determines their sphere of influence, degrees of strength, the mandates they receive, their position in the hierarchy--not bodies, places, or spaces, to the laws of which they are not subject. Nevertheless, their substance is present wherever they act. As an angel moves locally, says St. Thomas, his essence applies to various places. 70 Above, we heard the saintly Doctor tell us that the angels are present in places according to their substance, although they influence those places only by their power (no. 765). It follows that an angel’s substance is its entire sphere of action when that action is immediate and that he does not move lower things by higher ones. He is substantially everywhere where he immediately exercises his power. Therefore, he has a very simple and indivisible eminent extent. If we cannot understand this well it is because we cannot have an adequate notion of spirits here on earth.

We believe this greatness of the angel is what makes the unity of the angelic place. As such, that place is divisible and perhaps divided; but it is one vis-a-vis the angel, who occupies it by his presence and power. An angel is not obliged to have a place, nor must this place always correspond to an angel’s greatness. Raised by his nature above the demands of matter, the angel can do without it. The extent of the angelic place cannot exceed an angel’s greatness but could be lower in a sense if the angel acted in it only partially. Then, the angel’s presence will exceed his current sphere of influence as the divine essence exceeds the greatness of the universe by its greatness and immensity.

773. That is why we find it likely that the extent of bodies and places was made in the image of the greatness of spirits. While the latter is difficult to understand, we can conceive it better by considering the former and subtracting from spiritual greatness the notion of material extent from all things unsuitable to a spirit. Thanks to its simplicity, a spiritual substance is entirely in each part of the body that it animates and in each part of its direct sphere of influence or at least in its own grandeur absent other beings. That is what we call eminent expanse or grandeur of spirits.

In God, it is infinite. In the angel and the human soul, it is variously limited, but it is an image of divine immensity. That is why the expanse of space proclaims God’s immensity especially its greatness, of which the limits we cannot see, and continuity, of which the first principle must be simple and spiritual.

69 70

St. Thomas says that the soul contains the body: Continere est formae, contineri vero materiae. No. 337, note.

1 q. 53, a. 2, ad 2m.

By analogy, the various bodies we know, whose dimensions are very different, preach to us the various sizes of spirits, that is, the several spheres in which spirits can be both in each of its parts and as a whole.

774. If these notions are correct—and we are firmly confident they are, as created spirits mirror the divine immensity—what beautiful surprises await us in heaven at the sight of angels and holy souls! As we contemplate God’s immensity, we will also see in Him the various grandeurs of angelic spirits and human souls. These varied grandeurs will undoubtedly make the glorified universe appear as a vast and magnificent city. The larger and more numerous are its inhabitants, the less spacious a dwelling appears.

As we have seen, the number of angels is unimaginable (nos. 434-439) and that, according to each angel’s degree of perfection, he can occupy a vast place in the universe (nos. 553 & ff.), especially since he is glorified. Thus, materially speaking, the finally renovated universe, the completed Empyrean, Paradise, heavenly Jerusalem is a gorgeous city, the happy City of God. Each angel enjoys in it a kind of relative ubiquity proportional to his place. God alone possesses absolute ubiquity in creation and immensity, an absolute and necessary attribute of the Supreme Being.

775. There is more. In all likelihood, Blessed humans will participate in the properties of created spirits.

We have proved (nos. 315-319) that Christ can extend and multiply His glorious body’s presence in space indefinitely. Now, our resurrected bodies will be facsimiles of His Body. St. Paul says of every Elect’s human body: He will resurrect a spiritual body. 71 If some saints had the privilege of bilocation while still on earth, can we not admit without hesitation their multilocal presence in heaven? It will undoubtedly be different according to the various degrees of glory. Nothing will equal the extent of Our Lord’s presence, even bodily. Without being literally everywhere, it will nonetheless shine everywhere.

Mary’s multilocal presence will come closest to Her Son’s. After them, the angelic Seraphim and the human Seraphim will have relative ubiquity in proportion to their excellence, and so it will be, we think, gradually with all Blessed.

Again, let us state that we do not consider each Elect as attached to a place; he will have his ordinary home and benefit from his agility to temporarily form other places or even remain placeless in God’s immensity. O Paradise! What wonders you have in store for us! O, God! How good thou art for having created us, given us thy grace, directing us by thy Law and Providence, and assign us to such an abode!

Be eternally praised and thanked for it. Indeed, the sufferings of the present time are a slight test compared to the future glory that will be revealed in us. 72 But at least, Lord, we want to undergo with courage and joy this short trial made up of humility, obedience, work, and patience.

776. We have just seen how God is everywhere by His presence and how creatures participate in this omnipresence. Let us add that God is also everywhere by His power. The first two ways of being everywhere (per essentiam et per praesentiam) relate especially to vastness, while the third way (per potentiam) only designates the ubiquity or God’s active presence in limited realities. Now, dependence is always the first and most essential character of these realities, and not only at the beginning of their existence. Always totally or partly unable to be on their own power, creatures necessarily and constantly come under God’s omnipotence in their smallest details and as a whole. That is why the very existence of these things is proof positive of the ubiquity of divine power.

71 72

1Cor 15:44.

Rom 8:18.

Nothing in creation fails to move in some way, to have certain tendencies, or to play some role. A being who is essentially, totally, and always dependent, is necessarily so concerning his activity. Hence his continual need for a primary motor which is the Almighty. This truth is so evident that there is no point in proving and explaining it further.

III. The Scriptures’ Magnificent Language on This Subject 777. When we read these beautiful verses of the psalmist: For I will behold thy heavens, the works of thy fingers, The moon and the stars which thou hast founded. 73 How do we believe that God founded all these works if not on His power, presence, and essence? That is why all creatures are invited to praise the Lord: Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise ye him in the high places.

Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts.

Praise ye him, O sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars and light.

Praise him, ye heavens of heavens: and let all the waters that are above the heavens Praise the name of the Lord. For he spoke, and they were made: he commanded, and they were created.

He hath established them forever, and for ages of ages: he hath made a decree, and it shall not pass away. ... For his name alone is exalted. The praise of him is above heaven and earth. 74 778. Being eternal, immense, almighty, He willed, and they were created. His power, directed by His will, established them forever and laid down the law that we will not break because we will always be dependent. The majesty of His presence dominates the earth and the heavens.

779. Who can hide from Me that I may not see him, the Lord asks. Do I not fill Heaven and earth? 75 Yes, God is everywhere in a repletive way. A body is in a place by commensuration, as in a container, and responds to it part by part. An angel is in a place in a definite way because his greatness and power are limited, but he is not circumscribed and contained by the place. On the contrary, he assigns his own place and contains it. The Supreme Being is everywhere in a repletive way. He not only fills Heaven and earth, spirits and bodies, occupied places and exterior voids but fills them so much that He is as entirely in one point as everywhere. By filling everything, He hinders nothing, for nothing has His nature, and He is infinitely simpler than other beings. By filling everything, He sustains everything. If He were to stop supporting a being, molecule or atom, it would be annihilated because it would cease to exist by no Ps 8:4.

Ps 148.

75 Jer 23:24.

73 74

longer participating in Being itself, having no substance, cohesion, activity, or basis. Essentially dependent, if it stopped being dependent, it would die entirely without leaving any vestiges.

While having various operations, the same God operates everything in all. 76 How true it is that God is all in all things! 77 In Heaven, we will see this truth shine with incomparable evidence. Here we see it by the reasoning that faith suggests to us. How just it is that we love God above all things! Without Him, things have neither being nor goodness, since all the good they have comes to them ceaselessly from God, the Infinite ocean of goodness, thanks to Whom there are beings that have some goodness! O, God! For how long did I exist without thinking of thee!

Foolish and ignorant, I am become as a beast before thee.

I am always with thee, who hast held me by my right hand.

By thy will thou hast conducted me, and with thy glory thou hast received me.

For what have I in heaven? And besides thee what do I desire upon earth?

For thee my flesh and my heart hath fainted away: Thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion forever.

For behold they that go far from thee shall perish: thou hast destroyed all them that are disloyal to thee. But it is good for me to adhere to my God, to put my hope in the Lord God. 78 I will bless the Lord, who hath given me understanding.

Moreover, my reins 79 also have corrected me even till night.

I set the Lord always in my sight: For he is at my right hand, that I be not moved.

Therefore my heart hath been glad, and my tongue hath rejoiced.

Moreover, my flesh also shall rest in hope.

Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, Nor wilt thou give thy holy one to see corruption. 80

Cor 12:6.

Ibid 15:28.

78 Ps 72.

79 Literally, my kidneys; in Scripture, this word designates one’s mind, heart, conscience, and innermost affections.

76 77

Thou hast made known to me the ways of life, Thou shalt fill me with joy with thy countenance. 81 At thy right hand are delights even to the end. 82 780. The habitual exercise of God’s presence is one of the most effective means of achieving this happiness. This exercise makes us pray, enriches us with graces, consoles us, supports us, inspires us with horror for sin, makes us despise passing goods, and makes all virtues pleasant and easy. What could be better founded than this practice since it is in God that we live, move, and are?

Where shall I go from thy spirit, O God! Where shall I flee from thy face?

If I ascend into heaven, thou art there: if I descend into hell, thou art present.

If I take my wings early in the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there also shall thy hand lead me: and thy right hand shall hold me!

I said, perhaps darkness shall cover me, and night shall be the sole light that surrounds me.

But darkness hides nothing from thee, and night shall be light as day.

Thou hast formed the seat of my thoughts and feelings and woven me in my mother's womb.

I will praise thee for having made of me a prodigious marvel; Wonderful are thy works, and my soul knows it quite well.

My substance was not unknown to thee when I was mysteriously formed and my body woven in the entrails of the earth. 83 I was just an embryo, and thine eyes saw me; in thy book were written all the days I would live even before I was formed.

Thy designs are marvelous, and their number is immense! How could I count them? They are more numerous than sand.

When I wake up, I am still with thee. 84

These words were verified to the letter in Our Lord and His divine Mother. As for our bodies, they will triumph over corruption on the last day.

81 1 Jn 3:2. We will see God just as He is.

82 God alone can and will give them to His chosen ones. Ps 15:7-11.

83 The human body is earth like that of the first man, and thus our bodies were formed in the bowels of the earth.

84 Ps 138:7-18. The last two stanzas, translated from Hebrew like the others by Lesêtre, have a rather different meaning from that of the Vulgate.

80

781. All creatures have an intimate relationship with God. The prophet Isaias describes them beautifully in a few words: “Lift up your eyes on high, and see who hath created these things: who brings out their host by number, and calls them all by their names: by the greatness of his might, and strength, and power, not one of them was missing. Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel: My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Knowest thou not, or hast thou not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, who hath created the ends of the earth: he shall not faint, nor labor, neither is there any searching out of his wisdom. It is he that giveth strength to the weary, and increaseth force and might to them that are not. Youths shall faint and labor, and young men shall fall by infirmity. But they that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength, shall take wings like eagles, shall run and not be weary, shall walk and not faint.” 85 Happy, O God, is he who finds his strength in thee and thinks only of his journey to the homeland!

Passing through this valley of tears, he and his fellowmen make springs gush that fertilize and cover it with rich harvests. An abundant autumn rain favors sowing and covers it with blessings. They will march from vigor to force to appear before God in Zion, in the glorious city of the Blessed. 86 He who is a child of God deserves the glory of heaven on earth. He sows here below to reap above. The more he corresponds to grace during his test, the more he enlarges his future kingdom.

FOURTH MEDITATION Holy Trinity’s Heaven – Its Immensity and Visibility for the Blessed, and Essential Vitality 782. Immensity, as we conceive it, is an absolute perfection of the Divine Being. In reality, in the words of St. Dionysius, it is God’s very essence considered in its absolute simplicity and breadth. Now, the divine Being is in three Persons. The Father is immense, the Son is immense, and the Holy Ghost is immense, and there are not three immense but only one immense, Who is God. 87 This Trinity of which man is the image, says St. Augustine, is nothing else entirely but God and nothing other entirely than the Trinity. Nothing belongs to God’s nature which does not belong to this Trinity, and the three Persons are of the same essence and not like only one person, as every human individual. 88 The same Doctor, or better St. Fulgentius, whose booklet is inserted among the works of St. Augustine, also has this magnificent confession of faith on the immensity of the Holy Trinity: “The true God Himself in His Persons is Trinity, and He is only one (God) in a single nature. By this natural unity, the entire Father is in the Son and in the Holy Ghost, and the entire Son is in the Father and in the Holy Ghost, and the entire Holy Ghost is in the Father and in the Son. None of them is outside each of them because neither precedes the other by eternity, exceeds the other in greatness, or surpasses the other in power.

For, concerning the unity of the divine nature, the Father is neither older nor greater than the Son and the Holy Ghost, and the Son’s eternity and immensity cannot naturally precede or exceed the eternity or immensity of the Holy Ghost by anteriority or greatness. Because of this, we believe and rightly profess

Isa 40:26-31.

Ps 83:6-8.

87 Symbol of St. Athanasius.

88 De Trinit., 1. 15, c. 7, n. 11.

85 86

that the three (Persons) are only one God because there is absolutely only one eternity, one immensity, one necessary divinity of the three Persons.” 89 783. The three divine Persons are therefore eternal of the same eternity, almighty with the same omnipotence, immense with the same immensity, for in reality these attributes of the divine essence are common to the three Persons. In our final homeland, we will see the infinite Heaven, which is God, and the triune Heaven of the Holy Trinity. The latter is the very same Heaven which is God but equally possessed by the three Persons. Thus, they appear actually distinct from one another in possession of the infinite Heaven, which is their common greatness. Indeed, the faith obliges us to believe that each divine Person is immense. It is also of faith that in Heaven, we will see the Holy Trinity. “We define,” say the Fathers of the Council of Florence, “that the souls of those who have incurred no stain of sin whatsoever after baptism, as well as souls who after incurring the stain of sin have been cleansed whether in their bodies or outside their bodies, are straightaway received into heaven and clearly behold the triune God as He is, yet one person more perfectly than another according to their different merits.” 90 Furthermore, observes Cardinal Franzelin, “it would be an obvious contradiction to affirm that the Blessed see God as He is in Himself and yet they do not see a perfection formally existing in God. . .we must say the same of the [Blessed’s] intuition of the three divine Persons.” 91 784. That is why the formally divine and immense Heaven will appear to us as a triple circumincession, 92 each divine Person being in the other Persons because of the essence common to the three Persons, each Person being nonetheless really distinct from the others. This ineffable spectacle will be seen and contemplated with greater or lesser perfection by all the Blessed. These realities form the divine, one and triune Heaven. One Heaven by the immensity common to Persons; a Triune Heaven by the Persons’ real distinction from one another in their common immensity. Thus, we can say, with St. Thomas, that paternity is eternal or immense, 93 which we must undoubtedly affirm of filiation and spiration.

Moreover, while here below one can get an idea of God’s sovereign goodness through creatures without knowing the Trinity of Persons, in Heaven our knowledge will come through the vision of the divine essence. Just as in heaven we will know God’s goodness itself, and that is how the Blessed see it, it is impossible to know that goodness without also knowing the Trinity of Persons. 94 The same reasoning applies to knowledge of the divine immensity, an attribute just as essential to God as goodness.

785. “The Blessed,” says Franzelin, “know by intuitive vision the infinite being Himself, that is to say, the divine essence as it is, with all the formal, absolute and relative reasons, or with all perfections, and the divine persons Who are the very essence of God.” 95 Now, this essence is immense. God’s immensity is nothing other than the greatness of His Being, Who is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. All three Persons, really distinct from one another, have this same infinite greatness. So what is it that stands out in this immense and divine heaven that we can call it triune heaven? Here it is: “By virtue of its intrinsic Liber de fide ad Petrum, tome 7 of the Migne edition, c. 1, n. 4. St. Ambrose says the same : Nihil praescriptum, nihil circumscriptum, nihil emensum, nihil dimensum Trinitas habet. Prosec.

90 In decreto unionis.

91 De Deo uno, Thesis 17.

92 Translator’s Note: The theological doctrine of the reciprocal existence in each other of the three Persons of the Trinity.

93 1 p., Q. 32, art. 2, ad 2m.

94 St. Thomas, 2 2ae, q. 2, a. 8, ad 3m.

95 De Deo uno, Thesis 18, II. 89

perfection, the divine essence as such is Father while expressing the Word by His intellection; it is Father and Son while producing the Holy Ghost out of love. The Father’s intellect necessarily has the Word as its intrinsic term; likewise, the love of the Father and the Son necessarily has as its intrinsic end the Love which proceeds.” 96 Active intellection, understanding affirmed and expressed, love that proceeds from this knowledge as from a single principle: Vis-a-vis the Holy Ghost, the Father and the Son are only knowledge—behold the intrinsic, eternal, necessary, and immense vitality of the divine Being! Behold the heaven of heavens par excellence, the Being thanks to Whom all other beings are possible; the Being without Whom nothing is possible and nothing exists; the first Source of all order and activity; the supreme influence which gives rise to all paternities, all filiations, all participated love; the Sovereign Unity with the triple interior radiance, which freely produces outside the multiplicity and variety of finite beings (an image of the Trinity) but also produces the harmony of created beings which mirrors the essential unity of the three divine Persons and their mutual understanding. O sweet mystery of the Trinity, how happy we will be contemplating thee in thy depth and immensity, when we see God as He is!

786. O my God! Is it permissible here below to take a timid glance at thy intimate life, to have a foretaste of the happiness that thou promise us, to raise our courage in the midst of the pains of exile, to have some idea of the completely spiritual, divine, immense, infinite environment in which the Blessed live in the joy of their Lord? 97 If this was a reckless daring rather than a healthy desire of thy adopted children, the beloved apostle would not have told us: For the life was manifested; and we have seen and do bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal...that you also may have fellowship ... with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 98 And the one who wrote well about thee would not have given us such sublime teachings on thine eternal and necessary vitality. Under the direction and following these men enlightened by thy lights, we will also try to cast filial glances on thy divine Persons and to understand as much as possible for a weak mortal, thy supreme life of which all existing creatures are varied reflections, especially those living and intelligent.

787. Since according to the great Bishop of Hippo, the attention of Christians and all Christian progress are piously and soberly devoted to understanding the Trinity, 99 how can we conceive the Trinity without prejudice to the Supreme Being’s essential unity? God is all spirit. He is alive, intelligent, loving, and possesses all perfections in an infinitely perfect way. He is all that in the indivisible unity of His being, and is substantially all that He is. He necessarily knows Himself as the True and Infinite Good. Truth and good are His essence, called true in relation to what He knows, and good in relation to what He loves.

God necessarily conceives and understands Himself always and from all eternity, for if He were ignorant of Himself He would not be infinite perfection. Now, He who conceives and understands the Infinite has God’s nature and at the same time begets, because for a spirit to beget is to think, conceive, understand: intellectus intelligendo concipit. 100

Id., Ibid., Thesis 17, I. Mt 25:21.

98 1 Jn 2:3.

99 Cui Trinitati pie sobrieque intelligendae omnis excubat vigilanti a christiana, et omnis ejus provectus intenditur.

De libero arbitrio, 1. 3, c. 21, n. 60.

100 St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles, 1. 4, c. 11.

96 97

In God, to think or conceive cannot be something accidental or a passage from potency to act, for both accident and passage are incompatible with infinite perfection. An accident is something dependent, variable, secondary; a passage from potency to act shows indigence, a need to evolve, a search for a good, and all this must be excluded from the infinitely Perfect. Thus, what remains is the divine nature, which knows itself, says what it is, and generates the idea of itself through the Sovereign Spirit’s intellectual vitality. It is the Person of the Father. And as we are images of the Holy Trinity, the Father gives us an example to use our intellectual activity to know ourselves and God. 788. The Father, says St. Thomas, is God understanding Himself and thus generating His Word: Ex hoc quod Deus seipsum intelligit, Verbum ab eo genitum in Deo ponitur. 101 For God it is the same thing to contemplate Himself and to say what He sees. On contemplating Himself, He utters His Word. 102 He expresses the idea He conceives: the Word’s being is conceived in God’s bosom, or--which amounts to the same thing—He is the idea understood 103 by God as He contemplates Himself, and then uttered by God the Father. The Word of God is God understood: Verbum Dei est Deus intellectus, 104 and affirmed as understood; and the Father is God conceiving Himself and speaking His Word: Deus dicens. 105 The Word is the expression of what God understands, as well as the perfect image of His essence. 106 It is God understood Who incarnated Himself. What a source of knowledge for all intelligent creatures!

How sublime is the first origin of the supernatural Revelation, which we gladly admit, and of reason, which is also a reflection of the Word! The latter (God understood) was the true light that illuminates every man coming into this world. 107 The Word is also the perfect image of the divine essence; He is the splendor of His glory and the imprint of His substance. 108 It was therefore fitting for Him to clothe Himself with our humanity, to make God more intelligible to us, and to place the Supreme Being within our reach, if we can say so.

789. The Word being the idea that God has of Himself: intentio intellecta, 109 God’s conception of Himself, 110 it is impossible for it to be an accident or effect.

“In God,” says St. Thomas, ‘to be’ and ‘to understand’ are one and the same: hence the Word of God is not an accident in Him or an effect of His, but belongs to His very nature. Therefore, it must be something subsistent, for whatever is in the nature of God subsists.” 111 Just as the Person of the Father can be neither an accident nor a result of the passage from potency to act, as we have said, so the Word, Who is God like His Father, is necessarily above these imperfections and absolutely free from them. Everything in God is substance. 112 Ibid., C. 13, in princ .; and chap. 11, at the end.

Summa theologiae 1, p., Q. 34, a. 1, ad 2m.

103 Contra Gentiles, I. 4, c. 11., no. 3.

104 Ibid., 4th par.

105 lbid., C. 14.

106 lbid., C. 11, 6 alin.

107 Jn 1: 9.

108 Heb 1:3.

109 Contra Gentiles, Ibid., 3 alin.

110 Ibid., C. 12.

111 Summa Theologica, 1, q. 34, a. 2, ad 1m.

112 Contra Gentiles 1. 4, c. 14, 9 alin. Persona est aliquid subsistens in genere substantiae ; substantia autem per accidens constitui non potest. De Pot., q. 10, a. 3. It would be absurd to say that the person is an accident.

101 102

In His nature, the Word is the substance of God but is nevertheless distinguished from the Father as the idea is distinguished from the spirit that engenders it. In God the idea is God, as it cannot be an accident, effect, or anything changing and transitory. It is, however, an idea; it is begotten; it is a verb, a word, an expression, which adequately says the Infinite and which is itself infinite. This is what we call the Word or the Son of God: Word is the proper name of the Person of the Son; it means a certain emanation of the divine intellect. 113 790. The Word must be admitted in God because God is spirit; because He is alive; because the Father acts unceasingly, and so does the Word; 114 because He acts in accordance with His nature and infinite perfection; because what He operates outside is nothing but free and beneficent radiation of His intrinsic and necessary activity. One cannot reasonably object that the relation we say exist between the Father and the Son could be only a distinction of reason, that is to say, one that would be only in our mind. For, being absolute perfection, God really understands Himself. So the relations of Paternity and Filiation are really in God and not only in our way of conceiving them.

St. Thomas proves it thus: “The relation of the Word with God’s utterance, 115 which is His Word, is attributed to God because God understands Himself. This operation is in God or rather it is God Himself, as we have demonstrated above. Therefore, the aforesaid relationships are really in God and not only in our mind.” 116 To deny them would be to attack the life of the Great Spirit. If it is essential for the angel and for man to be able to think, and if their thought is really distinct from what thinks, for God it is essential to think because in Him nothing is potency, and this without prejudice to a real distinction between the Father who thinks and the Word who is spoken.

791. Let us reason in a similar manner about the Person of the Holy Ghost. God being infinite and substantial perfection, and knowing Himself perfectly, He necessarily loves Himself as being the infinite Good. In God, this love is just as vital and necessary as it is to know and express Himself. It is extremely easy to admit that this love proceeds from God understanding Himself, and from God understood, that is to say, from the Father and the Son; for the love of the infinite Good supposes the knowledge of this Good. We say knowledge in the singular (tanquam ab uno principio), because the Father and the Son, being God knowing and God expressed as known, are only one principle in relation to the Holy Ghost.

They both denote the knowledge of God by Himself.

Therefore, from God knowing Himself, and from God expressed by Himself comes God loved by Himself, or the Holy Ghost. We say proceeds and not is begotten because, as such, both the knowing and the known belong to the species of knowledge. Just as a father and his son equally belong to the human species, we say that the known is generated by the knowing; 117 but love and knowledge do not belong to the same species, as love proceeds from knowledge. 118 Summa Theologica, 1, q. 34, a. 2.

Jn 5:17.

115 Dicere Deo est cogitando intueri: the Father is God looking while contemplating Himself; and by saying what He sees, He generates His Word. Summa Theologica, 1, q. 34, fi, 1; .ad 2m.

116 Contra Gentiles. I A., c. 14, 8th par.

117 Omne quod procedit ab altero per modum geniti, procedit secundum similitudinem speciei a generante. Ibid., c.

19.

118 Necesse est igitur quod amor quo Deus est in voluntate divina ut amatum (the loved object) in amante, et a Verbo Dei, et a Deo cujus est Verbum, procedat. Ibid.

113 114

However, Love in Person, the Holy Ghost, does not proceed from the Father and the Son as an accident or effect. He is really distinguished from the Father and the Son as a Person, although he is one with them as to His essence, as we have said about the Father and the Son. What else then, is the third Person of the Trinity if not God infinitely loved by Himself? His proper name is Hypostatic Love. 119 792. With the same clarity and depth, the angelic Doctor demonstrates that the three divine Persons are one and the same God. 120 “These notions,” we wrote elsewhere, 121 “do not introduce composition in God because He is the same essence and every vital act that understands Himself, says what He is, and loves Himself. Here you do see a plurality, but only that of the Persons. The Father is God Who understands Himself; the Word is God understood and expressed by Himself; the Holy Ghost is God loved by Himself. Therefore, there is only one God, Who understands Himself, says Who He is, and loves Himself. In the infinitely perfect Being, one cannot conceive an absence of these acts of the unique divine essence. 122 These vital acts are really distinct from each other, although, according to St. Thomas, the existing distinctions between the divine Persons are the least of the real distinctions, 123 as there are more contrasts between finite beings, really distinct from one another, than between the divine Persons.”

793. We find in ourselves images of this sublime and sweet mystery, but only images because we are finite. We too think about what we are. This is necessary for us to fulfill all our duties toward God, our neighbor, and ourselves. We express in our mind the idea we have of ourselves, compare it to the ideal that we must reproduce, keep the memory of it and consult it as a rule of conduct, thus imitating Wisdom in person which is the Word. We also love ourselves, and this love, prescribed to us by nature and divine law, serves as a model for the love we must have for our neighbor. Our thought, expression and love are accidental to our soul as acts that come out of potency. The faculties alone are essential.

Hence we imitate the divine Trinity only from an infinite distance.

We are substantially plants, animals, and humans. As plants, we grow and take nourishment; as animals, we walk and sit; as humans, we freely think and want. Our unique human nature lives by this triple life, which, at bottom, is simply human life. 124 What fool, being himself threefold and one in a sense, would dare to challenge the trinity of Persons in one God? However, as finite beings, we are composed, while God, infinite and pure act, exists in three Persons without being composed. We believe that all objections one would be tempted to make against the Trinity can be resolved without great difficulty by considering the infinite perfection of the Supreme Being and carefully examinining the characteristics peculiar to each Person. The nature of our work does not allow us to explore this subject in depth. We

Cf. St. Thomas, ibid., C. 18, and p. 1, q; 37, a. 1.

Contra Gentiles 1. 4:, c. 14.

121 Issues covered at the Diocese of Aosta’s Ecclesiastical Lectures for the year 1899, Answers, 2nd Lecture.

122 Generatio divina attenditur secundum operationem ... interius manentem. De Pot., q. 9, a. 9, ad 4m. Alia attributa (wisdom, goodness, etc.) non habent operationem intrinecam secundum quam possit attendi processus divinae personae, sicut intellectus et voluntas. Ibid., ad 19m. One must consider the Persons of the Trinity as divine vitaly deployed inside.

123 Patet quod ex imperfectione quae in relationibus creatis esse videtur, non sequitur quod personae divinae sunt imperfectae, quae relationibus distinguuutur; sed sequitur quod divinarum personarum minima sit distinctio. Ibid., c. 14, ad finem.

124 Because of his triple and unequal imperfection, man is only one person. But God, supremely simple and infinitely perfect in all respects, is necessarily in three equal Persons.

119 120

must content ourselves with a few general points of view, and invite a reader who wishes to know more, to read the magnificent explanations of St. Thomas about the Trinity.

794. We add with the Prince of theologians that one cannot conceive in God more than three persons, and these Persons are modes in which the divine life unfolds within. God conceiving Himself, and with Him all things, is infinite as such; all fatherhood in God is found in Him, and it is therefore impossible for there to be more than one Father in God. Likewise, God understood, God expressed in a substantial image that also includes the expression of all things is also infinite as word; therefore, there can only be one Word in God. Likewise, the mutual love of the Father and the Son, infinite as love, includes all personal love and makes impossible the existence of another Holy Spirit in God, all the more so since because of its infinity, this love also encompasses everything that is or can be outside of God. “In God as in us there is a kind of circulation of the operations of the intellect and will; for the will returns to the principle of intellection. But for us the circle is completed with what is outside of us. The exterior good moves our intellect, the intellect moves the will, and the will tends by desire and love to the exterior good. For God, the circle closes in itself. By conceiving Himself, God conceives His Word, which is also the reason for all the objects understood by Him, because He understands all things by understanding Himself. And from this word He proceeds to the love of all things and of Himself. This led someone (Mercury Trismegistus or Hermes) to say that the monad generated the monad, and has folded its ardor into itself. But when the circle is closed, nothing more can be added. This is why a third procession cannot follow in the divine nature, but the processoin follows later (in a free way) in the external nature,” 125 that is to say, outside, by creation and the various divine influences on finite things.

795. There are theologians who dare not say that the divine Persons are modes of being of the infinite Spirit and disapprove of this opinion and this way of expressing it. We gladly adopt the idea of Father Perrone, who sees in God the trinity of distinct modes of existence. 126 St. Thomas speaks the same language. He says: “Therefore, as the word that signifies a nature, such as human being or animal, is common and definable, so there is a word that signifies a nature with such a way of existing (e.g., hypostasis or person)...A Person is the incommunicable existence of the divine nature,” 127 so the word incommunicable shows that the divine essence is not a Person” (unlike divine nature absolutely speaking, which is communicable to the three Persons). He continues: “The word person signifies only a rational nature in such a way of existing.” 128 “In divine things, this mode by which God is in God as a

thing understood in the spirit that understands it, is expressed by what we call the Son, Who is the Word of God; in the same way, we express the mode by which God is in God as the loved object in the loving faculty by admitting in God the (Holy) Ghost, which is divine Love .” 129

De Potentia, A. 9. See also Summa Theologica, 1, q. 41, a. 6.

Tract. de Trinit., c. 2, prop. 4.

127 De Potentia, q. 9, a. 2, in almost all answers to objections. See https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199914395.001.0001/acprof9780199914395-chapter-9.

128 Ibid., A. 3.

129 St. Thomas, Compendium theologiae, c. 46. St. Thomas also says: “Licet tota et perfecta divinitas sit in qualibet trium personarum secundum proprium modum existendi, tamen ad perfectionem divinitatis pertinet ut sint plures modi existendi in divinis, ut scilicet sit ibi a quo alius et ipse a nullo, et aliquis qui est ab alio,” De Potentia,, q. 9, a.

5, ad 23m.

125 126

796. Therefore, it seems to us that there can be no difficulty on this point. God is: He must be in some ways. As we have seen, these ways cannot be accidents in God, and so they are modes of being of His substance: substance and modes at the same time. But His substance is entirely spiritual, all act, and ceaselessly operative. The Persons are therefore divine operations; they are like God’s life, the Supreme Being’s intelligent and loving life. This life, which is formally in God, and which is God, shines in all the immensity of the infinite Spirit and forms the immense Paradise of the spirits and hearts of the Elect. O Paradise par excellence! O Paradise which forms the essential happiness of the Blessed! Grant us, O Lord, one day to contemplate thy infinite splendors, to live from thy life, and be happy with thy happiness! For he who unites with the Lord is one spirit with him. 130

FIFTH MEDITATION Influences of the Holy Trinity Heaven on Creatures 797. As we begin to study and meditate on the influences exerted on creatures by the one and triune Heaven, let us first observe that God’s sovereign goodness, sovereign happiness, and sovereign glory require that God be infinite charity, and this requires the trinity of divine Persons. Having contemplated the supreme charity and order in their source, we will see them reflected as an ocean of light, love, harmony and beatifying influences on all that should participate in divine bliss.

798. “For perfect divine goodness, happiness, and glory,” says St. Thomas, “there needs to be true and perfect charity in God, since nothing is better or more perfect than charity, as Richard of St. Victor says in Trinity. But there is no happiness without pleasure, which one most possesses through charity. For, as the same work says, ‘Nothing is sweeter, nothing more pleasant, than charity, and the rational life experiences nothing sweeter than the delights of charity and enjoys no more delectable pleasure.’ Also, the perfection of glory consists of a magnificence of perfect sharing, which charity causes. But true and perfect charity requires the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, since the love whereby one loves only oneself is self-love, not true charity.”

“And God cannot love another who is not most loveable, nor is another most loveable who is not supremely good. Therefore, the highest true charity evidently cannot be in God if there should be in him only one Person, nor can there be perfect charity if there should be only two Persons in him, since perfect charity requires that the lover wish that the beloved equally love what the lover loves. For it is a sign of great weakness to be unable to share one’s love, and it is a sign of great perfection to be able to do so. The greater the pleasure to receive, the greater the desire required. Therefore, if there should be perfect goodness, pleasure, and glory in God, there needs to be a Trinity of Persons in the Godhead.” 131

799. If therefore God is necessarily in three persons, it is above all because He is infinite charity. God is charity, and whoever abides in love, abides in God, and God in him. 132 Says St. Cyprian: We are in the Father, live in the Son, and move and progress in the Holy Ghost. 133 We are in the Father because He is

1 Cor 6:17.

De potentia, q. 9, a 9, Sed contra.

132 1 Jn 4:16.

133 Libro De Baptismo Christi.

130 131

the principle of all Divinity, according to St. Augustine; 134 because He is not begotten and does not proceed. He has a certain personal resemblance to aseity, which we conceive as what is first and most essential in God. He is the eternal and necessary principle of the other Persons; this is why we attribute to Him especially the power, which makes us exist: “Power is a principle,” says St. Thomas, “which resembles the heavenly Father, Who is the principle of all Divinity.” 135 We live in the Son because all things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made. In Him was life. 136 We live a participated, communicated life. Now, the supreme communicated life is the Word, who eternally and necessarily receives God’s living nature from the Father. This supreme vital communication is the necessary principle of all vital and free communication externally.

Nothing exists or lives except through the Word, because the Word is, so to speak, existence itself, the first begotten, the first who proceeds, and the exemplary cause of all that will participate in existence and life. This is why, conceived in God and understanding Himself, the Word is but one and at the same time expresses God and all things. 137 Being God sovereignly understood and expressed, He is thereby the ideal of all that God can do or does externally.“By these words: God said and everything was done, let us understand that God produced the Word, through Whom He realized things as per their perfect reason (or notion).” 138 Besides, the Word is not only an ideal by which God made things as if He were abstract knowledge with nothing substantial and vitally active. He really subsists, He is an ideal substance and person who has the entire divine nature and acts simultaneously as efficient cause and exemplary cause. 139 He is life itself, considered as participated and received; we live in Him as distant reflections of the supreme participated life. O how suitable it was for the Word—communicated life par excellence—to become incarnate to extend and propagate this life! The life was manifested... we have seen it...and announce to you the life eternal...that appeared to us. 140 In the Eucharistic mystery, through Our Lord’s holy humanity, the same life eternally received places itself ineffably within our reach. How God wants to deify us! How sublime will be our greatness in the heavenly Fatherland!

We move and grow in the Holy Ghost. Strictly speaking, it is the Holy Ghost above all Who is spirit, as He is God proceeding by way of love, and love signifies a certain motor virtue 141 that moves us and makes us progress. “The loved object is in the will as something that inclines and intrinsically pushes, in some way, the one who loves toward the loved thing. Now, the intrinsic impulse of a living being belongs to the spirit. Therefore, it is appropriate for God, proceeding by way of love, to be called Spirit, His breath being a kind of aspiration...” 142 “As the Holy Ghost proceeds by way of love, and as love has a certain

De Trinitate, book 4, ch. 20. Essentia divina est in Patre ut non accepta, in Filio ut accepta etc. St. Thomas, opusc. 9, q. 11.

135 1, q. 39, a. 8.

136 Jn 1:3-4.

137 St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles, l. 4. c. 13.

138 St. Thomas, ibid.

139 Ibid. The Son is also Wisdom, not wisdom considered as a quality, but hypostatic Wisdom, which is substantial and acts as a person.

140 1 Jn 1:2.

141 St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles 1. 4 c. 23.

142 Ibid., c. 19.

134

propelling and moving force, the movement which God gives to things, or which things have received from God must, it seems, be properly attributed to the Holy Ghost.” 143 “The goodness of God is the reason for His wanting things, and His will is what gave them being. This is why the love by which God loves His goodness is the cause of the creation of things...If impulse and motion suit the Holy Ghost insofar as He is love, life is also appropriately attributed to Him, as St. John says (6:64): It is the Spirit that gives life.” 144 Therefore, if we live in the Son because He eternally expressed us, opened the way through His generation to all secondary participations and acted as a personal ideal in the creation and Incarnation, we move and advance in the Holy Ghost because He led the divine will to create; because, as Spirit, he blows on our vital movement to strengthen and regulate it; because, being living and substantial Love in person He infuses us with the love of God, our ultimate end, which powerfully attracts and uplifts us until we attain our supreme destiny.

800. How the Supreme Being’s triune life is reflected in luminous and vivifying waves from God on all beings! Nothing is done in creatures that is not done eternally, necessarily and eminently in God. But as finite beings can only have finite goodness, the Father freely conceives them in a practical way to create them, the Son freely expresses them as having to exist, and the Holy Ghost loves them to decree their existence. By freely willing them, God makes them participate in the vital operations of the Holy Trinity.

How sublime is the primary origin of creatures’ limited and diverse power, their intellectual or instinctive knowledge, and their love and tendencies! O Heaven of the Trinity, how marvelous are your influences!

“Each thing is loved according to how good it is. Now, as the goodness of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is only one and the same, it is through the same Love—the Holy Ghost—that the Father loves Himself, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and every creature; and it is by the same Word—the Son—that He utters Himself, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and all creatures.” 145 Since a creature can only be good with finite goodness which is not necessary, it follows that God can only want it in a free way and as an effect of His generous goodness.

The angel of the school insists particularly on this doctrine: “Therefore, as we say that a tree flowers by its flower, so we say that the Father speaks Himself and His creatures by the Word or Son and that the Father and the Son love each other and us by the Holy Ghost or Love proceeding.” 146 Again: “The Father loves not only the Son, but also Himself and us, by the Holy Ghost; because, as above explained, to love in a notional sense entails not only the production of a divine person but also the person produced, by way of love, which has relation to the object loved. Hence, as the Father speaks Himself and every creature by His begotten Word, inasmuch as the Word "begotten" adequately represents the Father and every creature; so He loves Himself and every creature by the Holy Ghost, inasmuch as the Holy Ghost proceeds as the love of the primal goodness whereby the Father loves Himself and every creature. Thus it is evident that relation to the creature is implied both in the Word and in the proceeding Love, as it

Ibid., c. 20.

Ibid.

145 De Potentia, q. 9; a. 91 ad 13m.

146 1, q. 371 a. 2. https://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/12251274,_Thomas_Aquinas,_Summa_Theologica_%5B1%5D,_EN.pdf.

143 144

were in a secondary way, inasmuch as the divine truth and goodness are a principle of understanding and loving all creatures.” 147 801. It follows—we believe—that the Heaven of the Holy Trinity is like the divine atmosphere that connects the finite with the Heaven of God’s immensity and infinity. Infinite in all respects, by His absolute perfection, God is most distant from all things finite. The Divine Persons, formally considered as Persons, are only infinite in their personal characters, the Father as Father, the Son as Son, and the Holy Ghost as such, but not directly the Father as Son, the Son as Father, etc., as that would remove the real distinctions between the Persons. Hence these august Persons, being several things subsisting in the divine nature, 148 bear a closer analogical resemblance to creatures than God considered absolutely, meaning that God is closer to finite beings by His Persons than by His essence.

That is why the Blessed see the divine essence rather through the Trinity than the Trinity through the essence of God. We have also seen, according to St. Thomas (n. 794), that one must place God’s procession in the external nature immediately after the personal processions taking place by the intelligence and the will. The Holy Trinity is the immediate principle of creation to which we must relate all that God does outside. God cannot create anything without thinking of Himself, without expressing Himself through His Word, and without loving Himself through His Holy Ghost. All that He does outside, as we have said, is only a generously produced reflection of the vital acts by which He is Trinity.

Therefore, the Blessed owe the vision of the infinite Heaven, which is the divine essence, to the Heaven of the Holy Trinity.

802. So, St. Thomas tells us: The very vision of the Divine Persons leads us to bliss. 149 While other editions of the Summa Theologica have the word mission instead of vision, as we see it, this amounts to roughly the same. For grace and glory, having the same nature, and differing not only as imperfect from perfect in the same species, are also conferred by the same divine process. Therefore, as grace comes to us through the Divine Persons, the light of glory will come to us through the same Persons, and seeing the Trinity, we will see God face to face as He is.

803. “Every creature has a created intellect...as its existence is participated. Therefore, the created intellect cannot see the essence of God unless God by His grace unites Himself to the created intellect, as an object made intelligible to it.” 150 “If the principle of the visual power and the thing seen were one and the same thing, it would necessarily follow that the seer would receive both the visual power and the form whereby he sees. ...

Since the intellective power of the creature is not the essence of God, it follows that it is some kind of participated likeness of Him who is the first intellect. Hence also the intellectual power of the creature is called an intelligible light, as it were, derived from the first light, whether this be understood of the natural power, or of some perfection superadded of grace or of glory.” 151 The Prince of theologians thus powerfully confirms what we have just said.

lbid. 1 ad 3m.

Summa Theologica, 1 11 q. 301 a. 1.

149 2a 2ae, q. 2, a. 8, ad 3m.

150 Summa Theologica,1, q. 12, a. 4.

151 Ibid., a. 2.

147 148

The creature has nothing but participation, and any external participation is an association with the vital, intrinsic, divine operations from which the Trinity of Persons in God results. It follows rigorously that all finite beings are born, live, move toward their ends, attain those ends and rest there because of the direct influences of the Holy Trinity’s Heaven. When St. Thomas says that (as is our case), the principle of visual virtue and the object of vision is one and the same thing, he does not exclude but assumes the Trinity, which is essential to God. We conceive it as the last complement of the divine substance and as the indispensable condition, to say nothing more, of the deployment of its activity outside. 152 804. Therefore, God really acts as being in three Persons, although this mode of operating outside himself cannot be known surely by reason except through the Revelation. By conceiving Himself as Father, God conceives all things; by expressing Himself as Word, God expresses the finite; by wanting Himself personally as Love, God creates, maintains, and leads limited beings to their ends.

We have said that this divine mode of operating outside exceeds the natural capacity of reason. Indeed, if it is possible to know the existence and principal attributes of the Creator by considering the creatures, the same is not true for knowing the Cause’s mode of operation. This science is of a higher order. The effects do not trace this mode clearly, and we can only learn it with certainty from the Cause itself. 153 805. However, this divine mode of acting outside is very real and does not consist only in an appropriation of the various operations by the Persons according to their own characteristics by a kind of convenience. There is more: “According to the reason for their procession, the divine Persons have causality concerning the creation of things...for God is the cause of things by His intelligence and will.

Hence God the Father brought about creation through His Word, which is His Son, and through His Love, which is the Holy Ghost. And so the processions of Persons are the reasons for the production of creatures inasmuch as these processions include the essential attributes, which are knowledge and will. . .Although the divine nature is common to the three Persons, it is however with a certain order that this nature suits them, inasmuch as the Son receives it from the Father, and the Holy Ghost from both. The same is true of creative power, which, although common to the three Persons, nevertheless suits them in a certain order; for the Son receives it from the Father and the Holy Ghost from both. Whence it follows that creation is attributed to the Father because He does not receive the creative power from another; it is said of the Son that all was created by Him 154 because He received the creative power from another... and He is the principle derived from the principle; to the Holy Ghost, Who receives this virtue from the other two Persons, we attribute the domain, government and vivification of the things created by the Father and by the Son.” 155 The angel of the School then speaks of appropriation itself, which should not be confused with the reasoning we have just expounded.

806. The essential attributes such as power, wisdom, kindness are appropriated to the divine Persons, but God’s intelligence and will are vital acts which, by forming or giving rise to the Trinity of Persons, also constitute this vital atmosphere, the one and triune Heaven where all finite beings live, and particularly the intelligent and glorified. The internal acts of God’s intellect and will are not appropriate Non esset omnimoda perfectio in divinis, nisi esset ibi processio verbi et amoris. St. Thomas, De Potentia, q. 9, a.

5J ad 23m.

153 See Summa Theologica, 1, q. 32, a. 1.

154 Jn 1:2.

155 1 q. 45, a. 6.

152

to the Persons but constitute them and really distinguish them from one another. This is why, when the divine processions radiate freely outward in traces and images, we notice in creatures, through the eyes of faith, something more than the reflections of the essential attributes of the divinity, attributes that one appropriates to the Persons. We also observe special participation in vital acts through which God is Trinity, which will help us better understand the theory of grace and the light of glory. Let us be satisfied, for the moment, to consider the irradiations of the Triune Heaven in traces and images.

807. “The likeness of the three divine Persons,” says St. Thomas, “appears in creatures in a triple manner: 1. Every effect in some degree represents its cause, but diversely. Some effects represent only the causality of the cause but not its form, as smoke represents fire without reproducing its heat. Such a representation is called a ‘trace’ ... In this respect, the principle of all divinity, i.e., the Father, is represented by what is first in the creature, that is to say, in that the creature is one in itself, subsisting, or subject to something else. But the Word is represented by the form of any creature; for, in the works of an intelligent being, the form of the effect derives from the conception of the intelligent being. Thus, a palace conforms to the intellectual plan of the architect who directed the work. The forms of created beings, therefore, represent the Word. As for Love, the Holy Ghost is represented by the order imposed on the creature. For it is by virtue of God’s love for Himself that He makes all things gravitate toward Him with a certain order; this resemblance is said to be a trace because the trace or footprint represents a foot as an effect represents its cause but without telling us the qualities of the cause and without reproducing the way in which the cause operated.

2. The creature represents the Trinity according to the same mode of operation. Thus the Trinity is traced only in the intelligent creature, who can understand and love himself in imitation of God and produce the word and love of self. This is the natural likeness of the image, for the things which bear the image of others are those that show a similar appearance. In rational creatures, possessing intellect and will, there is found the representation of the Trinity by way of image inasmuch as there is found in them the word conceived, and the love proceeding.

3. The creature represents the Trinity by the unity or identity of the object, as the rational creature knows and loves God. This conformity of union is found only in Saints. Knowing and loving God, they know and love the same object which is known and loved by God, which is God Himself.

Job is speaking about the first of these resemblances when he says: “Wilt thou comprehend the steps of God?” 156 Genesis reads: “Let us make man to our image and likeness.” 157 And St. Paul mentions the third, saying: “But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 158 808. Elsewhere St. Thomas explains even better how our soul is an image of the Trinity. “First, it receives and retains species (as it were intellectual photographs of things that it knows), and thus we have memory (not the sensitive memory that brutes also have, but intellectual memory, ideas). The soul knows (or understands) the species which it retains, and thus we have intelligence (which “reads” the Job 11:7.

Gn 1:26.

158 2 Cor 3:18. In this item, we merged and explained a little two passages from St. Thomas: De Potentia, q. 9, a. 9; and Summa Theologica, 1, q. 45, a. 7.

156 157

species as one reads a book, intus legere, and which understands their meaning). Moreover, the soul accepts the things retained and understood as objects that it likes, and so we have the will. It follows that intelligence proceeds from (intellectual) memory, for if the soul did not receive species, it would neither retain nor understand them. And so the will proceeds from memory through intelligence, for, if there were no understanding of the species, the will would not love them. We see by this that these three things are the acts of a single soul; and the second proceeds from the first, while the third proceeds from the other two: as three persons in one essence, and one proceeding from the other, and the third from the first two.” 159 809. The same process is followed in the supernatural or glorious operations of human souls and angelic spirits. If God himself acts as a Trinity by the necessity of His infinitely perfect nature, His spiritual and finite images cannot escape this law. This is why it is first of all the intuitive vision of God which beatifies the Elect, followed by the contemplator’s understanding according to his degree of capacity, and finally by the enjoyment that proceeds from the first two acts.

810. Therefore, in all created times, places, things and persons we only see traces and images of the Sovereign Trinity. 160 These traces and images relate to the Holy Trinity not only as their supreme exemplary cause but also as their efficient cause, as the divine Persons are subsisting and active. They create, conserve, govern, sanctify and glorify. Therefore, all that exists or lives outside of God exists and lives only through the influences of what we call the Heaven of the divine Trinity.

That Heaven is all life, supreme life. One life, because it is infinite; triune life by generating in God Himself a plurality of which the external radiance gives rise to the countless multitude of servants and persons who participate in life par excellence. How beautiful is this immense Heaven with infinite, supremely glorious, and beatifying vitality! Eternal, essential life, a supreme blossoming of life through its processions, it naturally and properly communicates immortality and stability in the good. Being immense and entirely everywhere, what size will it give heavenly Jerusalem, and how firmly it will establish it! Visible everywhere to the Elected and contemplated as it is, namely, One and Triune, immense ocean of order, beauty, truth, light, how it will flood the renewed universe with glory, charms, and divine harmony! Triune because He is Charity itself, making all beings His substantial traces or living images, He wants to embrace everything in the supreme goodness and ineffable harmony of His three hypostases to show Himself entirely in all things finally. 161 O wise men, what is there still inexplicable in nature, which moves and lives in such an element? We can ignore many secondary causes, but here is the primary cause, all resplendent in its incomparable majesty. And since we are all called to contemplate it one day as it is, including knowing the caused causes, our main business today is to deserve this glory and bliss. O adorable Trinity, turn to thee all the loving glances of our hearts. Thou art our essential good. As for the creatures who tempt us, they must only serve us, and we must be their immediate good.

Libr. 1 Dist. 3, q. 2, a. 1.

If we travel with our mind through the heavens, earth and underworld, we find people everywhere, and each of these persons is a trace or image of the divine Trinity. The Trinity continually maintains these traces and images just as the sun always makes the moon luminous on one side or the other.

161 1Cor 15:28.

159 160

811. Let us summarize this Meditation in broad outline with some beautiful passages from the Saints on the subject which concerns us.

“How would the Father do anything without His only begotten Son and His Holy Ghost? The works of the Godhead are inseparable. If the Father has given the power to the Son, even insofar as He is man; He has given it to Him through the Word because the Word is the Son of God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made. 162 But it is honorable and appropriate that Christ attributes to the Father what He Himself does as God, for He is God of God, God begotten of God, while the Father is God not begotten of God.” 163 “Everything that the Trinity does must be esteemed as done simultaneously by the Father, by the Son, and by the Holy Ghost.” 164 “We find a trace of the Trinity even in the exterior man.” 165 “In (man’s) thought is realized a unity which constitutes three things, that is to say, the memory, the internal vision, and the will, which unite the first two acts among them.” 166 Says St. Augustine: “We are men, created in the image of our Creator, whose eternity is true, and whose truth is eternal, whose love is eternal and true, and who Himself is the eternal, true, and adorable Trinity, without confusion, without separation; and, therefore, while, as we run over all the works which He has established, we may detect, as it were, His footprints, now more and now less distinct even in those things that are beneath us, since they could not so much as exist, or be bodied forth in any shape, or follow and observe any law, had they not been made by Him who supremely is, and is supremely good and supremely wise; yet in ourselves beholding His image, let us, like that younger son of the gospel (Lk 15:18), come to ourselves, and arise and return to Him from whom by our sin we had departed. There our being will have no death, our knowledge no error, our love no mishap.” 167 Under the beatifying influences of this same Trinity, the image of the Holy Trinity will have reached its highest degree of perfection in us.

812. During our pilgrimage, the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost come to us simultaneously as we go to them. They come to us by helping us; we go to them by obeying; they come by enlightening us; we go by looking; they come by filling us; we go by receiving them so that the spectacle of the divine Persons is not outside us but in us, and their dwelling in us is not transitory but eternal.” 168 “The rational and intellectual soul is made in the image and likeness of God so that as an image it may know its Creator, and as likeness, it will love Him. For as an image it has reason, and as resemblance, it has charity. Charity represents the Trinity. Reason has the feeling of the Trinity, and when it is calm, it seeks it; but charity finds it and, contemplating it, rests in bliss. At present, faith follows it; hope accompanies it to Heaven, and charity embraces it perpetually.” 169 813. “The blessed Trinity shines forth in the Scriptures, shows itself in images, shines in creatures.” 170 According to St. Cyprian, “the Trinity is hidden everywhere and apparent everywhere.” 171 “The Trinity, Jn 1:3.

St. Augustine, Contra Sermonem Arianorum, c. 11.

164 Id., Epistol. Class: I, Epist. 11, n. 2, Edit. Migne.

165 Id., De Trinit., 1 11, chaps. 1 & 2.

166 Ibid., c. 3. See also Contra Sermonen Arianorum, c. 16.

167 De Civitate Dei, 1.11, c. 28. Cf. https://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/03540430,_Augustinus,_De_Civitate_Dei_Contra_Paganos,_EN.pdf 168 Tract. 76 in Johannes, no. 4.

169 Id., Lib. De Spiritu et anima, c. 39.

170 St. Bonaventure, 1. 1 Compend. theol. verit., c. 10 162 163

says St. Jerome, preaches and announces Itself with kindness to all visible and invisible creatures.” 172 All the majesty of the sovereign Trinity, and the unity of this majesty, says St. Lawrence Justinian, shine abundantly in the lives of all Saints. We know the Father in their virtues, the Word in their wisdom, and the Holy Ghost in the gifts they possess.” 173 “In the school of divine teaching on the Trinity,” says St. Cyprian, “it is the Father who gives lessons and instructs; it is the Son who reveals and explains to us the secrets; it is the Holy Ghost who fills us and gives us to drink. We receive power from the Father, wisdom from the Son, innocence from the Holy Ghost. The Father chooses, the Son loves, the Holy Ghost conjoins and unites. The Father gives us eternity, the Son conformity to His image (His humanity), the Holy Ghost, integrity and freedom.” 174 “To know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is eternal life, perfect beatitude, supreme enjoyment.” 175 “The Trinity ... is that supreme good contemplated by very pure spirits.” 176

SIXTH MEDITATION Infinite Heaven or God’s Immensity According to Saint Augustine 814. We said above (n. 756) that we would meditate separately on the particular teachings of St. Augustine and St. Thomas on divine immensity. Here we are starting to fulfill our promise.

815. Some theologians who call themselves Thomists deny this title to all theologians who find in St. Thomas what they do not. They accuse us of misunderstanding St. Augustine and St. Thomas when speaking about the immensity of God. We have before us a recent work composed by a pure Thomist who undoubtedly represents faithfully the school to which he belongs. Reading this book, 177 which is serious and very good on various points, we were at first surprised to find that our ideas did not fit precisely with those of the aforementioned great masters concerning the divine immensity. A little mortified, we went to the sources, and our unpleasant impression soon vanished. We found that St. Augustine and St. Thomas are about as foreign to the Thomistic school as we are. Unless we are deceiving ourselves, here we are in good company. Let us begin by summarizing our teaching using the very expressions of Father Froget.

“When certain theologians, foreign to the Thomist school, want to explain God’s omnipresence, they say that God is everywhere by His essence, for being infinite, the divine substance fills Heaven and earth.

For them, immensity is a property (we prefer: an absolute divine attribute) whereby the divine essence spreads to infinity in all existing or possible spaces. Omnipresence is the current diffusion of the Expos. St. Symb. Apost., c. 9.

Epist. 17, Ad Cyril., de expl. fidei.

173 De casto con., c. 19.

174 De Baptismo Christi, chap. 3.

175 St. Bernard., libr. Medit., c. 1.

176 St. Augustine, De Trinit., 1. 1, c. 2.

177 De l'habitation du Saint-Esprit dans les âmes justes, d'après la doctrine de St. Thomas d'Aquin [On the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit in Righteous Souls According to the Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas], by Rev. Fr. Bar. Froget, O.P., Lethielleux, Paris, 1898.

171 172

penetrating divine being into all beings and real places without mingling with them. 178 Therefore, according to this opinion, we could compare the divine immensity to a sea without shores or limits, capable of containing innumerable multitudes of beings of all kinds and dimensions, in the midst of which is plunged, in time, a sponge soaked with water overflowing on all sides. It is an image of this world, which God’s immensity penetrates and overflows from on all sides, with this difference, however, that God is entirely in the world and each of its parts while each portion of the liquid element occupies a separate space. In his youth, St. Augustine had formed a similar conception of the divine immensity.” 179 816. While this passage adequately expounds our thesis, we do not hesitate to say that its concluding statement on the doctrine of St. Augustine is entirely flawed, as we shall see. Let us first reproduce what Father Froget was able to read in St. Augustine: “So also did I endeavor to conceive of Thee, Life of my life, as vast, through infinite spaces on every side penetrating the whole mass of the universe, and beyond it, every way, through unmeasurable boundless spaces; so that the earth should have Thee, the heaven have Thee, all things have Thee, and they be bounded in Thee, and Thou bounded nowhere. For that as the body of this air which is above the earth, hindereth not the light of the sun from passing through it, penetrating it, not by bursting or by cutting, but by filling it wholly: so I thought the body not of heaven, air, and sea only, but of the earth too, pervious to Thee, so that in all its parts, the greatest as the smallest, it should admit Thy presence, by a secret inspiration, within and without, directing all things which Thou hast created.

“So I guessed, only as unable to conceive aught else, for it was false (falsum erat). For thus should a greater part of the earth contain a greater portion of Thee, and a less, a lesser: and all things should in such sort be full of Thee, that the body of an elephant should contain more of Thee, than that of a sparrow, by how much larger it is, and takes up more room; and thus shouldest Thou make the several portions of Thyself present unto the several portions of the world, in fragments, large to the large, petty to the petty. But such art not Thou. But not as yet hadst Thou enlightened my darkness.” 180 817. Strangely enough, Father Froget did not notice that this passage from Saint Augustine is selfexplanatory in our favor and clearly shows what the Bishop of Hippo reproached in his past ideas: What error was that falsum erat? Here it is: If God existed “in this way (illo enim modo), more of the earth would contain more of thy being; a smaller one would contain a lesser ... an elephant’s body would contain a greater part of thy substance than that of a sparrow.” Fr. Froget conveys in an extremely vague manner the words of St. Augustine’s that follow these we have just quoted. Indeed, the great African Doctor actually wrote: “Atque ita frustatim partibus mundi, magnis magnas, brevibus breves partes tuas praesentes faceres,” that is, “and thou wouldst make parts of thee present to the parts of the world, thy big parts to big parts of the world, thy small parts to small parts of the world.” 181 How easy it is now to understand what young Augustine’s darkness was and in what his error consisted!

The causal particle car (illo enim modo) indicates beyond doubt that Augustine first imagined God as a body, having all modes of existence proper to bodies and, consequently, a divisible expanse. And it is Here the reverend author gives us in a note, an excerpt from Hugo von Hurter St. J., and two from Suarez. We accept the doctrine contained therein as our own.

179 Froget, work cited, ch. I, par. II. 180 St. Augustine, Confessions, 1.7, c.

181 Ibid., N. 2.

178

through such testimonies that he [Fr. Froget] tries to condemn our notion of divine immensity! The great Doctor does not say a word that tends to condemn God’s greatness as he had just explained it; therefore, he admits it entirely. But he condemns the crude way in which he conceived it: illo modo ..., frustatim ..., non es autem ita.

818. The fact that this interpretation is the only possible one appears even more clearly in the first part of the quoted chapter from St. Augustine. The title alone would suffice to demonstrate it: Augustine imagines God as something bodily spread through infinite spaces, and the development of this thought fits the title perfectly. Let us quote a few passages. “I could not conceive of anything substantial having other qualities than those we commonly see with the eyes of the body. However, I did not imagine thy being, O God, in the form of a human body ... but I did not know in what other form to represent it...My heart passionately cried out against all my phantoms, and with this one blow, I sought to beat away from the eye of my mind the impure crowd of material images which buzzed around it. But, scarcely chased away, in the twinkling of an eye, there they were again piling up, rushing before my gaze and obscuring it: so much so that my mind, although free from any idea of human form, was nevertheless forced to imagine something bodily, extending through all places, widespread in the world and even infinitely outside the world ... because everything I conceived, deprived of such space, seemed to be nothing, absolutely nothing, not even a void, as if a body were taken out of its space, and the place should remain empty of any body at all, of earth and water, air and heaven, yet would remain a void place, as it were a spacious nothing.”

819. It is evident from this that the young Augustine was a materialist seeking and not finding the true notion of spirit. This is why he condemns at the same time the false idea he had of God and the false idea he had of his own soul. “My mind,” he continues, “being therefore obscured and weighed down to the point of not seeing itself, I believed that things with no material extent and or mass contained in some space or space containing or capable of containing something was nothing at all. For, as my eyes saw nothing beyond bodily objects, my mind also saw nothing beyond the images by which we represent these kinds of objects; nor did I realize that what existed in me and was able to form these images was not material and I could not have formed them if it had not been something great.”

820. Nor does St. Augustine correct in this passage, as in the others, the idea of God’s greatness he had once formed. He does not restrict this greatness; he has nothing to say against the omnipresence of the divine substance. He reproaches himself only for not having considered God as a pure spirit and for having refused Him, for lack of knowledge, the properties which should be accorded even to narrow minds. 182 Later, this Church Father returns to the same subject, but in an incidental manner. He researches the nature and origin of evil, and, to achieve his goal, he first expounds his old conception of the ensemble of things. His imagination always pictured all creatures as bodily beings, even the angels and all spiritual natures that dwell in heaven. Accordingly, He conceived of God himself as an infinite sea whose waters penetrated all finite beings. It is a correct notion concerning God’s greatness but a false It is impossible to understand how Father Froget, after having admitted that we did not fall into the error of Monica’ son, went on to say that on the substance of the issue, and on the way of conceiving divine ubiquity, we seemed to share the ideas that youthful Augustine was later to reform. What?! We discard, with St. Augustine, all the objectionable points of his old theory, which he condemns, and we only admit what he posits and does not correct; we conceive of God as a spirit, while the young Augustine conceived Him as a body. How, then, can that be the same thing in substance and manner? This truly does not honor Thomism. This is not how you reason. See Froget, p. 15, op. cit.

182

notion of the nature of this greatness, which has nothing of a bodily expanse, is not divisible by pieces and is entirely everywhere, infinitely exceeding the finite. This is why Augustine was troubled to roll miserably in his mind. 183 821. Father Froget quotes against us another passage from St. Augustine. Below we reproduce his translation, underlining words other than those he emphaised: “When we say that God is everywhere, we must remove all gross thought from our mind and free ourselves from the impression of the senses not to imagine God spread everywhere as a grandeur unfolding in space like that of earth, water, air, and light; because [note the force of the causal particle, as it announces St. Augustine’s true thought and indicates what he wants to emphasize] all things of this kind are less in one of their parts that in the whole. Rather, we must conceive of God’s greatness as we imagine great wisdom in a man, even if he is small.” 184 We fully subscribe to everything that the illustrious and holy Bishop of Hippo tells us here. First of all, it is not God, strictly speaking, who is deployed in space, but it is space that is deployed in God. God was where He is before space was created, for otherwise, what would follow? When space was taken out of nothingness, it was put in God, in God’s presence, and it unfolds in God without God being modified in any way. So God is not widespread everywhere but is substantially everywhere and in all imaginary places. And the latter are possible only because God is there. Otherwise, His power would be where His essence is not. What could be more absurd?

822. Above all, God does not have a spacious grandeur like those of earth, water, air, which are all divisible and divided or at least circumscribed. One should resist this crass thought. However, the Thomists claim that God is directly and immediately present to things only through His power and still find this opinion in St. Augustine, striving to render our notion of divine immensity more spiritual. While their intention is good, is it true that the great Bishop of Hippo condemns us on this point? No matter how much we read and reread it, we find nothing unfavorable to our thesis. They cite these passages: “God is spread everywhere in such a way that He is not the quality of the world, but its creative substance ... He is everywhere present, wholly everywhere, not confined to any place. 185 God was in the world and the world was made by Him. But how was He there? Like an artist who governs the work He has done. He did not do it as a workman makes a chest; the chest is outside the worker. But God built the world while spread in the world; He does what He does by the presence of His majesty and governs what He does by His presence. He was, therefore, in the world as its creator. 186 God is entirely everywhere, free from all places, free from all obstacles, not at all divisible, filling Heaven and earth with the presence of His power and by its nature, which needs nothing.” 187 823. What is there in all this that we do not fully admit? Nothing. God is everywhere as the creative substance of the world. Therefore, the divine substance is everywhere. We also say that God is not confined in places but is there and that the places are contained in Him: ln ipso vivimus, movemur et summus—not only in His power, but in Himself. God is in the world like an artist who takes care of his work; there is not only the care but also the artist. God is in the world when He makes and preserves it; Ibid., C. 5.

De praesentia Dei liber, seu etc., c. 4, n. 11.

185 Ibid., no. 14.

186 ln Evang. Joan., Tract. 2.

187 De Civit. Dei, 1. 7, c. 30.

183 184

it is not only His power but His Being, God. He does what He does by the presence of His Majesty; by His presence, He governs what He has made. Let the Thomist school express itself thus, and we will applaud it. God fills Heaven and earth by the presence of His power, by His nature that needs nothing. Are these words against us? On the contrary, this is our teaching. 188 God’s nature and substance are everywhere without the need for creatures. They were in possible places before their creation. They continued being there after creation. Places owe to God’s power their existence and conservation. And since His power can never be isolated from His substance, one must admit that His substance is wherever His power is. This is a great way to demonstrate God’s ubiquity. If we limit ourselves to explaining the divine immensity, an essential and absolute attribute of the Supreme Being, we do not need to have recourse to power, a relative attribute.

824. Father Froget translates St. Augustine’s words, non indigente natura, in a singularly free way: God fills heaven and earth but not by a necessity of His nature. Really? That is curious. He seems to mean that God does not need finite beings. As long as creatures exist, who can deny that God is there by necessity, that is to say, by the perfection of His nature? Is it the finite beings that oblige God to be present to them, or is it His power? 189 As we see it, St. Augustine’s thought is straightforward: God fills heaven and earth with the presence of His power, and His nature is also present there without needing those beings as a dwelling.

Moreover, in this chapter, the great Doctor does not speak precisely of God’s immensity but about the Creator and His angels’ government of creatures. Thus, immediately before the words quoted, he writes: “It is the one and only true God Who makes and operates all these things, but He does it in God.” Since in this chapter we are dealing with the divine operations externally, St. Augustine speaks especially about the power of God. In turn, we are speaking about God’s presence in things and not about the divine Being’s operations on things considered in His immensity or capacity as Creator.

825. We will further explore this thought in the following meditation. Here we content ourselves with quoting a few passages in which St. Augustine more particularly supports our opinion directly or implicitly. "When a body is wholly healthy, health, which is a quality, is just as great in the body’s small parts as in the large ones ... Therefore, we are far from thinking that the Creator’s very substance is absent from the quality of a created body. God is therefore everywhere ... He is everything in Heaven, everything on earth, everything in both Heaven and earth, not at all confined by a place, entirely everywhere in Himself.” 190 That is precisely our thesis. Whether His power acts or not on the outside, God is also "whole everywhere in Himself.” If there are created beings, He is everywhere in them because He is everywhere in Himself, in His immensity. If there are no finite beings, nothing participates in His immensity, but He is just as immense in His very substance. Also, “we must admit that God is everywhere through the

Implens coelum et terram praesente potentia, non indigente natura; aliter: non absente natura.

God’s grandeur was infinite before creating the world. In creating, He put things in His presence. That is why he is also present to them. His power makes things present to God but it does not constitute the presence of God, Who is necessarily infinite in greatness.

190 De praesentia Dei, ut supra, c. 4, n. 13, et n. 14.

188 189

presence of the Divinity.” 191 Nothing created can change this presence because God is essentially present to Himself; that is, He necessarily is in His infinite greatness.

826. “The weaker the eyes, the more distant they are from the light. What is further from the light than blindness, even though the light is present and shines on dull eyes?” 192 Likewise, we add, if divine power were no longer to support creatures, the divine essence would still radiate like an infinite sun and remain immense, but nothing would receive the divine benefits.

827. “If the mass of a large or small body were entirely suppressed, its qualities would no longer have where to stay even though they are not measured by volume. The same does not happen with God. He is no less present when someone participates less in His presence. He is all in Himself, and when He is in something, He is not there as if He needed to. Just as He is not absent but rather entirely present in someone in whom He does not dwell, so He is entirely present in someone in whom He dwells, even though that someone does not have Him entirely.” 193 Because God is all in Himself, we can see that by His power or virtue, He acts more strongly or more weakly externally (as His power plays a significant part in the operations of creatures), without His presence as such being any less or more perfect. He abides in Himself by His eternal stability and can make Himself present entirely to each and every thing although things only participate in His presence according to their capacity. 194 828. St. Augustine asks: Is it not clear that God’s omnipresence is a primordial, eternal, necessary, and immutable fact absolutely independent of creatures, a fact that does not derive from God’s power but His very essence? Being wholly everywhere, in an atom as well as in the universe, is characteristic of the Creator’s very substance. Finite beings add nothing to it, take nothing away, and modify nothing. As all theologians admit, God fills Heaven and earth with His Being and essence. Is it not absurd to ask whether God’s substance came to this place only after or when He created it? When God freely created things, He necessarily had to put them in Himself because of His immensity. So His substance was already where He put the universe by creating it. Otherwise, how would He be immutable and immense? Will we say that the “there” did not exist? All right, but God was wholly everywhere in Himself, and this was the necessary foundation for all possible places that the Creator called into existence, as well as those He might create.

829. Let us listen again to the illustrious Bishop of Hippo: “God is not in some place. Something that is somewhere is contained (circumscribed) by a place, and thus it is a body. But God is not a body, and therefore He is not in some place. And yet, since He is without being in a place, all things are in Him instead of His being somewhere. However, they are not in Him as if He were a place, for a place is in a space occupied by a body’s length, width, and height. God is nothing like that. That is why all things are in God without God being a place. However, one says improperly that a temple is God’s place, not because God is contained in it, but because He is present there.” 195 What an admirably true, simple and profound doctrine! God is everywhere but not as content, measured or imprisoned by places, for He is spirit. Moreover, He is an unbounded, infinite spirit, and Ibid., C. 5, n. 16.

Ibid., no. 17.

193 Ibid., C. 6, n. 18.

194 Ibid., no. 19.

195 De divers. quaest. 83, XX, De loco Dei. 191 192

that is why all things are in Him. Being a creature, an angel cannot be present to the whole universe simultaneously, as it would exceed his greatness. He is limited by his nature, not by bodies. But God is immense by nature. Nothing is or can be except in Him, not only because every participating being can only receive existence from God, but also because there is no possible place where God would not be by His essence.

830. The great Doctor says that things are in Him rather than He is in things because the particle in could designate a place, and God, being all spirit, is not a location. “All things are in God without God being a place,” for a place would be divisible, circumscribed, material, limited, measurable by bodies, while God is nothing like that.” However, God is present everywhere, in churches and the universe, being entirely everywhere in Himself. St. Augustine does not leave the subject as do theologians who do not know how to speak about the divine immensity without continually mingling it with God’s power and the creation and preservation of things.

831. They further object against us with this passage from the same Father: “One must conceive God’s greatness rather as we imagine great wisdom in a man, even if he is small.” 196 We answer that with this comparison, the saintly Doctor explains up to a point how God can be entirely in small things and big.

But his goal is not to make us conceive of God’s immensity in the manner of universals. Wisdom is a quality, a universal idea like the properties of bodies, like health. These things, which are as complete in a small being as in a large one, are not substantial; they are accidents that appear or disappear with the substances that serve them as subjects. So St. Augustine carefully tells us that “the same does not happen with God” (no. 827) and that it is God’s very substance that is immense (n. 825).

832. O my God, thy great servant Augustine only confirms me in the idea I have formed of thy immensity by reading thy holy Scriptures. He quotes them in the same sense that I found there by thy grace, 197 without noticing those anthropomorphisms that other authors want to see therein. 198 Thou art the infinite ocean of being, an ocean entirely spiritual, indivisible and entirely everywhere, remaining only in Itself, immutable, formally immense, and absolutely independent of any created being. The greatness of thy being is the supreme model of the expanse of Heaven and the limited ubiquities of angels and human souls (nos. 544 548). All thy images and traces preach and proclaim thy greatness!

By thy power thou makest finite things present to thy Being, creating them, sustaining them, governing them. But thy being is pre-existent, and thy creatures, coming out of nothingness, already find it entirely and everywhere in itself. Thou placest thy creatures in thee, in thy immensity, and maintainest them by thy power, help, and grace; and “things participate in thy presence according to their capacity.” The possible, with no actual existence, has only a possibility of participating in it; the angel has his ubiquity in his angelic place; the human soul, in its body; the animal form, in its animal; the mineral form, in its mineral, atom or molecule. We see everywhere that the immaterial has a kind of eminent and indivisible extent, ubiquity and small immensity, which is not contained in matter but rather contains it, forming a divisible extent by joining material parts among them. 199

De praesentia Dei, ut supra, c. 4, n. 11.

Ibid., C. 4, no. 14.

198 See the cited work by Father Froget, p. 33.

199 It seems to us that this relative ubiquity is what St. Thomas called virtual QUANTITY, no. 542.

196 197

O great God, how everything in the universe preaches thee! All these things exist only to the various degrees that they participate in thy eternal and necessary Being in its immensity. Thou makest all beings participate more or less in thy various attributes. In thy power, by their activity; in thy goodness, by their degrees of perfection; in thy wisdom, by supernatural light, reason, instinct, weight, and so on. But by their existence, thou makest them participate in thy eternal presence and immensity. O Heaven of Heavens par excellence! O Supreme Ocean of reality, life, grandeur, beauty, goodness, charm, why am I not all spirit thinking only of thee, all heart to love only thee, all strength and hope to constantly reach out to thee, to plunge one day in thy glorious immensity. In the meantime, O my God, to deserve such great happiness, I want to live continuously from thy presence and get used to seeing it in all things.

Such will be my great moral principle. What a sublime company! What an inspirer! What a director!

What a friend! What a master! O how sweet it is to me, Lord, to exercise myself here below as a prelude to this life which will be the essence of my bliss in Paradise!

SEVENTH MEDITATION The Infinite Heaven or God’s Immensity according to St. Thomas Aquinas I. St. Thomas’s Formal Teaching 833. The Angel of the School seldom speaks of God’s vastness as such but usually focuses his gaze on ubiquity. We believe this is why Thomists dispute our opinion on this subject. Are they right to do so?

Not at all, as we see it. When dealing with the absolute divine attribute that we call immensity, the Prince of theologians speaks the same language we employ. Our opponents present against us a passage in which the holy Doctor wonders if God is everywhere and demonstrates divine ubiquity with an excellent argument that can be summarized thus: Neither the whole of creation nor its parts can exist without the first cause that gives them existence and preserves them. Therefore, since the divine power is everywhere, the divine substance absolutely must be there too. There is nothing better from this point of view. Elsewhere, the great theologian wonders how God is everywhere, and below is his answer.

834. “God has infinite duration as He has infinite greatness; but because of His infinite duration, we say that God is eternal, that is to say, that He is at all times. Therefore, because of His infinite greatness, He is everywhere, that is to say, say in all places.” 200 He devotes the rest of the article to prove that God is not in places in the manner of bodies but that He preserves all places and is in all things placed in them.

His next article is even more remarkable. We are going to quote it almost entirely.

835. “The Always is to time what the Everywhere is to place. Now, the Always expresses (importat) immensity; therefore, so does the Everywhere. Thus, it suits God alone to be everywhere because God alone is immense ... Just as this adverb, always, taken in its proper sense relates not only to all the time that is or will be but to all the time that one can imagine, so also the adverb, everywhere, relates to any imaginable place. For we do not say, strictly speaking, that the world has always been, although it has 200

Libr. 1 Dist. 37, q. 2, a. 1.

always been in time, as it did not exist before creation. One says of God alone that He has always been, outside of whose permanence it is impossible to imagine time. Likewise, strictly speaking, we say that it is everywhere, or else we cannot imagine any place. Now, this can only be infinity. That is why, God alone being infinite, it is suitable only for God alone to be everywhere. ...

“If there were a continuous body filling all the space of the sky, one could not say that it would be everywhere for two reasons: 1. Because one could imagine, outside this body, a place where there would be nothing of this body; 2. Because this body would fill all space as a single place but only because its parts would be in the various parts of that place. Now, God is everything in the whole universe and in every part of it, and It is impossible to imagine a place in which God would not be if that place existed.

Hence it is appropriate for God to be everywhere in all truth and in the most exact way.” 201 836. This thesis, which we espouse, was formally defended and taught by St. Thomas as it had been by his teacher, St. Augustine. The expressions of these great doctors are different, but in substance, the doctrine is the same. “As God has an infinite duration, so He has an infinite greatness.” This is not about God’s power or virtue, but His nature. As we can consider God's eternity in itself without seeing it through His image, which is time, so we can envision God’s immensity without His ubiquity. God is necessarily eternal; He has been from all eternity before time existed. Likewise, His greatness being infinite, His being necessarily exceeds the limits of creation and extends infinitely beyond. St. Thomas uses the same language as St. Dionysius (nos. 741, 760), whose doctrine he faithfully followed.

837. “Because of His infinite duration, we say that God is eternal, meaning that He is at all times.

Therefore, because of His infinite greatness, He is everywhere, i.e., in every place.” God’s duration is infinite and indivisible, and time, which is divisible and finite, is swallowed up like a variable and changing drop in the ocean of spiritual and unchanging eternity. Eternity is time’s infinite Heaven. Being eternal, God is necessarily at all times. He is the immensity of duration, and time stands to this duration as ubiquity stands to God’s infinite greatness. God is in every place because of His infinite greatness, which necessarily penetrates all real places and, being infinite, exceeds them infinitely. Here you have the infinite sea of which St. Augustine spoke (nos. 816, 820).

838. “The Always is to time what the Everywhere is to place. Now, the Always involves immensity, and so the Everywhere drags it along. God alone is immense, and so it suits only God to be everywhere.” No Thomist denies that eternity preceded time. Let them also admit, at least out of love for St. Thomas, that the divine Everywhere goes beyond places since it is just as immense as eternity. God is not only in all places—no place can exist without His power (which would tend to limit the divine substance to real places)—but He is everywhere because He is immense, and this does not limit the divine Being in any way.

839. “Just as, in its proper sense, always relates not only to all the time that is or will be but also to all the time imaginable, so too the adverb everywhere relates to any imaginable place.” Therefore, according to St. Thomas, it is evident that God is also beyond the created universe, in imaginary spaces, as the universe is finite. “From that alone, we say that He has always been, outside the permanence of which it is impossible to imagine a time. Likewise, strictly speaking, it is said to be everywhere; without which one cannot imagine any place. But this can only be infinity.” St. Thomas says that one cannot imagine any place from which the divine Being would be absent. As for us, along with Holy Scripture 201

Ibid. 1 a. 2.

(nos. 759 & ff.), St. Dionysius, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas, we imagine a large number of possible places outside the real world. God is there, although He does not exercise His power there; He is there because He is infinite, as the Prince of Scholastics says. Being absolute infinity in all respects, He is also infinite in magnitude, a perfection included in His supreme perfection. “This is why, God alone being infinite, it is appropriate only for God alone to be everywhere.” Everywhere means both created space and all possible or imaginary spaces, for God’s grandeur is infinite.

840. “God is everything in the whole universe and every part of it. It is impossible to imagine a place, if it existed (illo posito), in which God would not be. Hence it follows that it befits God to be everywhere in all truth and the most exact manner.” The condition that St. Thomas places on God’s presence in an imaginary space, illo posito, is not contrary to our thesis, for it is absurd for God to be present in what is not. However, God is not to blame for this; His greatness is infinite, and He is wholly everywhere in Himself, as Saint Augustine tells us. The blame falls squarely on the place which, being only imaginary, has no reality and consequently cannot be present to God. Obviously, we would make a gross error if we imagined that God’s infinite greatness changes depending on whether there are places or not or whether these places are large or small. St. Augustine says: “He abides in Himself by His eternal stability and can make Himself present to all things”(no. 827) by creating, preserving, and perfecting them. But he cannot restrict the infinite grandeur of His being.

Immensity is a necessity of His nature. God is necessarily infinite in greatness, as He is necessarily God. Hence St. Thomas attributes immensity to God’s greatness as much as to His eternity.

II. St. Thomas’s ‘Controversial’ Teaching 841. That is why we are astonished by reading this Thomist half-page. “The notion of immensity given by St. Thomas seems much more spiritual and hence more in conformity with God’s nature [was St. Thomas more spiritual than St. Thomas?]. Our opponents claim there is such a widespread diffusion of the divine substance that God would be substantially present to creatures scattered in space but (absurdly), would not exert any action on them. 202 [No creatures would be there, but the infinite greatness would because it is immutable and immense.] On the contrary, the Angelic Doctor teaches that the formal reason for God's presence in created things only His operation [strictly speaking, he says, that is because God is immense and infinite]. His omnipotence is the foundation of immensity [how confusing--a relative attribute serves as a foundation for an absolute attribute!] He makes no distinction between ubiquity and immensity—if God had created nothing, He would not be immense!] As such, the divine substance is not bound to occupy any place [I agree]. It requires no space to deploy [it does require infinity in magnitude]. It does not involve close relationship [not true because, being infinite in grandeur, God is necessarily close to everything that exists: in ipso summus]. It does not involve any distance from beings existing in space. If it comes into a relationship or contact with them, it is by its power and operation [obviously, relations and contacts suppose two terms, and, in our case, the second term exists only by virtue of the first; but the first is fixed, eternal, Immense, invariable as to its substance; and if He wants to have a second term and create it by His power, He must necessarily put it

We quote in a note an excerpt from Suarez (Metaph., Disp. 30, sect. 8, n. 52) which we completely approve, and which is based on the passages quoted from St. Thomas.

202

in Himself first so that it preexists in His infinite greatness]. If God’s substance is intimately present in everything that exists, it is because it produces and maintains the being of all things.” 203 842. This last statement seems very inadequate. Let us complete it with the notions the Angelic Doctor has given us. If the divine substance is intimately present to everything that exists, it is impossible for an immense nature, infinite in magnitude, not to be intimately present to something. The contrary would be absurd, as immensity, infinite grandeur, would be limited. If the divine substance is intimately present in all that exists, it is because it produces ... the being of all things.” What? So the divine substance would disappear from there if its power failed to produce things there! Why confuse God’s presence in things with the presence of things in God? These are very different ideas. Does the power of God produce the presence of God? In our opinion, divine power can do nothing over the divine Being, His infinity or immensity, but can create things and make them present to God. Therefore, we must say that if the divine substance is intimately present to everything that exists, it is, 1. because on God’s side it cannot be otherwise; 2. because in creating, God’s power must necessarily place things in His presence. Where else to put them outside of His infinite magnitude? Things are present to God because He produces and maintains them. God, the divine Being, preexists in His immensity, which does not vary whether He is present in things or not. One says that this greatness is present in things when there are things. If there is nothing, we do not name God’s presence because this word supposes two terms. Suffice it to affirm God’s immensity and infinite greatness or to profess – which is the same— that God is everywhere in Himself.

843. How to explain the many passages where St. Thomas affirms that God is in things by His virtue and power? We see no difficulties on this point. Let us quote some passages underlining certain noteworthy expressions and explaining his thought according to the principles he gave us (nos. 834, 835). “God is not determined to one place, great or small, by the necessity of His essence, seeing that He is from eternity before all place.” 204 We ask why he does not quote the immediately preceding words, which explain their meaning. Says St. Thomas: “God is indivisible and wholly out of the category of the continuous: hence He is not determined to one place...” etc. We teach this truth just as he did: “Deus indivisibilis est, quasi omnino extra genus continui existens.” Something continuous is formed of juxtaposed parts linked together; hence a continuum is divisible. But God is completely above the continuous genus since He is an eminently simple and indivisible spirit.

Why does St. Thomas add a quasi to this? Is it to attenuate the indivisibility of God? Obviously not. He wants to save God’s immensity and infinite greatness while affirming that this greatness is indivisible and placed outside the genus of the continuous, for God’s greatness is as immense as His eternity (no.

835). Hence, “God is not determined to one place by the necessity of His essence” but rather to immensity; not to space but infinite grandeur.

844. If you want to seek His relationships with real places, evidently, the divine power must first create places. There are no relations without two terms. The first term necessarily exists in its immensity, but the second is nothing without divine power. Although God’s greatness is infinite, it is alone until His omnipotence puts something finite in the presence of the Sovereign Being’s incomprehensible amplitude (no. 741). St. Thomas adds: “by the immensity of His power, God reaches all things that are in 203 204

Father Froget, work cited, p. 15.

Contra Gentiles 1. 3, c. 68.

place, since He is the universal cause of being. Thus, then He is whole everywhere, reaching all things by His undivided power.” 205 St. Thomas is not saying what they want him to say. He is not dealing with God’s immensity considered in itself, as he did above (n. 835). Still, he demonstrates that it reaches finite beings through His virtue because God is the universal cause of being and reaches them by being entirely everywhere. Not a word contrary to our doctrine. We also teach all this.

However, we say that God would be no less great or immense in the absolute and supremely vast deployment of His incomprehensible amplitude if He did not reach finite beings and there was nothing outside of Him. Hence His power is not the cause of His ubiquity, but only of the ubi. It is not the cause of His immensity, which fills Heaven and earth but only of things made present to this immensity, which allows us to say that Immensity is present to things because of the relative meaning of the word presence. Our adversaries are singularly deceived by this word. We invite them to tell us if, by removing the relative aspect of this expression we are simultaneously removing God’s immensity and His infinite greatness. Obviously not. You can remove the finite term, but the infinite term remains immutable in its substantial limitless ocean. God is above the heavens and fills the heavens and the earth. If you annihilate the whole universe with thought, what remains? The immense God remains just as He was when He filled His creatures. This is theological and philosophical evidence. Our thesis’ opponents only arouse word quarrels.

845. Let us quote another passage from the Angelic Doctor using a translation faithfully taken from the Thomist school. “The presence of the divinity in all places implies a relation of God with creatures founded on an operation which is the principle of their non-existence (we prefer the literal translation: a relation founded on some operation, thanks to which one says that God is) in things. Now, any relation founded on an operation that takes place in created beings can only be attributed to God temporally (add: sicut Dominus et Creator et huiusmodi), because these kinds of relationships, being current, assume the existence of both terms. Just as we cannot say that God operates in creatures from all eternity, neither can we affirm His eternal presence in them because that supposes (we prefer the word designates, designat) His operation.” 206 Here again, we are simply going through an open door, as we will quickly see.

846. “The presence of the divinity in all places supposes a relationship between God and creatures founded on an operation thanks to which one says that God is in things.” God is clearly not in places or things that cannot exist or relate with Him. But can one conclude from the fact that God is not in these things because they do not exist, that God is not immense? “Any relationship based on an operation in created beings can be attributed to God only temporally, such as the denominations of Lord, Creator, and the like.” Therefore, Thomists must distinguish between God’s vastness and His ubiquity. The latter is quite relative and requires prior creation; the former is absolute and does not change at all by the creative operation. In the passage reported, as in many others, St. Thomas speaks only about ubiquity, and we respectfully follow him. We also followed what he said about the immensity and infinity of divine greatness (nos. 834, 835): Sicut Deus est infinitae durationis, ita infinitae magnitudinis. Sicut semper se habet ad tempus, ita ubique ad locum. Sed semper importat immensitatem; ergo et Ubique: et ita soli Deo contenit esse ubique, cum solus Deus sit immensus... Cum solus Deus sit infinitus; soli Deo

205 206

Ibid., no. 4.

L. 1, Sent. Dist. 37, q. 2, a. 3, French translation given by Father Froget.

competit esse ubique, proprie loquendo. We are entirely Thomist, perhaps better than those who bear this name.

847. “Just as we cannot say that God operates in creatures from all eternity, neither can we affirm His eternal presence in them, as that would designate operation.” As we observed at the beginning of the previous item, these words, in creatures, explain everything most easily. Here is how Father Froget sums up our argument on the presence of God in creatures: “This person is here since I hear him, but he is not here because I hear him; if he kept silent, he could be here without my hearing him. So it is with God; He is everywhere since He operates in all things, but He is not there because He operates. Even if one were absurdly to admit that He did not act on creatures, He would nevertheless be intimately present to them, as His infinite substance is necessarily indistinguishable from everything that exists in space.” The author above tries to refute this excellent reasoning as inconclusive. “This reasoning,” he says, “would be conclusive if God were in space like bodies.” He goes on to strike at us again, to no avail and says: “If God did not act in us, He would not be in us ... The formally immanent ... and ... virtually transitive, virtualiter transiens divine operation is the formal reason, the true foundation, the definitive cause of God’s presence in creatures.” Please forgive us if we say frankly that this is nothing but pitiful sophistry.

848. 1. “This reasoning would be conclusive if God were in space like bodies.” Reply: It is all the same, and better still if God is present in space like spirits. If the presence is there, why would the mode of presence matter? We hold that spirits are more perfectly present to bodies than bodies can be to other bodies. Indeed, spirits are wholly present in each part of their absolute or relative ubiquity, while bodies are often present to other bodies with some of their parts. Moreover, if God were in space like bodies, He would not be immense or infinite in size, as Saint Thomas tells us (no. 835). In this case, our reasoning would lose most of its force. God’s infinite substance would no longer necessarily be indistinguishable from everything that exists in space. Note that we base our entire reasoning on the divine substance’s wholly spiritual, necessary, indivisible immensity and on the Supreme Being’s infinite and infinitely simple greatness. Consequently, if they fight us on this ground, they do not take the trouble to weigh our reasons.

849. 2. “If God did not act in us, He would not be in us. How naive! If God did not act in us, we would not exist, and therefore, God would not be in what was not real. But God would be just as immense and infinite in greatness, a necessary condition for Him to be in us if He wants to create us and do us good.

Would creatures modify the infinite magnitude of the divine substance by their being or non-being? Like us, our adversaries uphold the Sovereign Being’s absolute independence from places, bodies, and creatures. Why then do they want to link the divine substance to the works of the almighty power, all of which proceed from God’s free will? Where does St. Thomas teach such a doctrine?

850. 3. “The formally immanent ... and virtually transitive divine operation: behold the formal reason, the true foundation, the definitive cause of God’s presence in creatures.” In our opinion, it is still the same fallacy. This divine virtue is the mode of creation considered in its active principle. But God’s creative virtue does not affect the immensity of the divine substance, which remains in its supremely vast and necessary amplitude and is the first immutable term of what is called God’s presence. “This virtue is the true foundation, the definitive cause of God’s presence in creatures” only in the sense that it gives being to the second term and makes it present to God. As for God, He was there before His virtue operated. How could His immensity, infinite grandeur be absent? It is said to be present only concerning the second term, for presence is relative but preexists as such in its infinite amplitude and

constitutes, so to speak, the necessary environment in which the divine virtue must put everything that it creates.

I have in my presence the book by Fr. Froget. Why is it there? Because I put it there. If it weren't there, I wouldn't be less where I am and how I am, although I wouldn't be present to this book because the book would not be in my presence. Would the substance of my being and its mode of existence depend on the act by which I put the book in my presence? It obviously would not. Now, considered in the immense actuality of His substance, God is infinitely more independent of His creatures than I am of a book. So the divine essence is determined to be immense and everywhere by the necessity of its nature.

And in the absurd hypothesis that finite beings existed without God’s virtue, God would be present to them by the sole fact of His immensity and infinite greatness, for presence does not by itself include relations of influence 207 but only the immediate proximity of two terms, each existing in its own way.

EIGHTH MEDITATION Remarkable Language of Several Church Fathers Observations on Some Theological Opinions 851. We dedicate this meditation to expounding some passages from Church Fathers and examining theological opinions related to our subject.

“God,” says St. Basil, “is not contained by a place. He is not enclosed in a measure or circumscribed because He is infinite.” 208 Athenagoras expresses himself thus: “God goes so far beyond the world that He fills in every sense everything that is above the world (imaginary spaces, we believe), and leaves no place empty of Himself.” 209 “God ... is in all things, embraces all things, and overflows outside.” 210 “God is in all things, outside all things, above all things, below all things. He is outside by His grandeur, inside

by His subtlety. He is outside by surrounding, inside by penetrating. He is below and above without place (by nature), greater without breadth, more subtle without lessening.” 211 “As it is impossible for us to ignore the air that is everywhere, and existing not far from each of us, so we cannot ignore the Creator of all things.” 212 “What temple could God have,” asks St. Cyprian, “since His temple is the whole world?

God is only one, and He is wholly present everywhere.” 213 “God is an infinite and unlimited ocean of essence: Infinitum quoddam et interminatum essentiae pelagus.” 214 What St. Athanasius says of the Son must also apply to the other divine Persons: “He is

St. Thomas himself recognizes that spirits can be present in places without influencing them (nos. 765, 766).

Quoted by Suarez, Tome 1, 1. 2, c. 2, no. 8.

209 Ibid.

210 Prudence, ibid.

211 Pope St. Gregory, Moral., 1. 2, c. 8.

212 St. John Chrysostom, cited by Cornelius a Lapide in Act. Apost., C. 17 v. 28.

213 De vanit. idol.

214 St. Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. in Natal.

207 208

everywhere and outside of all things: extra omnia.” 215 St. Jerome says that God is "outside" of all things and "within": et forinsecus et intrinsecus. 216 “God not only fills but also exceeds all things; for He is not enclosed but contains all things.” 217 Says Theophilus of Antioch: “Just as a pomegranate with its bark around it contains small clusters and various compartments separated by membranes and a great number of seeds artistically placed in it, so too the spirit of God embraces all creatures. Both intelligent ones and the others are enclosed in God’s hands.” 218 Saint Augustine asks, “what is this Almighty God Who has prepared such great, eternal, and heavenly goods for Catholic Saints and faithful peoples?

What is this God Who has prepared such great things? Yes, what is Almighty God? What is He if not the unfathomable, incomprehensible, ineffable, the One that is beyond all things, outside all things, different from all things? Ultra omnia, extra omnia, praeter omnia. He exceeds all His creatures, all His work, and surpasses everything in excellence. If you are looking for greatness, He is greater. ” 219 852. We see by this how far the illustrious Bishop of Hippo was from weakening the idea he gave us of God’s greatness by depicting it as an infinite sea whose waters penetrate all creatures and extend in all directions and infinitely beyond the universe (no. 820). The language of the other Fathers we have cited is no less expressive in this sense. To give us an idea of God’s immensity, they do not always speak first of His power and virtue. In their eyes, the Supreme Being is infinite in grandeur and is substantially even where His omnipotence has created nothing, for He is also beyond and outside His work. In this sense, Boethius said, “Every place is present to God, although no place is capable of containing Him.” 220 That is because bodies cannot contain or imprison spirits and because the Infinite Spirit’s magnitude goes beyond space as much as the duration of eternity goes beyond that of time, as St. Thomas proved with the notion of infinity and immensity (nos. 834, 835). This is the doctrine the Holy Scriptures teach clearly and widely (nos. 739 & ff., 756 & ff.). It is the teaching retained by the Christian people. Let us question a basically instructed believer.

853. What is God? - He is an infinite spirit. Is the world infinite? - No. So God is still beyond the world? Yes, because God is infinite. Before creating the world, was God where the world is now? - Without a doubt. Why? - Because God is infinite. Could God destroy the world? - Yes. If God annihilated the world, would God still be present where the world was? - Without a doubt. Why? Because God does not change. O child of the Church, how your simplicity contains sound philosophical and theological sense!

854. However, theologians' opinions are divided on whether God is present outside the world in imaginary spaces. We will expound them using the words of Knoll 221 and assess them inspired by the principles expounded above.

1. “Asked if God is also outside real space, some, along with Herminier, Suarez and others have judged that we must answer in the affirmative for fear of restricting God within the limits of the world.” This is the thesis we have supported and which seems impregnable. In our opinion, Suarez did not only see fit to answer the above question in the affirmative, but he firmly proved what he was saying, and we found Epist. ad Serap.

In Isaias, c. 66.

217 Author commonly known as Ambrosiaster, comment. in Epist. ad Ephes.

218 Cited by Fr. Perrone, De immensitate Dei, Praelect. thol.

219 Sermo 384, Migne edition, chap. 1.

220 De Trinit., 1., 1.

221 Institutiones theol., vol. I; p. 1, sect. 1, c. 3, a. 2, Note 1.

215 216

no serious refutation of his arguments. Would the famous word of Empedocles: God is a circle (a sphere) whose center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere no longer be true? Would St. Ambrose, Pascal, and countless Catholic authors have erred by adopting it? Would God be infinite in greatness if He were substantially only in the finite universe? What follows from this restriction if not that God would be surrounded by nothingness? My Lord, what an idea! Wouldst Thou no longer be an infinite and unlimited ocean of substance? What would become of Thy infinite magnitude? What should we understand by thy ample, vast, simple, and indivisible immensity?

Before thou created the world, the same nothingness that is now part of the world occupied the place the world now occupies. Why would we think that thy substance was in this latter part of nothingness but not in the former? If other than dwelling in thyself thou were only in possible or imaginary spaces, why would it be otherwise today? Could the Infinite be found better where the finite is than where the finite is not? My substance is as nothing before thee; 222 all nations are before thee as if they were not, and thou regardest them as a void and nothingness. 223 Compared to thy being, O my God, all creatures share the condition of my substance and that of the earth’s peoples So, O great God, compared to thy essence and mode of being, the finite has nothing more than nothingness; outside of thee, everything is imaginary. Thou needst the world as a home no more than the relative emptiness that surrounds it. Thou art in thyself while being in thy creatures. 224 Thy work is in thee, and thou art thyself outside thy work just as thou art in it. 225 In the former, thou givest something, and it has the reality of the finite; in the latter, thou givest nothing and are alone, but thy substance is self-sufficient in both. So, concerning thy substance, I must consider all finite things as nothing. Hence I must reason likewise the immense topicality of thy being, both while being in the world and out of it.

I said that thou givest nothing outside the world and display thy kindness in the world. Is that correct?

Thou art infinitely simple and entirely within thyself. So thou doest outside the world what thou dost here. In fact, here thou makest thy kindnesses deploy, whereas they do not deploy there. Thou ensurest that thy kindness deploys not there but here; so here and there thou doest the same thing. If there is a difference, it is entirely outside of thee because participating beings exist here but not there.

855. Someone might object that if thou art entirely in thy everywhere it is futile to have recourse to imaginary places. For, already wholly in thyself in every nook and cranny, thou cannot be more than whole in an infinity of places. Consequently, what is the use of multiplying spaces in our imagination?

While this difficulty seems to be serious, deep down, there is nothing dreadful about it. Thou sayest to us, O my God, that thou art higher than the heavens, that the heavens are thy throne, that thou fillest heaven and earth. It is a fact that thy substance is entirely in every part of the universe and even above.

It is characteristic of thy greatness to be that way. So, to speak of thy immensity, it is not enough to say that thou art entirely in one point. Thou must also be entirely in the infinity of thy greatness just as thou art entirely in the infinity of thy duration. Thy entire eternity, being indivisible, corresponds to one minute of our time; but by itself, our time does not correspond to all thy eternity. The same must be said of thy immensity concerning places.

Ps 38:6.

Isa 40:17; Dan 4:32.

224 Inhabitation in thy creatures is only an originally free radiance from thy necessary inhabitation in thyself.

225 For thy work does not change thee.

222 223

Moreover, even narrow spirits provide an analogous idea of thy greatness. My soul is entirely in every part of my body, and yet it would be ridiculous for me to claim one atom would suffice because my soul would be entirely there. Given its spiritual greatness, it must be whole in a larger number of parts and in a bigger body. This is attributable to the virtue of my soul but also to its being, for each being acts according to what he is, and the greater or lesser virtue of a thing indicates whether it is greater or smaller. 226 True, a great soul can be in a relatively small human body, but in this sense, that soul will exert a more significant outside influence on nature, the sciences, society. So to speak, the larger a spirit is, the more space it takes in the world. What can one say of the infinite Spirit? The extent and circumference of the universe are only an insignificant point compared to His size. He is infinity in all respects.

In the same way, it is found that the more perfect the angelic natures are, the greater they are, and the more places they can embrace in their presence. While they do not need places, their size does relate to places. Thus, the noblest angel is also the one whose presence simultaneously occupies the greatest number of places or the largest angelic place (which amounts to the same). God is so great that no real space adequately corresponds to His greatness. ‘God, Who is His whole being . . . has being according to all the virtue of being, 227 that is, according to the full amplitude and meaning of being. Therefore, since greatness belongs to being, God must have it all; in other words, He must be infinite. “A thing is perfect in so far as it is in actuality: therefore, it will be imperfect inasmuch as it fails in actuality. Therefore, evil is either a privation, includes a privation, or is nothing. But the subject of privation is potentiality, and that cannot be in God; therefore, neither can evil. ” 228 Now, outside the universe, there is an indefinite number of possible places. God, Who is all act, cannot occupy them potentially. Therefore, His immensity extends infinitely and necessarily. “Everything in a finite thing that is act (reality) must be found in God much more eminently than in that thing.” 229 According to our notion of immensity, the extension of real space is considerable and found much more eminently (even infinitely) in God. This notion is all the more true since we attribute immensity to the very substance of the divine Being, not just to His power. “In any genus, there is something very perfect which measures everything included in it. Each thing in this is considered more or less perfect depending on its degree of closeness to the genus’ model. But God alone, Being Himself, can be the measure of all beings.” 230 Therefore, God is the infinite greatness by which all spiritual and material greatness is measured. “God is called great, as St. Dionysius tells us (no. 741), because of His greatness, which is communicated to all great things and extends infinitely to all greatness externally . . . this magnitude is without limit, quantity, number, and its incomparable excellence shines in the absolute and supremely vast development of its incomprehensible amplitude.”

See St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles., 1, I, c. 28. Omnium perfectiones pertinent ad perfectionem essendi. Summa Theologiae, p. 1, q. 4, a. 2.

227 Contra Gentiles, ibid.

228 Ibid.

229 Ibid.

230 Ibid.

226

The greatness of God is not only the necessary measure of real space, angels and men, but also of all purely possible spaces and beings that could be created. Therefore, we have no doubt about the actuality of the divine substance in so-called imaginary spaces: magnitudinis ejus non est finis! 231 Thy greatness, O my God, has no limits. I adore thy words’ sublime simplicity, incomparable clarity, and sovereign truth. No one but thee fully knows thy greatness, and thou art the only One Who can give us a fair idea of it. Thou were kind enough to do so in a manner commensurate with our capacity. The world has limits; thy greatness has none. Therefore, it exceeds the world’s extent. How many times does it exceed this extent? A hundred times, a thousand times, a million times? If so, thy greatness would have limits. The greatness of thy work would be measurable so many times. But since it neither has limits nor is finite, it is not measurable in any way. Thus, thy nature is immense and infinite not only in its essence but also in its amplitude. Hence, O my God, the many teachings thy Holy Scriptures give us about thy immensity are understood most naturally. We learn thy truth effortlessly and avoid splitting hairs about the word of the best of fathers!

856. 2. According to Knoll, “other theologians such as Tournely, Charmes etc. maintained that God is not positively but negatively in imaginary spaces, meaning that God is not there outside of Himself and has no coexistence or connection with these places.” In our opinion, this does not make sense unless it identifies with our thesis. God is essentially in Himself and His immensity, and from this point of view, He can only be there positively. His dwelling in supposedly imaginary spaces is completely nonexistent because there is nothing outside of God. 232 God is not outside of Himself (an expression which seems rather singular) and has no coexistence or any (real) relationship with such places. Of course! How can you coexist with something that does not exist? If these theologians agree with us that God is entirely everywhere in Himself, in His infinite greatness, then their opinion is no different from ours.

857. 3. “Others, with more reason, deem the whole question absurd. According to St. Augustine, 233 vain are human dreams of infinite places while there is no place outside the world. Therefore, imaginary spaces are nothing, and God is not in nothingness. In nothingness, says St. Thomas (in Billuart, Diss. 3, a.

6, par. 4), there is absolutely nothing. St. Bonaventure adds (I. D. 37) that it is foolish to say that God is in what is nothing.” In our humble view, our opponents do not quote these authorities in this matter. They condemn what we condemn without reaching our thesis, which only appears absurd because it is not understood. As we noted above, this is not about knowing whether God is in what does not exist, but whether the divine substance, which is infinite in magnitude and is in the world although not contained by it, also extends beyond the world or exists only where God exerts His power.

In these terms, the question seems to resolve itself independently of the many reasons we have given.

What theologian wants to set limits on the Being Who is infinite in all respects? If the Sovereign Spirit really has this greatness that corresponds to the magnitude of real space (which all Catholic authors maintain) is there any reason to prove that this greatness stops there as if the divine substance did not exceed in magnitude the work of omnipotence? Under divine freedom, His omnipotence made the world finite. But immensity is a necessity of God’s nature and does not depend at all on His will.

Therefore, He must exist according to the full extent of Being, which can only occur in the eternal, immense, and infinite in all respects.

Ps 144:3.

If it is about real possibles, God is their foundation, and that is positive.

233 De Civit. Dei, 1. 11, c. 5.

231 232

That is why, strictly speaking, nothingness has never existed and cannot exist because it is nothingness and notably because the absolute being Who is God makes it absolutely impossible. Since God is the entire and absolute being, it would be absurd for nothingness to exist anywhere. Outside the world, there is only a relative nothingness or nonexistence of finite things. But since God is the very Being in all His magnitude, substance, perfection, greatness, and all the rest, He is loath to contemplate a complete or absolute void from which His substance would be absent. The absolute Being would no longer be absolute and would only go so far. His condition would be in part that of bodies or finite minds. Even my imagination could dream of infinite grandeur, but God would not be so great! Deus magnus vincens scientiam nostram: 234 God’s greatness goes beyond my science, but my imagination could imagine more excellent greatness!

No, my God, that cannot be! Thy immense reality is a formally infinite Heaven that only exists adequately in itself. Thy substance reigns alone without limits or participation where finite beings are lacking. Thou, who art the very being, the absolute being, dost not inhabit nothingness! Thou art still in Thyself where Thou hast placed creatures since thou drawest no benefit from the finite but makest all things participate in thy goodness, greatness, and other perfections. It makes no difference for thy substance whether it is alone in its vastness or coexists with creatures in that same vastness.

NINTH MEDITATION Examining Father Knoll’s Personal Opinion 858. Knoll expounds his opinion thus: “Mistaken are those who think that claiming that God does not exist outside the world or in imaginary spaces would restrict His immensity. Whatever spaces they imagine, being extended and divisible, these spaces can never be infinite. Consequently, God would never be immense space-wise (ratione spatii). This is why one must remove from God all notions of space and place. The Fathers say that, before creating the world, God did not exist in space or place, but in Himself.”

At first glance, this reasoning seems to have some value. But the more we weigh it, the less consistency it offers. First, it would prove too much. What this author says about space can be said about all finite beings and their qualities. Hence it would follow that God would not be infinite in any way. For example, all created spirits are necessarily limited and could never be more than finite no matter what perfections we add to them in thought. Thus, the Supreme Spirit would never be infinite! Any human or angelic science would be susceptible to further degrees of light. Therefore, God’s science would never be infinite! Whether about space or any other creature, this argument obviously cannot stand; one must follow the opposite process. We can always add to space by thought because there is infinite greatness we will never reach, which is the first foundation and measure of all possibilities that we imagine. We can always assume new degrees of perfection in finite science because there is an infinite science that cannot be exhausted, and so on.

859. Since infinity results neither from adding being to being, qualities to qualities, or parts to parts, forming a divisible extent, it follows that God is not at all infinite in the sense of creatures (ratione entis 234

Job 36:26.

fini). Thus, Fr. Knoll’s argument does not stand against our thesis or any other thesis on the relationships between finite and infinite. God’s immensity is boundless by His nature and not by real or imaginary spaces. If we say that immensity would be restricted if it did not occupy purely possible spaces, immensity would no longer be immensity. It would be as simple as the greatness of created spirits but would be just as limited as these spirits, as it would only embrace a finite world. By indefinitely adding space to space in our imagination, we also designate all possible spaces to which divine immensity must necessarily correspond. Without this, these spaces would not be possible. It makes no sense for God’s power to act where His substance is not, all the more so since these two things in God are identical.

860. Imaginary spaces are nothing but possibilities in the genre of extension. As such, it is appropriate for a being to be everywhere, says St. Thomas, when this being is everywhere. This properly suits God because He would have to be there everywhere regardless of the number of places one supposes, whether real or imaginary, for nothing can exist except by God. 235 We mentioned above that St. Thomas speaks conditionally, excluding God’s actual dwelling in unreal places but not limiting His divine immensity to real places. That means that no finite being outside the world participates in God’s greatness, but not that this greatness stops at the limits of the universe, for it is as immense as eternity (nos. 834 & ff.). Thus, St. Thomas maintains that divine immensity corresponds to all possible places, for nothing can be except through God. We must therefore admit the actuality of the divine being outside the world.

861. Someone might object that to prove your thesis you need possible places that are infinite. Can that be admitted? We answer: What is so strange about it? There are important notions to be developed on this point, and all these difficulties seem to arise from the lack of a precise idea about the issue. First, the divine immensity does not depend on a possible infinite place. Instead, this possible place (if we can suppose one) is what depends on God’s immensity. Secondly, the divine Being’s immense magnitude would not be compromised at all if we were unable to adequately explain the relations between God’s infinite greatness and possible places. We have demonstrated this with many other proofs, and, in our opinion, the mere idea of infinity in all respects would suffice to prove it.

862. That said, we state with St. Thomas that God indeed knows an infinite number of finite actual or possible beings. “Since God knows not only actual things but also things possible to Himself or created things, as shown above (Article 9), and as these must be infinite, one must hold that He knows infinite things. . . even by the knowledge of vision. The divine essence, whereby the divine intellect understands, is the sufficient model of all things that exist or can exist, also concerning the principles proper to each one. Hence it follows that God’s knowledge extends to infinite things even distinct from each other. But God does not know the infinite or infinite things as if He enumerated part after part, as He knows all things simultaneously and not successively. Hence nothing prevents Him from knowing infinite things.” 236 863. Elsewhere, the same holy Doctor writes: “Nothing would hinder the existence of several such infinite things, as if we were to suppose several lines of infinite length drawn on a surface of finite breadth. Hence, as infinitude is not a substance but is accidental to things said to be infinite . . . and the infinite is multiplied by different subjects, so too a property of the infinite must be multiplied in such a 235 236

1 q. 8 a. 4.

1 q. 14 a. 12.

way that it belongs to each of them according to that particular subject. We observe this also in numbers, for the species of even numbers are infinite, and the species of odd numbers are also infinite, yet even and odd numbers together are more numerous than just than even numbers. Thus, one must say that nothing is greater than something infinite in every way. When something is infinite within a species, nothing is greater in that species, but we may suppose something greater outside that species.

Therefore, there are infinite things in the potentiality of the creature, and yet there are more in the power of God than in the potentiality of the creature.” 237 864. On this point, as on others, Cardinal Franzelin is a faithful echo of St. Thomas. “We cannot,” he says, “fix the frail gaze of our mind on infinite series, each of which has an infinite variety of possibilities.

That is why there is an infinite and infinitely varied multitude of truths that do not correspond to finite realities but are understood by the unique divine gaze. For example, when we seek to get an idea of the multitude of worlds and orders, each of which is objectively possible, we cannot conceive of it other than by adding to a given number of these possibilities a still greater number, and we are unable to encompass this multitude with our gaze because the notion of infinite as we can see it is such that its object always exceeds it (and we can conceive this excess only in a confused way). But God distinctly understands each of these possibilities and their modes of being should they be realized. And He understands them in such a way that nothing is possibly left out from the multitude that He distinctly understands. Now then, this whole multitude is undoubtedly infinite, clearly not in perfection but in the number of possible things. [These things] form an extension, an infinite multitude. Thus, St. Augustine said 238 that the numbers are most certainly infinite.” 239 854. Let us observe with the same author that we consider this infinite multitude only as a possibility and an object of divine science. Given the very condition of finite things, this multitude could not be realized, at least simultaneously and in the order of realities; there would only be, at most, an infinite potential. Anything realized thereby excludes the realization of other possibilities. For example, a flower can blossom in each of the minutes that make up several days; but the fact that it blooms in the hundredth minute makes its effective blossoming impossible in all other minutes. One’s mind can combine all these possibilities. In reality, however, an infinity of things excludes others. Could we demonstrate, by analogous reasoning, that an infinite space known as such in the order of possibilities would nevertheless be impossible to realize? Our thesis does not oblige us to study this question, which would take us too far. Observing the infinite number of possibilities considered as the object of God’s knowledge suffices for the demonstration we set out to make.

866. From the cited passages by St. Thomas and Cardinal Franzelin, it is clear that God knows an infinite space among the possibilities. If a line or an area infinite in length is not aberrant to reason, why would an infinite space be? It would only be infinite in one sense, that is to say, in extent, and there would be nothing greater. Since it is immense, the divine substance is the sufficient model of this partial and simply possible infinity, and possible places exist everywhere because God’s greatness is infinite. In each infinite series, there is, as Cardinal Franzelin told us, an infinite variety of possibilities. The series of places is one of those infinite series where possible places form an infinite variety. The multitude of

3 q. 10, a. 3.

Civitas Dei, 1. 12, c. 18.

239 Franzelin, De Deo uno, Thes. 41, 1.

237 238

different worlds and orders, as known to divine science, form a truly infinite number of possibilities, an infinite extension.

867. Let us add that these possibilities exist only through God’s immensity. The latter is necessarily the exemplary cause of all actual or possible extensions. And since the material worlds and the various orders of things (considered only as possibilities and objects of God’s infinite science) are infinite in number, it rigorously follows that divine immensity, which is their exemplary cause, is infinite in size.

Otherwise, these possibilities would not be possible for lack of a primary model and the first foundation for their extension. St. Thomas tells us that “science only has beings as objects”: scientia non est nisi entis. 240 Now, God knows an infinite number of worlds and material beings, an infinite number which is not real; therefore, it is an infinite number of possible beings. How is this infinite number of beings, which includes the notion of extension in that of their possibility, possible without divine immensity, which eminently corresponds to infinite possible space?

Is omnipotence the adequate cause of all real or imaginary extensions? We answer that the role of omnipotence is to act according to God’s free will and, as long as we speak only of possibles, we are in the field of necessary things. Omnipotence acts according to a supreme exemplary cause which in our case can only be the immensity of the divine Being. Therefore, it seems that we have firmly demonstrated, through the infinity of possibilities, the actuality of the divine substance in what are called imaginary spaces.

868. Father Knoll ends his opinion thus: “We must remove from God all notions of space and place.

Thus, the Fathers say that before creating the world, God did not exist in space and place but in Himself”(no. 858, 4). To the first statement, we answer that one obviously should not attribute to God a material and divisible extent. But it seems utterly false that the extent of places and spaces could not preach divine immensity or that it is not a trace of the greatness of the Supreme Being.

Could it be in vain that Sacred Scripture says: The greatness and beauty of the creature make the Creator known and made visible? 241 Again: God’s invisible perfections, made comprehensible since the creation of the world by the things that were made, became visible, and so did His eternal power and divinity. 242 What does the unimaginable greatness of the universe proclaim if not God’s infinite greatness? Can the expanse natural to the heavens not be found eminently in God’s nature? Yes, we must remove from God all coarse properties that suitable only for creatures—for example, a divisible and limited extent—but we must recognize God’s absolute simplicity and vastness compared to which the universe is tiny. Are these not the teachings that divine Scriptures and the majestic collection of created beings give us?

869. As for the statement that “God exists in Himself,” we have explained it abundantly and need not come back to it.

Here is then, O great God, the Idea I have formed of thy immensity. I conceive it as the eternal, infinite Heaven without divisible extension although it exceeds all extension; absolutely simple since it is nothing but thy Being in its incomprehensible amplitude (no. 741). It fills the finite sky and the earth, 3, q. 10, a. 3.

Wis 13:5.

242 Rm 1:20.

240 241

penetrating all things and contained only in Itself, infinitely beyond the limits of creation. 243 Thine intelligent creatures who have attained the supreme bliss, o my God, will contemplate thee as infinite Heaven. Thou wilt be like their vital element and stay par excellence because in thee alone will they find essential happiness. The material heavenly Jerusalem and the glorified universe will have limits, which is why they will serve the secondary happiness of thy children. The heavens emerging from nothingness will be too small for their minds and hearts. According to their various degrees of perfection, they will also contemplate the worlds of all kinds of possibilities, seeing thy essence in itself, in its power, goodness, beauty, infinite grandeur. And since there certainly are possible places outside the actual places, they will see them in different degrees according to their capacity. But they will never see them all, for these places, as possibles known to God alone, are infinite in number.

O, God! What pleasures thou reserves for us in the Fatherland! We will always see something new in God because the Infinite is eternally inexhaustible! The Infinite unceasingly gives Itself to the Blessed with infinite love, and as they must receive it in a finite fashion, it gives rise to endless variety. I give thanks, my God, for thy ineffable goodness! May we sing it forever! We hope so, O Lord, by thy grace, by the infinite merits of Jesus our Savior, and the almighty intercession of the Queen of Heaven, our Mother.

870. O celestial spirits, O glorified Human Elect, what Heaven you dwell in! For you, the created heavens are suitable but neither sufficient nor necessary. Infinite Heaven is your home par excellence. 244 It is the proper abode of spirits confirmed in the love of God. It is the appropriate abode of human souls made equal to the angels. It is the true home of glorified human bodies living from their souls rather than material elements. Accordingly, you need not keep yourselves within the limits of the universe transformed and flooded with glory. It now is, so to speak, your meeting place. It is like the temple where you celebrate your festivals. Like doves with agile and powerful flight, you will also travel as you wish to all possible regions in the immensity of the divine Heaven. O Heaven without limits! Happy inhabitants of this Heaven go in all directions to your heart’s content; there is no end to it. Go for it! Fly millions of times the equivalent of the universe's diameter: God is always and everywhere the Infinite Ocean of being.

Where would nothingness be? There is no room for it, as its very name proves. There are non-beings opposed to finite reality, but these non-beings are known to God alone, Who calls things that are not, and things that are. 245 They form the infinite world of possibilities embraced at a glance by the divine gaze but eternally offering themselves as indefinite series to the eyes of created spirits and souls.

Ineffably enlarged and strengthened by the light of glory, these spirits and souls contemplate such multitudinous possibilities in varying degrees of perfection and breadth. They see them perhaps better than our mortal eyes see fleeting realities. They see them in the Holy Trinity, and especially in the Word, Who is the expression of God and all things (nos. 794, 799, 800). Their intellectual gazes, immersed in such an intense and shining light, acquire inexpressible power. Since the main object of their vision is

Who is as the Lord our God, who dwells on high and looks down on the low things in heaven and earth? Ps 112:5-6. French translation from Hebrew. Father Lesêtre, translator and commentator of the Psalms, adds: God is infinitely great, therefore the heavens are below Him, Who looks down at them.

244 This is the spiritual Paradise, which is the vision of God. St. Thomas, libr. 3 Dist. 22, art. 4, ad 1 m.

245 Rm 4:17.

243

the divine essence itself, what difficulty can they have to know the possibilities of which God’s essence is the supreme model?

This is why the Infinite Heaven offers their eyes an infinite variety. Once again, what lovely heaven! Yes, thy magnificence, O my God, is high above the heavens. 246 Be exalted above the heavens, O God. 247 Thy glory is above the heavens. 248 The created heavens are great, but thou weighest them on the palm of thy hand. 249 In th immensity, thou hast extended these heavens like nothing. 250 Thy Son, Jesus, also ascended with His humility above all these heavens to fill all things. 251 And we, His members, will be with Him in and above these heavens; for the Heaven par excellence, O my God, is thy infinite greatness, which penetrates and surpasses all things.

CHAPTER TWO QUICK GLANCE AT ALL CREATED HEAVENS AND THEIR INFLUENCES Quod autem ascendit, quid est, nisi quia et descendit primum in inferiores partes terrae? Qui descendit, ipse est et qui ascendit .super omnes coelos, ut impleret omnia.

Now that He ascended, what is it, but because He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended above all the heavens that He might fill all things (Eph 4:9-10).

FIRST MEDITATION

By Its Radiance, the Glorious Humanity of the Word Forms the first Heaven after that of the Divine Persons l. THIS HOLY HUMANITY IS ABOVE ALL HEIGHTS AND CREATED SPIRITS TO FILL ALL THINGS WITH ITS GIFTS Personality does not extend beyond the bounds of that nature from which it has its subsistence. But the Word of God does not have its subsistence from human nature but rather draws that human nature to His own subsistence or personality: it does not subsist through it but in it.

Ps 8:2.

Ps 107:6.

248 Ps 112:4.

249 lsa 40:12.

250 Ibid. 22.

251 Eph 4:10.

246 247

871. After the infinite Heaven of divine immensity, the first Heaven which presents itself to our minds is that of the Word Incarnate. The Word, as we have seen (nos. 782 & ff.), is as immense as the other Persons of the Holy Trinity. But God’s greatness, “infinite in its absolute deployment and sovereignly vast” (no. 741) does not coexist with creatures in all possible places but only in the real universe.

Likewise, the Word, Who is immense, is united to the human nature of Christ according to its obedient power in such a way that its humanity is finite in itself and its radiance. “Personality,” says St. Thomas, “does not extend beyond the bounds of that nature from which it has its subsistence. But the Word of God has not its subsistence from its human nature but rather draws that human nature to its own subsistence or personality: for it does not subsist through it but in it. Because of this, nothing prevents the Word of God from being everywhere, although the human nature taken up by the Word of God is not everywhere.” 252 872. Since by taking on human nature, the Word elevates it to His own personality, Christ’s human nature does not form a person by itself. Hence it might seem that deprived of its natural personality this nature appears somehow diminished. On the contrary, St. Thomas observes, this is an incomparable dignity of the humanity of Christ. “Everything has a nobler being when united to a support worthier if it existed by itself: witness the sensitive soul, whose being is nobler in man than in other animals, although in them it is the main form, and not in man.” 253 The human soul—the only soul that exists in man—simultaneously fulfills the functions of three souls: vegetable, sensitive, and human. It makes man live and eat, smell and walk, think and love. Thus, man is eminently a plant and an animal—a rational animal. Something analogous happens in Christ, although the Word is not the form of His humanity but only the person of Jesus. However, the fact that the humanity of Christ belongs to the Person of the Word and has none other than the Word itself raises this humanity to such a degree of greatness and excellence that God Himself could do nothing better in this kind (no. 31).

873. That is why the humanity of the Word, considered in its total triumph, supreme exaltation and all the breadth of its glorious radiance constitutes the highest, greatest, and most beautiful heaven after the Heaven of divine immensity, as we showed at length in the first volume of this work (nos. 181-319).

The Prince of theologians makes his own these words of St. Paul, giving them a magnificent relief: Christ has ascended above all heavens so that He may fill all things. "The more abundantly certain bodies participate in divine goodness,” says the holy Doctor, “the higher they are placed in the set of material things, which together constitutes a local order. For we see that bodies which are more nobly informed, are naturally superior (to those with less perfect forms). Indeed, it is by its form that each body participates in the divine being. Now, a body participates more abundantly in divine goodness by glory than any natural body participates in it by the form of its nature; and it is manifest that the body of Christ is the most resplendent of all glorious bodies. This is why it is very appropriate that this body be established at a height from which it dominates all other bodies. Hence this comment is added to the words of the Apostle: Having ascended on high, 254 (Christ is on high) locally and according to His dignity.”

Contra Gentiles 1, 4, c. 49 3. Human nature is equal to the person in every man other than Christ. His person is infinite or divine, but His human nature is finite. Libr. 3, Dist. 22, a 2, ad 2m.

253 Ibid. no. 8.

254 Eph 4:8.

252

“It is said that the throne of God is in heaven, not as contained by heaven but rather as penetrating and embracing heaven. From which it follows that we must not admit that any part of heaven is higher than Christ but recognize that Christ is above all heavens, as we read in Psalm 8: Thy magnificence is high above the heavens. ...

“A place is a kind of container, and hence the first container is also the first place (of material things), and this place is the first heaven. But bodies need to be in a place as much as they need to be contained by a celestial body. Glorious bodies, and especially the Body of Christ, do not need to be contained because they receive nothing from the heavenly bodies but everything from God through their soul.

That is why nothing prevents the Body of Christ from being entirely outside containment by heavenly bodies or any place.

“This is not to say, however, that outside heaven there is emptiness, for there is no place or power capable of receiving a body; the power to reach that point is in Christ . . . A glorious body does not owe to its nature that it can be in or above heaven. This faculty comes from the blessed soul from which the body receives glory. A glorious body’s upward movement toward the heights does not hinder the body’s ascent nor its rest (above celestial bodies). That is why nothing prevents this rest from being eternal.” 255 874. St. Thomas uses much the same language in his Summa Contra Gentiles, which contains valuable explanations on several points of particular interest to our subject. He writes: “As a place must be in proportion to what it contains, having acquired the properties of heavenly bodies, the resurrected bodies must have a place in the heavens, or better, above all heavens so they may be with Christ, Whose virtue will lead them to glory. This prompted the Apostle to say of Jesus: He has ascended above all heavens, as He fills all things.

“It is futile, in our view, to claim that the natural condition of elements would stand against this divine promise as if it were impossible for a human body, which is material and occupies a tiny place according to its nature, to rise above lighter elements. For it is manifest that, perfected by its soul, the body does not follow the inclinations of the elements. It is the soul which, by its virtue, contains the body while we live so it does not dissolve facing hostile elements. It is also by the soul’s propelling virtue that the body rises to the heights, and all the higher as that propelling virtue is stronger. But the soul will evidently have reached its maximum virtue when united with God through (intuitive) vision. Therefore, it should not seem difficult to admit that the body is then preserved from all corruption by the virtue of the soul, and that it is raised (by that same virtue) above all other bodies.

“Nor is this divine promise compromised by the impossibility of breaking heavenly bodies (the spheres, no. 3), as it is necessary to make a passage for the glorious bodies so they may rise above the heavens.

Divine virtue will ensure that glorious bodies penetrate all other bodies, as did the Body of Christ by entering, with the doors closed, the room where His disciples were.” 256 875. Is it appropriate for bodies to be placed higher than angelic spirits and for the Body of Christ to be placed even higher than the Seraphim? On this point, let us listen once again to the Angelic Doctor as he explains this magnificent passage from St. Paul: The Father placed Christ at His right hand in heaven,

255 256

3 q. 57 a. 4.

Contra Gentiles 1. 4, c. 87.

above all principality, and power, and virtue, and domination, and every name that is named not only in this world but also in that which is to come. And He has subjected all things under his feet. 257 “The more exalted place is due to the nobler subject, whether it be a place according to bodily contact, as regards bodies, or whether it be by way of spiritual contact, as regards spiritual substances; thus a heavenly place which is the highest of places is becomingly due to spiritual substances since they are highest in the order of substances. But although Christ's body is beneath spiritual substances, if we weigh the conditions of its corporeal nature, nevertheless, it surpasses all spiritual substances in dignity when we call to mind its dignity of union whereby it is united personally with God. Consequently, owing to this very fittingness, a higher place is due to it above every spiritual creature. Hence, St. Gregory says that ‘He who had made all things, was by His own power raised up above all things.’ . . . Although a place is differently attributed to corporeal and spiritual substances, still in either case this remains in common, that the higher place is assigned to the worthier . . . it is due to the body of Christ to be above spiritual creatures.” 258 876. Sitting at the right hand of the Father is particularly appropriate for Christ as God, for He is equal to His Father in everything. But in a sense, it is also suitable for His humanity since it is adorned with the habitual grace which is more abundant in Christ than in all other creatures. Thus, in Christ, human nature itself is happier than in other creatures and enjoys royal and judicial power over all ‘created’ beings . . . Thanks to His incomparable superabundance of perfections, ‘the human nature of Christ enjoys the best goods of God.’ 259 “As God, and clothed (as a man) with the dignity of Lord, He sits on the throne of heaven and poureth on men the divine favors according to these words: ‘He ascended above all the heavens, that He filled all things ... with His gifts.’ 260 He not only ascended above all bodily heavens but also all spiritual creatures.” 261 877. From this abundant and splendid teaching of St. Thomas, and from what we said above on the celestial Eucharist (nos. 310-319), emerge in rays of light the broad outline of the highest heaven, which is that of Christ, Mary, St. Joseph, and the other leading angelic and human Blessed.

The Body of Christ is above all heavens and all created spirits so that Christ may fill all things with His gifts. He is not at the top of a pyramid from which He towers over all beings. He is at the top above all heavens that surround the entire universe. For around our globe, there are heavens in every direction, and Christ is above them all. The angelic spirits dominate and occupy the entire universe. Still, the humanity of the Word is higher than all these spirits, even locally, and it fills all things with its beneficent influences. It embraces the universe as the Eucharistic Christ embraces our earth (nos. 313, 314), but with a splendor entirely freed from all mystery and at its highest degree of intensity and expansion.

Such will be the supreme heaven after the resurrection of the dead and the renewal of the universe. At that moment, everything in the most sublime heights is relatively complete. At the end of time, the heaven of Christ, Mary and Joseph will not be essentially improved, but its radiance and influences will work downward unceasingly to form the Elect and lay the foundations of the lower heavens’ future Eph 1:20-22.

3, q. 57, a. 5.

259 3, q. 58, a. 3.

260 3, q. 57, a. 6.

261 Comment. in Epist. ad Ephes., chap. 4, v. 10.

257 258

glorification. The kingdom of Christ becomes increasingly worthier of its King until all mystical members of the Savior Jesus are finally in glory and the universe—the material heavenly Jerusalem—also receive its last complement, sovereign perfection, and eternal and universal consecration in glory.

878. “The throne of God is in heaven, not as contained by it but rather as entering and embracing heaven.” This throne of God is mainly the humanity of Christ with its radiance (nos. 243 & ff.). O the happiness of all creatures! The heaven of Christ is their vital atmosphere. What will be their final fate? It will be that of Christ according to the capacity of each thing. How true it is that all things are predestined in Christ (nos. 288 and above)! God, who saw all finite realities eternally and with the same glance (no.

281), contemplated the heaven of Christ together with all things before calling anything into existence; and it is out of love for this heaven that He gave being to the other heavens and what they contain.

God created heaven and earth, 262 the Empyrean and Chaos according to this first Principle decreed in the beginning of His divine ways. 263 He made the Empyrean with its angels and with time (no. 416); then Chaos, with its destinies, which included Christ under the vivifying action of the Holy Spirit, our heavens, and our humanity, as far as bodies are concerned. In Christ, everything was created in the heavens and on earth, visible and the invisible, Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, Powers. All were created by Him and in Him; 264 He is before all, and everything remains in Him. He is the head of the body of the Church; He is the Beginning. 265 When the Jews asked Him, Who are you? Jesus answered: The beginning, who also speak unto you. 266 O admirable and lovable beginning! The being, life, happiness, and glory of all things are the effects of thy divine-human radiance. Thy radiance comes from above all heavens to fill all creatures with its gifts and forms an atmosphere, a heaven that penetrates and encompasses the lower heavens, or better all other heavens.

II. THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST’S GLORIOUS HUMANITY SOMEHOW EXTENDS TO ALL TIMES AND PLACES 879. If an earthly king is not everywhere in the whole extent of his kingdom, says St. Thomas, it is because his substance is circumscribed. God, being uncircumscribed, is everywhere. And even if He was everywhere, He would rule all things by His providence. Thus, insofar as it is limited (and restricted), a king’s presence is a defect. But it is rendered effectual by the fact that he exercises his government even where he is absent. As for God, these two things are accurate to the same degree: He is everywhere and governs all things.” 267 On this point, what to say of Christ considered as man and king of the universe? Do we find in Him the defect inherent to any earthly king? Would even the glorified Christ have this imperfection? We think not. True, His body is not everywhere in the universe and is circumscribed. However, it is not circumscribed by other bodies, heavens, or spaces but only by His soul. “Glorious bodies, especially the Body of Christ, do not need to be contained by other bodies because they receive nothing from heavenly bodies but everything from God through their soul . . . Why should it seem difficult to admit Gen 1:1.

Prov 8:22.

264 Col 1:16.

265 Ibid. 17:18.

266 Jn 8:25.

267 Quodlib. XI, q. 1, a. 1, ad 4m.

262 263

that the body (after the glorious resurrection) is preserved from all corruption and raised above all other bodies by virtue of the soul?” The reason is that “when united to God by the [intuitive] vision, the soul will have reached its maximum virtue.”

880. What influence does Our Lord’s soul exert on His glorified body above all heavens? Does Christ act defectively like earthly kings who are absent from all points of their kingdom except for one, where their body is, if “Christ’s human nature is happier than other creatures’, enjoys royal and judicial power over all created beings, and pours out from above all heavens and spiritual creatures an ocean of divine favors over all things finite and fills all things with His gifts? Again, we do not think so. “It is quite certain,” we repeat with Cardinal Franzelin (n. 316), that according to Revelation, the organic body of Christ with all its parts, the same body that is in heaven, really exists in the Eucharist in a non-extensive way. This allows His body to be simultaneously present in heaven and an infinity of places on earth, even very distant from each other.

It seems evident that surrounded by all the brilliance of His glory in heaven, Our Lord’s Body does what He mysteriously operates in the Eucharist in a more perfect, more extensive, more apparent and marvelous manner. Paradise is the supreme perfection of all things to the point that the Church Militant, with its mysteries, institutions, and organization, is only a beginning, preparation, and image of it. Thus, if Our Lord’s Body is present throughout His Church Militant, which embraces the entire earth, we believe that unhindered in its glorious radiance, His divine body is present throughout the Church Triumphant however large she may be. Distances are nothing to what exists in a non-extensive way.

881. Further, Cardinal Franzelin writes (no. 318): “By multiplying a body’s relations, God can make it indefinitely present to an ever-increasing number of beings, and strictly speaking, make it present to all things that exist and those that will exist when they come into existence. Just as nature requires the soul to be present in all parts of the body quickened by it, so divine mercy has willed that, in the supernatural order of grace, the life-giving body of Christ be present as a principle of life in His entire Mystical Body, which is the Church. This does not happen in the same way as a soul is present in a body, but according to a special institution.”

As we have seen (no. 31), united to the Word, the humanity of Christ is the first of the three divine masterpieces in which power, wisdom, liberality, and other attributes of the Supreme Being have exhausted their infinite virtue. If absolutely speaking, God can make the body of Christ present to all things that actually exist and those that will exist when they do, we can be sure that He does so in the Empyrean, His Son’s glorious kingdom, and will do so when the whole universe is transformed by the light of glory. He does not allow the Word’s unique royal humanity, whose empire is universal, to have the defect of earthly kings present only in one point of their kingdom.

Nor is it admissible that the Church Militant would be somehow more fortunate than the Church Triumphant or that the Eucharistic remembrance of Our Lord’s death, a perpetual lesson of humility, patience and obedience, would have something more wonderful than the supreme and glorious crowning of all these virtues and Christ’s love for His members!

882. Note, however, that the presence of the Man-God throughout the Empyrean and the glorified universe does not at all mean that His divine body is present in all creatures. These two ideas are very different. The sun is simultaneously present to an entire hemisphere without being on earth. If millions of globes similar to our planet formed a spherical crown all around the sun from the same distance that

separates our earth from the sun; the latter would still be present to all these globes without being there and therefore without being everywhere in that region. Consequently, the non-ubiquity of the Body of Our Lord is not contrary to our thesis.

If on Mount Tabor the face of Jesus shines like the sun, 268 a soft yet glorious radiance that emanated from our Redeemer’s suffering humanity, what to think or to say of the luminous ocean that it projects from above all heavens? So much light evidently fills all things. From the moment the Empyrean is complete and the universe transformed, this radiance must become so intense and powerful that our Savior’s body, even if occupying a single place, would be present to all finite beings and effect an indefinite multiplication of its real presence.

883. After all, what are the renewal of the material universe and the glorification of the righteous’ bodies if not a participation in the state and splendor of the Body of the Man-God? “It behooved all things appertaining to glory, whether they regard the soul, as the perfect fruition of God, or whether they regard the body, as the glorious resurrection, to be first in Christ as the author of glory.” 269 On this point, there is no doubt concerning the glorification of human bodies and the final renovation of the universe. As for the glorification of the angels and the Empyrean, which preceded the actual advent of the Messias, we hope to demonstrate later (1st meditation of the 4th book of this work, II vol.) that it only took place by an anticipated radiance, a brilliant dawn of the merits and glory of the Man-God. “What is first in any genre is the cause of everything that comes later in the same genre.” 270 Since the resurrection of the Body of Christ, personally united to the Word, is the first to have happened in time, it is likewise the first in dignity and perfection. Now, it is always true that what is perfect is the model of what is less perfect and imitates the perfect in its own way. That is why the Resurrection of Christ is the exemplary cause of our resurrection. Christ's Resurrection the efficient cause of ours through the Divine power, whose office it is to quicken the dead; and by its presence, this power is in touch with all places and times.” 271 “The principle of human quickening is the Word of God, of which it is said: In thee is the source of life. 272 This is why Our Lord says: As the Father awakens the dead and gives them life, so the Son gives life to those whom He wills.” 273 Now, it is proper to the divinely instituted natural order of things that every cause operates first on what is closest to it and, then, through that, on what is more distant. Just as fire first heats the neighboring air, by which it heats bodies from a distance, so God first illuminates the substances closest to Him, and through them those that are more distant. This is why the Word of God first gives immortal life to the body naturally united to it, and through this body, He brings about the resurrection in all others.” 274 884. We thus think that all glorification—of the angels, the Empyrean, human souls and bodies, and the universe at the end of time—is somehow due, though in different ways, to the glory of the soul and body of the Man-God; in other words, to the splendors projected by the heaven of the Incarnate Word.

Mt 17:2.

St. Thomas, 3 q. 53, a.3, ad 3m.

270 3. q. 56, a. 1.

271 Ibid., ad 3m.

272 Ps 35:10.

273 Jn 5:21.

274 Ibid., in corp.

268 269

The glorification of the Empyrean is only a reflection of that of the angels, which is due to the Author of glory Who, after God, is none other than Christ as a man. This is not surprising since by revelation, the angels knew the divine mysteries, particularly those of grace, and consequently those of glory (nos. 642, 644), much more perfectly than our prophets and us. St. Thomas writes: “It behooved all things appertaining to glory, whether they regard the soul ... or whether they regard the body ... to be first in Christ as the author of glory.” Either in Christ already come and glorified or supernaturally known as having the primacy of glory in soul and body, thus fulfilling the role of exemplary cause, and even, in a sense, of efficient cause after God. Thus, He is absolutely the first in the genre of the glorification of souls and bodies, and is, as such, “the cause of all that comes after in the same genre.”

885. The fact that “the resurrection of the body of Christ ... is the first one in dignity and perfection because this body is personally united with the Word confirms this statement. By the way, it is always true that what is most perfect is the model of what is less perfect, which only imitates the perfect as best it can.” Divine virtue, which glorifies created spirits and bodies by the resurrection of Christ, reaches by its presence all places and times, always by Christ, in Whom all was predestined (nos. 287 & 288). The divinely instituted order requires that the most perfect divine influences be exercised on that which is nobler after God, on the humanity of the Man-God, and, then, by this humanity, on others.

886. O, beloved Christ! I greet thee with enthusiasm as having been planned before the foundation of the world, slain from the beginning of the world (no. 677), the firstborn of creatures, the One in Whom all was created, Who is before all, the first in all, in Whom rests all fullness (no. 683), the first in grace, and the first in glory (no. 684). It is in thy heaven, the greatest and most delightful after that of divine immensity, that all beings are born, travel and reach their end. It is in thy heaven that the holy angels triumphed and were glorified. It is in thy heaven that the Empyrean is clothed with glory. From thy heaven were the rebellious spirits cast, and as thou fillest all things with thy gifts, they must have been imprisoned in the center of chaos, where thy justice predominates.

It is in thy heaven that the lower heavens were deployed and travel to assimilate it and participate in its glory. It is thanks to the influences of thy heaven that the bodies of the Blessed can be with thy holy humanity above all material heavens and rule over them without depending on them at all.

Yet these heavens are divided into various abodes in which thy angels and Saints dwell as they please, for all matter is made to serve them during the trial and to recreate them in glory. But, oh marvel! Thy body, Lord Jesus, above all heavens thanks to its personal union with the Word, hovers with its radiance above all created spirits, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones and all angelic hosts, and fills all things with its divine-human splendors. O angels, it is through humanity that you are happy! Come, o humans, come with purity, faith, and enthusiasm to receive the bread of angels, the living bread which came down from heaven so that it transforms you and ultimately raises you with it above all heavens.

SECOND MEDITATION A Synthetic Glance on Mary’s Heaven and Those of the Leading Blessed 1. THESE HEAVENS CONSIDERED MAINLY FROM THE DOCTRINE OF ST. THOMAS

887. Let us now consider, according to the same principles, the Heaven of the Mother of God and the leading Elect. As living members of Christ and part of His kingdom, they are enclosed in His Mystical Body and participate in His condition and glories in varying degrees of perfection.

“Their glorious bodies do not need to be contained by other bodies because they receive nothing from heavenly bodies but everything from God through their souls ... Since souls will have attained their maximum virtue thanks to their union with God thtr [beatific] vision, it is easy to admit they will preserve their bodies from all corruption and raise them above all other bodies” (no. 879) “so that they may be with Christ” (no. 874). See how nobly they will reign over all matter! They will not need matter at all. They will not follow the inclinations of the elements (no. 874) or subject to any material attraction. Their glorified souls will sustain, direct and enlighten them, making them subtle, agile, and incorruptible. This is why the Empyrean does not need a surface to support the bodies of the Elect.

It is a colossal cube (nos. 153 & ff.) formed of celestial bodies very artistically arranged and placed at a distance from each other. It is like a marvelous set of superb islands shining with all material beauties in the great ocean of ether. In this glorified world, the bodies of the Blessed, especially those of Mary, Joseph, the Apostles, Martyrs and other great Saints are like living stars, shining at the same time with a light of their own and a light borrowed from the most extraordinary created sun, which is the humanity of the Word. These animated stars, surrounded by clarity, impassive, subtle and agile, will not be fixed as material masses but enjoy absolute freedom to go, come or be at rest. The righteous will shine like a sun in the kingdom of their Father. 275 Those who had true science will shine like the fires of the firmament. Those who have taught justice to a large number of people will shine like stars in all eternities. 276 They will be the faithful, living images of Him whose face shone like the sun on Tabor, 277 but their shine, in the full radiance of their glory above all heavens, defies any imaginable comparison.

How admirable you will be, o wonderful stars! 278 How you will hover above the ether and all material worlds! How beautiful it will be to watch your always harmonious movements! You can penetrate the universe in all directions, descend or ascend at will, emit or veil your light as you wish, offer your presence, or hide it from those inferior to you. You will only undergo the attractions of souls and spirits, and spirits will only experience divine attractions. But through your souls, you will project beneficent influences on what is below you. You will beautify your habitual abodes, which will reflect the beauties of your souls, and such will be, in part, the usefulness of glorified inorganic matter.

888. Angels have often appeared to mortals in sensible forms by taking accidental bodies. They will also do so in the renewed universe to charm the bodily gazes of Blessed humans and satisfy their Mt 13:43.

Dan 12:3. French translation after Martini.

277 Mt 17:2.

278 Let us listen to St. John Chrysostom comparing the Apostles to stars: “Quae sunt tales stellae sicut Apostoli?

Stellae in coelo, Apostoli super coelos”(Meditate on the supercelestial glories of the Apostles). “Quae sursum sunt, inquit Apostolus, sapite, ubi Christus est in dextera Patris sedens. Stellae de igne insensibili, Apostoli de igne intelligibili. Stellae in nocte lucent, in die obscurantur : Apostoli, in die et in nocte sui radiis, hoc est virtutibus, effulgent. Stellae sole obscurantur : Apostoli, Sole justitiae resplendente, sua claritate lucescunt. Stellae in resurrectione cadunt sicut folia : Apostoli in resurrectione rapientur in aera nubibus. Et in illis quidem sideribus alius Antifer, alius Lucifer appellatur : In Apostolis autem nullus Antifer est, omnes Luciferi: ideo stellis majores Apostoli. Et quicumque eos luminaria vocaverit mundi, non peccabit, non solum dum essent in corpore, sed etiam magis nunc quando de vita migrarunt” (Homily 1 de Pentecost., sub fin. Tom. 3).

275 276

imagination and secondary faculties. What ineffable variety will shine everywhere in the blissful place of glory! The Elect angels and men will not depend on the matter. Still, they will reign fully over it and use it as they see fit for their accidental happiness and make the various attributes of the Supreme Being shine in their bodily eyes. Before the renovation of the world, many of these wonders are only partially done.

889. “The more abundantly certain bodies participate in divine goodness, the higher they are placed in the ensemble of material things, which constitutes a local order ... It is manifest that the body of Christ is the most resplendent of all glorious bodies. That is why it is very appropriate that it be at a height from which it dominates all other bodies”(no. 873). Let us apply the same principle to the bodies of Mary, Joseph, the Holy Apostles, martyrs, great pontiffs, great doctors and all saints. Human bodies participate abundantly in divine goodness through the perfections of their souls. The more grace and divine love have elevated these souls, the higher these souls will raise their bodies “in the ensemble of material things, which is a local order.” Thus, “if it is manifest that the body of Christ is the most resplendent of all the glorious bodies, and that it towers above all other bodies,” it is also well known that after the body of Jesus, Mary’s is the highest placed, most luminous, and most powerful of bodies, the radiance of which is vastest and most beneficent, as befits the great glorified soul of the Mother of God. The body of the Queen of heaven, earth, and all creatures, free as much as possible from a limited presence like that of mortal kings in their kingdom, must somehow appear everywhere by its radiance. See also what we wrote above on this point (nos. 186, 187, 192, etc.).

890. Just as the body of Christ is raised above all angelic spirits because of its dignity as personally united to the Word, Mary’s body shines above all angelic choirs because of Her dignity as the Mother of God, in whose body the body of Christ was formed (no. 875). “As it is common for worthier bodies and spirits to be given a higher place . . . it is due to the body of Christ . . . to be above spiritual creatures” (Ibid.)—a new proof that perfection, beauty, power and glory increase as one approaches the upper limits of the universe; and that hell, the height of evil, is at the very center of things (nos. 405 & ff.) Since these human bodies hover above all angelic spirits, how eminent and glorious position bodies can reach!

The supreme atmosphere of the created universe is not formed by pure spirits but by souls substantially united to bodies, supernaturally perfected more than the Seraphim, and radiating even sensibly through their bodies. Such is the finished heaven the sublime Author of predestination saw from the beginning of His works before creating anything, 279 for everything is simultaneously and eternally present in His eyes, and for Him, there is neither past nor future. He does prefer what most resembles Him, and that is the primacy we are addressing here (nos. 281 & ff.). It is, therefore, the heaven of Jesus glorified and His elected members; it is the heaven of Mary and her faithful children, angelic and human. In short, it is the mixed heaven of humanity considered in Christ and His divine Mother, the heaven which God willed more than all the rest, and for which and because of which He willed the other heavens and all lower beings.

In the humanity of the Word and the Mother of God are found united the communicated supernatural, the finite spirit, and finite matter at their highest degree of perfection. Thus, as it were, they virtually contain the whole universe. In decreeing their existence, the Almighty also decreed their retinue and empire. This is why the model idea of creation is the idea of humanity enhanced by the supernatural. 280 Prov 8:22.

Compared to human nature, angelic nature is superior. But if we compare human nature elevated to hypostatic union in Christ and to divine motherhood in Mary, to angelic nature adorned with grace, this latter is but a weak 279 280

God created the angels by isolating them from the notion of matter contained in the idea of the human being. He formed them with relationships that accidentally unite them to the bodily creature (no. 552) because their finite exemplary cause was humanity, in which soul and body are substantially united. He gave them the material Empyrean for sojourning because He made matter eyeing especially mixed creatures, in which the models of angels were found.

891. O Heaven of Christ! O Heaven of Mary! No wonder you embrace all Angelic Heaven. Nowhere is shared divinity so intense, powerful and wondrous as in you. And since “it is common for worthier bodies and spirits to be given a higher place,” you form the pinnacle of the created heavens to fill all things with your life-giving influences. It is a property of all heavens to influence what they contain in their bosom by penetrating, modifying, and moving it in any way. Your luminous atmosphere is so abundant and expansive that it easily penetrates all creatures—a physical expression that everything has been predestined in you (nos. 280 & ff.). In other words, you are the temples of the Empyrean (nos.

209 & ff.) and the thrones of God (nos. 241 & ff.).

We mortals may find it astonishing that the radiance of two human bodies can be proportional to the extent of the universe. That may happen if we look at things from a natural viewpoint or a from a nonglorified supernatural one, ignoring the ineffable excellences of the body personally united to the Word and the body of the Mother of God, the glorious Queen of creatures.

Moreover, as we have seen (no. 67), the clarity that shines in the Empyrean is admittedly the light of glory, which also gives inorganic bodies their supreme perfection. This ideal created light of a higher order has a power of radiation vigorous enough to invade the whole world. How many things would we see if the ether were suddenly and universally illuminated! How far our gaze would extend if our bodies were transfigured by resurrection! Would brute matter and distances be insurmountable obstacles as they now are? What difficulties would there be if the luminous foci are the Incarnate Word and the Mother of God at the height of their glory?

Furthermore, contrary to lower matter, resurrected bodies exist in a non-extensive way like the body of Eucharistic Jesus: surget corpus spiritale. Who could oppose our considerations? Christ ascended above all heavens to fill all things, and, secondarily, Mary does everything that her divine Son’s humanity does.

Finally, when we think that the whole universe will be glorified (n. 89) with the sole exception of its central parts and that divinity will clearly shine in its bodily effects (Ibid.), we must stop reasoning according to the natural laws that govern the world and adopt a supernatural physics.

892. “We say that the throne of God is in heaven, not as contained by heaven but rather as penetrating and encompassing heaven.” Hence one must not admit that any part of heaven is higher than Christ but acknowledge that Christ is above all heavens”(no. 873). With these words, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that, as a glorified man, Christ is God’s throne to such an extent that He encompasses and penetrates all heavens: Sedes Dei (Christus) dicitur esse in coelo, non sicut in continente, sed magis sicut in contento.

He is both above and in all heavens: Super omnes coelos et in contento, to fill all things with His gifts.

After the humanity of her Son, the glorious Virgin is the first throne of God (nos. 244-246; 259-264). Her imitation of the former. Finally, if we consider angels and men as children of God, both are equal. We can say that their excellences correspond to each other at every degree. But since all nature is made for the supernatural, which is of a higher order, the models of beings are those in whom the supernatural is most abundant. And they are all the more perfect as they participate more in the divine. See no. 459 with notes.

splendors form the first heaven after that of Jesus or, mingling with His divine-human splendors, constitute the highest created heaven (no. 244}. Remarkably, at the same time that both envelop all the lower creation, they also influence and penetrate it entirely, distributing good according to the capacity of each thing.

893. O Mary, I understand better and better that you are the first and greatest living temple in the Empyrean after your divine Son (nos. 232-239). As it were, all the Elect and glorified matter swim deliciously in your incomparable splendor. Just as nature seldom offers us the spectacle of a single rainbow but usually two, one interior and the other exterior, so also, O glorious Queen of all creatures, I imagine your celestial radiance like an interior rainbow next to that of Jesus, which enlightens all your children and encompasses your whole empire (nos. 259-264; 272; 275). It is through your rainbow that the eyes of Christ, whose rainbow is higher and more extensive than yours, shine in the eyes of the Blessed. Even in heaven, you somehow bring forth Christ to angels, men, and all finite beings. Your Son humanizes the divine splendors, as it were, and you give them a maternal touch, providing the Elect with perfect knowledge of lower creatures and endowing their glorified senses, as well as the aptitudes of other beings, with a divine capacity. O Mary, it is not in vain that you are the Mother of grace, glory, and all good things (nos. 240 and above).

894. Following the same reasoning, it is easy to apply to Mary all the passages of St. Thomas cited in the preceding meditation while recognizing that the Virgin has by privilege and secondarily what Christ has by nature to the highest degree of perfection. While the Mother of God’s glorious radiance is inferior to that of Jesus’s humanity, it is universally superior to the radiance of angels, the human Elect, the Empyrean, and all lower things. It is so admirable that only the Son of God and the excellent Virgin can understand it perfectly (nos. 42-45; 72-: 75).

895. As for St. Joseph, the Seraphim and the Apostles, the Cherubim and the great Doctors, the angelic Thrones and the martyrs, their heavens are all the more illuminated, larger and comprehensive as they are higher in glory and draw closer to Mary’s heaven. After that of his most holy Spouse, St. Joseph’s radiance is incomparable (n.460).

Then come the heavens of angelic and human seraphic choirs, cherubic choirs, and others in descending progression, for the bodily creature will ultimately receive an appropriate disposition according to the state of man, as St. Thomas says. 281 Once men are delivered from corruption and glorified . . . it will be necessary for bodily creatures to be glorified in their own way 282 so they will perfectly serve the Blessed in all that materially concerns their accidental happiness and the sensible relief imparted to their various degrees of glory.

That is why the varied splendors that will shine above all heavens will penetrate their interior and descend from region to region, illuminating each being’s capacity, successively attenuating the divine to make it accessible to all and, as it were, allowing crude justice to arrive only in the central parts where sin and moral chaos have been dumped with the remnants of material chaos. All things are ministers of God in the creation and will be excellently so in glory (nos. 443-447). The flames of hell and the damned play a similar role as executors of divine vengeance. In this magnificent and immense ‘republic’ of all

281 282

Contra Gentiles l. IV, c: 9.7, in fine.

Ibid.

created beings, the Supreme Emperor arranges everything according to ineffable justice relative to rewards and punishments, graces and retributions (St. Augustine, nos. 340, 341).

896. The Son of Man told us with His divine mouth: After the judgment, the righteous will shine like a sun in the kingdom of their Father (no. 887). Each righteous will be a kind of Empyrean sun with greater or lesser brilliance according to his degree of glory: “In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul says: “[the body] is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in glory.” 283 That refers to the clarity of resurrected bodies, as one can see in the previous verses by the Apostle, where He compares the glory of resurrected bodies to the light of the stars.” 284 One thing is the clarity of the sun, says St. Paul in the same place, another the clarity of the moon, and still another the clarity of the stars. Even stars differ from one another in clarity. So does the resurrection of the dead 285 -- a wonderful comment on the Savior’s words.

Baptized children, who die before they have been able to cooperate with grace, will shine like a moon, so to speak, with borrowed light. They will borrow their clarity from the great sun which is Christ, and from the other suns whose rays will form a kind of heavenly communion of saints. But righteous adults, who by their free cooperation with grace assimilated the merits of Jesus Christ, making only one vital principle of supernatural operation will be as suns shining with their own lights. Thus, the Apostle compares them to stars which are nothing but suns, noting that a star differs from another in clarity, and such will be the resurrection of the dead.

897. The set of Blessed will thus be like a set of suns of various sizes spread orderly in the Empyrean.

They will be alive, free, agile, subtle, impassive, forming immense animated heaven above the material heavens and illuminating the latter to the neighboring regions of the center. Their splendors will be visible like those of our sun: “The the light of glory, as to its cause, will be of a different kind from the light of nature, but not as to its species. Hence it follows that just as natural light is naturally proportional to one’s sight, so will the light of glory, 286 which will be visible even to non-glorified eyes.” 287 The natural light of the sun and stars is caused by the creative will, but the light of resurrected human bodies will be caused by their glorious souls. This is why the stars’ natural splendor generally differs as to its cause from the light of renewed bodies. But both lights as such are identical. Also, “the light of a glorious body can be seen naturally by a non-glorious eye.” 288 So it illuminates the material heavens and the worlds as the suns currently scattered in space. If there is a difference between the lights of the suns in our visible skies and the animated suns of the Empyrean, this difference is all in favor of the latter: “Although the light of the glorious body surpasses that of the sun, it does not inconvenience the eye by its nature but charms it; hence this light is likened to that of jasper (Apoc. 21:11), the colors of which are varied and pleasant to the eye. 289 898. The Angel of the School says that the splendor of the righteous’ resurrected bodies surpasses that of the sun. Therefore, we were right to consider the Blessed as bright stars whose powerful irradiations 1 Cor 15:43.

St. Thomas, Summa Th., p. 3, Supplem., q. 85, a. 1, Sed contra.

285 Ibid., 41, 42.

286 Ibid., Art. 2, ad 1m.

287 Ibid., Sed contra.

288 Ibid., in corp.

289 Ibid, ad 2m.

283 284

will embrace and penetrate the universe (n. 887). But these living suns will be very different from each other in size and brightness. Each one’s luminous atmosphere will be a sensitive demonstration of his soul’s spiritual glory. Let us listen again to the Prince of theologians: “This (exterior) light will be produced by the soul’s superabundant glory, blossoming from the body. For that which something receives is not received according to the mode of what gives, but according to the mode of what receives. That is why light, which is spiritual in the soul, is received as bodily in the body. Also, depending on whether the soul will have greater clarity because of higher merit, we will see the same difference in clarity in the body, as the Apostle tells us. 290 And so seeing a glorious body, one will know the glory of the soul like one sees in a glass the color of the body it contains, as St. Gregory says.

Glorious bodies will be at the same time transparent and luminous . . . The density of a glorious body does not deprive it of its transparency.” 291 899. Higher lights will thus be visible through lower ones. Visible from all lower regions, except the central ones, will be Christ’s humanity, the supreme created Sun, Mary, the most fabulous sun after that of Jesus, Joseph, the greatest sun after that of his spouse, then seraphic suns, cherubic suns, and others in order of perfection and nobility. All these lights received by the glorified bodies will shine from souls and other happy spirits and spread over the universe. The various degrees of spiritual glory will be as it were ‘incarnated’ above and in the heavens after the model of the Incarnate Word, the exemplary cause of all things. Just as the Incarnation took place in the womb of divine Mary, so all spiritual glories of the various choirs of saints will be made sensible to human bodies in the heaven of the sublime Virgin, who will again appear universally not only as Mother of God (n. 893), but also as the Mother of the glorified beings of the Elect (no. 140).

In the Empyrean, the radiance of the supreme creature [Our Lady], which on earth is small and mystical, will be grand and manifest. One of her properties will be universality. If “the clarity of a glorified body surpasses that of the sun” no matter whose body it may be, even that of the last of saints, then the great Virginal Sun will shine in proportion to the ineffably great soul of the Mother of God and Queen of all creatures. As St. Thomas tells us, the light of the body should be a faithful and visible expression of that of the soul. Now then, no Blessed soul inferior to the Virgin will be able to understand all the excellence of Mary’s glorified soul (no. 72). The Mother of God’s radiance will invade not only the whole universe but go beyond it in such a way that the Seraphim themselves cannot fully understand it.

Since one will see in a glorious body the glory of the soul as one sees through a glass the color of the body it contains, and since, although very visible and very known, the glory of Mary’s soul will exceed by its brilliance the capacity of angels and glorified men, we must admit that all created heavens will be small compared to that of the Queen of the universe; and that its power, beauty, grace, extension and shining sweetness in the finished heavens will be incomparable (nos. 73-75; 174, 175; 187-190; 200, etc.).

II. The Same Heavens Considered from Other Data 900. The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father, and even more than the sun, as we have seen. 292 What will be the splendor of your sun, O Mary? Those who had knowledge will shine 1Cor 15:41.

Locus cit., A. 1.

292 Mt 13:43.

290 291

like fires in the firmament, and those who taught justice to a large number will shine like stars in all eternities. 293 However, O Mary, your luminous hearth will eclipse all fires of the firmament (no. 72), and the brightest stars will be very modest in the great day of your light. Then the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days: in the day when the Lord shall bind up the wound of His people, and shall heal the stroke of their wound. 294 As per the general observations expounded above (nos. 113-117), these words describe both the Gospel times and the glory of Heaven. The wound of the people of God will not be perfectly healed until the Last Judgment. This is why the prophet especially looks up to the completed and glorified Empyrean.

Mary will be its moon, having become shining like the sun. From our vantage point, the moon is brighter than all the stars together. Likewise, the Virgin alone will have more radiance than all the Blessed because she will reflect the light of the Incarnate Word. Even more, she will be as sunlight and moonlight simultaneously: Incomparable sun for all creatures of which she is the Queen; a moon vis-avis the sun of Christ; a sun by the excellence of her glory fully proportional to her greatness; a moon in that her heaven will temper the brightness of Christ's heaven and make it accessible to the eyes of all Blessed. In short, she will be clothed with the sun, “amicta sole” (no. 187).

The ocean of the splendors of Christ’s heaven spreads around her heaven, and Mary’s interior rainbow transmits them to the eyes of the Elect. This maternal office is eminently suited to the Mother of all creatures, who is such because, by giving Christ to the world, she has given it all goods and because she is eternally the Mother of God. “I will not suffer my truth to fail.

Neither will I profane my covenant, and the words that proceed from my mouth I will not make void.

Once have I sworn by my holiness: I will not lie unto David: His seed shall endure forever.

And his throne as the sun before me: and as the moon perfect forever, and a faithful witness in heaven. 295 To us, all the meanings that interpreters find in this passage seem true to varying degrees of perfection according to the principles set out in numbers 69 & ff., 113-117.

The divine plan is irreformable. Since everything was predestined in Christ, Who is the son of David according to the flesh, and in Mary, who is of the same descent (nos. 280 & ff.), the Most High changes nothing of what His lips have uttered. Holiness cannot lie. This is why the race of David, understood Dan 12:3.

Isa 30:26.

295 Ps 88:35-38.

293 294

religiously as the Messiah and His mystical members, Mary and her children will remain eternally. It will be like a Church Militant prefigured or accomplished for the duration of time; then it will be as a Church Triumphant for all eternities, as every part of this Church will be eternal.

The same happens with the solar throne of Christ and the throne of Mary. Together they render a very faithful and celestial testimony to the Creator’s supernatural covenant with His creature, and notably to the Supreme Father’s covenant with His children. Christ’s heaven has always been and will always be before God the most resplendent after the divinity. Before God, Mary’s heaven has always been and will be the most brilliant light after the sun of Christ. The Almighty drew both heavens out of nothing and measured all other heavens after them, which He always saw as the most excellent ones. He also made all things gravitate toward them.

O happy David, whose offspring motivated all beings and all ages and set the tone for all works and blessings of the Creator! In these heavens eternally present to the divine gaze, the Empyrean was created with its spiritual inhabitants (no. 886). Grace, faith, hope, and charity abounded there through the anticipated influences of Christ and Mary (nos. 671 & ff.). The first humans were created and placed in that same atmosphere (ibid. & elsewhere). When doing anything in heaven and on earth, the Lord, whose purpose is immutable, always seemed to say: “I will not suffer my truth to fail.

Neither will I profane my covenant.

The words that proceed from my mouth I will not make void.

Once have I sworn by my holiness, I will not lie unto David: His seed shall endure forever.”

902. How could God break His word to David, whom he raised Himself because of the Messias and His holy Mother, the Church Militant of the New Covenant, and above all the Church Triumphant? Not to support the throne of the son of Jesse would be to modify the whole divine plan regarding the Lord’s covenant with mortals, angelic spirits, the Blessed, and through them with all creatures. That will not happen. His throne will remain before God like the sun. God will always contemplate the heaven of Christ's humanity, which is the throne of His glorious soul (no. 243) as the created splendor par excellence. Mary’s heaven, which serves as a throne for His humanity, the heavens of the Elect, the Empyrean and the glorified universe will owe their beauty, brilliance, perfection, and eternal duration to Him that is ascended above all heavens to fill all things with His gifts.

That is why this throne will be like an unfailing and always full moon, for everything there will shine with constant and perpetual radiance from Christ. But it is Mary who first receives them and composes her rainbow. She is the rainbow placed in the clouds of heaven as the sign of an alliance between Heaven and earth. 296 It is somehow placed in the clouds because its most sublime heights exceed the visual 296

St. Albert the Great, Bibl. Mar., sup. libr. Eccli.

capacity of all creatures. In it, the divine marries nature in such an excellent way that it will always be a sort of mystery for the Blessed. This marriage will remain forever in the heaven of the Incarnate Word as a faithful testimony to God’s glorious covenant with His children and Church, also material, through Christ and His divine Mother. 297 903. Mary “is a spiritual moon,” says Denis the Carthusian. For just like the moon delights, adorns and illuminates our earth with its light, so too the Blessed Virgin, shining in the region of the living, in the land of immortals, makes all souls rejoice, spreads her brilliant rays throughout the Empyrean, embellishes the supra-worldly Paradise, draws all intelligences to the contemplation of her beauty, charms them ineffably with her suavity and fragrant sweetness, and finally makes them all shine with love by the kindness of her goodness.” 298 Mary, a “spiritual moon,” illuminates the entire intelligent Empyrean with her abundant lights. In the bosom of her splendors, she contains the whole mystical Christ (nos. 174, 189 etc.). With her glory, she illuminates all citizens of heaven (nos. 73-75; 198, 200). As the Prince of Scholasticism tells us (no. 898), a soul’s spiritual radiance in the Empyrean will faithfully reproduce by a bodily and sensible radiance fully proportional to the power of its spiritual radiance: “We will see the same light difference in [glorified] bodies.” It remains for me to conclude, O Mother of God, that your beatifying splendors will form an atmosphere in which all glorified beings will be deliciously installed. This is what I call your heaven. And your worthy husband, St. Joseph, will have a heaven similar to yours: another moon full of luminous influences from above, a celestial and faithful testimony to God’s glorious alliance with His Church Triumphant.

Your happy children, angels and blessed humans will form other heavens in the image of the former according to their diverse degrees of spiritual glory, somehow incarnated to shine sensibly. O Paradise! how wonderful will you be! O pure spirits, souls, material elements, nature, supernatural, glory, what ineffable harmony will you form in Mary’s heaven, in that of the Incarnate Word, in the infinite heaven of divine immensity! How this harmony will be visible in the light of glory’s eternal noon! Having attained its final perfection, how the entire creation will appear worthy of God and entirely arranged in its whole and in its parts for the happiness of the Blessed! (no. 895).

904. In a long and magnificent passage, Saint Epiphanius admirably confirms what we said about Mary and her heaven. "What shall I say or tell about the illustrious and holy Virgin? Except for God alone, she is superior to all things. She has a more beautiful nature than the Cherubim and Seraphim and the whole angelic host. No earthly or angelic language is capable of celebrating her worthily.” Mary's heaven must correspond to this sublime creature’s superiority over all that is not God. She has a nature more beautiful and perfect than all others except for the human nature of Christ, as we consider the excellences of both natures with their supernatural and glorious accidents (nos. 459 and 890 with notes). The Mother of God is an exemplary cause of angels and men in beatitude and trial, with the extent and intensity of her radiance. After Christ the man, she is the one who most resembles God in greatness and beauty in all things. No created language can praise her worthily because as she exceeds all lower heavens.

Since the light of resurrected bodies is by nature the same as that of stars and also acts naturally on nonglorified heavens (n. 897), it will noticeably form visible heavens that will light up the material heavens.

298 De Praev. B. V. M., libr. 4, art. 11.

297

905. “O Blessed Virgin Mary, pure dove and celestial bride, heaven, temple and throne of the Divinity, whose son is Christ, the sun Who shines in heaven and on earth! O brilliant cloud that brought Christ from heaven, the permanent light that illuminates the world! Hail O Full of grace, gate of heaven of whom the prophet said, She is a closed garden, my sister, my wife, yes, a closed garden, a sealed fountain.” 299 What the Virgin was on earth in a veiled and mysterious way, that is, the Divinity’s heaven, temple and throne, having for son Christ, the sun of heaven and earth, she now is in heaven with a brilliance that delights the eyes of all inhabitants of the Empyrean. Her greatness is reflected even sensibly by all the glorified beings to whom she gives birth and transmits the splendors of the sun, who is Christ. She is thus “a brilliant cloud that brings Christ from the higher heaven, the permanent light that illuminates everyone” with glory.

Since the splendors of Christ descend to the lower heavens through her, in a way she is the gate of heaven also to the Empyrean. Its inhabitants raise their eyes to Christ through the strenghtening splendors of Mary, who always behaves as the Mother of the Elect. These phenomena are simply Mary’s spiritual glory made sensible by her body’s proportional radiance (no. 898). Yet, as sister and wife, she is a closed garden, a sealed fountain, and a cloud, for no human or angelic language can praise Mary as she deserves. So close is her intimacy with Christ and God as a Virgin, sister and wife, and so enmeshed is her heaven with that of her Son that no Blessed soul can understand all the glory of Mary.

906. “O holy Mother of God, the immaculate sheep who gave birth to the Christ the Lamb, the Incarnate Word of your substance! O most holy Virgin, who have seized with amazement the army of angels! Mary is an astonishing miracle in the heavens. She is the woman clothed with the sun, carrying the light in her arms. The Lord of the angels became the child of the Virgin. The angels accused Eve, now they celebrate Mary, who raised Eve from her fall and brought into heaven Adam, banished from the earthly paradise.

She is the Mediatrix of heaven and earth; a ministry of union is natural to her. The Blessed Virgin’s grace is immense. Hence Gabriel greets her by saying: Hail, O Full of grace, splendid heaven. Hail, full of grace, Virgin adorned with a multitude of virtues. I salute you, full of grace who appease the thirst of the thirsty with the sweetness of the perpetual fountain. Hail, Most Holy Virgin, Immaculate, who begot Christ, Who is before you. Hail, misunderstood book that gave the Word and Son of the Eternal Father for the world to read. 300 My sister and wife is a closed garden, a sealed fountain. Your radiance, O Mary, is a paradise. 301 Nothing in her is common or vulgar. Everything in her is of a higher order which no one can reach. Yet the plants from this garden, the waters of this fountain and the luminous and beneficent emanations and rays of this hearth are a paradise. Nothing is so beautiful to see. No stay is more enjoyable than this.

907. If we understand the words of St. Epiphanius and the Song of Songs as addressing glorified Mary, it seems they all preach the heaven of the Mother of God in the sense we explained. Mary’s heaven is mediating heaven between that of Christ and those of the Blessed. This ministry of union is natural to the Mother of God and all creatures. The Full of Grace is also the Full of Glory. Being full of grace for all wayfarers, she is full of glory for all understanders. If the ardor of her maternal love covers all wayfarers, 302 no victor is truly blissful without the Queen of Heaven’s glorious mediation. Beatitude is Cant. 4:12.

Breviarum Romanum, Octave of the Immaculate Conception, 3° noct.

301 Ibid., 7m., Respons. et cant., IV, 12, 13.

302 Ps 18:7.

299 300

the supreme perfection of all things in every sense: intensity, extent, perceptible visibility, beauty, grandeur, activity, and influences. However little we meditate on the excellences of Mary raised to the apex of her glory, we must conclude that her heaven is real, as we have hopefully demonstrated and almost described.

908. What was it like before the Virgin’s Assumption into heaven? We broached on this point in several meditations (nos. 628 & ff., 668 & ff.) and will return to it later (4th volume, Med. 16, 26 & ff. of chap. I).

For now, let me briefly report on and explain a beautiful passage from Saint Bridget. The angels, says this illustrious saint, “contemplated in this blessed mirror, that is to say, in God the Creator a kind of venerable throne so close to God that it seemed impossible there could be one closer. They knew this throne had been prepared from all eternity for a creature that did not yet exist. But the vision of God’s splendor so inflamed all angels with the divine charity that each of them loved his neighbor as himself and loved God over all things in a sovereign way. And they loved that creature who did not yet exist and was to be placed on the throne closest to God more than themselves because they saw that God loved her in a sovereign way and rejoiced over her to the highest degree. O Virgin, consolation of all, the object of divine jubilation for whom the angels burned with love from the first moment of your creation!

They burned with such love that despite their ineffable joy with the sweet and clear vision of God, they still rejoiced exceedingly that you were one day to be closer to God than they and that the Creator had in store for you greater glory and bliss than theirs.

“This is why, although they knew that God was very honored and happy with their creation, they saw that He drew more honor and joy from your upcoming creation to receive such a sublime crown. Thus, the angels rejoiced more keenly over God’s decision to create you than over their own creation. O most holy Virgin, you were the joy of the angels as soon as created and the object of most intense love from the God without beginning. It is true to say that God intimately rejoiced about you with the angels, and the angels with God, before you received existence, O Virgin who surpass all creatures in dignity.” 303 909. As we have seen, even during their trial, the angels had either naturally or supernaturally a clear idea of Christ, Mary, and all that God wanted to achieve. Instructed by a very abundant Revelation, and seeing very clearly certain mysteries we can only believe here below (nos. 644, 645 with notes), they could not fail to contemplate Mary’s throne and heaven (though less perfectly than in glory) as immediately following the throne and heaven of Christ. This knowledge stood at the very core of their trial (nos. 654 & ff.). When still innocent, our first parents had knowledge similar to that of the wayfaring angels, as we have shown above. So Mary’s heaven somehow always existed with that of her Son, as Saint Bridget tells us. This heaven has always projected invigorating influences; it is not without reason that it is an object of admiration and love. It was from the beginning like the vital atmosphere of angels, men, and all finite beings.

Everything was predestined in Christ and Mary (nos. 280 & ff.). Thus, the whole universe with its ages, people, things, destinies, journeys, glory, all was arranged in the heavens of the Incarnate Word and His worthy Mother. If this is mystical teaching for us, it only proves its sublime truth (no. 175). When we see God face to face as He is in the heavenly Fatherland, we will also see the luminous and beatifying oceans of Christ and Mary, and the lower universe will have given us its secrets. O Paradise! O kingdom of Jesus and the divine Virgin! How beautiful and vast will you be, O sublime sharing of members of Christ and 303

In Sermone Angelico, c. 4, apud Cristobal Vega, Theologia Mariana, no. 1526.

children of Mary! What an immense harmony will you form! 0 grace of God, prepare us for such greatness and beauty! O mortals, dear companions in exile, let us pray without ceasing to obtain grace; and let us keep our hearts lifted to heaven. Sursum corda!

THIRD MEDITATION Summary Table of Influences Exerted by the Heaven of the Incarnate Word l. As the First Predestined Heaven 910. In this chapter’s first meditation, we considered the heaven of Christ according to Theology as having attained its ultimate perfection and supreme degree of splendor. We also aimed at establishing the truth of this heaven and its perpetual existence since creation so that it was and always is like the vital environment where creatures were placed (nos. 886 and others). In the second meditation, we attempted to get a general and summary idea of the heavens of Mary and the other principal members of Christ. All these heavens are animated, intelligent, loving, and according to St. Paul and St. Thomas, are placed above all material heavens, permeating them with powerful influences. Just as human society covers the area of the terrestrial globe, the glorified society of Christ and His members covers the area of the material Empyrean and the universe.

The ocean of ether is limited. I imagine its surface like the pavement of heavenly Jerusalem, admirably proportioned to the qualities of resurrected bodies that do not need matter to support themselves but relate with matter more than angelic spirits (nos. 567, 570, 574 and others). Nothing is as penetrable as this surface. The element that composes it, which we conceive as the first purely material heaven, permeates all matter. Although the Blessed do not need it for their life and movements, they use it to travel and influence the lower heavens and beings; for the ultimate end of all things is to serve the Elect and the glory of God (nos. 327-329). The eminently radiant and vital atmosphere of Mary and Christ, in whom everything is found because everything was predestined in them (nos. 280 & ff.) reigns above the ethereal and luminous ocean formed by the angels and glorified Saints. Supreme glorification is nothing but the complete and visible realization of predestination.

These higher created heavens have somehow existed since the beginning of the world, for the angels were created in the supernatural, and thus under the influences of Jesus and Mary (nos. 642-649 & ff.).

The Word is eternal, and everything was created in the Word set to be incarnated, and consequently, also in Mary (nos. 292-302). The wayfaring angels knew this by infused ideas and Revelation (nos. 628 & ff.). Thus, these upper heavens have existed from the beginning as the principal, nobler, greatest, best, and most influential.

911. Just as the material Empyrean manifests itself to us through its influences on the lower universe (nos. 336 & ff.), the higher created heavens, particularly that of Christ, have always manifested themselves by a series of influences on times and various events. We believe it is useful and exciting to present all these manifestations and temporary influences in a summarized chart, drawing from Sacred Scripture. A notable part of the science of Paradise is the one that studies its most sublime relationships with all times and all created people, especially the wayfaring human race.

912. Our divine Master gave us admirable and profound teaching when He said to His Father: And now glorify thou me, O Father, with thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with thee. 304 What was this glory? We prefer St. Augustine’s interpretation, which appears to be the truest. St. Thomas, 305 Suarez, and other serious authors also adopt it. According to the great bishop of Hippo, Christ refers to the glory He had as a man in the divine predestination and now asks for its actual fulfillment. “He manifested more clearly this predestination in which the Father glorified the Son, by adding: ‘with the glory which I had with you before the world existed’ . . . This is why He said: And now glorify me now by realization as I was then by predestination; accomplish in the world what has already been with Thee before the world; realize in time what Thou hast resolved before all time.” 306 If that was the glory the Word has as God in the bosom of His Father, that glory would not have then and now; it is always the same. If we consider this divine glory of the Word as communicating itself to the humanity of Christ, to resurrect His body and glorify it or demonstrate His divinity, all this comes within predestination. That is why we find no interpretation that seems as exact and natural as St. Augustine’s.

913. The great African doctor continues: Nothing obliges us to accept this opinion (that Christ’s humanity would be glorified as it would be converted into God), which we do not find in conformity with the truth. We must bear in mind the words of the Son that His human nature was predestined to glory and, from mortal, would become immortal with the Father. We admit that all that had been done in predestination before the world existed was fulfilled in the world and in time. If the Apostle said of us: As He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4), how would one depart from the truth by saying that the Father glorified our Head when He chose us to become His members in Him? We were chosen in the same way that He was glorified. Indeed, before the world existed, neither we existed nor did Christ Jesus the Man, Mediator between God and men (1Tim 2:5). But God the Father, Who also made future things through Christ as His Word and calls things that are not as if they were (Rom 4:17), certainly glorified His Son for us as man and Mediator between God and men before the foundation of the world and also chose us in Him. What is the Apostle saying? We know that everything cooperates for the good of those who, by His decree, are called to be saints. For those whom He knew by foreknowledge, He also predestined to conform to the image of His Son (the Word Who took up human flesh) so that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And He also called those whom He predestined (Ibid., VIII, 28-30).” 307 914. Obviously, continues the holy Doctor, Christ was not predestined as the Word of God, for as such, He is eternal. He had to be predestined to something that would be realized in time, like the Incarnation.

"Whoever therefore denies the predestination of the Son of God, thereby denies that He is the son of man ... contrary to the teaching of the Apostle, who says: ... He was predestined as Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of sanctification, by the resurrection from the dead (Ibid., I, 4). Thus, according to this predestination, He was also glorified before the world by the decree of His glorious resurrection from the dead and His ascension to the Father, at whose right hand He sits. Therefore, when He saw that the time of His predestined glorification had come at last, that the same thing that had taken place Jn 17:5.

Catena aurea, in hunc loc. Jo. 306 Tract. CV. In Joan. Evang., no. 6.

307 St. Augustine, ibid., no. 7.

304 305

in the divine decree might now be fulfilled, he prayed, saying: And now, glorify me, O Father, with thyself, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (Jn 17:5). As if saying, ‘It is time that I, living in thy right hand, have with thee this glory I had with thee ... in predestination.” 308 915. The illustrious Doctor of predestination and grace thus marvelously confirms what we said above on the predestination of all things in Jesus Christ (nos. 281 & ff.). Christ as a man had glory with His Father before the world was. This glory consisted in occupying the first rank in predestination, being decreed as head for whose sake members were decreed, being willed as the exemplary cause of all rational creatures, being established as the immediate end of all things finite, that is, as a measure, a universal center of beneficence, and the supreme finite crowning of all things in glory by His resurrection and by sitting at the right hand of the Father above all created heavens. Christ the Man had this glory with the Father in the ideal heavenly Jerusalem—the Church eternally known of the Father to be begotten in the image of His Son and to be like a full development of the Word’s humanity (nos. 214; 215).

916. This glory doubtless shone only in the eyes of God, apud te, before the world existed. But apud te, according to St. Augustine, is equivalent to apud te praedestinantem, that is, with you considered as the Author of predestination. Predestination encompassed Jesus Christ Man as Head and Firstborn, that is to say, Jesus with His Mother, His angelic and human members, and all that will be created for them, which is to say: with all things. In reality, the glory of Christ then existed only in the eyes of God. Still, the Author of predestination saw that glory shine on all His future work because, in divine knowledge, it formed the heaven of the Incarnate Word, the unique atmosphere of existence, natural life, supernatural life, and glorious life according to the plan of the Supreme Artist.

Thus, the Almighty created the angels in the Messianic heaven, giving them grace because of Christ and making shine in their eyes in many ways and different degrees the splendors of the Son of Man’s predestination (no. 910 toward the end and in the nos. cited therein). Our first parents were placed in the same conditions (no. 283). Since the supernatural, the grace of Christ, faith, hope and charity also had the future Man-God as their object (in the mobile Empyrean and Eden, things were at the same time very sublime and real), the heaven of the Incarnate Word clearly existed from then on as higher heaven perceptible intellectually and religiously, powerful in influences, and delighting the eyes of the wayfaring angels and early humans (nos. 908, 909, etc.). Everything was arranged according to the predestination of Christ, which manifested itself externally in many ways, and everything gravitated toward Him. II. As a Principle of Existence, Life, Light 917. Although at the beginning of his Gospel, St. John aims above all to affirm the divinity of Christ, he seems to express quite clearly the truths we find in the Lord’s prayer. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to give testimony of the light, so that all men might believe through him.” 309 The beloved disciple draws our attention to the 308 309

Ibid., no. 8.

Jn 1:1-7.

beginning of things; and to explain this beginning, he says that the Word existed already, was with God, and was God. He affirms again that the Word was with God and adds: It is by him that all things were made, and without him nothing was made. What a sublime teaching! The Word is eternal since it was already at the beginning of things. He was distinct from the Father since he was with God and is named apart. He had the nature of God since he was God. Here we find the immense and eternal Heaven of the Holy Trinity, including the Holy Spirit, Who necessarily proceeds from the Father and the Son. But the evangelist then purposely repeats that the Word was at the beginning with God to make us consider Him especially in relation to creatures. He was in God not only as Word but also as predestined with all His retinue of finite beings; in other words, as man, the Firstborn of creatures (no. 886) and head of His future Church, partly intelligent and partly material. So by Him, all things were made, and without Him, nothing was made of what was made. He made all things in two capacities: as the Father’s Wisdom, and while including all His members and empire in His predestination. That is why without Him, nothing was done. The Father did nothing without his Wisdom. Moreover, when creating with His Wisdom and Love, He made, arranged and organized everything with the exemplary, meritorious and immediate final cause of all things, that is to say, with His gaze fixed on the incarnation of His Son, and gauging everything according to the greatness of the Son of man.

In Him was life, and life was the light of men. How was life in Him? It was also in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. However, it was especially in Him since it was there in two ways, that is to say, in the eternal Word and in the first predestined. The apostle of love particularly mentions life communicated to the outside, the light that became the light of men. O finite beings, whoever you are, you all participate in this life that comes out of the infinite Ocean of life through Christ and makes you live as images or vestiges of God. Since you exist, O atoms, material worlds, you live from your forms and active principles. What would you be if divine life had not gone out through Christ’s predestination?

Nothing. That would also have been your lot, O plants and animals. You live life properly speaking. But without the supreme life shared outside and the divine life’s radiance in the hypostatic union, in divine motherhood, adoptive filiation, and intelligent natures, the vital torrent would not have flowed to you, and you would also be nothing. You are distant reflections of participated life, a kind of dawn of that life that rises toward the horizon. You would be nothing without the vivifying star.

And you, intelligent beings, what would you be without the life which is the light of men and angels? If the life communicated outside had in the predestined Christ the first radiance of the Word’s divine life, you live only from the predestination of Christ, of which you are the extension. The Word was also the true light that illuminates every man who comes into this world. 310 He was the eternal and formally divine light and also the light communicated outside, which empowers all who receive it and allow it to enlighten them and make them children of God. 311 You, intelligent creatures, receive everything: The light of reason, the light of grace, and the light of glory as living reflections of Him who said: I am come a light into the world. 312 Again: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father, but by Me, 313 just as no one comes from the Father except by the same way, truth and life: In ipso conditat sunt universa (nos. 668 & ff.).

Ibid., V. 9.

Ibid., 12.

312 Jn 12:46.

313 Ibid. 14:6.

310 311

Oh! Blessed be the holy Catholic Church, which continues the sublime ministry of John the Baptist until the end of the ages, bearing witness to the light amid the darkness that does not comprehend it so that all men believe in Jesus Christ. 314 Come, O men, Him Who is full of grace and truth. 315 If we all have received from His fullness, 316 let us continue drinking from the same source so that we are transformed into genuine members of Christ and have a well-founded hope of reigning with Him in His glory.

918. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. 317 The heaven of the Incarnate Word has always influenced the other heavens and manifested itself in some ways to intelligent creatures in the mobile Empyrean, in the terrestrial Paradise (n. 916), and all over the earth by various and very significant events. However, for the fallen human race, this manifestation became sublimely evident when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us as the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The prophet Baruch expresses himself substantially like St. John on the Man-God’s perpetual theophanies in the times that preceded the Incarnation.

After speaking about the greatness of the house of God, which is the entire universe, 318 after telling us about this Wisdom that comes from heaven and is communicated to men, 319 he adds: But he that knows all things, knows her, and has found her out with his understanding: he that prepared the earth forevermore and filled it with cattle and four-footed beasts: He that sends forth light, and it goes: and has called it, and it obeys him with trembling. And the stars have given light in their watches and rejoiced: They were called, and said: Here we are: and with cheerfulness, they have shined forth to him that made them. This is our God, and no other shall be accounted of in comparison of him. He found out all the way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob, his servant, and to Israel, his beloved. Afterward, he was seen upon earth and conversed with men. 320 919. He Who has established the earth forever, Who sends light, commands the stars, has found all the ways of true science, and given men this knowledge by Revelation is our God. He is the Word preluding His incarnation, the One Who was seen on earth and conversed with men. The authorized but somewhat varied interpretations of this passage are not contradictory. Rational creatures have always seen the Incarnate Word but in varying degrees of clarity. They saw Him in the mobile Empyrean and Eden. He showed Himself through Gabriel or other angels who impersonated Him, especially on Mount Sinai and many other circumstances. Finally, He was Himself seen on earth and conversed with men: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us ... full of grace and truth. According to St. Thomas, the Word is God expressed, God known, God manifested, God communicated, as we will see in greater detail in the rest of this work. Now, the Incarnation of the Word with its direct consequences is the divine manifestation par excellence. All other divine manifestations are a more or less luminous twilight of the incomparable finite star, which is the humanity of Christ.

Ibid. 1:7.

Ibid. 1: 14.

316 Ibid. 1:16.

317 Jn 1:14.

318 See Cornelius a Lapide on this text from Baruch (3:24-25) and Martini, in hunc loc.

319 Ibid. 3:28-31.

320 Bar 3:32-38.

314 315

920. When Solomon said to God: Send thy Wisdom out of thy holy heaven, and from the throne of thy majesty, that she may be with me, and may labor with me, that I may know what is acceptable with thee, 321 “he is symbolically asking God to send Him His Son.” 322 After the Infinite Heaven, no heavens are holier and more sacred than the Heavens of Christ and Mary, through which the Infinite Heaven influences all other heavens established to communicate the divine to the entire set of creatures in varying degrees of perfection.

We have seen that the humanity of Christ with Mary and their radiance is the first throne of God’s greatness (nos. 243 & ff.). That throne had always existed in predestination but has shone differently according to the times. In the Old Testament, the Word appeared especially through the ministry of the angels. Says St. Thomas: “There is no objection to a simultaneous mission, outwardly by an angel, and interiorly by the Divine Persons through grace. Even better, one should say that in these kinds of manifestations, the angel appeared on behalf of the divine Person and his own person. That is why one says that it was not an angel but a divine Person that was sent into these creatures even as regards their external appearance.” 323 The very Person of the Word manifested Himself thus, being, however, served by angels in the visible mode of manifestation— ordinarily the human appearance—which the Word preferred to any other because of His future Incarnation.

According to St. Thomas, Holy Scripture attributes the entire apparition to the divine Person even in its external and sensible aspects. By these varied and relatively imperfect manifestations, the Word preluded the apparition par excellence that He was to accomplish by becoming man: Benignitas et humanitas apparuit Salvatoris nostri Dei. 324 As the Word showed Himself to men in transient human forms when God descended from heaven to instruct and direct men, Solomon also invoked Him as Wisdom that had descended from the throne of divine greatness to work with him and inspire him what was pleasing to God. The idea of God's coming down to earth haunted all the ancient saints. What was this idea if not an influence of what we called the heaven of the incarnate Word?

III. As the Cause of All Adoptive Divine Filiation 921. However, these theandric manifestations were made with measure both in visible apparitions and in prophecies and the faith of saints. They were a preparation for the fullness of time: When the fullness of time was come, God sent His Son ... that we might receive the adoption of sons.” 325 “This time is called full,” says St. Thomas, “because of the fullness of the graces given in it, because in it the figures of the old law and the divine promises are fulfilled. God foreordained the time of the advent of Christ for two reasons: 1. Because of the greatness of Him who was to come, which required that men be disposed to His coming by many testimonies and preparations. 2. Because before the coming of the One Who was the physician, men should be convinced that they were sick, lacked knowledge of the natural law, and

Wis 9:10.

Cornelius a Lapide, in hunc loc.

323 Libr. I, Dist. XVI, a. 4, ad 2, Fiaccadori edition.

324 1 Tit 3:4.

325 Gal 4:4-5.

321 322

lacked virtue to fulfill the written law. So the law of nature and the written law needed to precede the advent of Christ.” 326 It clearly follows that, before the fullness of time, everything in the world was only a preparation for this fullness in the Old Testament, in Eden, and in the mobile Empyrean. There is no doubt about the period that elapsed between the first man's fall and the Annunciation. All prophecies, prayers, sacrifices, ceremonies, various revelations and apparitions, and the hopes of mortals addressed the coming Messias. If one does not interpret the language of inspired writers from this viewpoint, one will hardly understand anything. Their eyes were constantly fixed on this viewpoint, which for them was the most important. 327 922. As for the inhabitants of the two earthly paradises, of men and wayfaring angels, they evidently also awaited the fullness of time since they believed and hoped in Jesus Christ and owed everything to the future Man-God (nos. 300, 654 etc.), in Whom they had all been predestined (nos. 283, 300 etc.)

This is why we can also hear from the glorified angels the magnificent teaching St. Augustine gives us on these words of the divine Master: No man has ascended into heaven but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven. 328 "Spiritual generation," says the great Bishop of Hippo, "will take place in such a way that, from earthly, men will become heavenly, something they are unable to achieve unless they are made members of Me so that those who came down may ascend; for no one ascends except He who has descended.

Therefore, if they do not all enter into the unity of Christ to be changed and raised so that Christ Himself (Who has come down) ascends, they will not be able to ascend at all; for no one ascends into heaven except He who came down from heaven, the Son of man, Who is in heaven. He deems His body, that is to say, His Church, the same as Himself: They will be two in one flesh (Gen 2:24), meaning Christ and His Church. Thus they are no longer two but one flesh. 329 Our Lord did not consider the ‘son of man’ denomination as dishonorable to His divinity but saw it fitting to honor His flesh with the name Son of God. “One should not regard these two things as two Christs, one being God, the other a man, but as one and the same Christ, God and man. God, because in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Man, because the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14).

Accordingly, by the difference between divinity and infirmity, the Son of God dwelt in heaven and the Son of man lived on earth. But by the unity of His Person, in Whom both substances made only one Christ, the Son of God happened to live on earth; and the same Son of God, having also become the son of man, dwelt in heaven. Thus, Faith in believable things is formed from faith in less believable things in which one already believes. The divine substance, much more distant and incomparably above us, took our human substance for our sake so that a single person resulted from this union. Thus, the Son of man, Who was on earth through the infirmity of the flesh, was also in heaven through the participation of the Godhead in His flesh. This being so, why would it not be believable that other men, saints and faithful of His, should become a single Christ with Christ-the-Man so that, having all risen by His grace 326

327 328 329

Comment. in Epist. ad Gal.1 chap. 4:4-5.

All prophets from Samuel onward announced the days of the Messias (St. Peter, Acts 3:24.).

Jn 3:13.

Mk 10:8.

and society with Him, it is Christ all alone Who ascends to heaven (who had come down from heaven)?

So the Apostle says: As the body is one, though having many members, and all members of the body, though many, are yet one body: so is Christ (1 Cor 12:12). He does not say: So is the body of Christ, so are the members of Christ, but: so is Christ, calling one Christ the Head and Body.” 330 923. What a sublime doctrine, which brings out the excellence of the Church of Jesus Christ! Is the Church not made up of angels and men? Is Christ not the Head of both? Everything was predestined in Him. Nothing has received grace and glory except as reflections of humanity’s hypostatic union with the Word in Christ. No one has ascended to the heaven of intuitive vision except He who came down from heaven through Incarnation, the Son of man Who is in heaven, Who sees God naturally because of the hypostatic union, and Who alone empowers others to be made children of God and to contemplate God face to face. Thou art thus the One, O Lord Jesus, Who ascended into heaven when the angels were glorified; for no one ascends there but thee. They are a part of thy mystical body that entered into glory, while the other part entered into the trial. The same sun is the cause of the dawn and the great day.

The angels, so intelligent and enlightened by grace, saw thee in the distance. They loved thee and entered into the splendors of thy grace and glory as the highest mountains are the first to receive the rays of the dawning sun. We mortals, fallen and blind, groaned in the lowest regions, in darkness and the shadow of death; the great Sun came to visit us later. Then, the same God that commanded that light should spring forth from the darkness has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. 331 “Before we converted to Christ, we were dark ... and the clarity of His glory did not shine in us. Now that Christ has called us to Himself by His grace, that darkness was dispelled and the virtue His light’s glory shines upon us at last, and so abundantly that we are enlightened no only to see but also that we may enlighten others.” 332 Since we are members of Christ, our enlightenment is one of His glories, and thus we honor our Head. The Incarnate Word, Who had already illuminated the angels in heaven, came down to enlighten us too in the way that best suited us. It is of us that Isaias said, the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: light is risen to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death. 333 924. This light, which men have always seen as twilight or broad daylight, transformed into adopted children of God all human beings who received it and did not prefer darkness. 334 Thus the grace of divine adoption operated in the fallen human race what it had already done in the mobile Empyrean and Eden.

But it was always a radiance of Christ, an influence from the heaven of the Incarnate Word. As St. Augustine tells us, one cannot obtain spiritual generation without becoming a member of Christ. He alone ascends to heaven Who came down from heaven, the Son of man, Who is in heaven. The angels ascended to adoptive sonship, begun in the trial and completed in glory. Therefore, they were part of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. As adopted children, they received the fullness of natural parentage. 335 No one has ever seen God. The one Who made Him known is His only begotten Son, Who

De Peccator. merit. et remiss., libr. I, cap. 31, n. 60.

2Cor 4:6.

332 St. Thomas, Commentar. in hunc loc.

333 Isa 9:2.

334 Jn 1:2; 3:19.

335 Ibid. 1:16.

330 331

is in the bosom of the Father. 336 He did so by coming down from heaven, becoming the son of man, full of grace and truth, and by flooding angels and men with His fullness.

According to St. Augustine, the members of Christ become one Christ with Him following the example of the Son of God and the Son of man, Who are one Person. Thus, the angels are members of Christ, and in the likeness of the Son of Man, Who is none other than the Word. Christ has always been the center of divine radiance externally and the adoptive sonship, the splendor projected by that center.

925. “Adoptive filiation,” says St. Thomas, “pertains especially to Christ. We cannot become adoptive children except through conformity with the natural son ... It is through the natural Son of God that we become adopted children according to the grace that comes from Christ.” 337 This is substantially the same reasoning of St. Augustine, which generally embraces all adopted children of God. Thus, let us conclude from these and other above-expounded reasons that God’s adoptive filiation in the mobile Empyrean, Eden, and among the fallen human race was nothing but a divine influence projected by the heaven of the Incarnate Word. Just as nature was created and arranged for the supernatural (nos. 289, 290), the entire universe by its existence, order, tendencies and all that is in it testifies to the heavenly influences of which we have spoken. “The Supreme Emperor,” as St. Augustine told us above (n. 340), in this kind of magnificent and immense republic of all created beings, disposes everything from the point of view of ineffable justice relative to rewards and punishments, graces and retributions,” which is done only in Christ.

FOURTH MEDITATION More Manifest Influences of the Same Heaven as per Great Principles and Early Prophecies 926. For several reasons, we call heaven the whole radiance of the incarnate Word on epochs and places and what they contain. This radiance is heaven by its incomparable height, surpassed only by divine immensity. It communicates a supernatural in its maximum intensity and strength, forming this fullness of which St. John speaks: Plenum gratiae et veritatis ... De plenitudine ejus nos omnes accepimus. 338 Next, it is heaven by His universal influences. As we said, it is the ambience, natural life, supernatural life, glorious existence, and life for all beings. That is why it contains, influences, illuminates and attracts all things to itself: In ipso condita sunt universa in cœlis et in terrae. 339 In ipso vita erat, as we explained, et vita erat lux hominum. 340 If to us this heaven is mystical, it is nonetheless real. Its excellence, greatness, and power of action exceed the capacity of our intelligence. But it reaches and influences all creatures as the most sublime of created heavens, i.e., universally, mysteriously, deeply, powerfully, and Revelation multiplies its lights to make it known to us. Although briefly, due to space limitations, we will now consider its most apparent manifestations.

Ibid. 1:18.

Comment. in Epist. ad Gal., c. IV, 5.

338 Jn 1:14-16.

339 Col 1:16.

340 Jn 1:4.

336 337

927. As we have seen, everything was founded on the holy mountains, particularly Christ and Mary, who are the most splendid stars in the supernatural heaven (nos. 109 & ff.). Everything was predestined in Christ and His divine Mother for existence and other goods (nos. 281 & ff., 296 & ff.). In the mobile Empyrean and Eden, the children of God lived the life of Christ in the Heaven of Christ (nos. 282, 283).

And since the supernatural is the measure, support and crown of nature, nothing existed and developed except under the influences of the Man-God (nos. 290 & ff.). All that happened in the early days: the government of the mobile Empyrean, the good fight of the faithful angels, the stubborn struggle of the bad, the organization of the elements of chaos insofar as it depended on finite causes, the glorification of the Holy angels and the Empyrean, and the terrible punishment inflicted on Lucifer and his followers, everything was done mainly about Christ, gravitated toward Christ, or was repelled from Him, most strikingly demonstrating the existence and incomparable influences of His heaven (See Chapter Five of Book II., nos. 612 & ff.). But let us focus on our planet and the human race, to which the Word was kind enough to belong through His humanity.

928. Even before driving our guilty first parents out of Eden and cursing the earth for sin, God promised man a Redeemer Who was to conquer Satan and reduce the prince of evil to the sole ability to lie in wait for the heel of the good. 341 Since then, enmities were established (which must later reach their maximum) between the serpent and the woman and between their two races. The serpent was cursed from that day and condemned to crawl on its stomach and eat dirt all the days of his life. The early mortals left the earthly paradise taking with them faith and hope, powerful and gentle radiances from the heaven of the Incarnate Word. Furthermore, Wisdom kept the one whom God had first formed to be the father of the world and drew him from his sin while giving him the strength to rule all things. 342 Thus, he soon recovered charity, which made him a member of Christ and victorious at least over the devil and sin, if not over all of life’s evils. What was this victory other than the first man’s participation in the energetic influences of the heaven of Christ, from which Satan had been cast, and his gravitating toward that heaven?

929. Subsequently, although before the Flood all men led a corrupt life, 343 and even leading men were later deprived of intelligence and, from the greatest to the smallest did their own individual thing, caring for their own transient interests, 344 the human race still kept faith and hope in the One who said of Himself: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and last, the beginning and the end. 345 That is to say, the first, most abundant, and universal participation in the excellence of the Most High, Who designated Himself elsewhere with the same words. 346 Yes, if God Himself is absolutely the beginning and end because He is the Eternal and Sovereign Good, Christ, as man, is all this at the first and highest degree of participation. He is the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the beginning of God’s creation. 347 Above all, He is Amen as Word because the Word is God expressed and affirmed, as we know (nos. 788 & ff.). The word amen also expresses this well. He is also the Amen as a man because as supreme and accomplished holiness, He always perfectly loved and wanted what pleases God: Ego quae placita sunt Gen 3:15.

Wis 10:1-2.

343 Gen 6:12.

344 Isa 56:11.

345 Ap 22:13.

346 Ibid. 1:8; 21:6.

347 Ap 3:14.

341 342

ei, facio semper. 348 Ita, Pater. 349 Therefore, all holiness, honesty and virtue practiced by angels and men were only a reflection of the holiness of Christ and an effect of the influences of His heaven. It is an axiom that what is first and more perfect in a genre is the cause of everything there is in that genre.

Therefore, since humanity has always had more or less holiness and virtue despite its general perversion, and since the best leaves its mark on all the rest, it follows that the first man’s posterity has always walked under the beneficent radiance of Christ.

930. Christ has always also been the faithful and true Witness. First, He is eternally so as the Word because the Word unceasingly says, expresses, and faithfully, truly, and adequately testifies to all that God is. He therefore always testified that God is charity 350 and that He wants to communicate Himself by creating, sanctifying, and glorifying. He always testified that to achieve this goal, He would become incarnate. Because of His Incarnation, God would create Mary, angels, men, and a material universe as a procession of the Man-God. As a man, He was also the faithful and true Witness of God’s supernatural covenant with His intelligent creatures and, through them, with all created beings (nos. 901-903).

The hypostatic union of humanity with the Word in Christ is the supreme source and the accomplished model of all union with God by grace, glory, and divine motherhood. Thus, the adoptive filiation of angels and men; the glorification of the faithful angels and the Empyrean; the sublime dignity of the Mother of God; the Redemption of the human race; the atmosphere of actual graces that is like the vital and supernatural environment in which rational creatures move; belief in the divine as in the directing agent of nature and of men; all these are nothing but more or less powerful radiations of the humanity taken up and raised by the Word. These radiations are projected in all times and places and make up the most sublime of finite heavens, the heaven of Christ’s humanity. And since the entire universe and its parts gravitate toward the participated supernatural of which Christ is the total and unique home, it is fair to say that no being exists or moves since Creation except under the influences of Christ's heaven.

Considered as man, and thus after the Word, Christ is the first faithful and true witness both of God’s love for His chosen creatures and their destination for grace, holiness, and glory. He is the way, by which God descends, and rational beings ascend; the truth, which contains the entire and actual divine plan outside of which there is nothing but emptiness, error and evil; and life, 351 which makes all beings exist and gravitate toward good, and leads them to the height of their perfection and glory. Now, since humanity has always enjoyed these influences to varying degrees, one must say that it always lived on the vital emanations of the created heaven par excellence.

931. Christ is the Beginning of God's creatures both as divine Word and as a man. As the Word, because by adequately expressing God, He also states all His designs, decrees and works (nos. 799 & ff.). Thus Christ, supreme life communicated within, is the first principle and model of all communicated life without (ibid.). Being a substantial, personal, active communicated life, He is also the efficient cause of all participation by creatures in being and life (ibid.) Thus, as God, He is the way, the truth, and the life.

By His humanity, Christ is the beginning of God's creatures, the first decreed finite being, the reason for decreeing other beings, the anticipated or actual meritorious cause of all divine work externally, the Jn 8:29.

Mt 11:26.

350 1 Jn 4:8.

351 Jn 14:6.

348 349

exemplary cause or mold of all things, which are His assorted retinue. He is the channel that transmits all divine favors to finite beings, the created sovereign star that attracts everything to itself to raise everything to the Supreme Good. After God, He is the highest final cause, and thus the most powerful cause of all activities taking place in the universe.

Despite the thick fog of errors and vices, How could the ancient people of God and the gentiles not had lived in Christ’s atmosphere and enjoyed the influences of His noble heaven! Jesus Christ was yesterday, is today, and will be the same forever. 352 About this passage, Martini observes: “Jesus Christ is eternal; the righteous of all past ages have believed in Him; the Apostles believed in Him ... and so do all the living faithful; all future ages will believe in Him until the end of the world. Therefore, the faith of His children must be immutable just as Christ is eternal and immutable.” Jesus Christ is eternal as the Word of God, but as a man, He is the Lamb already known before the foundation of the world 353 and slain from the beginning of the world 354 (nos. 878, 886 etc.). So all times, places, people and things have been subordinate to the Man-God and constantly depended on the Beginning of God's creatures.

932. Let us now see how these dispositions of the divine plan descend as it were from their abstract heights to enlighten, console, direct, and raise fallen humanity. This same Race of the Woman, who was promised in Eden to crush the serpent’s head (no. 928), was subsequently pledged to be the Blessing that would rain on all men. In you, says the Lord to Abraham, will be blessed all peoples of the earth. 355 All nations of the earth will be blessed in the One who proceeds from you. 356 He made the same promise to Isaac: All nations of the earth will be blessed in the One who will be born of you. 357 And the same promise was made to Jacob as well: All nations of the earth will be blessed in you and in Him who will come out of you. 358 Again, the same promise was made to Juda: The scepter shall not be taken away from Juda, nor a ruler from his thigh, till he come that is to be sent; and he shall be the expectation of nations. 359 The same divine promise was made by the mouth of Moses: The Lord thy God will raise up to thee a Prophet

of thy nation and of thy brethren like unto me: him thou shalt hear . . . I will raise them up a prophet out of the midst of their brethren like to thee (Moses) and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him (Deut. 18:15-18).

The whole tradition recognizes the Messias as this Prophet who resembles Moses. In fact, except for Christ, no prophet rose again in Israel like Moses, to whom the Lord spoke face to face (Ibid., 34:10).

Moreover, St. Peter, St. John, St. Stephen have given this passage the authentic interpretation. 360 933. Here is what Balaam cries, who hears the words of God, knows the doctrine of the Most High and sees the visions of the Almighty ... I will see Him, the promised Savior, but no now; I will consider Him, but not closely. A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a scepter shall spring up from Israel, and shall strike the chiefs of Moab, and shall waste all the children of Seth ... out of Jacob shall the Dominator come out (Numbers 24:16-19). The words, doctrine and visions of the Most High make Christ shine through all Heb 13:8.

1Pet 1:19-20.

354 Ap 13:8.

355 Gen 12:3.

356 Ibid. 22:18; 18:18.

357 Ibid. 26:4.

358 Ibid. 28:14.

359 Ibid. 49:10.

360 Acts 3:22; 7:37; Jn 1:45; 6:14.

352 353

times. The infinite heaven moves the first created heaven, which moves all other heavens. I will see Him, but not now, not up close. His influences are present and provoke faith and hope, but He does not appear to us yet. A star will come out of Jacob; it is the morning star God has promised to give men of goodwill and the Elect (Apoc. 2:28). I, Jesus am the burning morning star (Ibid., 22:16); a star whose reflections, wonderfully arranged by the angels, formed the star of the Magi 361 and demonstrated that the heavens of God had descended to the earth. 362 The greatest star in the supernatural heaven approaches men not only to enlighten them but to attract them to Himself and govern them divinely. So a scepter will rise out of Israel and strike the rulers of Moab, representatives of the ancient Serpent, whose head is to be crushed. He will destroy all the children of Seth, a fallen and sinful man ... and give empire to the children of God: Israel vero fortiter aget. The children of Seth are all mankind, for the descendants of Cain perished entirely by the flood just as the whole race of the old man is destined to perish by the merciful flood of the sufferings of the New Man. He empowered them to be made sons of God, to them that believe in his name. Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 363 Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself. 364 The Dominator will come from Jacob. The children of Seth will sustain a happy ruin, which will be nothing other than domination by Christ, the immediate end of which is the multiplication of the children of God! Thus, the Chaldaic version [of the Bible] reads dominate instead of ruin: Dominabitur omnium filiorum hominum: domination which gradually extends over the earth but will be complete and absolute at the end of time.

934. How admirable are the divine predictions about the Messias! They follow an increasingly luminous and precise course. First of all, the promised Messias is only a descendant of the first woman: Semen tuum. What could be more generic? However, he is then announced as a descendant of Abraham, then of Isaac, Jacob, Judah. Amid the maze formed by ever more numerous families and human individuals, the Spirit of God unceasingly distinguishes the lineage from which the Desired One of the nations must emerge. Infallible milestones are placed in the long series of ages to surely direct the gazes of mankind to the Great Envoy of Heaven. Within the populous tribe of Judah, hope concentrates in Jesse, then in his son, David, then in Solomon. 365 A branch of Jesse shall come forth, and a flower shall arise from its root.

The Spirit of the Lord with all His gifts will rest on Him. He will be the great supernatural focus whose radiance must illuminate, warm, heal, perfect and, as it were, deify humanity. Justice and charity will be the wonders of His reign. On that day, the offspring of Jesse will be exposed before all peoples on Calvary like a standard; the nations will come to offer their prayers to Him, and His sepulcher will be glorious ... The Lord will raise up his standard among the nations, and Christianity will rule over the earth. 366 ... And thou shalt say in that day: I will give thanks to thee, O Lord, for thou wast angry with me: thy wrath is turned away, and thou hast comforted me. Behold, God is my savior, I will deal confidently, According to St. John Chrysosthom and St. Thomas, this star was an invisible virtue given a stellar appearance.

Summa Theologiae, 3, q. 36, a. 7.

362 Ps 143:6.

363 Jn 1:12-13.

364 Jn 12:31-32.

365 2Kgs 7:12-13 & ff.; 3Kgs 11:34-36.

366 Isa 11:10-12.

361

and will not fear: O because the Lord is my strength, and my praise, and he is become my salvation. You shall draw waters with joy out of the savior's fountains: And you shall say in that day: Praise ye the Lord, and call upon his name: make his works known among the people: remember that his name is high. Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath done great things: shew this forth in all the earth. Rejoice, and praise, O thou habitation of Sion: for great is he that is in the midst of thee, the Holy One of Israel. 367 935. Hear now, house of David, the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and His name will be Emmanuel (God-with-us). He shall eat butter and honey like other children until He is old enough to condemn evil and choose good. 368 The house of David from which the Messias was to come out was in grave danger. “Phacee, king of the ten schismatic tribes of Israel, and Rasin, king of Syria, had decided to put on the throne of Judah a new dynasty whose leader was to be the son of Tabeel. To achieve this goal, it was necessary, according to the customs of the time, to exterminate all the existing royal family ... The prophet therefore points out to the princes (of Judah) that the preservation of their family is guaranteed as a consequence of the divine promise, since the future Redeemer must come from the house of David.” 369 Thus, the conspiracy hatched against David’s royal descendants will abort before the young boy, Scheer-Yaschub, son of Isaiah, 370 learns how to reject evil and choose good, 371 that is to say, in a few years.

Nearly 700 years before Emmanuel's temporal birth, events are not arranged according to the calculations of worldly politics but to the plan of the Almighty, Who arranged everything because of the Virgin Mary and her Son. Signum, the future miracle, dominates the ancient centuries. The Messias will be at the same time Emmanuel, a child-God and a child-man since He will feed on butter and honey and progress to reach the age of reason. His mother will be a virgin, a pure creature, but in her, the supernatural will abound since she will be at the same time virgin and mother.

Double sign, double miracle: a virgin gives birth, and her child is God! And both the Virgin and Child must descend from David. That is why the times and events which precede these wonders must turn in this direction and orient themselves toward these miracles. So in a short time, the two kings who plot the extinction of the race of David will lose their crown and their life; one, before the young boy, ScheerYaschub, knows how to reject evil and choose good; 372 and the other, before a second child of Isaiah, Maher-Schalal-Hasch-Baz can call my father! My mother! 373 Two children of the prophet, innocent and faithful instruments of God’s will, serve to demonstrate that, even in ancient times, the Child Jesus prepares the ground for Himself and the Virgin His Mother.

936. We say ‘the Child Jesus’ because “Emmanuel is perfectly equivalent to Jesus, which means God helps us, assists us, saves us ... In Hebrew, the name Jesus written out in full means the Lord helps us, saves us. It is made up of Lord and help.” 374 By being called Jesus, the Messias is called God-with-us or Emmanuel. But since the light of Revelation has continually been growing by specifying more everything Isa 12.

Ibid 7:14-15. Literal translation from Hebrew to French by M. P. L. B. Drach: L'Eglise ét la Synagogue.

369 M. Drach, ibid., Tome 2, pp. 18-19.

370 Isa 7:3.

371 Ibid 16.

372 Ibid.

373 Ibid 8:3-4.

374 M. Drach, loc. c., p. 189, with the note (e).

367 368

related to the Son of God, the generic name God-with-us has become the more specific name of Jehovah saves us, or Jesus. The prophet Isaias said it well, but instructed by the angel, Mary and Joseph said even better the proper name of the Messias. 375 937. Isaias's prophecy is all the more remarkable because he not only predicts the Messias as Man-God but also sees Him in glory before announcing His birth to a Virgin. Let us listen again to M. Drach: “In the preceding chapter (Is 6:1), the prophet describes the celestial glory of Adonai-Jehovah, whom he had seen seated on an eminent and high throne. Therefore, it was not one of those visions in which the Lord made Himself proportional to the weakness of those He had chosen to announce His wills, as He says in Hosea 12:11, but a true sight. However, Isaias could not see the pure Divinity since the Lord said to Moses: No man can see Me and live (Ex 33:20). Thus, the prophet saw the Incarnate Word, God, become somehow visible to the human eye in the earthly nature which He united intimately to his own.”

“In the same sense, the son of Amos says: Men will see the Lord face to face when he arrives in Zion a second time (Is. 52:8).” “This explanation of Isaias's words ... is very old. A Doctor belonging to the Jewish nation ... the beloved disciple of the Messias, gave this explanation a seal of truth by placing it in in his Gospel. After transcribing the tenth verse of Isaias chapter 6, the holy Evangelist adds: Isaias expressed himself in these terms when he saw the glory of Jesus Christ, and it is of Him that he spoke (Jn 12:41).” 376 938. We largely confirm this interpretation in the 4th book of this work (Chap. I, Medit. I and II). Here we will simply point out that after having seen the Word in His glorified human nature, the prophet easily extended his gaze to the circumstances of the Messias’s temporal life. It became easy for him to play the role of the fifth evangelist, which is rightly attributed to him. The glory of Christ eminently contains all the features of his humble and laborious life that deserved it. Thus, the prophecies of the son of Amos are filled with facts that pertain to Christ. The people who walked in darkness, he says, saw a great light; the day has dawned for those who dwelled in the obscure region of death ... A little child was born to us, and a son was given to us, who will carry on his shoulder the mark of his principality; He will be called the admirable, the counselor, the strong God, the father of eternity, the prince of peace. His empire will expand more and more, and peace will have no end. Sitting on David's throne, He will ensure its duration and stability in justice and holiness, now and forever. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will effectuate these things. 377

“The prophet ends (this chapter) by confirming the threats he made against Rasin and the kingdom of Israel. He unceasingly links forthcoming material deliverance of Jerusalem, and the defeat of its enemies to the spiritual and future deliverance of all Israel. Both offered a sure pledge of the preservation of the house of David.” 378 In fact, this is a salient character of the prophecies: their main object was the Messias and His influence on the past, present and future, basically embracing all things. All prophets since Samuel have announced these days, 379 the days of Christ and of the Gospel. If they also announced a multitude of other facts and preached many other truths, it is because these facts and truths were closely related to the Son of man. So the Old Testament (and all the more so the New) describes the influences of the heaven of the Incarnate Word.

Lk 1:11; Mt 1:21-23.

Canon Drach, loc. c., pp. 195, 196.

377 Isa 9:2,6, 7.

378 Canon Drach, loc. cit., p. 31.

379 Acts 3:24.

375 376

939. All of Isaias’s numerous prophecies announce more or less imminent facts that concern the Jews in particular. But they include the event par excellence toward which gravitate all facts and all prophecies, the event that sums up all wonders of the Lord’s power and goodness, the absolutely universal event that influences all times, places, persons, and events and constitutes humanity’s hope and salvation: the Incarnation of the Word and the redemptive work of the Son of man. The prophet often does not take the trouble to formulate relations between small facts and this paramount divine event. He explains the former to his people, and then, seemingly without transition, he stands in contemplation, describing them as a historian rather than a prophet. His attraction for the Messias is so strong and constant, and his art and free will are subordinate to Him. This proves that Isaias is a prophet above all for the Messias and about other things only concerning the Messias.

A profane eye reading Isaias without adopting this point of view would see nothing but riddles in this divine language, even more than the believing eunuch of Queen Candace who, despite his faith, would say: How will I be able to understand the reading of Isaias if someone does not explain it to me? 380 Now, just as this reading became perfectly intelligible to the eunuch when Philip announced Jesus to him, 381 so any reader who considers Isaias an Old Testament evangelist has the key to his prophecies. All ancient times were oriented and gravitated toward Christ.

940. The people of God existed only for the Messias; other peoples received the treatment required by the varying conditions of the people of God. The Messias was the center of all things because, always present in the eyes of God, the Messias concentrated in Himself all of the Lord’s attention, thoughts, and affections. Behold my servant; I will uphold him: my elect, my soul delights in him: I have given my spirit upon him, he shall teach righteousness to the nations. 382 It is through His ministry 383 that the Most High executes His plan by making everything converge toward Him until He appears; by submitting all things to Him when He appears, by making all beings participate in His excellence when He spreads His deifying influences and triumphs.

Suscipiam eum, according to the Hebrew, sustinebo, sustentabo: 384 I will take his humanity so that it will subsist in the Word, and henceforth it will possess all divine favors in the highest degree. He will be my Chosen One par excellence, the One by Whom and through Whom the other Chosen Ones will exist; for, my soul having placed in Him all its affection, I will love others only by the reflection of that first and incomparable affection. I will love them only as members of my Supreme Elect, as happened in the mobile Empyrean, in the earthly paradise, in the Old Testament, and among the Gentiles inasmuch as they could have had chosen ones; and will happen in evangelical times and eternity.

I poured out my Spirit on Him. The Holy Ghost will first arise in Mary, His Mother, and the virtue of the Most High will cover her with its shadow. 385 Thus, she will conceive of the Holy Ghost. 386 Since therefore what will be generated in Mary will be of the Holy Spirit, 387 an external sovereign operation of Acts 8:30-31.

Ibid 35-36.

382 Isa 42:1; Mt 12:17-18.

383 The Hebrew word corresponding to the word servus of the Vulgate means minister.

384 Cornelius a Lapide, in hunc loc.

385 Lk 1:35.

386 Mt 1:18.

387 Ibid 20.

380 381

hypostatic Love, sovereign divine filiation communicated with existence, so the Son of man will be indeed Son of God, the Holy Ghost will rest on Jesus with the absolute fullness of His gifts; 388 and any communication from the Holy Ghost, made or to be made to other people at any time is only a radiance in the past, present and future, of the great hearth which contains the given fullness of the Holy Ghost.

O supernatural radiance of Christ, sublime atmosphere of divine life, are thou not all the grace that has, is and will come out of God? O supernatural heaven of Christ, what being, created out of nothingness, has not experienced thy vital and salutary influences? Nothing would exist without thee; everything was created for thee, Who are at the same time the immediate end, measure and good of all things (nos.

112, 243, 282 & ff., 289 & ff. ). All is, and all is good only through thee. That is why thou clearly influence all times, places, people, and things. Thy radiance is the good that God communicates to creatures, the good that also contains the justice the Messias will teach nations.

941. He will not cry out, neither will He show favoritism to anyone. His voice will not be heard outside, meaning that He will not break the broken reed nor put out the still smoldering wick. He will judge according to the truth. He will not be sorrowful or turbulent as He establishes righteousness on the earth; the islands, that is, all regions enclosed in the oceans and seas, will await His law. It is the Lord God who says these things, creates the heavens and extends them, establishes the earth and what it produces, gives breath to the people who dwell therein and spirit to those who move about it. I, the Lord, have called you, O Messias, for the love of righteousness; I took you by the hand and kept you; I have appointed you to be the reconciler of the people and the light of nations to open the eyes of the blind, to draw out of shackles those who were in chains, and to bring out of prison those who were seated in darkness. I, Jehovah that is my name; I will not give my glory to a stranger but to my Son, nor my honor to pretenses. 389 The creation and arrangement of the heavens, the consolidation of the earth, the existence and preservation of mankind and its peoples all relate to the Messias Who must save, complete, and perfect everything. The Lord speaks as incidentally of the universality of beings, focusing His gaze on the ManGod and describing Him and His divine ministries with delight. I put my words in your mouth, He says to him elsewhere, and hid you under the shadow of my hand that you may establish the heavens and found the earth and say in Zion: You are my people. 390 O how profound are these words! Who could ever have the words of God in his mouth like Emmanuel, God made man while remaining God? Who could better keep in the shadow of Jehovah's hand than Jehovah our help, or Jesus, the Person of whose humanity is the Word of God? By this ineffable greatness of Christ, let us judge the greatness of the works He will accomplish: establish the heavens, found the earth, and say to Zion: You are my people.

O humanity of Christ! We again learn you are, after God, the first cause of the establishment of the heavens, the earth, the supernatural world, and the society of the children of God, which caused the existence of other intelligent creatures and all lower beings. The heavens, the earth, the supernatural, the adoptive sonship of God existed before you appeared among men, but they existed through you. To say nothing more, you have been the exemplary, final, and meritorious cause, and your sublime reality has always been present in the eyes of the Lord. But when you appear in the goodness proper to our

Isa 11:2.

Isa 42:2-8.

390 Ibid 51:16.

388 389

Savior God, 391 even mortals will see you, so to speak, creating and establishing the heavens, founding the earth and the supernatural kingdom. No one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid from all eternity, which is Christ Jesus. 392 Thus, when the very Principle of God’s creatures (Ap 3:14) appears on earth and converses with men (Baruch 3:38), they will contemplate with their eyes the first finite cause of the heavens, the earth, humanity, the supernatural, and all things (nos. 886, 931).

The great model employed by God in creation will appear with evidence. The star that has always attracted the finite to itself will shine in all its brilliance. The infinite merits that solicited and obtained from God all the good, and in our view were initially only envisaged, will unfold before our eyes in their immense and divine reality. And so we will somehow witness the creation and formation of the Empyrean, the angelic society, the supernatural world and other heavens and beings, because we will see at work their primary cause after God, at the same time as their adorable Repairer and divine Perfector.

942. To be complete on this subject, we would have to cite almost all chapters of Isaias. Jesus is the hero this prophet announced and sung almost continuously. As Abraham saw the day of the Messias with transports of joy, 393 the son of Amos fixed his gaze on that day – in die illa – incomparably more often.

What did he see if not Jesus? “Here is God, my Jesus," he cries out as if to signify the name of the child, the Emmanuel of Whom he has just spoken ... The Hebrew carries it word for word: Here is God, my salvation. Salvation is the Savior; it is Jesus as if the prophet were saying: Here is Jesus, Who brought me such abundant redemption from so many evils ... What else would I say but: My God, my Jesus, my everything? This is why he repeats the name of Salvation, i.e., of the Savior, Jesus, three times in this verse and the following one. 394 My strength and praise is the Lord of the Lord because He has become my Salvation. 395 “I received from Jesus all my strength, by which I shook off the devil’s yoke ... the Lord became the matter and object of my praise ... because He became my Savior and Jesus ... Lord God: in Hebrew we read: Ja Jehova, which can be translated as God of God, or God proceeding from God. Ja is an abbreviation of Jehovah, and Jesus is the One Who annihilated and shortened Himself by the Incarnation.” 396 Thus, the words of the prophet: Laus mea Dominus, et factus est mihi in salutem, literally mean, according to the Hebrew: Jehovah of Jehovah (the Son of God) is the object of my praise because He became my Savior or my Jesus.

943. The Man-God is also clearly designated in these passages: My name is blasphemed unceasingly throughout the day by the oppressors of my people and their vicious leaders. This is why, on that day, my people will know my name: for I who once spoke through my prophets am here present. 397 ... The Lord has manifested His holy arm in the eyes of all nations, and all parts of the earth will see the Lord sent by our God. 398 O Jesus! We do not know well the name of God until we see thee. We knew that Tit 3:4.

1Cor 3:11.

393 Jn 8:56.

394 Cornelius a Lapide, in hunc loc.; Isa 12:1-2.

395 Translation from Hebrew according to the same commentator.

396 Id., Ibid.

397 Isa 52:5-6.

398 Ibid 10.

391 392

God is Jehovah, the Very Being, the Most High, the Almighty. But we have never known perfectly how much goodness and love this august Name contains and until it was expressed by God’s descent to us through the Incarnation to help and save us. Thy Name, O Jesus, gives us the superior knowledge of the Name of God because it expresses the infinitely helpful love of God, Who is Charity: “Deus charitas est.”

And God’s charity appeared in that He sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. 399 God is essentially charity, but thy Name, O Jesus, designates that infinite charity as radiating outwardly.

If Jehovah defines God Himself, thy Name, O Jesus, defines God as relating to creatures and especially man. Everything was predestined in thee and is enclosed not only in thee but also in thy Name, which expresses God sovereignly communicating Himself to finite beings, making them exist, progress and achieve their ends. Thus, as Jehovah means God, Jesus means everything other than God but which God Himself communicated in the highest degree. O how deep the meaning of the Name of Jesus is! O Name ineffably delightful! O Jehovah of Jehovah, Whose eternal generation flourishes freely in temporal generation through the Incarnation and consequently creates the finite for thee and sanctifies and regenerates thy members, glorifies thy Mystical Body and the whole set of things. O how everything is in thee and in thy Name! How right it is that in the Name of Jesus, every knee should bend in heaven, on earth and in hell, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father! 400 944. I who once spoke, here I am present. The same Jesus that will bring us the light of the Gospel was also the author of the supernatural revelations in the times before He appeared on earth. All sensible means employed to manifest the divine truths were a prelude to the humanity of the Word, His voice and visibility. The Word was also present when He spoke through His prophets, but He hid under figures that symbolized His future humanity and was not present as a man. After the Incarnation, He will say: Here I am present both as the Word and as a man, and my people will know my Name, which will say all this simultaneously: Jesus. Here I am entirely present since I am here as the incarnate Word.

945. Everything has converged to the Incarnate Word from all ages. He has always been the holy arm by which God did His works and arranged events. The human faithful have glimpsed this truth from the beginning and admitted it by faith. The rest of humanity had a hunch about this providential design and were dominated by it. However, through the Incarnation, the Lord will manifest His holy arm in the eyes of all nations; and all parts of the earth will see the Savior sent by our God. The Lord will cause your master not to depart from you anymore, and your eyes will see your mentor. 401 This is why many apostles will preach Him until the end of time as a crucified God, lifted up as a standard before all peoples, who will always be the virtue of God and the Wisdom of God. 402 946. All of Isaias's prophecies relate more or less to Christ, and the more he advances in his prophetic career, the more his eyes focus on the Messias. He speaks about the Jewish people, the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Philistines, Moabites, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Idumeans, Arabs, island peoples, all Gentiles, the sky, the earth, the times, the judgment, and eternity. If we read him attentively, he groups all this under the dominant idea of the Messias and His reign. The Salvation that I will give will be eternal ... Rise up, O Arm of the Lord! rise up ... as you did in centuries past and from the beginning of the 1 Jn 4:8-9.

Phil 2:10-11.

401 Isa 30:20.

402 1 Cor 1:23:24.

399 400

world. Is it not you who struck down the proud one, who wounded the dragon, Lucifer, Sennacherib, the Pharaoh and their proud imitators? Is it not you who dried up the sea and the depths of the abyss, opening the way at the bottom of its waters to those whom you freed? 403 The law shall go forth from Me, and my justice shall enlighten the peoples and rest among them. The Just One Whom I will send is nigh. The Lord I promised will appear; my arms, the Messiah, the Holy Ghost He will send; the Apostles will govern the peoples. 404 The islands will wait for me and hope in my arm. The law will come from the Father through the Word made man. God’s justice will enlighten the peoples through Christ and rest among them in the Church of Christ. It is the Father Who sends the Righteous and Savior. The Father has arms through which He does His works; we have named the main ones. The Word says that the islands will wait for Him and the Father, that they will hope in the Messias, who is the quintessential Arm of the Father. Raise your eyes to heaven and lower them to earth, and the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and its inhabitants shall perish with it. But the salvation which I will give is eternal, and my righteousness endures forever. 405 What could be more obvious? The whole mobile universe is subordinate to the heaven of Christ.

The Lord will rise on you, Jerusalem, and His glory will shine in you. Nations will walk in the light of your light, and kings in the splendor that will rise over you ... All that is greatest in nations will be given to you ... The islands await Me and the vessels from the beginning, to bring your children from afar ... The people and kingdom that will not be subject to you will perish ... You will suck the milk of nations ... 406 Since gentility gravitates so strongly towards Christ from the beginning, Christ is the One Who has always attracted it by the influences of His heaven. Why is the prophet Isaias always attentive to show us Jehovah as unceasingly mindful of the Savior that He must send to earth? To show us the Jewish people as having to live only on faith and hope in the Messias? To show that all peoples of the earth are subject to a certain divine government which one would imagine established in Palestine, and which must end by bringing and subjugating everything to Christ? In our opinion, it is impossible to describe better the universal action of the heaven of the Incarnate Word, which attracts the gaze of the Lord toward the finite, orients all ages, persons and beings toward Christ, prepares the new heavens and the new earth through Christianity, forever imperishable and worthy abode of the glorified members of the Man-God: Sicut coeli novi, et terra nova, quae ego facio stare coram me, dicit Dominus : sic stabit semen vestrum, et nomen vestrum. 407

FIFTH MEDITATION Ancient Theophanies Were Manifestations of the Heaven of the Incarnate Word

Isa 51:8-9-10.

Brachia Dei Patris, Filius ejus et Spiritus Sanctus intelliguntur: sicut est illud in Isaïa proph., Et brachia mea populos judicabunt. Brachium Dei Patris singulariter, Filius ejus accipitur ... , quia omnis creatura electa ab ipso continetur. St. Augustine, De Essentia divinitatis, I. 405 Ibid 4-6.

406 Ibid 60.

407 Isa 66:22.

403 404

947. A day will come, says the Lord, in which my people will know my Name completely, because I will say: behold I am here, who spoke to you of old (Isaias 52:6). Since Thou were the one Who spoke, Thou were present to those who listened. Thy apostle tells us that Thou once spoke to our fathers through the prophets many times and in many ways, but that lately, Thou spoke to us through thy Son, Whom thou madest heir to all things (Heb 1:1-2). Christ considered as a man was established heir to all the goods of God, so Thou wantest to speak to us lately, in these days of fullness of time and graces through thy Son considered as a man. That is why we fully know thy Name, O God because we know the ManGod. The incarnate Word, showing Himself as a human among men, said: Behold here I am, who spoke very often and in many ways to our fathers through the prophets. He spoke through the Holy Ghost, Who inspired the holy men of God (2 Peter 1:21). He spoke through his angels and other ministers. Moreover, He made many appearances as if preluding His future supreme appearance by incarnating. He was represented by men and symbolized by things; He grouped all events around Himself and His Church.

Thus He demonstrated the universality and power of his influences. In this meditation, let us consider only the ancient theophanies. l. Ancient Theophanies According to St. Augustine 948. According to Cornelius a Lapide, St. Cyprian, St. Hilary and St. Gregory Nazianzus believe that God visibly appeared in bodily form to Abraham, Moses and the prophets. More likely, all those appearances were made by angels who impersonated God in factitious bodies and are thus called God. 408 Such is the opinion of a majority of authors. It is also in part the doctrine of Saint Augustine dealing with this question ex-professo, 409 and of Saint Thomas, we quoted above (no. 920). “All these manifestations to the Fathers,” says the great bishop of Hippo, “when God made Himself present to them according to His dispensation and the times” were evidently made through creatures. While we do not know how God did it by the ministry of the angels, we do know by faith and the authority of the divine Scriptures...that God did it through angels.

“However, someone may object, why then is it written: The Lord said to Moses, rather than the angel said to Moses? It is because when a bailiff proclaims a judge's sentence, one does not write in the report: the bailiff said, but the judge said. So too, when a holy prophet speaks, while we say ‘the Prophet has said,’ we mean nothing else but that the Lord said it. If we say: ‘The Lord has said,’ we do not leave out the prophet but name the one who spoke through him. The mentioned text of Scripture often shows us that the angel identifies himself with the Lord and that it is frequently said ‘the Lord has said,’ when it is the angel who spoke, as we have shown.” 410 No one doubts God Himself gave Moses the law to subdue the people of Israel; yet we also know that it, as St. Stephen says, the law was given by angels: “You received it through the ministry of the angels, and you did not keep it” (Acts 7:53).

“Indeed, the law was given to this people by the ministry of the angels, but it prepared and announced in advance the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. As the Word of God, He Himself was admirably and ineffable found in the angels, by whose ministry the law was given. He says in the Gospel: If you believed In Pentateucum, can. 16.

De Trinit., 11. 15, .libr. 3, chap. 11, etc., and almost all of l. 2, and elsewhere, particularly in 1. 4 of the same work, c. 21, n. 31.

410 Loc. cit., nos. 22, 23.

408 409

in Moses, you would doubtless believe in Me as well, for it is of Me that he wrote (Jn 5:46). Therefore, it is through the angels that the Lord spoke at the time. It is also through the angels that the Son of God and future mediator between God and of men, a descendant of Abraham, arranged His advent so He could find people who received Him. Writing to the Galatians, the Apostle said: Why then was the law established? It was established because of transgressions (to prevent them and to see when they were committed), until the offspring (the Messias) came, whom God had promised, and the ministry of angels gave the law in the hand of the Mediator (Gal 3:19).”

St. Augustine read this passage from the Apostle differently than we now do. For him, the Offspring was the One Whom the angels had placed in the hand of the Mediator. In other words, the advent of the Messias was prepared by the angels under the direction of the Word (in manu sua). According to the Bishop of Hyppo, this Mediator was not Moses but Christ. 411 He continues: “Let not the Apostle call one of the angels a mediator, but rather Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as He deigned to become a man. We find Him elsewhere where it is said: One God and one Mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus, man (1 Tim 2:5). Hence the Passover is made sacrificing a lamb (Ex 12), and all these things that symbolized the coming Christ in the flesh, the suffering Christ and the risen Christ, were contained in the law given by the angelic ministry. In these angels were doubtless found the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Holy Ghost. Sometimes, God was represented by the angels without any distinction of Person, although He appeared in visible and sensible forms. He appeared through His creature, not in His substance. Therefore, it is evident from the probable teaching of reason and the persistent and irrefutable testimony of holy Scriptures that when they tell us that God appeared to our ancient fathers before the incarnation of the Savior, the voices and bodily appearances that formed these apparitions were by angels. They either spoke or did something representing God, a custom we noticed among the Prophets; or they took up forms alien to their nature to represent God figuratively in the eyes of men. The Prophets also practiced such manifestations, as Scripture shows us with many examples.” 412 949. Thus, what was exterior and sensitive in the ancient theophanies was attributable to the angels, according to St. Augustine. But the angels impersonated God and sometimes the Father or the Son or the Holy Ghost. However, elsewhere the great bishop of Hippo tells us that it is the Word in particular that is manifested by the angelic ministry. This teaching seems very interesting from our point of view, and we will return to it.

950. “Regarding what is written, that God spoke with Adam and Eve, with the serpent, with Cain and other elders (Gen 3, 4, 13 etc.), that God appeared to many and was seen by them, which is proved by a great number of scriptural passages, the Manichaeans set up traps for us claiming that all these accounts are contrary to the words of the Lord in the New Testament: No one has ever seen God: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father is He Who made Him known (Jn 1:18). And again to the Jews: "You have never heard His [the Father’s] voice nor seen His face, and you do not have His word abiding in you because you do not believe in Him whom He has sent (Ibid. 5:37-38). We reply that one can resolve the whole question with these words of the Gospel: No one has ever seen God, except the Only Begotten Who is in the bosom of the Father and has made Him known. For the very Son, Who is the Word of God, made known the Father not only in these latter days when He deigned to appear in 411 412

St. Augustine teaches the same doctrine in his Expositionis lib. unus Epistolae ad Gal., no. 24.

Id., Ibid., nos. 26, 27, De Trinit.

the flesh, but also before, from the beginning of the world, by speaking or appearing by an angelic power or some creature. For He is the (eminent) truth which is in all things; because in His eyes everything is evident; because everything serves Him according to His desires; because everything is subject to Him. Thus, when He wants, He appears in the eyes of whomever He pleases through a visible creature, although, according to His divinity He can only be seen by the very pure hearts (of the Blessed).” 413 951. The Holy Doctor continues: It follows from these passages of Sacred Scripture (Gen. 18:1-2; 32:2430; Exodus, 3:2; ibid., 19:3; Acts 7:30:35) that God’s apparitions were at the same time apparitions of the angels or rather apparitions of God through the angels. “Indeed, we must not think that the Word of God by Whom all things were made can be limited to places and appear visibly to someone without it being through a visible creature. For just as the Word of God is in the prophet, and so it is rightly said: ‘The Lord said,’ because it is the Word of God, Who is the Christ, Who speaks the truth in the prophet, so it is also He who speaks in the angel when the angel announces the truth, and then one rightfully says: ‘God said,’ and again: ‘God appeared,’ although one can also say just as correctly: ‘the angel said,’ ‘the angel appeared.’ The first way of saying relates to God living in the angel, and the other way relates to the person of the angel Who serves God in this action. According to the same rule, the Apostle said: Do you seek a proof of Christ that speaks in me? (2Cor 13:3).” 414 952. As to the other words of St. John reported above (no. 950), to which the Manicheans objected, St. Augustine easily explains in a manner that harmonizes with the theophanies of ancient times. You have never heard the voice of the Father, that is to say, you Jews to whom I am speaking have not obeyed His word. You have not seen His face; indeed, that cannot be. You do not have His word abiding in you because Christ abides in him who keeps the word of God. But the Jews rejected Christ and consequently also the divine word, so they did not believe. "That is why it is not surprising that the Word of God, the only Son of God Who makes the Father known manifests Himself to whoever He wills, personally or through some creature, speaking or appearing directly to those who have a pure heart and causing the Father to show Himself through Him: Blessed are those who have a pure heart because they will see God (Mt 5:8). It is not unusual for the two Testaments to employ the same language on this point everywhere.” 415 953. Regarding this passage from Genesis: As they (Adam and Eve) had heard the voice of the Lord God who was walking in paradise, etc. (3:8-10), St. Augustine writes: “I do not see how one could take this walk and conversation with God literally without God having appeared in human form. For one cannot say that the voice alone was heard since we read that God was walking, nor that He who was walking in that place was not visible, since Adam said he hid from the face of God. But who was this character?

Was it the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost? Or was it the Triune God speaking to Adam in human form?” 416 It seems that it must have been God the Father, to Whom the Fiat lux and the Fiat firmamentum are especially attributed, but nevertheless He did all things through His Word. “However, it is possible for Scripture to switch imperceptibly from one person to another. After recounting that the Father said: ‘Let Contra Adimantum, c. IX, no. 1.

Ibid.

415 Ibid., no. 2.

416 De Trinit., Libr. 2., c. 10, n. 17.

413 414

light be made’ and the other things He did through the Word, the same Scripture would have the Son speak to the first man without identifying Himself openly but implying it to those able to understand... I believe I can say without recklessness that the Scripture really designates a place, a corporeal paradise, God could not walk in it other than in a bodily form.” 417 954. Elsewhere, the same Doctor says: "It is quite probable that God ordinarily appeared in human form to early humans employing something created according to the circumstances.” 418 Therefore, it seems that those apparitions related particularly to the Word, Who was going to become incarnate and was eternally seen by God as a man and model of humanity. St. Augustine finds that the humanity of Christ played a role in many of these theophanies. Thus, concerning the passages of Exodus (33:18-23) where Moses asks to see the face of God and succeeds only in seeing God from behind, the Bishop of Hippo says that God’s back indicates the flesh of Christ according to which He was born of the Virgin, died and resurrected. It is said to be His back because of His mortality or the late epoch when the Word took it upon Himself. 419 Moses really saw Him according to God’s promise but did not see His face, that is to say, His divinity: Videbis posteriora mea; faciem autem meam videri non poteris. Now, it is the Word Who calls his own (mea) the flesh which He joined. We are thus led to believe that it is the Word who spoke to Moses.

955. St. Augustine also supposes that Christ as a son of man appeared in a visible form to Daniel (7:914). But there and in other places, the same St. Doctor maintains that the Father and the Holy Ghost also appeared in various circumstances and forms. 420 About this other episode reported by Daniel (3:92), that Nebuchadnezzar also saw in the furnace, in addition to the three men thrown into it, a fourth man similar to the son of God, St. Augustine thus addresses that idolatrous king: “O stranger, where does this knowledge come from? Who announced the Son of God to you? Which law? What prophet? He had not yet been born into the world and you already knew what the child looked like. Where does this come from? Who announced it to you, if not the divine fire which so enlighted you ... that you had to bear witness to the Son of God.” 421 956. Let us summarize in a few words the teaching of the great African Doctor on this subject.

1. As the holy Scriptures recount, when God spoke or appeared to the ancients, He did so ordinarily by the ministry of the angels or at least by something created and sensible.

2. In His divine nature and Persons, God never showed Himself intuitively to mortal eyes: Non videbit me homo et vivet (Exodus 33:20).

3. These words and apparitions were not always attributable only to the Word, but sometimes to the Father, sometimes to the Holy Ghost, sometimes to the whole Trinity, sometimes to God taken absolutely although every external divine work is the work of the Trinity. 422

Ibid., no. 18.

De Gen. ad litt., 1. n, c. 34, no. 46.

419 De Trinit., l. 2, c. 17, nos. 28, 32.

420 Ibid., c. 18, nos. 33-35.

421 Sermo contra Judaeos, paganos et Arianos, chap. 15.

422 De Trinit., 1. 2, c. 10, no. 18.

417 418

4. The Word was already active in the Old Testament as a future descendant of Abraham and the Mediator between God and men. The written law was given by the ministry of the angels but in His hand as, by the law, He arranged men and things for His coming in the flesh. Moses, like the angels, was thus His minister. 423 5. Before His Incarnation, from the beginning of the world, the Word made the Father known by speaking, appearing, through some angelic power or some creature. It is Christ Who spoke the truth in the prophets, who spoke or appeared in the angels, who manifested himself (sometimes directly Himself ). 424 6. Hence the human form in which God showed Himself in the earthly paradise to our first parents, and elsewhere to Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar and others.

Il. The Same Theophanies Seen by Other Fathers and Authors 957. We expounded St. Augustine’s doctrine on this matter first because of this great man’s extraordinary authority. In our opinion, this teaching is the one that best expresses all the truths we find on this subject in Sacred Scripture and Tradition. He leans the least toward extreme opinions that singularly oppose one another in the field of divine apparitions. Bergier seems to have explained well the state of this question: “According to the history of Creation,” he writes, “God conversed in a sensible manner with Adam and his children, with Noah and his family, with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and several prophets. The Fathers of the Church raised the question of whether it was God Himself who was present and visible to men or whether it was an angel who spoke and acted in God’s Name.

Almost all the ancients were convinced that it was the divine Word, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, who thus presaged the mystery of the Incarnation. Others believed they were angels. It would be difficult to prove either of these opinions, as both may be true depending on the circumstances.

However, unless we do violence to the sacred text, we cannot deny the Creator Himself spoke and conversed with Adam, Noah, and Abraham. It does not seem probable that an angel said to Moses in the burning bush: ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham,’ or to the Israelites assembled at the foot of Mount Sinai: ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt’ (Ex 20:2). Yet we read in the Acts of the Apostles (7:38) that it was an angel who spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai. And St. Stephen said to the Jews: You have received a law prepared by the angels (Ibid. 53).” 425 958. We opine with Bergier that the two opinions above may be equally valid depending on the circumstances. We keep as a general rule these words of St. Augustine: “If I am asked how these voices, sensible forms, appearances, were made before the Incarnation of the Word, which prefigured this 423 Iste mediator significatus est per Moysen, in cujus manu est Lex data; St. Thomas, Comment. in Epist. ad Gal., c.

III,. lect. 7, IV. 424 If St. Augustine seems generally to attribute the sensible part of the apparitionsto the angels, it is because certain heretics of his time claimed that the substance of the Son of God was visible by itself without using ANY BODY, apparent or real. St. Augustine fights them, but his main principle on this subject is not that God always used angels to appear, but that God always used A CREATURE subject to Him to manifest Himself. This is also perfectly true in the case where the Word would have shown Himself through a bodily appearance. De Gen. ad litt., ll. 12, 1. 8, c. 27, etc. 18.

425 Dictionnaire de théologie, entry Apparition.

mystery, I answer that God made them through the angels, which I have sufficiently demonstrated with the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures.” 426 As we have seen, this Father nevertheless admitted that the Word sometimes bypassed the angels and spoke through prophets or some creature, showing Himself directly to those with a pure heart, making the Father known from the beginning of the world and thus also to the angels, and manifesting Himself to anyone He wants. This shows that the African Doctor does not condemn the opinion of those who attribute some apparitions to the Word Himself.

959. The ancient Fathers supported this opinion so universally that we believe it is founded on the truth as it does not deny divine apparitions operated through the angels. That is why we find too radical the authors who, with Suarez, 427 strive to prove that no divine apparition took place in the Old Testament except through the angelic ministry. Before pointing out how weak their non-arguments seem, let us give the floor to some ancient Fathers and other authors.

960. “The Word,” said Eusebius, “sometimes appeared to mortals through angels. sometimes He appeared by Himself to some of the ancients whose piety was eminent, and showed Himself to them no other than in human form.” 428 Nicephorus also says, “The Word sometimes appeared by Himself and sometimes by His ministers, the angels, to Abraham and his descendants.” 429 "He who spoke to Moses," said Tertullian, "was the Son of God Himself. It was always He who appeared, for no one during his life ever saw the Father.” 430 “To instruct and justify men,” said St. Leo, “the Almighty Son of God would appear in human form as He did to patriarchs and prophets, engaged in a fight (with Jacob), had a conversation or was pleased to receive hospitality and even take food. These mystical figures and teachings foretold the truth of the Man-God as a descendant of the ancient Fathers.” 431 Saint Isidore quite far in the same direction: "Wherever one takes an angel for God in the Holy Scriptures, we must not see him as the Father or the Holy Ghost but the Son alone, who foreordained His Incarnation.” 432 961. Suarez also cites, defending this thesis, St. Hilary, Theophylact, St. John Chrysostom, St. Justin, St. Cyprien, St Epiphanius, St. Ambrose, Pope St. Clement, and others. 433 This persuades us more and more that the truth in this matter is not in any extreme opinion but in that which admits that the Word sometimes appears Himself. As we have seen, this is what results from the whole teaching of Saint Augustine.

De Trinit., l. 4, chap. 21, no. 31.

De Angelis, 1. 6, chap. 20, nos. 36 & ff.

428 L. 1. De Demonstr., c. 5; and 1. 5, c. 20, and 28; and L. 1 Hist., C. 2.

429 Hist., 1. 1, c. 2.

430 Contr. Prax., cc. 14 & ff., et contr. Judae., c. 9.

431 Epist. 13, ad Pulcheriam.

432 Libr. 1, De Summo Bono, c. 19.

433 Suarez, loc. cit., nos. 7, 8, 25, 26.

426 427

St. Dionysius, whom they claim to oppose us, basically uses the same language. “Our illustrious fathers,” he says, “received the explanation of these divine visions from the heavenly powers.” 434 It simply affirms that the angels played a role in these visions without prejudice to the central role that the Word played in them by Himself. This Church Father thought that God, considered in His nature, cannot be seen by mortal eyes and but only appear on earth through something created and sensible, as St. Augustine said.

“If we claim that God,” wrote St. Dionysius in the place quoted, “immediately appeared to some saints Himself, we will know through the clear expressions of the sacred oracles that no one has seen or will ever see what is secret in God (Jn 1:18; 1Tim 6:16). In these theophanies to pious creatures, God showed Himself as He was in His majesty with the help of sacred visions connected with the seers. Wise theology rightly calls these visions theophanies because they provide seers with a different illustration and initiate them into something divine. As such, these visions outline the “unfigured” by the “figurative,” that is, they somehow show the invisible God through something sensible. They “retrace the divine likeness” in the seers “by raising them toward the divine.” “Do the oracles not report God Himself gave Moses the sacred code of the law? Yes, to truly teach us that it was a holy and divine summary. But theology wisely teaches that this law was transmitted to us by the angels (Heb 2:2) to show that in the order of divine economy, the inferior rises to God through a superior.” 435 962. Thus, according to St. Dionysius, if God himself did not appear immediately to some saints, it is because He never let Himself be seen intuitively by mortals. He showed Himself with the help of sacred visions in connection with the seers,” and some of these visions may have taken place without the ministry of the angels. God Himself gave Moses the sacred code of the law, “but this law was transmitted to us only by the angels. The divine mystery of Jesus’s philanthropy was first revealed to the angels, and through them, the grace of this knowledge came down to us.” But “Jesus Himself is placed in the rank of announcers and is named angel of the great council (Isaias 9:6, after the Septuagint). In this capacity as an angel, He says He taught us all that He learned from the Father (Jn 15:15).” 436 Thus, on attributing a role to the angels in the divine apparitions, we must not forget the role of the angel par excellence, Christ, to Whom we must mainly attribute what is often attributed to angelic creatures.

963. Malachi calls Christ the Angel of the testament (3:1). Cornelius a Lapide observes that Christ was the angel and legate of the two testaments, the old or Judaic, and the new, or Christian. He adds: “The Christ Sent by the Father appeared to Moses on Sinai, and through Him made the old covenant with the Jews, promising to come in the flesh for their redemption and that of the whole world. For Christ was the angel promised in the Old Testament to Abraham and his race, especially Moses. That is why St. Paul tells the Galatians (3:19) that the old Law was given into the hand, that is, by the hand of the Mediator.

A great number of authors understand that Christ is this Mediator. Hence He directly said to Isaias (52:6): I Myself that spoke, behold I am here. St. Basil, St. Cyril, Eusebius, St. Ambrose and numerous other Fathers hold that whenever God appeared in the Old Testament, it was the Son, the Second Person who appeared to signify in advance His actual coming in the flesh, and to prelude and foreshadow it with an apparent body, as I said at the beginning of the Pentateuch, chapter 16.” 437 Celestial Hierarchy, ch. 4, § 3.

Ibid., French translation by Father Dulac.

436 Ibid § 4.

437 Comment. in Malach., III, 1.

434 435

964. Quite remarkably, this teaching coincides with that of many rabbis who commonly find the Name of the Man-God in the Old Testament and call Him (in Hebrew), Man-Jehovah, Man-Angel of Jehovah, Angel of the Covenant, Angel of the face, Metatron Angel. 438 Eve gives her firstborn the name of Cain, saying, as per the text, “I have acquired a Jehovah man.” This last word is in the accusative mode and is an attribute of man. The Chaldaic paraphrase reads: “A man, angel (or Envoy) of Jehovah;” the Syriac version says: “One man, the Lord.” This man is called vir as if he were a grown man, and at the same time Jehovah, as if He was God. What is this mystery? It is that our first parents had heard from God's mouth that the conqueror of hell would be a Man-God, a Jehovah-Man. And Eve, in her ignorance, the first fruit of sin, imagined that Cain was the promised Messias and took him for the Jehovah-Man or the Man-Angel of Jehovah. This strongly indicates that God appeared in human form to our first parents in Eden, since, on seeing a child, Eve called Him a Jehovah-Man. 965. The Prophet Hosea (12:4-6) calls angel and Jehovah the man against whom Jacob fought a mystical struggle (Gen 32:25), Canon Drach continues, and Genesis calls Him God (32:29-31). Therefore, we conclude, being God and Envoy simultaneously, He could only be the Angel of the Testament or Christ.

Malachi said: Behold, I am sending my angel, and he will prepare the way before me. According to Canon Drach, this literary means: And He will prepare the way for my face; the rabbis call the second Hypostasis (the Son), the Face of Jehovah.” This angel is John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the Messias. But the prophet continues: And soon the Lord (Adon, Adonai) that you ask for, the Angel of the Covenant that you desire enters His temple, says Jehovah Sabaoth (Malachi 3:1). God alone is the master of the temple, and God is clearly expressed by the word Lord, Adon, the same Hebrew name we read in this verse of the psalmist: Dixit Dominus Domino meo. Malachi thus speaks of the God-Angel, Angel of the Covenant. “This Angel of Jehovah, or Divine Person of the Supreme Trinity, is the King Messias, as the rabbis admit.”

966. But this Supreme Angel, according to the same authors, was also such before His Incarnation. The Lord said in Exodus (23:20 & ff.): Behold, I am sending my angel before you to keep you in the way. Obey his voice, for My Name is in Him ... The Name often means the Essence of God. Several rabbis say that this angel was God because the word angel is preceded by the article the, which designates the divinity and the Son and the two natures of the Incarnate Word. 439 “The angel promised to Israel, says Fr. Moses Nalthmenides, it is the angel Redeemer who contains within Him the great Name of God with Whom He created the worlds. ... Scripture calls him angel because the whole government of this world belongs to this mode of Divinity, and our Doctors teach that He is Metatron (master and envoy).

“Commenting on Exodus 33—And God said, I will send my angel before thee—Rabbi Behhai says that ‘My angel’ means my beloved angel by whom I am known in the world. Speaking of this angel, God said to Moses: My face will go before you. He was answering Moses’s prayer, ‘Let me know your way,’ meaning, make me know the way by which you are known in the world. That is also the meaning of this verse: And the angel of His face saved them (Isaias 63:9), which is to say, the angel who is His very face.” 440 Let us observe from these passages that it is perfectly fitting for the Word to be called the face of God because He is the splendor of the glory of God and the imprint of His substance (Heb 1:3 ). God We borrow these notions and the following ones on the same subject from the work of Canon Drach, De l'harmonie entre l'Eglise et la Synagogue, tom. II, pages 405 & ff.

439 Canon Drach, ibid. p. 412 & elsewhere.

440 Id. p. 413-414.

438

makes Himself known to the outside world above all through the Word; and Christ, as the Word or as a man, has always been the faithful witness to every covenant of God with His creatures (no. 930).

967. Note particularly the formal distinction that God makes in Exodus chapter 336 between His angel (created angel) and His Word, the angel par excellence. From the context, it seems clear that the first words quoted by Rabbi Behhai refer to an ordinary angel, while the others refer to the divine angel or Son of God. Indeed, the Lord said to Moses: I will send an angel to serve as a forerunner. As for me, I will not go up with you (1, 2, 3). It was the pavilion where God gave His oracles, erected far outside the camp (v. 7) so the angel of God was with the people and preceded them, but God wanted to manifest Himself only outside the camp. Now the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man accustomed to speaking to his friend. Thus, it seems that Moses saw God in the form of a man, as we see a friend speaking to us. It seems He saw Him with human features, as later on the Thabor. But he would have liked to see more, that is, the Word Himself: Ostende mihi faciem tuam, ut sciam te. And the Lord said unto him: My face shall go before thee ... but you will not be able to see my face or divinity without dying (11, 13, 14, 20). Moses, therefore, obtained that God Himself ostensibly accompanied the people without prejudice to the angel; and it was the Face of God, that is to say, the Word, that walked before the Israelites.

968. Canon Drach continues: “Rabbis give the Angel Metatron all attributes of divinity. This angel infinitely elevated above the angels, whom the prophet Malachi announces as the Messias, was constantly the guide and guardian of the ancient patriarchs of the Hebrew people. In a word, the one that the rabbis call Metatron can only be, according to their definition, the second hypostasis of the divine Trinity.” 441 The same author goes on to quote various rabbinical authorities of which we only report this passage: “The man who is the saint from above governs everything. It is He who gives spirit and life to all beings.” Canon Drach ends this remarkable chapter with these words: “Numbers 22:15.

Moses sends word to the King of Edom: We have long remained in Egypt, and we called upon Jehovah, Who has heeded us. He sent an angel who saved us from Egypt.

“A) This angel is the Lord Himself, as we learn from Deuteronomy 26:8: And Jehovah brought us out of Egypt by His mighty hand” 442 – Eduxit nos de Egypto in manu forti, et bracllio extenta, etc. St. Augustine told us above, quite rightfully, that the Father’s arm in the singular means His own Son”(no. 946, 2nd note). Thus, the Jewish people were delivered from their oppressors above all through the powerful influences of the Word—an image of what the Word would do more perfectly with Christianity through His incarnation.

“B) In the ritual of the first two evenings of Easter, inserted in the great work of Maimonides, this verse states: ‘And Jehovah extricated us from Egypt, not by an angel, a Seraphim or some minister, but the Most Holy ... let us out Himself.”

“C) Commenting on the book of Numbers, Aben-Ezra says the angel mentioned there is the same one Isaias calls Angel of the Face: Jehovah was afflicted in all afflictions of the children of Israel, and the Angel of the Face redeemed them with his ‘love’ and ‘tenderness’ (Isaias 63:9).” 443

Ibid., p. 417. lbid. pp. 419-420.

443 Canon Drach, ibid.

441 442

969. From all these data, it seems that the Word sometimes appeared by Himself without using the angelic ministry. In such cases, He did not appear in His divine essence, which only the Blessed can see, but through some visible creature and most often under the human form, as St. Augustine says. The Word had a marked predominance in these theophanies without excluding manifestations of the Father and the Holy Ghost. Finally, as ministers of the Word and the other divine Persons the created angels ordinarily played a role in these supernatural and divine phenomena which, considered in general, were effects of the influences of the heaven of the Incarnate Word, which is the exemplary, meritorious and immediate final cause of all things.

III. How We See These Theophanies Based on the Principles Expounded in this Book 970. As indicated above (no. 959), we believe that the authors who, with Suarez, attribute all ancient theophanies to angelic ministries are going too far. Nor do the proofs they give seem very solid. They rely on St. Dionysius, who asserts at most a general rule, saying that God only shows Himself to mortals in sensible forms, which is something no one disputes. He also attributes the angels a role without refusing one to the Angel of the Great Council, Whom he also calls Announcer, Who causes God to give the ancient law and makes the angels explain and transmit it. Note that supporters of the two extreme opinions cite St. Dionysius. In our opinion, this Father condemns the absolutism of both sides (nos. 961, 962).

If we take St. Augustine’s teaching as a whole (nos. 948-956), it is identical to that of St. Dionysius.

Favoring one side on some points and the other side on others, it simultaneously avoids the two opposing excesses and opposes only what they find exclusive.

On this point, St. Thomas relies on the doctrine taught by St. Augustine in his third volume of De Trinitate. 444 We have amply quoted this Father, whom the Angel of the School does not disapprove at all. St. Thomas himself tells us that the Word appeared to the angels at the beginning (during their test), when they were edified by clinging to the Word: Verunt est quod a principio apparuit angelis quando ex conversione ad se œdificavit ipsos. 445 They did not see Him intuitively as they were still not glorified, and yet the Word appeared to them. How, then, did they see Him if not as incarnate? According to the Apostle, what appeared to them was the mystery of the Incarnation: Manifeste magnum est pietatis sacramentum, quod manifestatum est in carne ... apparuit angelis. He certainly did not appear to the angels through angels, which would be odd; there is every reason to believe that He manifested Himself to them as a supernatural object of faith manifests itself, which was, is, or will be actual.

This reality, eternally known to God as such, can appear in a supernatural way at any time. During their test, the angels believed in the future incarnation of the Word—a very important object of their faith (nos. 648 & ff.)—and it was the Word Incarnate that appeared to them to edify them. About this passage of Exodus: The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a friend usually speaks to his friend (33:2), St. Thomas admits that an eminent and familiar contemplation of God may exist, which nevertheless will be inferior to the vision of the divine essence. 446 Contemplation of God face to face without seeing the Libr. 2, Dist. VIII, a. 2, ad 2m.

Comment. in l Epist. ad Timot., c. 3, v. 16.

446 II, q, 98, a. 3, at 2m.

444 445

divine essence aptly designates the sight of the Word made flesh and could scarcely mean anything else: Quod vidimus oculis nostris, quod perspeximus, et manus nostrae contrectaverunt de Verbo vitae. 447 971. Suarez’s proofs a priori do not seem to invalidate our opinion. One can sum them up in this general rule formulated by St. Dionysius, St. Augustine, and other theologians: God administers average things by leading ones and lesser things by average ones when it can be done properly. Therefore, He must appear to men through angels. We answer that, according to Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas, the angels are hardly superior but rather equal to men considered as children of God, prophets, apostles, etc. (no. 459, 1st note). Thus, it is not surprising that God sometimes manifests Himself directly to men and, through them, to other men. This is why Moses, the Prophets, Apostles, Bishops are, as such, kinds of angels or envoys from God, and Christ is the angel par excellence.

Moreover, if the Word appears to men through creatures other than angels as sensible instruments employed by the Word, these creatures are superior to men, for whose sake theophanies are made.

Although it may be tiny, a tool has the nobility of him who wields it. Thus, the general rule invoked by Suarez would also be observed.

Moreover, in our opinion, the Incarnation of the Word must modify the opinion of Suarez because the Son of God wanted to administer things more through His humanity than the angels, whom He admitted to the service of His humanity. Why, then, should something similar not have been done in the Old Testament, where everything was a figure of the New? In the former, the Word preluded with accidental unions, the personal union He was to contract with humanity through the Incarnation. Just as an angel announced the Incarnation to Mary, and angels celebrated it before the shepherds and served the Word made man in various other ways, angels also played some in the ancient theophanies even when the Word appeared by Himself.

972. All these theophanies aimed in some way at the Incarnation and were centered on the Word becoming man. The ministries the angels fulfilled in them had the same end. “The fact that angels took up bodies in the Old Testament,” says Saint Thomas, “was a kind of figurative clue that the Word of God had to take a human body. For all the [divine] apparitions in the Old Testament were ordered to the apparition in which the Son of God was shown in the flesh.” 448 Speaking of prophecies, theophanies and supernatural facts in the Old Testament, Cardinal Franzelin says: "All preceding manifestations—as preparation—and all subsequent manifestations—as effects and continuation—aim at one great manifestation that God Himself makes by incarnating: Great mystery of piety revealed in the flesh and justified by the Spirit, which appeared to the angels, was announced to the nations, believed in the world, and received in glory (1Tim. 3:16). St. John, speaking of the mystery by which God became visible in the human nature He assumed, cried out: And we saw His glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. When one considers Christ in all His admirable life with all the miracles He performed by His power, His relation to the history of the Old Testament—a preparation for His advent, of which He was the complement— and finally, in His

447 448

1 Jn 1:1.

1, q. 51, a. 2, ad 1m.

relations with subsequent Christian history, which depends on Him as its cause and principle, one must necessarily regard Christ as the apex of the manifestation of God.” 449 973. It follows from this indisputable teaching that the two Testaments are radiations of different intensities from the heaven of the Incarnate Word. God properly understood and expressed (nos. 788 & ff.), supreme participated life (nos. 799 & ff.; 917, 919, 930, 931), hypostatic union (the great focus of communicated supernatural), in short, the Incarnate Word, projected the whole supernatural dawn that shone in the world among angels and men before the Son of God’s temporal birth. After Christ’s the temporal birth, the supernatural is an effect, a reflection, a diminished extension of participated divine life, or grace, the very fullness of which is in Christ. Thus, whether in ancient times the Word appeared

by Himself or through angels made visible or other creatures, these supernatural and beneficent apparitions must be attributed especially to the Word. Back then, He operated less perfectly according to the requirements of those times, and later more perfectly, by the ministry of His humanity. In the New Testament, the Father manifested Himself for Christ by saying several times: Behold my beloved Son etc. The Holy Ghost manifested Himself as having been sent by Christ. Accordingly, the apparitions of the Father and the Holy Ghost in the Old Testament are in some way attributable to the Word, Whose humanity was to have all things as his cortege. He made angels, men and all creatures lovable in the eyes of the divine Persons.

974. These explanations and those given in no. 971, show how solid is the teaching of the ancient Fathers, who saw the Word in many theophanies but did not exclude the ministry of the created angels any more than they excluded the New Testament. However, as Saint Paul observes (Heb 2:1-3), the role of the angels had a certain predominance in those ancient times, in which the action of the Word was much more mysterious even though God spoke and appeared quite frequently (Heb 1:1,2, etc.) as per the Holy Scriptures. It seems that in many cases, the manifestations by God and the angels were lumped together as supernatural manifestations. This process made sense because both the idea of God manifesting Himself and the idea of an envoy or angel came together in the Messias, the God Who was sent not only as man but also as God, as well as the Holy Ghost. 450 Since the Word is the divine Envoy par excellence, it is not surprising that in many theophanies, the notions of God and angel are as it were merged into one. And since the revealed truth did not shine in the Old Testament with the same clarity as in the New, the apparitions of the Word were sometimes recounted as apparitions of angels, both of which, moreover, could be true simultaneously.

975. How can we conceive the apparitions of the Word in human form without the need for angelic ministry? The answer is that the Word can do eminently everything the angels do. While the angels could form and take dummy bodies only by virtue of divine power, as St. Thomas says, 451 the Word needed no borrowed power to produce the same effects. While the Son of God alone incarnated, both the Father and the Holy Ghost cooperated in this mystery of love; and the Trinity acted together externally even though some theophanies were particularly attributable to the Word. Besides, why would it have been suitable only for the angels (not destined to become incarnate) to take on human appearances and less so for the Word Who was to become incarnate according to eternal predestination? If the Old Testament was an outline and preparation for the New, everything seems to De Deo uno, thes. 8, 3°.

1, q . 43, s. 4.

451 1, q. 511 a. 21 ad 2m and ad 3m.

449 450

lead us to believe that the Word Himself sometimes foreshadowed what He was to do more excellently later.

976. However, one can ask, what human appearance could the Word then take since His humanity was not yet present? We answer that the question must be even more difficult if made about the angels, who were never to become men. Let us remember that for God, there is neither past nor future but an eternal present in which all that has been, is and will be, appears simultaneously (n. 281). Thus, Christ’s humanity was seen as actual thanks to the indivisibility of God’s knowledge from all eternity and especially when He drew angels, men and other beings from nothing, for everything was predestined in Christ (nos 281 & ff.). In various circumstances, the humanity of Christ, this finished reality par excellence which the Eternal always contemplated as reality, was able to supernaturally project its radiance in the eyes of the angels and men whom God kindly favored. After all, what is prophecy if not a supernatural view of the future that still does not exist when seen but exists for the prophet who sees it? 452 This is participation in the eternal knowledge of God, for Whom there is neither past nor future. In our opinion, some theophanies were like that. The humanity of Christ shone transiently in the eyes of a few angels and privileged men.

That is how, we believe, Christ appeared to the angels (no. 970). That is how Abraham saw Him and rejoiced (Jn 8:56); that is how He appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai, when the angels placed the Law into the hand of the Mediator (Gal 3:19), preluding in fear the glorious and suave manifestation He will later make on Mount Thabor. That is also, we think, how He walked in Eden in the afternoon (Gen 3:8) and made Himself visible to our first innocent parents. St. Thomas tells us that “the angels, before their confirmation in grace, and man, before his sin, knew with manifest knowledge something of the divine mysteries that we now can only know from faith.” 453 They saw certain supernatural things that are of faith to us, and yet their contemplation was not the intuitive vision of God in His essence. 454 “They did not have the darkness of guilt or sorrow, but their intellect had some natural darkness whereby every creature is darkness compared to the immensity of divine light, and this darkness suffices for faith to exist.” 455 Thus, their faith was much more enlightened than ours, and they saw certain things that we only know imperfectly by faith. That is why the reasons expounded in this meditation and others lead us to believe that the wayfaring angels and the inhabitants of Eden sometimes enjoyed the supernatural privilege of contemplating the humanity of Christ by some participation in God’s unchanging and eternal knowledge.

977. In this way, God manifested Himself by Himself without showing His divine essence to mortals or spirits under test. We say manifested because the words, sounds and instructions that accompanied these apparitions could be made and uttered by angels as ministers of the Word in a way that suited the Prophecy is also a view of the image of the future. Now, who animated the image of Christ that angels and some holy men were able to supernaturally see? The Word Himself, Who is eternally alive. For if the Word indeed supports the real humanity of Christ, how easy He can support His image! And since the Old Testament was the time of images, in it the Word sometimes manifested itself in accordance with the economy of the time. But, in this case, the Word Himself appeared in certain circumstances, and by Himself.

453 2a 2ae, q. 5, a. 1.

454 Ibid., ad 1m.

455 Ibid., ad 2m.

452

humanity of Christ. 456 St. Thomas does not attribute any vital action to the factitious bodies taken by angels but only a virtue of signifying, 457 which suffices to attribute similar miraculous apparitions in ancient times to the humanity of Christ.

Here we ask whether we found the point of view from which the various opinions appear to be true in that they are not utterly exclusive. When God appeared in human form, He would always have appeared in the human form of Christ. To us, this seems to conform to the almost unanimous teaching of the ancient Fathers. But the whole active part of the theophany would have been done by the Word and the angels, servants of Christ, and especially St. Gabriel, who particularly represented the Man-God (nos.

528-530). This is the common teaching of current scholastics and theologians.

Since the Person of Christ is eternal and was necessarily present and active in all theophanies, He must be given the leading role in the acting or speaking part of these manifestations without prejudice to the secondary role played by the angels. 458 St. Augustine tells us that “the Word Himself, in an admirable and ineffable manner, was in the angels by whose ministry the law was given” (no. 948). In other words, "the Word of God, Who is Christ, spoke the truth through the Prophets” and “through the angels when they proclaimed the truth” (no. 951).

978. Let us add that the angels had from their creation an infused idea of all that God wanted to achieve, at least in nature, a notion that Revelation perfected and extended (nos. 628 & ff.; 637; 642 & ff.), and made eminently clear with their glorification. Thus, we believe they knew Christ’s exact human appearance before His Incarnation. Hence, we conclude, they could take factitious bodies that faithfully reproduced the image of Christ as a man; , and what God generally granted to the angels during their test, He did not refuse to innocent men and holy personages in the Old Testament.

We have seen how (nos. 459 and 890, notes), as children of God, angels and men are equal. Therefore, it seems appropriate that they should enjoy the same privileges up to a certain point. If Christ appeared to the angels during their trial (no. 970), to men at the Incarnation, and later also appeared from time to time and in various ways, it seems eminently plausible that He also appeared to early humans in the earthly paradise and to certain characters in the Old Testament. The divine plan is unique and homogeneous, and Christ is first and foremost in all parts of this plan. Just as the Word manifested Himself most splendidly by becoming flesh and living among us, we can easily admit that in ancient times He also showed Himself in His humanity—at least as an image—to wayfaring angels and faithful humans, albeit these apparitions were not as perfect.

IV. Several Other Cases Where it Seems that God, or Rather the Word, Appeared Himself 456 A priest administering the sacraments seems to act in a similar way. However, Christ is the chief minister. If we also saw His human appearances, would we not say that He manifests Himself without prejudice to the action of His ministers?

457 1, q. 51, a. 3, in corp., And ad 2m, 4m, 5m. Through these bodies the angels could also operate some effects as operate the non-vital natural causes. St. Thomas, ibid.

458 All angels are ministers or administrators (Heb. 1:14). The Word employed them just as Jesus Christ uses His human ministers in the New Testament. They said what the Word Incarnate would have said had it been real rather than only apparent. When they spoke, they said only what the Word suggested to them. In reality, the Word sometimes appeared by Himself, while using angels to honor secondary causes.

979. Above (no. 976) we mentioned four cases from ancient times in which the Word appeared in person. But we believe that He appeared much more often. In Genesis, God speaks or shows Himself many times before we see the ministry of the angels. Except for the Cherubim who guard the entrance to the earthly paradise (Gen 3:24), we do not find any good angel there until that of Hagar (16:7), if we read correctly. After that, we find the two angels who went to Sodom to destroy that guilty city (18:16,22; 19:1). In the other cases, until chapter 19, it is always Elohim or Jehovah who manifests Himself. Why, then, would we put angels where neither the text nor the context does? We believe that in chapter 16:7, 9, 10, 13, and often in subsequent texts, it is clear that an angel speaks on God’s behalf.

But how many times does the Lord show Himself alone with the proper characteristics of the Divinity!

Let us see a few examples.

980. Angels do not figure in Noah's story, although God speaks there frequently and sometimes at length. How did God speak or manifest Himself there? The text does not tell us, but it seems that He usually did it through visions, as in the talks that took place later between God and Abraham (Gen. 15:1, 2, 7 etc.). In them, God Himself was speaking: Ego Dominus qui eduxi te, etc. God Himself said to Noah and his children: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth (Gen 9:1), just as He had said before to Adam and Eve (Gen 1:28). Righteous men and faithful angels are also His children (no. 459, notes), and it is not surprising that He sometimes likes to manifest Himself directly to both by sensible means as a prelude to the Incarnation.

It was also the Lord Himself Who confused the proud builders of the Tower of Babel. He said: Come, let us go down to this place and confound their tongue (Gen 11:7), just as He said at the beginning: Let us make man in our image (1:26.), and a little later: Behold Adam has become as one of us (3:22).

It is the Lord Who tells Abram to leave his country and appears to him (Gen 12:1,4,7): The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him: I will give this land (Canaan) to your posterity. And Abram built there an altar unto the Lord Who had appeared unto him. That patriarch did not erect an altar to an angel, but to the Lord Who had shown Himself to him. Therefore, it seems that God manifested Himself directly.

In chapter 17, God appears again and speaks to Abraham, showing the characters of the Divinity: The Lord appeared to him and said: I am the Lord Almighty; walk before Me and be perfect ... And God said unto him: It is I. I will strengthen my covenant with you, and after you, with your race in their generations, by a perpetual covenant, that I may be your God and the God of your posterity after you (1, 4,7). This language seems much appropriate in God’s mouth than an angel’s; besides, this chapter does not mention any angel. If by becoming flesh the Word must one day converse habitually with men and remain with them bodily until the end of time through the Holy Eucharist, a rightly proportioned divine plan seems to require that God exceptionally manifest Himself personally to a few holy personages of the ancient times.

981. In chapters 18 and 19, we clearly see a distinction emerge between times when God speaks and times when an angel speaks. It is the Lord Who again appears to Abraham in the valley of Mambre. But the Father of believers first saw three men. However, one of them soon showed Himself to be the Lord, while the other two are expressly called angels (19:1). The text says in several places that the first personage was God Himself appearing in human form: The Lord appeared to him (1) ... Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes (3) ... The Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh? (13) ... No, says the Lord, that is not so, for you laughed (15) ... While Abraham was leading these men back to the side of

Sodom, the Lord said to him: Could I hide what am I going to tell Abraham? (17) ... The Lord then added: The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah increased more and more, and their sin rose to its height. I will come down and see if their works respond to this cry... (20, 21). And they [the two angels] departed from there and went to Sodom, but Abraham remained before the Lord. And coming up, he said unto Him, wilt Thou lose the righteous with the ungodly, Lot with the Sodomites? (22, 23) And the Lord continued with Abraham this familiar and famous conversation which ends with these words: If I find ten righteous in Sodom, I will not lose this city (32). And the Lord withdrew after He had ceased to speak to Abraham; and he returned home (33).

The Lord also came down to Sodom according to His promise (21), but in an invisible way. It was the Lord who sent down from heaven a rain of sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah and destroyed these cities with all their inhabitants (19:24-25). According to the biblical account, Lot, much less perfect than Abraham, did not see the Lord but only the two angels, who consistently behaved as angels sent by the Lord (13). 459 As for Abraham, it is indeed with the Lord that he had been, as the sacred writer again affirms in this chapter (27). This word, Lord, is not an honorary title given to an angel because in Hebrew it reads Jehovah (18:3,27,30,32), the most divine and incommunicable of names.

982. Following the literal meaning, we are obliged to make the same observations about chapter 22.

There, God and an angel show themselves successively and apparently in a very distinct manner. It is God Who, first of all, calls Abraham and orders him to immolate his son. Subsequently, it is an angel who speaks to him in person, by order of God, to prevent him from killing Isaac (11,12). After that, the angel of the Lord called Abraham from heaven for the second time and spoke to him on God’s behalf (15, 16 & ff.). For the second time means that in the first verse, the call was not made by the angel as in verses 11 and 15, but by God: Tentavit Deus Abraham, et dixit ad eum : Abraham, Abraham, etc. (v. 1). In Jacob's vision, angels of God appear ascending and descending the ladder, but the patriarch also sees the Lord leaning on the top of the ladder, Who says to him: I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. . . All nations of the earth will be blessed in you and in him who comes out of you (28:12,13,14).

Further on, it is an angel of God who addresses Jacob in a dream and speaks to him on God’s behalf, as the text itself indicates (31:11-13).

Further, we see a wonderful man fighting against Jacob until morning. Is this man an angel, or God, Who appears in human form? He himself tells the patriarch: In the future, you will no longer be named Jacob, but Israel. For if you have been strong against God, how much stronger will you be against men! Jacob named that place Phanuel, saying, I saw God face to face, and my soul was saved; I saw God without dying (32:24,28,30). Cornelius a Lapide observes about this passage, that “Theodoret, St. Justin, Tertullian, St. Hillary, St. Ambrose, St. Cyril, and other Fathers ... seem to say that it was the Son of God, the Word, Who was to become incarnate. This is proved by the words of Jacob, who calls this man God (30).” But, the illustrious commentator adds, this “man was an angel as we read it in Hosea, 12:3.” 460

Except perhaps in verse 18, where the angels seem to fade to make way for the Lord as Lot expresses himself.

On the names given to God in Genesis, see Vigouroux, Manuel Biblique, tome 1, v. 253, 3°.

460 Comment. in hunc loc.

459

For our part, let us observe, with Cornelius a Lapide, that in the Hebrew text, Hosea does not give this man an angel’s name but calls him Elohim: 461 He (Jacob) fought in his strength against Elohim, which is a name of God. Besides, we have seen that Christ is the Angel par excellence, the divine Envoy to men (nos. 965 & ff.). Moreover, according to Hosea, this character is the same that Jacob found at Bethel (Hosea 12:4). At Bethel, God is indicated in the singular and represented as leaning on top of the ladder.

So, we conclude, the prophet Hosea’s passage only confirms the opinion of the Fathers mentioned above.

983. Some authors find it improper for the Son of God to fight in this way against a man and allow himself to be overcome. But we answer that Jacob’s antagonist also showed his superiority (25); that if the Lord is willing sometimes to obey the voice of man (Jos. 10:14), He can also show His condescension in other ways; that the Son of man did not come to earth to be served, but to serve (Mt 20:28), so that it was appropriate for the Word to prelude in some way, in ancient times, the humble condition He would later choose; and finally, if Christ deigned to fight against the world and the devil, and even pretend to have been defeated by them during His passion and on the Cross, we find edifying this process that strengthened the courage of a holy man. 462 Finally, note that the very name Israel given to Jacob on this occasion proves our opinion because it does not evoke the idea of an angel but only of God. It means being able to measure oneself with God or to rule over God. So we believe the whole context seems to favor our opinion.

984. Space does not allow us to make similar observations on all theophanies. Hence we limit ourselves to these examples, which we believe suffice to bring out the influences of the Word on the early periods of humanity. They will enable us to judge others, as nothing is as homogeneous as the various parts of the divine plan. We have also seen that human hands under the wings of Ezekiel’s cherubim, who lead the cogs of the universe (nos. 275: 277), meaning that all the works of the Creator are dominated by the Word Incarnate in Whom everything was predestined. Naturally, the One who is like the life and principle of existence of all beings appears always and in all things in one way or another.

We believe we have proven that Gabriel is the first of the Seraphim (nos. 520 & ff.). However, it is a man’s voice—that of the Man-God—that tells him to make Daniel see a vision (no. 528). What man can speak thus to the most sublime created spirit if not the Man par excellence, Who is superior to all creatures?

Daniel also saw what appeared to be a man coming upon the clouds and advancing to the Ancient of Days. All power has been given to this man, and his kingdom will never be destroyed (no. 529). Is it the Son of man, represented by Gabriel, as we implied in the place cited? Or is it the Word Himself appearing in His humanity? After all that we said, we are very inclined to see Him as the Word showing Himself in the human image He will one day assume by becoming flesh. Several passages of Revelation (1:13, 15, 17, 18) appear to strongly confirm this, as in them we only find Christ. The beloved Apostle of Jesus clearly says about his divine Master what Daniel said in a more veiled way. In both cases, it is the same Incarnate Word Whom the prophet saw imperfectly: quasi Filius hominis (7:13), but of Whom St. John seems to say expressly: It is the Lord, Dominus est.

461 462

Comment. In Osee, loc. cit.

According to Rupert and St. Thomas, this struggle was only imaginary, says Cornelius a Lapide in h. loc.

985. Saint John explains to us a vision of Isaias in the same sense (no. 937). That prophet had seen Adonai Jehovah seated on an eminent and elevated throne, and the disciple whom Jesus loved tells us that the son of Amos had seen the glory of Jesus Christ (Ibid.) The Apostle Saint Jude also tells us that Jesus, having delivered the people from the land of Egypt, then lost those who did not believe and that He had previously set aside for the judgment of the great day the angels who did not retain their first dignity but who forsook their abode (vs. 5 & 6). This Jesus, observes Martini, is not Joshua as some have thought, for it was not Joshua who dragged the Jewish people out of Egypt or killed the unbelievers in the desert (and even less, we add, who chained the rebel angels). It can only be Christ “according to this great principle of St. Paul that everything concerns Jesus Christ and His Church. In the first letter to the Corinthians (ch. 10), we see how the same Apostle recognizes Christ himself in all that happened to the Israelites during their departure from Egypt through the Red Sea and applies this to teach the faithful that part of holy history. By attributing to Jesus as God the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, the Apostle follows the spirit of the Church and the usage of the Scriptures, which attributes these things to divine Wisdom.” 463 986. Is it not obvious that when the New Testament names Jesus or Christ, it designates the Word as incarnate or bound to become incarnated? It is the Word thus considered Who did justice to the angels in revolt, punished the unbelieving Jews in the desert, led the people of God into the promised land, showed His glory to Isaias, and appeared to Daniel, Jacob, Abraham, etc. (nos. 963 & ff.).

That is why it seems that the ancient Fathers, who saw the Word more frequently than we do in Old Testament accounts, were better inspired than us by the teaching of the Apostles. 464 They did not deny the angels what Scripture attributes to them, nor did they diminish the direct influences of the Word of God, Who realized, realizes, and will realize the entire divine plan by preparing, accomplishing, and crowning His incarnation.

Like all other things, the ministries of the angels relate to the great mystery of piety which has been revealed in the flesh. These beneficent spirits served Christ in the New Testament but also Him in the Old Covenant, and from the beginning of things. However, they occupied a very secondary rank in relation to Christ always and everywhere. The Word sometimes appeared or spoke through them, but this process was not necessary to Him whose procession is composed of all finite beings and in whose hands the Father has handed over all things (Jn 3:35; 13:3).

So, we conclude with St. Augustine, He manifested Himself from the beginning of the world either through some angelic power or creature . . . because everything serves Him as He wishes . . . He manifests Himself directly to whoever He wills, or through some creature, by speaking sensibly or directly appearing to those with a pure heart or by causing the Father to show Himself through Him (nos. 950, 952).

Martini, in hunc loc.

Speaking about the Fathers of that time, H.H. Leo XIII wrote: “Inde plerique prodierunt Patres et seriptores, quorum operosis studiis egregiisque libris consecuta tria circiter saecula ita abundarunt, ut aetas biblicae exegeos aurea jure ea sit appellata” (Encyclical Providentissimus Deus).

463 464

SIXTH MEDITATION Last Glance at the Heavenly Influences of the Incarnate Word I. Other Influences Exerted by this Heaven before the Temporal Birth of Jesus Christ Into the People of God 987. The theophanies we just spoke about appear as eminently remarkable influences that Christ exerted before He espoused our nature. He thus indicated to us in advance, says St. John Chrysostom, that He would take human nature. As things were then at their beginnings and in preparation, He appeared only figuratively to those privileged men, as Hosea says (12:10): “I have multiplied the visions, and the prophets represented me under different images. But when the Lord resolved to take human form, He not only put on apparent flesh but real flesh. 465 According to this Father, it is the Word Who put on apparent flesh in theophanies to mark in advance His advent in the flesh. This was not a particular idea of the great bishop of Constantinople because a great number of interpreters, says Martini, see the Word of God as this angel that God promised to lead His people (Ex 23:20 ), who was to introduce the Israelites into the Promised Land. 466 St. Paul says it after St. John and St. Jude (n. 985), when he cries out: Let us not tempt Christ as some of them tempted Him and perished by serpents (1Cor. 10:9). Indeed, it is the Lord Who walked before them to show them the way, appearing in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night, to guide them day and night. Never did the pillar of cloud fail to appear before the people during the day for as long as their journey in the desert lasted, nor the pillar of fire during the night (Ex 13:21,22). As for the angel mentioned in the next chapter (Ex 14:19), either he was the very Word of God, the Angel Metatron (n. 966), as many interpreters believe, or he accompanied the Word and served Him, as the passage in which the angel and pillar of cloud are represented to us as two different things seems to insinuate: et cum eo pariter columna nubis.

988. The Word also exerted and manifested His influences in many other ways. We can say that the entire Old Testament speaks of Christ and refers only to Christ, proof that it is entirely an effect of the influences of His noble heaven. If we have any difficulty understanding the divine scriptures, says St. Augustine, let us be careful not to distance ourselves from Christ. When Christ shows Himself to us in those words, we will know we have understood. But before seeing Christ in them, let us not flatter ourselves thinking we understand those passages, for Christ is the end of the Law, 467 as St. Paul says (Rom 10:4). By law, in a generic sense, we mean all the writings of the Old Testament. 468 Our Lord Jesus Christ is not only the end of all these writings but also of all times and things that preceded His coming, because the times and what they were to contain were arranged in Christ Jesus Our Lord (Eph 3:11), as things are arranged according to the end they must reach. 469 Homily 58 ex Septuagesima, quoted by Cornelius a Lapide, Comment. in Gen., c. 32, v. 30.

Commentary on 1 Cor. 10:9.

467 Enarrat. in Psalm. 96, no. 2.

468 St. Augustine, Retractat., 1. 1, c. 25.

469 Moreover, adds Cornelius a Lapide in hunc loc., these arrangements were made by virtue of the expected merits of Jesus Christ.

465 466

These words of the Apostle, observes St. Thomas, can be understood both as the eternal predestination and temporal arrangement of things. 470 This preordination and concrete arrangement of all beings, their modes, functioning, and destinies were made in the plan entirely dominated by Christ, or rather, which is Christ Himself with His whole body and retinue. That is why, if we look closely, we find Christ everywhere and in all things and all times, and all things in Him: in Christo Jesu Domino nostro. The law was our teacher in Christ that we might be justified by faith (Gal 3:24). It was like an instrument that Christ used to give us faith in Him and life to His still young members, for the law was given in the hand of the Mediator (no. 948). “The law of the Lord,” says Saint Augustine, 471 is the Lord Himself Who came to fulfill and not to destroy (Mt 5:17).” The old law was like the imperfect body that Christ then used to save men, and He used it as He pleased, meaning that it was in His hand. 472 “Then as now, men were saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,” says St. Augustine. “God’s righteousness, represented and announced by the Law and Prophets, has now manifested itself without the Law (Rom 3:21). If it manifested itself now, it also did so then, but in a veiled way represented by the veil of the temple torn by the dying Jesus to indicate that He would reveal it (Mt 27:51). Hence, back then, this grace of Christ Jesus the man as unique Mediator between God and men was in the people of God, but hidden and mysterious . . . while now it shows itself conspicuously among all nations.” 473 “It is as a man that Christ is Mediator,” and He was so for the Old and the New Testament. 474 989. Since therefore everything gravitated toward Christ, Who was like the mold of ancient times, the soul of the Law, the main object of prophetic preaching, the Man-God from Whom all justifying grace secretly flowed, let us expect to see Him behind all things. “In those days, God had such men, such preachers of His coming Son, that we must seek and find Christ not only in the things they said but also in what they did and in what happened to them.” 475 “It is the Word who preached Himself in the prophets, who prophesied when full of the Word of God; it is full of Christ that they proclaimed Christ.” 476 “All things were done by Christ ... He performed miracles before being born to Mary. Who did them if not He of Whom it is said, Who alone does wonderful things? (Ps 71:18). Those who operated those things in the past did so by His power ... All miracles in those and later times were done by the same Lord, who did them also through His presence.” 477 990. Before the Messias “was born of a woman, all the holy and mystical apparitions to our fathers by angelic miracles, and the remarkable things they did were figures of Christ so that every creature might somehow announce by facts the advent of a future Mediator Who would be the salvation of all those bound to be restored to life.” 478 “All that the Holy Books say is about or because of Our Lord Jesus Christ. To exercise the mind of those who seek and charm those who find, the Scriptures present most things as allegories and enigmas, partly insinuated by words and partly told as facts. If some things were not clear, one would not understand the meaning that helps to dispel obscurities. Some of the things Comment. in epist. ad Ephes., in hunc loc.

Enarrat. in Ps. XVIII, n. 8.

472 Vides omnem legis veteris seriem fuisse typum futuri. St. Ambrose, 1. 2 in cap. 2 Lucae, circa medium.

473 Liber de peccato originali, seu De gratia Christi, lib. 2, chap. 25.

474 Confessions, 1.10, c. 43.

475 St. Augustine, Serm. II, De tentatione Abrahae a Deo, c. V, n. 7.

476 Id., Enarr. in psalm. 142, no. 2.

477 Id., Enarr. in psalm. 90, no. 1.

478 Id., De Trinit., l. 4, c. 7, n. 11.

470 471

enveloped in metaphors are placed together making as it were the same picture, and so unite their voices to demonstrate [the truth of] Christ that anyone who remains deaf to them must blush.” 479 All the holy Scriptures thus preach Christ by word and deed.

991. Thus, “the tree of life was a sacrament that signified wisdom ... and Christ Himself is Wisdom and the tree of life in the spiritual paradise, where He sent the good thief from the height of the Cross.” 480 Just as Cain was the founder of the earthly city by killing his brother, Abel, the victim of fraternal hatred and shepherd of animal sheep, represented Christ, the shepherd of human sheep put to death by the Jews because the event was a prophetic allegory.” 481 All we read in the biblical account concerning the first humans, if we carefully weigh its details, preach Christ and the Church in anticipation of both good Christians and bad. It was not in vain that the Apostle said: “Adam, who is the figure of Him who was to come” (Rom 5:14); and again: "They will be two in one flesh ... which is a great sacrament in Christ and the Church" (Eph 5:31-32). Christ abandoned His mother, the Synagogue, to join His wife, the Church.” 482 “Noah and family were preserved from death by water and the wooden ark, as the family of Christ finds salvation in the Baptism that flowed from the Cross.” 483 992. In the same book, Saint Augustine sees Christ in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, and all notables of ancient times. Likewise, both facts and persons preached Christ and the Church. 484 Since the Savior Jesus is the end of the law, everything converged on Him. All men and things had some of Christ’s features, and all these features formed a faithful, albeit coarse, image of the Incarnate Word and the Catholic Church. Hence, some unique and powerful form brought it all together as matching pieces make up one whole. That ‘all’ was the ancient Church of Christ, and this form was the heavenly influence of the Incarnate Word. Some socialites will object that this is only mysticism. We reply that this mysticism is entirely concrete and sublime. Is the high philosophy of Christianity deplorable because it is divine and explains events by their highest causes? The supernatural certainly ruled the ancient world, and since the supernatural is a reflection of the Incarnation of the Word, what we are saying must not be difficult to understand.

993. The whole religion of the Jews was closely related to Christ and the Gospel. Jesus did not come to abolish dogma, morality and the basis of worship, but to fulfill the law and the prophets (Mt 5:17). He came to perfect His work. “Both Testaments,” says St. Irenaeus, “were made by the Word of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, who spoke to Abraham and Moses, and Who in these latter times ... has made more abundant the grace that comes from Him.” 485 “The law,” says Clement of Alexandria, “is the ancient grace emanating from the Divine Word through Moses.” 486 According to St. Paul, the ceremonial law was also a shadow cast by the reality of Christ in ancient times: Quae sunt umbra futurorunt: corpus autem Christi (Col 2:17). The sacrifices, holy utensils used for worship, feasts and sacraments like circumcision, the Paschal Lamb, priestly consecration and Id., Contra Faustum manicheaum., l. 12, c. 7.

Id., De Gen. ad litt. 11. 12, 1. 8, cc. 4 & 5.

481 Id., De Civit. Dei, 1. 15, c. 7, no. 2.

482 St. Augustine, Contra Faustum manicheaum, 1. 12, c. 8.

483 Id., Ibid., C. 14.

484 Si petra Christus propter firmitatem, cur non et manna Christus, tanquam panis vivus qui de coelo descendit ... , cur non et nubes Christus, et columna ... Id., ibid., c. 29.

485 Adversus haereses, 1. 4, cc. 21 et 2.2.

486 Poedag., L. 1, c. 7.

479 480

various religious observances, all of these formed, says St. Thomas, the shadow of a body that was Christ: corpus pertinens ad Christum.487 The Law, says the Apostle, has only the shadow of future and heavenly goods and not the very image of things (Heb 10:1), which is specific to the New Testament. This is the faithful image of heavenly Jerusalem, especially through the charity that dominates it, which excludes sin. It only foreshadows future goods, promising its observers above all temporal goods and justifying men only because of what it means, that is to say, the coming Christ. Both are influences from the heaven of the Incarnate Word as an image comes from an original and a shadow from the body projecting it. After talking about the flight from Egypt and what happened in the desert, the Apostle of the Gentiles says: These things were figures of what concerns us ... All these things happened to them figuratively (1Cor 10:6-11). Therefore, it is true that the Law and events also preached Christ. Everything in those days was prophecy, so to speak.

And as Christ was the object prophesied par excellence, the entire Old Testament gravitated toward Him as the earth gravitates towards the sun: omnia. Thus, the ancient people of God lived only on Christ and His divine influences. All their aspirations had the same language: Heavens, send your dew from above, and let the clouds to rain upon the righteous; let the earth open, and the Savior germinate (Isaias 45:8).

II. Influences the Same Heaven Exerted on All Peoples before the Coming of Christ 994. As for other peoples, their fate was regulated as required by the people of God. The teaching of Moses on this point is magnificent: Heavens, listen to what I am going to say; let the earth hear the words of my mouth. This concerns the heavens, the earth, all the works of God, all nations ... All works of God are perfect, and all His ways are full of justice ... When the Most High divided the peoples and separated the children of Adam, He marked the boundaries of peoples according to the number of the children of Israel (Deut 32:1,4,8). The Lord took Jacob for his inheritance (Ibid. 9). The people of God are, as it were, the measure of all other peoples and the reason for raising or lowering, multiplying or diminishing, extending or restricting the various nations. For if everything is done first for God and His Christ, everything is done and arranged for the children of God; and it is by these and their head, Christ, that everything procures the glory of the Supreme Being. 488 According to the inspired doctrine of the prophet Daniel (2:38,39,40), whether earthly kingdoms had gold, silver, brass, or iron in their composition when instituting them, God associated these metals with earth and clay (41,42). It suffices for a stone to detach from the mountain without man’s intervention to strike those kingdoms and reduce them to dust (37, 45). Small at first, this stone gradually becomes a great mountain that fills the whole earth (35, 44): It is the Church of the Old and New Testaments, a kingdom which descends from the supernatural mountain and is detached from it not by human hands but by the finger of God. And it is in the time of these earthly kingdoms that the God of heaven raises

Quando quis, continues St. Thomas, videt umbram sperat quod corpus sequatur; legalia autem sunt umbra praecedens Christum, et eum figurabant venturum; et ideo dixit [Apostolus] : « Corpus », id est veritas rei pertinet ad Christum, sed umbra ad Legem. Comment. in Epist. ad Col., loc. cit.

488 The psalmist said: The Lord allowed no one to oppress them [the children of His people], and He rebuked kings for their sake; touch not my anointed, and harm not my prophets [Ps 104:14,15]. Thus, the history of human society’s upheavals and sufferings is usually the history of the persecutions of the Church: corripuit pro eis reges ...

Nolite tangere Christos meos.

487

up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or passed on to another people but will overthrow all these kingdoms and turn them into dust; and it will remain eternally (44).

This destruction is not absolute since the supernatural kingdom subsists in time with the other kingdoms that coexist with it. But in those that oppose the divine kingdom that subsistence is annihilated, and they feel it. Woe to those guilty kingdoms! Idolatry, impiety, tyranny, hatred of the supernatural are soon cast upon them by the stone which falls from above. Where is the power of Babylon, Nineveh, idolatrous Rome, pagan China, Turkey, Africa? While human power does exist, if not Christian, it is humiliated even humanly speaking. The Christian Kingdom is the kingdom par excellence. As for earthly kingdoms, either they are tributaries of Christianity and exist for this reason or they rise against the supernatural kingdom and become barbarians and succumb to the stone.

995. This clearly shows that the destinies of empires and nations are subordinate to the spiritual and supernatural kingdom of which the King is Christ. Daniel taught it formally, and we see it with our own eyes: Altissimus ... constituit terminos populorum juxta numerum filiorum Israel. Until the end of time, the people of God are to be like the brains and hearts of mankind as a whole; and the fate of mankind depends on these main organs. God made all members of the social body dependent on His Church so the whole world might walk under the divine and reinvigorating influences of the Incarnate Word and His Mystical Body, the stone detached from the mountain without human hands.

Earthly kingdoms are depicted as destroyed and annihilated by the marvelous stone, meaning the Church has royalty and constant and perpetual primacy among men. Since she alone has this universal and indestructible primacy, these kingdoms do not even exist from this standpoint. Compared to the supernatural realm, their dependence and obsolescence are inherent to their very nature and all things merely natural. God did not strengthen them further to leave the supreme direction of affairs to His Church. Therefore, their constitution and state are a clear testimony of the universal influences of the Incarnate Word.

As we said, Christian peoples alone enjoy preponderance on earth. But true Christianity is found only in Catholicism, and thus it seems that Catholic peoples should always be the most powerful. 489 If Catholic peoples faithfully practiced Catholicism, we would be amazed at their prosperity and the extent of their domination. However, we must consider that God has subjected His Church and children to many trials.

Life here below is the arena in which one acquires merit and prepares to achieve the immortal triumph, the only end essentially necessary. All things considered, Catholicism alone always dominates on earth as master because it is the indispensable basis and sole center of Christianity. Therefore, we must attribute mainly to it the power of Christian kingdoms, whatever they may be. And since Catholicism lives only on Christ, it follows that all that is constantly preponderant on our planet is a participation in the divine influences of the Word made flesh: In diebus regnorunt illorum, suscitabit Deus coeli regnum, quod in aeternum non dissipabitur, et regnum ejus alteri populo non tradetur (Dan 2: 44). 490 996. This powerful influence of Christ on humanity, eminently visible today, was also exerted in ancient times, although more weakly and mysteriously. I imagine the first people of God playing on earth the The kingdom predicted by Daniel as rising from the ruins of others and bound to last forever is a spiritual and supernatural kingdom. By that very fact, any people who are subject to its laws move toward prosperity and power.

490 It will always belong to the Christian people.

489

role that ten righteous people would have played in Sodom had they been there. Because they lived on Christ, these few people were like the salt of the earth and the light of the world. When a region of our globe abounds in divine manifestations; when the great truths that concern the whole universe and mankind are known there; when its people practice the true morality and await the promised Savior of all men, although that region may be very small compared to others, it is a reservoir of invaluable wealth for all the world’s countries. Light and good are diffusible. The Jewish people were like a religious school that the Supreme Master established and maintained amid humanity. Men from all countries could receive instruction there, and many Jews frequented various pagan peoples for most varied reasons and sowed the good seed everywhere. Unique, the Jewish nation was the only one that, through its many prophets, unceasingly promised salvation to all nations and to care for the higher interests of mankind. This is another striking proof that it served as an instrument for the Word to make His divine influences universal.

997. Hence the admirable expectation of a Liberator who was the common hope of all the world’s peoples, and the fact that He was the Desired of all nations (Aggeus 2:8). Tacitus writes: “Based on ancient prophecies, people were generally convinced that the East would prevail and that soon would come out of Judea those who would rule the universe” (Hist., 1 5, c. 13). Suetonius employs the same language. 491 Cicero mentions the ancient oracles of the Sybils that promised: “the coming of a King whom one should recognize in order to be saved” (De Divinat., L. 2, c. 54). Virgil graciously echoes the universal tradition: “The last times sung by the Sybil have finally arrived. The immense course of the ages will begin again.

Behold a new race is sent from heaven. May the birth of this Child, by whom the iron age will cease, and who will cause a golden age to rise throughout the whole universe, be the object of your good care, chaste Lucine! ... It is under your consulate, O Pollion, that this prodigy of the new age will show itself.

Then it is that, if men’s iniquity still has consequences, all the earth will at least breathe, freed from this terror which had held it chained for so long. He by whom these marvels are to take place will take life in the bosom of the Godhead. He will be distinguished among all celestial beings above whom he will appear and will rule the world pacified by the virtues he inherited from his father. Come then, o dear descendant of heaven, great offspring of Jupiter! The predicted time is approaching: come and receive the great honors that are due to you. Look: as you come, the globe shakes; the earth, sea, and deep skies are agitated. See how everything trembles at the approach of the new era about to begin.” 492 998. The Gauls worshiped a Virgin, who expected a Son. They authored this inscription: To the Virgin who is to give birth. In their holy book, called Edda, the ancient Scandinavians had a prophecy that Thor, the firstborn of Odin's children and the most valiant of the gods, would slay the Great Serpent and die in his victory. After that, the Sovereign Master would end the disorders and establish the sacred destinies that would last forever. Among the Greeks, Aeschylus, in his Prometheus Bound, depicts humanity fallen by sin but which must be rehabilitated by a God who will offer himself to replace it in its sufferings.

Socrates speaks of an Envoy from heaven who will come and instruct us on how we should behave In this and the following two items we make particular use of Etudes philosophiques by Augustine Nicolas, Traditions sur l'attente du Libérateur et Venue et règne de J.-C. Bergier’s Dictionnaire de théologie also gives us precious knowledge on this subject. See entry Médiateur, with note by Msgr. Gousset. Roselly de Lorgues also covered this subject very well in his work Le Christ devant le siècle, chaps. 13 &14.

492 4th Eclogue of Virgil.

491

toward the gods and men. The Greek philosopher adds that it is better to postpone offering sacrifices until that Personage comes and that one should hope from his kindness that he is not very far away.

Plato called this Personage the Word and also Savior, God, and Son of God. You will pray to the God of the Universe, he said; you will pray to his Father and Lord, whom we will all know as clearly as possible for men. Elsewhere, while depicting a truly virtuous and divine man, Plato draws a portrait of Jesus Christ, Whom he sees stripped of everything, even of the appearance of justice; irreproachable but suspected of all crimes; grappling with infamy and torments; walking steadily to the tomb, constantly surrounded by false judgments of public opinion, but always virtuous; beaten with rods, put to torture and shackles; and finally, after having suffered all punishments, expiring on a cross.

999. Among pagan theologies, that of Persians is perhaps the least incomplete and erroneous. It seems that Plato drew most of his inspiration from it, which was more directly inspired by Hebrew theology.

The Persians’ Mithras, which they also call Word or Verb, corresponds admirably to the Angel Metatron of the ancient rabbis (nos. 964-968) and the Word of our Holy Scriptures. They regard him as the King of the mobile heaven, the King of the living, the King of the dead, the mediator, savior, redeemer, liberator God Who will be born of a virgin, exterminate Ahrimane or the Demon, establish a single government of men, and make them happy.

“The Hindus,” said Auguste Nicolas, “were expecting an incarnation of Wishnu or Brahma to repair the evils that Kaly or Kaliga, the Great Serpent, had done.” 493 They called this divine character Krishna. 494 The Chinese, according to their ancient books, awaited the arrival of a hero named Kiuntse, who would make the last Religion succeed the religion of idols and restore everything to its early splendor. He was also called the Most Holy, the Universal Doctor, the Sovereign Truth. Confucius said that a saint should be sent from heaven who would know all things and have all power in heaven and earth ... No man could say his name, added the Chinese philosopher, but I, Khiêou, heard that this is the true Saint . . .

This Saint will appear in the West [the Middle East is West to China].

“The doctrine of Confucius, observes Auguste Nicolas, agreed with that of Fo or Xacca adopted by the people not only in China but in Tibet, Cochinchina, Tonkin, the Kingdom of Siam, Ceylon, and Japan.

People in these idolatrous countries universally believed that a God would save mankind by satisfying the Supreme God for the sins of men.” 495 “The Arabs, founded on an ancient tradition, were waiting for a Liberator who was to come and save the peoples.” 496 The Egyptians’ Orus or Epaphus, miraculously born from Isis thanks to a light touch by Jupiter on his mother’s forehead, conqueror of the Serpent Typhon who fills sea and earth with evils and miseries, is, in reality, the Redeemer of the world decked out in the mask of a pagan fable.

Philosophical studies, Traditions sur l'attente du Libérateur.

About 2500 years ago, sacred poem of the Hindus contained this prediction: “A Brahma [priest] will be born in the city of Sçambelam (bread house—Bethlehem means house of bread): it will be Wichnou [the Son of the Hindu Trinity] Jesoudou [Jesus] ... He will purge the earth of sinners, make justice and truth reign in it, offer a sacrifice ... “ Roselly de Lorgues, loc. cit.

495 Ibid.

496 Id., Ibid.

493 494

1000. Thus, O divine Word, all peoples of the earth awaited thy Incarnation before thy grace, goodness, and humanity appeared to men (Titus 2:11;3:4). A small people, who lived on thee, made their hope in thee shine everywhere. And the various nations, feeling as if by instinct that they existed for thy Church, the only one where salvation is found, welcomed this hope with joy and prepared themselves to hear the preaching of the Gospel.

Besides, nothing prevents us from admitting that thou also revealed the mystery of thy Incarnation and quality as the unique Mediator between God and men to some Gentiles so they would belong to thy spiritual Jerusalem. 497 By a special privilege of thy goodness, which is also a kind of mystery, the people of Israel have been a prophetic nation full of thy spirit and influences, existing only through thee and for thee in singular and admirable way. But thou also hadst thy elect among those who did not at all appear as belonging to thy people. They secretly believed in thee, but thy divine scriptures do not mention these believers.

Accordingly, the salvation of thy religion, the only true religion that promised true salvation, was never lacking to whoever was worthy of it; and whoever lacked it was not worthy of it by refusing the grace it presented. 498 That is why, O Word, Savior of humanity, the ocean of thy salutary influences and vivifying graces also mercifully invaded the pagan world and animated with thy life all men of goodwill on earth. Just as a minimal number of righteous would have saved Sodom from its dreadful ruin, both the people who were publicly thine and the inconspicuous members of thy mystical body, scattered throughout gentility, attracted thy beneficent gaze upon all epochs, things, and peoples.

It is through thee that everything existed, lived, and had some vision. Thou were in the world, the world was made by thee, and although very many people did not know thee, thou were the true light that illuminates every man coming into this world. We lived somehow from thy sovereign life, which communicated itself outside. We knew all we knew through thy life, which was the light of men (Jn 1:4,9,10). Everything existed, lived and moved in thy heaven and thanks to thy universal influences. Oh, may our hearts love thee as much as thou art worthy!

Ill. Brief Considerations on this Heaven’s Influences Since the Savior’s Birth 1001. These influences seem to have been very well summarized and expressed in the prophetic prayer of Habakkuk (3:2 & ff.). Let us first observe with Martini, whose commentary seems particularly apropos, that “For all prophets, the Jews’ deliverance from the captivity of Babylon was a prefigure of men’s redemption through Jesus Christ; and the destruction of the Chaldean Empire is often presented as a figure of the vengeance that Christ will one day mete out on all wicked. That is why the prophet now speaks of Christ, fully responding to the difficulties about divine Providence he had expounded (1:13-17). That is why we believe with all the elders that this prayer of Habakkuk contains a very magnificent and clear prophecy of Christ, as Saint Jerome says. Anyone wishing to reduce Habakkuk's words and feelings to deliverance from Babylonian slavery would be doing violence to the text in several places, as one can see by reading the explanations of interpreters who embraced this opinion. Their 497 498

This is the opinion of St. Augustine, De civit. Dei, l. 18, c. 47.

St. Augustine, Liber de praedest. Sanct.; cc. 9, 10, nos. 17, 19.

discordance and coldness aptly persuade us that the best that we can do when interpreting the Scriptures is always to follow the Church Fathers and the very Church that transmitted them. As everyone knows, the Church applies to Christ several passages from this canticle, especially the office and Mass of Good Friday. Even those who read this passage as a literal portrayal of the Hebrews’ liberation confess that the prophecy allegorically should apply to Christ. St. Jerome did not want predictions of future things to be attenuated and, as it were, weakened by allegorical uncertainty.”

1002. We fully adopt this opinion, which appears to be the only one acceptable from the context. The deliverance of the Israelites was the occasion for the prophet's prayer. Still, his inspired gaze immediately fell on the Liberator and Redeemer par excellence, whose merits, present in the eyes of God, were the reason to end the captivity of Babylon. The shadow depended on the body, the figure was subordinate to reality, and the man of God gazed with astonishment and love on the body and reality that was Christ: Corpus autem Christi (no. 993). Let us listen to the magnificent language inspired by this sight.

1003. The Lord said to me, write down what thou seest ... for what has been revealed to thee will appear at last and will not fail. This is the object of the revelation to the prophet. The latter sees that this object is a future personage and adds: If he delays, wait for him; for he will certainly come to pass and will not delay. But the unbeliever does not have a righteous soul, while the righteous will live in his faith (Hab. 2:2-4). St. Paul understands this passage applies to Jesus Christ and those who believe in him (Heb 10:37, 38), and Scripture repeatedly names Christ as the One Who is to come (Gen 49:10; Mt 11:3). But Habakkuk calls for and sings the glories of the Messias, especially in the following chapter.

1004. Lord, he said, I have heard thy word and was overcome with fear. Lord, this is thy work par excellence, do it amid the times. Thou wilt make it clear in the course of time: when angry thou wilt remember thy mercy. The prophet is seized with fear and amazement, seeing the ineffable greatness of this mystery of piety revealed in the flesh, justified by the Spirit, revealed to the angels, announced to the nations, believed in the world, received in glory (1Tim 3:16). “What is this fear,” asks St. Augustine, “if not unspeakable admiration for the redemption of men foreseen [by the prophet] and suddenly appearing [in his eyes] as new? Who is he speaking to if not the Lord [Jesus] Christ?” 499 Lord, realize thy work par excellence amid time, “amid the two Testaments,” the bishop of Hippo continues. 500 In the fullness of time, meaning in God's established and pre-ordained time. Vivify this work, vivifica illud; we have already seen some shadow, figure, or image of it; now show it also in its living reality.

In the middle of time, thou wilt make it appear clearly. The Word can become incarnate in the middle of time, so the world lasts in its present state as many centuries as it lasted before the coming of Christ.

We do not find it objectionable to take the words twice affirmed by the prophet in their litteral sense: In medio annorum vivifica illud; in medio annorum notum facies. This meaning does not contradict most interpreters of these lyrics. Moreover, we know that all the times that preceded the advent of Christ in the flesh were a preparation for this ineffably grand and important event. Thus, especially when it comes to the divine work par excellence in which everything is wonderfully well proportioned, it seems

499 500

De Civit. Dei, 1. 18, c. XXXII. Ibid.

that the work must have at least the duration of its preparation, the speech must be as long as its preface, and the temple must be as large as its vestibule.

If that is so, why should the years that followed the Incarnation of the Word not be more numerous than those employed in its preparation? We answer that the Christian law’s temporal duration seemingly must correspond to that of the law of nature and Mosaic Law, for Christian law is the complementation and perfecting of both. It also does have a later duration but in glorified form. Grace and glory having the same nature, the divine work continues into eternity, and the permanence of the completed work dramatically exceeds the duration of its time of preparation.

The prophet speaks of the years of human test represented by Jews’ trial in Babylon. It seems very probable that it was amid the 70 years of Babylonian captivity that Habakkuk cried out: Lord, begin thy work of deliverance in the midst of the sad years; thou wilt make it known to us in the middle of the years by some foretaste or consoling pledges. At the same time, he looks to the Redeemer, Who will appear amid the years of human trial. The Israelites had endured about thirty-five years of captivity when Cyrus made Persia independent by fighting the Medes while preparing his march against the Babylonian empire. The prophet saw this liberator as a figure of Christ advancing against the conquerors of the people of God amid the years of captivity. His prayer: in medio annorum vivifica illud, was answered. In the middle of the years, God made known to him deliverance in the process of being effected and the instrument used to accomplish this work.

By seeing Christ, the prophet, as it were, sees Cyrus. Seeing the Redemption of mankind he sees the material redemption of the Hebrews—his gaze switches from the body to its shadow, from the original to the image. The inspired writer said to God: When thou art angry, thou wilt remember thy mercy-that is, in the future, when Christ appears. That is why the immense mercy the Lord will later display through the Savior projects one of its beneficent rays on captive Israelites in Babylon and prepares their deliverance.

1005. Habakkuk sees nothing other than God made man and sings it in a magnificent canticle. God, he cries out, will come from the south side, and the Saint will appear from mount Pharan. His glory covers the heavens, and the earth is full of His praises (3:3). He will come from the south because Bethlehem is south of Jerusalem. The Saint will appear from Mount Pharan, also on the south side because the Word splendidly manifested himself in these southern regions whence He will come to make His apparition par excellence in Bethlehem. Moses wrote: The Lord came from Sinai, where He gave His law; He rose over us from Seir, where the bronze serpent was erected; He appeared on Mount Pharan, where He rained quails and gave the prophetic spirit to the seventy judges; 501 thousands of holy angels were with Him; He carried in His right hand the law handed down amid the fire on Sinai (Deut. 33:2).

The same Lord, the Word, will bring all these manifestations and graces to a higher degree of perfection, rising like a star south of Jerusalem, making Himself man for the salvation of humanity. The law He brings us is better than the law He held in his right hand on Sinai. Rather than terrifying lightning, the fire of charity accompanies its promulgation. From atop the cross on Calvary, He healed all disabled humans who cast their eyes on Him much better than the sight of the brass serpent healed the Israelites in the desert of Seir. Instead of quails falling from the sky near Mount Pharan, He gives us for food His own flesh hypostatically united to the Person of the Word, His flesh transformed and made glorious by 501

Num 11:16,17,25.

the resurrection. Instead of the simple prophetic spirit that He gives in that same place to seventy judges, He sends down the Holy Ghost with all His gifts on the Apostles and their spiritual children until the end of time.

Thousands of holy angels were with Him when He operated His ancient theophanies and so many wonders. But never did the angels show themselves so brilliantly as His servants as when they celebrated His birth in Bethlehem. A whole multitude of the heavenly militia was there praising God: Glory to God in the highest heavens, and peace on earth to men of goodwill (Lk 2:13-14). And the angels continued singing as they ascended to heaven (Lk 15), for the glory of Christ covers the mobile heavens.

Above them, heavenly spirits sing His greatness and bounties. The heaven of the Incarnate Word also covers the angelic heavens, which it encloses in its bosom and penetrates with divine influences. Our little earth is also full of His praises. Our planet cannot remain indifferent but must praise and acclaim Him everywhere because of His ineffable holiness, sublime doctrine, miracles as numerous as they are brilliant, resurrection and ascension to heaven, the conversion of the Gentiles, and the wonders that His Church works through Him throughout the earth until the end of time.

1006. His splendor will be like light itself. Shining and mighty weapons will be in His hands: it is there that His strength is hidden. He will not only shine like the angels and Saints but will say in all truth: I am the light of the world ... he who follows me will have the light of life (Jn 8:12). As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world (Ibid 9:5). I, the light, have come into the world so that whoever believes in Me may not dwell in darkness (Ibid 12:46).

The Chaldaic version says: His splendor appeared as the original light: splendor primigenius apparuit. His hands will be horns, meaning beams of light like those coming from Moses’s face as he descended from Mount Sinai. He uses these “horns” as weapons to conquer the earth; they are the arms of His Cross by which, from the height of Calvary, He takes possession of all things. In these arms is His strength hidden, meaning that by them He appeases the wrath of His Father in heaven, delivers mankind from the slavery of Satan, and makes Himself master of hearts by dint of love and devotion. He thus reconciles all things, making peace through the blood of His cross to the things that are on earth and the things that are in heaven (Col 1:20). He is the horn of salvation or mighty Savior that God has raised to us in David’s house or race (Lk 1:69).

1007. Death will go before Him, and the devil will precede His steps. He is the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Him, even if dead, will live; and whoever lives and believes in Him will never die (Jn 11:25-26). This is also true of the life of the soul as the devil, before His steps and especially at His word, will flee from the bodies of possessed people, from the souls of sinners and the top government of things: Now the prince of this world will be cast out (Jn 12:31). He measured the earth from atop the cross. With a glance, He irritated the gentility and broke down the grandees of the age, conquerors, pagan emperors, and pillars of idolatry. The hills of the world must have bowed when the Lord, having become man, set out to begin His conquests: Every valley will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be made low; crooked paths will become straight, and rough ones united; and all flesh will see the salvation of God (Lk 3:5-6). Everything gives way before the footsteps of His eternity. God is patient because He is eternal. He allows us to fight Him and wage war on His Church but made His Church unwavering in the image of His eternity. His enemies, and the enemies of His Mystical Body, are subject to the storm that upsets and sweeps away all that is merely human. That is why the hills of the world are forced to bow before the steps of His essential eternity and the shared eternity of His Church.

1008. I saw the Ethiopians’ tents and the pavilions of Midianites who had risen up against thy people to defend iniquity and idolatry, broken and upset by thy overwhelming power. Paganism cannot stand before thee. To overcome it, Lord, wilt thou be angry as of old, making rivers swell or exerting thy fury in the likes of the plagues on the Nile, or even stop the flow of the Jordan? Or wilt thou show thy indignation making the sea swallow up thy enemies as in the Red Sea? No! Thou wilt ride thy horses, and thy quadriga will spread salvation. Animated by thy goodness, thy Apostles, Evangelists, and thy Church will cross the ages imitating thee by saving souls rather than losing them (Lk 9:54-56) or drawing heaven’s punishments on them. Thy Church will not judge the world before its time but do her best to save it (Jn 3:17). That is how thou governest us under the law of grace with great discretion, as thou wilt always be free to use thy power whenever thou pleasest (Wis 12:18).

Alas, many people see the discretion of thy supernatural reign, which is the Church, as a kind of weakness. They are not attentive enough to perceive the truth and ignore thy patience concerning human freedom. Rather than increasing their strength, thy governance’s kindness and patience inspire them to become more brazen and contemptuous. But their dispositions toward the supernatural must cause them a horror, for its kindness to them is such that it entices men of goodwill and disconcerts and punishes the proud (Mt 13:13-15; Mk 4:11-12; Isaias 6:9-10; 7:14-15). Be warned! The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1:7). Those who do not have it are headed to madness and perdition. The simple people who feared God knew, loved and followed Christ; the proud fell on this stone and were shattered; this stone fell on them and crushed them (Mt 21:44).

The reign of Christ and His Church is the reign of the Lamb. Wolves are highly tempted to sink their teeth and claws into it, but in the end nothing will be as mighty and terrible as the Lamb. His wrath will be all the more formidable as His leniency, discretion and patience will have been admirable, persevering, and insulted. The proud will say to the mountains: fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb (Ap 6:16).

1009. The prophet Habakkuk says: Thou wilt resolutely take thy bow in hand, O Lord, according to the oaths thou hast sworn to the tribes of thy chosen ones. Then wilt thou judge men, and all thy creatures will terrify and punish thy enemies, delivering thy faithful and making them triumph. Thou wilt divide the rivers of the earth to ravage the countryside. At thy sight, the mountains trembled, the swelling waves retreated, the depths raised their voices, the deep sea stretched out its arms. The sun and moon remained motionless as if struck with bewilderment and attentive to receive thy orders; they will march by the light of thy arrows and the shine of thy lightning lance, zealous ministers of thy justice against the guilty. With trembling wilt thou tread the earth; in thy fury, thou wilt astonish the nations.

Thou hast come out of thy rest and surrounded thyself with such a frightful war apparatus to save thy people through thy Christ, to Whom thou hast given the power to judge (Jn 5:27). Thou hast struck down the head of the ungodly family whose invisible head is the demon and whose visible head is the Antichrist. Thou hast ruined his house from top to bottom, cursed his hellish scepter and the human leader of his hosts, who raised a storm to turn me into dust with thy other chosen ones. Their joy was like that of a man who secretly devours the poor. But their desire was in vain. Thou hast opened a way for thy horses across the sea through the mire of great waters. The drivers of thy chosen ones’ chariots miraculously found a way to shield them from the pursuits of their enemies and to get them cross this new Red Sea successfully.

I heard from thy mouth, O Lord, the proclamation of all these things, and my entrails were moved; at thy voice, my lips quivered. May the rot enter my bones and spread in me as in another Job so that, thanks to these sufferings patiently endured, I may be at rest on the day of the supreme tribulation and join thy people of victorious fighters. Since the earth will suffer such great evils, let nothing in it tempt me anymore. The fig tree will not blossom, nor will the vines grow. The olive tree will not bear fruit, and the fields will not yield grain. The sheepfolds will be without sheep, and the stables without flocks. As for me, despite these misfortunes I see in advance falling on the earth, I will rejoice in the Lord and tremble for joy in God my Jesus; for when these things begin to be fulfilled, the friends of God will know that their redemption is near (Lk 21:28).

The Lord God is my strength and the strength of all the elect. He will make my feet like those of deer to aid my flight through the ruins of the present century. Victorious, He will lead me joyfully and singing hymns of praise in my high places (Habakkuk 3). Jesus Christ will conquer in His Saints. He will lead them to the heaven of heavens, to the lovely dwellings of heavenly Jerusalem, where they will sing the eternal hallelujah (Tobias 13:22).

1010. Thus, everything is subject to Christ until the end of time. Christus vivit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat. Nothing lives except on the influences of His heaven. He allows the struggle between good and evil, in which He took a major share. He continues to fight with His Church. He would annihilate all His enemies in the blink of an eye if He did not intend to save rather than destroy. What may seem like weakness is nothing but love, discretion, and patience. Happy are those who understand this feature of Christ and His supernatural empire! The Savior treats men as intelligent and free beings. He emits enough light for those who want to see and provides enough relief for those who want to do good or attain the highest perfection. Conversely, He harbors enough obscurities and mysteries to stun the proud enemies of the divine and enough neglect to let them fall into the very pit they are digging for His Religion.

The wicked have their hour, which is the same hour, for the righteous, of deserving and energetically lifting their hearts toward eternal goods. Christ personally directs people and things. The good, the wicked and the mobile universe march through this twilight of trial toward the Last Judgment. All things that belong to Christ’s procession and move toward their end must share the condition of the suffering and dying Christ. Christ keeps a watchful eye on all wayfaring things. From the bosom of His Church, where He multiplies His presence indefinitely and even bodily, and from the height of heaven, where He shows Himself in glory having been given omnipotence in heaven and earth (Mt 28:18), Christ ceaselessly inspects all things (ab alto Christus universorum inspector – St. Ephrem, orat. De 40 Mart., T. 3).

His influences have the same extent as his gaze, forming partly visible and partly invisible heaven where everything exists and moves for Christ until He finally appears in all His splendor to be glorified in His Saints (2 Thess 1:10). Then, the wicked will be condemned, hell will be closed, the universe renewed, the material celestial Jerusalem completed, and all the members of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, living suns of the Empyrean, will reign with their Master over all works of God.

SEVENTH MEDITATION

Summary and Confirmation of the Main Ideas Expressed in This Work l. Overview of All Heavens 1011. God himself, infinite in perfection, immense in grandeur, is the greatest and highest heaven, which forms the essence of Paradise. 502 He is heaven because He contains, penetrates, supports, moves, and maintains all things. His substance is infinite in size and, at the same time, infinitely simple and indivisible. However, since each divine Person is immense, and since the Persons are distinct from one another in the immensity of God, it follows that the infinite Heaven is both one and triune as explained above (nos. 782 & ff.). This heaven infinitely exceeds all other heavens, which are necessarily finite. The heavens of heavens cannot contain God (3 Kgs 8:27). As the prophet says, the Most High does not dwell in temples made with human hands or in houses proportional to His greatness: Heaven is my throne, and the earth the stool of my feet.

All created heaven is below God as a seat is below him who sits in it. What house will you build for Me, says the Lord, or where is my resting place? Is it not my hand that did all these things? (Acts 7:48-50).

The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with human hands (Ibid 17:24, Isaias 66:1,2). He is particularly present in them by His graces but is also present in the whole universe, which is like a temple He built for Himself with His own hand. He is the Most High Who infinitely surpasses His work in every sense and weighs the heavens on the palm of His hand (Isaias 40:12). Nothing can circumscribe and His immensity and absolutely simple and infinite magnitude.

1012. This heaven is reserved for the one and triune God: Coelum coeli Domino (Ps 113:16), and it is the firm and unshakeable abode of God (2 Chr 6:33). It is above all in honor of this heaven that we sing: Hosanna in the highest (Mt 21:9; Mk 11:10), Glory to God in the highest (Lk 2:14; 19:38). Several heavens participate more or less abundantly in the greatness of the infinite Heaven and thus are more or less vast and perfect. Christ ascended as a man above all finished heavens and has all created things under His feet. Everything lives or exists by and in its influences so that it forms the largest and most beautiful heaven after the Infinite Heaven. We have such a high priest, says St. Paul, who sits on the right hand of the throne of majesty in the heavens, a minister of holy things and the true tabernacle erected by God and not by man (Heb 8:1,2).

This high priest is the minister of holy things because “he administers the sacraments of grace in the present time and those of glory in the future . . . He is the minister of the true tabernacle which is the Church Militant ... and the Church Triumphant ... Christ as a man is a minister because He is the dispenser of all the goods of glory. He is seated at the right hand of the throne of majesty because the humanity He has taken is as associated with the Godhead and sits with It to judge: Thy magnificence is exalted above the heavens (Ps 8:2).” 503 “He sits at the right of Majesty in the heights, that is to say, above all creatures.” 504 We have our great pontiff, Jesus Who crossed the lower heavens (Heb 4:14) "We will contemplate the glory of the Creator, says Pope St. Gregory; we will see God face to face, we will see the uncircumscribed light.” Hom. 37 in Evang. Is this uncircumscribed light not the splendor of infinite Heaven?

503 St. Thomas, Comment. in Epist. ad Hebr. VIII, 1, 2.

504 Ibid, in chap. I, 3.

502

who fulfills the office of the pontiff of heavenly goods up there 505 in the tabernacle of celestial glory, in which are united the immense multitude of goods without any mixture of evil.” 506 This tabernacle is not of this creation and was not formed by human hands. God Himself created it by creating heaven and earth in the beginning before unraveling the chaos from which our mobile universe emerged. And God glorified it by glorifying the angels (no. 422) before creating man. “We can also understand by this tabernacle the body of Christ,” or better, His humanity, “for in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead corporeally” (Col 2:9). 507 1013. These two senses are not mutually exclusive but are both true to different degrees of perfection.

Our great high priest, Jesus, is the minister par excellence of holy things and the true tabernacle erected

by God and not by man. He presides over the participated supernatural, whose supreme focus is Himself as Man-God. His humanity hypostatically united to the Word is the most perfect of the tabernacles erected by God, for nowhere is God so present and generous in communicating goods as in the humanity taken and raised by the Word. After this tabernacle, model of all others comes, in order of perfection, the Mother of God. She, too, is a tabernacle erected by God and not by men, owing her incomparable excellence to grace. She is a holy tabernacle vaster than the heavens, having received the Word of God, which no creature can contain. 508 The Church Militant and the Church Triumphant are tabernacles of God modeled after the two tabernacles we have just mentioned. In them, God makes grace and glory abound as reflections of the supreme grace and the supreme glory shared by Christ and His august Mother. That is why all of God’s tabernacles have as prime minister Jesus Christ, Who presides over all holy things. His heaven is the participating supernatural from which the wayfaring angels drew grace, and the faithful angels and the Empyrean pulled glory. His heaven manifested itself to humans as original justice, as a law of nature enhanced by graces and supernatural gifts, as the divinely written law and Old Covenant, as the Christian law and fullness of times, all of which will be followed by the universal reign of glory. How powerful and universal are the influences of this heaven! Since as every created being somehow gravitates toward the supernatural and tends to serve it, all creatures and times are dependencies of the heaven of Christ, the greatest and highest of heavens after the Infinite Heaven.

1014. Mary’s heaven is like the interior rainbow shining in the heaven of Christ (nos. 892, 893), which also embraces in its radiance the heavens of St. Joseph, the Seraphim, the Apostles, and other Elect (nos. 894, 895). The glorified children of God have the outer surface of the material universe as their ordinary abode (nos. 897, 903 etc.). For, as St. Thomas says (nos. 873, 87 4), they must be with Christ above all material heavens. While they are entirely free to go wherever they want, it is there that their abodes are fixed, and their power over regions and lower beings is measured. They will be like celestial fires and living stars raised above all material heavens (Dan 12:3). Thus, the Lord’s praise is above heaven and earth (Ps 148:14) because it is uttered by intelligent beings above this heaven and the earth.

Daniel gives us a general idea of the heavens, first by mentioning Infinite Heaven or the holy temple of the glory of God, then the heaven of Christ or throne of His Kingdom (no. 243), which is above the Id., ibid., in chap. IX, 11.

Id., Ibid.

507 Id., Ibid.

508 St. John Damascene, In Octoec. Graec.

505 506

Cherubim and also the heaven of the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ; then the firmament of heaven or material expanse (rakia in Hebrew), formed by the spacing of celestial bodies, which is like the very solid framework (firmamentum) of the material heavens. Then, speaking in greater detail about the works of the Lord, the prophet mentions the angels: Angels of the Lord, bless the Lord; then the heavens and waters that are above them (Daniel 3:53-60) refer, we believe, to the fluid or gaseous element—the ether—which envelops and penetrates all matter in the universe. 509 The angels compose the same heaven with glorified humans. Both are members of Christ and sit with Him above all material heavens.

The angels, says St. Augustine, were created above those heavens: Creavit Angelos ultra coelos. 510 1015. The psalmist uses much the same language.

Praise ye the Lord from the heavens; Praise ye Him in the high places.

Praise ye Him, all His angels; Praise ye Him, all His hosts.

Praise ye Him, O sun and moon: praise Him, all ye stars and light Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens: And let all the waters that are above the heavens Praise the name of the Lord. (Ps 148:1-5) About this Psalm, Cardinal Bellarmine makes, among others, these observations: “First of all, the Psalmist addresses an invitation to the angels who reside in the highest heaven in the very court of the Eternal King ... Continue to praise the Lord, you angels, who are the first in the order of created beings.

The word coelis (from the highest heaven) refers to the place where the angels dwell. So, the meaning is: Praise the Lord from your heavenly abode. From the angels, endowed with reason and intelligence, who praise God properly speaking, the Psalmist descends to heavenly bodies that praise God only by their greatness, speed, influences, splendor, and admirable beauty. Having listed the sun, moon and stars, which are contained in the sky, the inspired author passes to heaven properly so-called, which he calls the heavens of heavens, that is, the upper heavens, to which the lower heavens are subject.

So as not to leave out any part of the upper world, the Psalmist adds to these high heavens the waters above the heavens. We must consider sure that these waters are bodily and above the ethereal vault rather than only above our atmosphere. For the Prophet places them above the heavens of the heavens In Psalm 103, speaking about the same heaven, the Prophet says: Thou stretchest out the heaven like a tent; thou coverest its heights with water. In the first chapter of Genesis, Moses says there are waters above the firmament in which, a little later, he shows us there are stars. This is how the ancient Fathers thought.” 511

Verisimile est coelum empyreum non esse solidum instar ferri ... sed habere suum aerem vel aetherem, omni rerum specie ornatissimum, per quem Beati omnia sentiunt, respirant et moventur. Cornelius a Lapide, Gen.1:6-8.

510 Serm. II, De tent. Abrahae, c. 6, n. 7.

511 Bellarmine, Explanatione in Psalmos, Ps 148.

509

“With admirable skill,” says the same author, “God placed above the sky waters as if on fire; and yet, neither do the waters extinguish fire nor does fire consume the waters.” 512 While admiring the Creator’s infinite art, we note with Saint Thomas that the Empyrean is not so named because it is on fire but because it is splendidly illuminated. We believe that the waters of which the Psalmist speaks are not of the same nature as our waters but a fluid or gaseous element like the one mentioned in the sixth verse of Genesis: Let the firmament be made in the midst of the waters. Cornelius a Lapide admits that these waters are different from our ordinary water. We follow the opinion of St. Bonaventure and other authors, who see these upper waters as the crystalline heaven or ether. 513 1016. Reconciling these notions with those in St. Paul and St. Thomas, we say that Christ and His chosen members are above all material heavens whatever they may be, and thus form by their radiance and influences a heaven that dominates and encompasses all lower heavens. 514 We believe that the ether, a kind of atmosphere in which matter floats, constitutes the largest and highest material heaven, which, as we see it, is glorified in its upper part. From it come the physical motions that communicate movement to the mobile universe. Below, in the waters covering them, are the heavens of heavens, glorified by the splendid reflections which their happy inhabitants cast upon them. We believe Job is speaking of these heavens when he says they are as solid as brass (37:18). The Psalmist too refers to them when he sings: Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens: And let all the waters that are above the heavens Praise the name of the Lord.

For He spoke, and they were made: He commanded, and they were created.

He hath established them forever, and for ages of ages: He hath made a decree, and it shall not pass away. (Ps 148:4-6) These heavens were created in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, while the lower heavens were taken out of chaos and simply formed: fiat firmamentum. He established the latter forever in their present state and glorified them at the time by making them partakers of the glory of the holy angels. This is the kingdom that has been prepared for us since the foundation of the world (Mt 25:34), when the movable universe began to organize itself with the formation of light. In its natural state, this kingdom was prepared when created along with wayfaring angels. But the complete

In Psalm 103:3.

See Cornelius a Lapide on this verse of Genesis. However, we do not believe that the crystalline heaven is solid, but rather gaseous and extremely mobile.

514 In the offices of the Virgin, the Apostles, etc., the Church makes us recite the psalm 18, Cœli enarrant gloriam Dei. Many Church Fathers, especially Pope St. Gregory (Homil. 30 in Ev.), see Mary and the Apostles in these heavens. How sublime Church teaching is! Formed by the presence, splendor and influences of the noblest glorified members of Christ, the living heavens are the models and containers of the material heavens, the sight of which enchants us. The thoughts of the Church Fathers moved toward realities superior to those our senses can perceive, but without prejudicing the latter.

512 513

preparation of which the Gospel seems to speak was carried out with the glorification of the Empyrean.

Paradise has since existed and will exist forever and ever, as glorification is a law of fixity in glory. 515 1017. When Jesus Christ tells us: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away (Mt 24:35), He is speaking about our earth’s sky or the heavens that came out of chaos at the same time as the Arid. The stars of this sky will fall, and the powers of this sky will be shaken (Ibid. 29). We believe that several passages from Isaias (13:13), Ezekiel (32:7, 8), and Joel (2:10; 3:15) have the same meaning.

About these heavens, St. Peter says: As for the heavens that exist now, and the earth that is a part of them, they are reserved for the day of Judgment. These heavens will pass with a great crash. The blazing heavens will be dissolved (2 Pet 3:7,10,12). Martini observes about it that “St. Augustine (De Civit. Dei, l.

20, chaps. 14, 16, 18, 24) and St. Gregory (Moral., 17, 5) understand the aerial sky “or atmosphere that surrounds the earth.” 516 Therefore, there are moving heavens that will pass away or rather be transformed, giving rise to new heavens and new earth (2Pet 3:13), and we currently belong to these heavens. But there are also higher and vaster material heavens that God has established forever and are flooded with glory. They make up the Empyrean or Paradise. Their atmosphere is the ether or waters that are upon the heavens of heavens, an atmosphere illuminated by the living suns of the Empyrean (nos. 897 & ff.). These suns, along with Mary and Jesus Christ as man, form the created, intelligent and animated heaven for which the material universe was created. We believe that it is placed like a rainbow in the infinite Heaven of the immensity of God and the divine Persons, although, as we said, the material Empyrean that it contains is shaped like a perfect cube (nos. 153 & ff.). 517 O my God, how great is my joy, since, as I hope, I will see thy heavens, the work of thy fingers! (Ps 8:4).

II. The Whole Universe Is a Temple of God, Who Has Worshippers Everywhere. We Form a Society with the Entire Universe, All of which Is Christian 1018. Let us explain in a few words how theologically proven are this conception of the heavens and the whole universe, the Empyrean’s predominance over the lower heavens, and the place of honor occupied by the finite intelligent heavens.

1. The Sacred Scripture and its interpreters present the entire universe as the temple or house of God. Therefore, it must be consecrated in some way. This temple must have priests and be filled with faithful.

The universe is consecrated especially by the Empyrean, which surrounds it with light, glory, and holy and powerful influences. In this temple, the priests and faithful who pray and praise God are Jesus Christ and His mystical members, especially the glorified ones. O Israel, cried Baruch, how great is the house of

This fixity seems to have given rise to the opinion of Scholastics that the Empyrean is immobile. In our opinion, it is confirmed in its condition like the Blessed are confirmed in God’s friendship, which is not absolute stillness.

516 Comment. in hunc loc. Petri. We will return to this idea.

517 Coelum (empyreum) neque movetur, neque rotundum est, sed fixum, fixeque in sua quadratura consistens, inquit Chrysostomus. Cornelius a Lapide, Comment. in Epist. ad Hebr., chap. VIII, 2. The idea we have just expressed seems very apt to reconcile the two opinions that the authors share on the exterior configuration of the Empyrean.

As St. John told us, the material Empyrean is a perfect cube, but the intelligent Empyrean appears to be arranged in the shape of a spherical sky. The ether may be beginning to take this disposition.

515

God, and how extensive is the place of His domain! It is vast and has no limits; it is high and immense. In it were those famous giants from the beginning (3:24-26).

“The house of God mentioned here is the whole universe created and ruled by God, and therefore His domain, a domain so vast that man cannot see its limits. The prophet shows the way to follow to acquire wisdom, which consists in ascending from the world, which is God’s house and temple, to God Himself.” 518 Having focused his eyes on the confines of the universe and ascertained that it is high and immense, he sees places initially occupied by those famous giants. They are rebel angels who played during the angelic trial in the Empyrean the sad role that human giants would later play in the promised land. They were also there like the Korah, Dathan and Abiram of those early days: the Lord did not choose them, nor did they find the way of Wisdom, and because of this, they perished (Ibid., 27). But from then on, the faithful angels, grouped in faith around Christ, were worthy ministers of God in the great temple of the universe.

1019. The Lord is in the temple of His holiness, says the Psalmist. The Lord’s throne is in heaven (Ps 10:5).

“The inspired author calls the upper heaven holy temple of God,” says Bellarmine. “it is a temple not made by human hands. The second verse is even clearer and has the same meaning: The Lord’s throne is in heaven, that is, He has His seat or throne in heaven.” 519 Micah also says, may the Lord God, from the height of His holy temple, be a witness against you. For, behold the Lord is about to come out of His abode, and will come down and trample on the greatness of the earth (I:2-3). God resides in heaven as in His temple, and from there He contemplates the earth and all the works of men.” 520 The Lord is in his holy temple, says Habakkuk; may all the earth remain in silence before Him (2:20).

“Since the creation of time, God has lived gloriously in the heaven which is His throne and temple.” 521 Saint Jerome comments on these words of the Prophet: “Here the whole universe, which comprises heaven and earth and is limited by the circles of heavens is shown to us as being the house of God. This is why the Apostle also said with assurance: It is in Him that we live, move and are.” 522 1020. 1. Let us draw conclusions directly related to our subject. The actual material temple of God, which He built for Himself with His own hands, is the whole unintelligent universe, as the Acts of the Apostles teach very clearly (no. 1011). But the Lord’s temple is especially the Empyrean because it is there that His glory shines fully, and His praises are sung in the most harmonious and holy way. If the whole universe is a temple of God, let us not be astonished at the grandeur assigned to Paradise or Empyrean. For Paradise must still grow with all the worlds that will be renewed after the general resurrection so that the whole temple that God built for Himself may reach the height of its beauty and the perfection of its glorious consecration.

1021. 2. Since the whole universe is a temple of God, worshipers of the Supreme Being, singers of His divine attributes, and executors of His holy will are everywhere. “In this world,” says St. Augustine, “each visible thing has an angelic power that governs it, as the divine Scriptures testify in several Martini, on the quoted text.

Comment. in hunc loc.

520 Cornelius a Lapide, in hunc loc.

521 Idem.

522 Habakkuk, in hunc loc.

518 519

places.” 523 “All bodily nature, all irrational life, all flawed or bad will are subject to the glorious angels who humbly enjoy God and happily serve Him,” says the same Father. “Seeing in God the immutable truth, they likewise direct their wills according to this truth; that is why they always participate in eternity, in truth and the will of God regardless of time and place.” 524 “The set of bodily things is not extrinsically helped by bodies because no body exists outside this set, otherwise it would not be the universality of bodies.”

God, the pure infinite spirit, surrounds alone the material universe. Outside, the latter is delimited by the glorious bodies of the Blessed who form the upper region of the material Empyrean, which is also the Holy angels’ habitual abode. Parts of the physical universe are extrinsically helped by bodies to "perfect" themselves in several ways. According to this principle, the bodies of the Blessed perfect the material Empyrean; the latter perfects the mobile universe by moving it, preserving it, and attracting it to its end (nos. 336 & ff.). In some way, the mobile universe way perfects the Empyrean by serving as a subject for the influences of this noble heaven and above all by completing its glorification. In some way, even hell perfects the heavens by collecting in its bosom, as the sewer of the whole universe, all that is ignoble and slimy in the whole of things. 525 Thus, the material universe forms an immense unity, a single ensemble of which the various parts work on perfecting the whole and completing themselves in their kind under the action of the other parts and the whole.

Are the Blessed angels extrinsically helped and perfected by things? “If they are, it can only be, it seems, to the degree that they see one another, enjoy their mutual society in God, and seeing all creatures, thank and praise the Creator everywhere. Concerning the angelic action by which God’s Providence takes care of all things and especially the human race, this action helps beings extrinsically through images similar to bodies, and by bodies that are subject to angelic power.” 526 If the sight of their society perfects the angels, the contemplation of the holy humanity of Jesus Christ, His divine Mother Mary, His foster-father St. Joseph, and the whole society of elected members of the Incarnate Word perfect them even more. Everywhere, they thank and praise not only the Creator but also the Redeemer and Coredemptrix, who after God are all the greatest, most beautiful and benevolent of all beings. Concerning the care of wayfaring creatures, the Blessed angels extend their solicitude to all moving things gravitating toward their end. These happy glorified spirits are therefore everywhere.

If we saw them surrounded by their clarity, all nature would seem to us a paradise begun. Oh! May faith show us what our bodily eyes cannot see! How many angels would we see around our tabernacles, in our sacred temples, in our holy meetings, in our homes, in the whole Church, on the seas, in the heavens! Oh, how true it is that the entire creation is a divine temple, filled with such worshipers to whom God shows Himself face to face everywhere. They fill the universe with an immense concert of praise to honor the One in Whom everything lives, moves and exists!

1022. 3. Why would we find Heaven too vast if the entire universe is a paradise in many respects? Have we not seen that all observable nature is subject to childbirth labor, the end of which will be general glorification or assimilation to the Empyrean? (nos. 324 & ff.) Particularly noteworthy is the fact that our De div. quaest. LXXXIII, q. 79, no. 1.

De Gen. ad litt., 1. 8, ch. 24, II. 45.

525 St. Thomas, supplem., q. 97, a. 1.

526 St. Augustine, loc. cit., c. 25, nos. 46, 47.

523 524

most beautiful prayers embrace the universality of beings, and we could call them hymns of the universe.

Bless the Lord all ye works of the Lord; praise Him and extoll His sovereign greatness in all ages. Bless the Lord, angels of the Lord, bless the Lord, heavens. Bless the Lord, waters above the heavens. Bless the Lord, Powers and Virtues of the Lord. “The latter are intellects, that is to say, angels who move heaven. The Virtues are also placed between the (upper or Empyrean) heavens and the sun and stars, as they preside over all these things. We can understand by Virtues the influences of the (upper) heavens on the lower.” 527 After addressing the angels, the Prophet addresses the glorified heavens and ether, then the Virtues that move the mobile heavens, then the mobile heavens, which he designates as the sun, moon and stars, then the various beings closest to or on our earth. 528 Nothing is forgotten because everything is part of the great temple of God. 1023. These various beings are invited to bless the Lord altogether, to praise Him and extoll His sovereign greatness in all ages, not because they would forget to do so but because their concert could be magnified with our blessings and praise. If this concert becomes more perceptible for us through grace, we will add to it our adoration and prayers. The simple desire we have to see God celebrated by all beings in the universe makes our homage more harmonious and beautiful than the whole harmony of the physical universe. By naming the material heavens, the stars, the sun, the moon and other things, we are indirectly addressing the holy angels, our brethren in Jesus Christ, who rule all these beings, and inviting them to shine in our eyes the various divine perfections through the creatures in their care.

Finally, there is always something lacking in the universal concert of creatures until our hearts and conduct harmonize fully with the will of God. Accordingly, we ask all creatures to persevere in extolling the Supreme Being so we are given the time to praise our Creator as He should be.

The whole universe preaches Christian truths and morals; the entire universe is Christian. We bless God with the whole universe, and it blesses God with us. To what, then, will ultimately lead this religious society we are forming with all creatures, if not to its completion in glory (except for those who flee from it and gravitate toward the dreadful abyss)?

1024. We also note our association with all created beings in the Preface, this sublime hymn sung during Holy Mass.

The priest addresses to God a silent prayer which ends thus: Through Jesus Christ Our Lord, thy Son Who lives and reigns with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost. He then raises his voice and ends: forever and ever. And the people answer: Amen. May the Lord be with you. And with your spirit. Lift up your hearts.

They are lifted up to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right and just to do so. It is truly right and just, our duty and salvation, to give thee thanks always and everywhere, Lord, Holy Father, almighty and eternal God, through Jesus Christ thy only Son Our Lord. Through Him, the angels praise thy majesty, the Dominations adore, the Powers tremble before thee. Heaven, the Virtues of heaven, and the blessed Seraphim worship together with exultation. May our voices join with theirs in humble praise, as we acclaim: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!

527 528

Cornelius a Lapide, Comment. in hunc loc.

Dan 3:57 & ff.

The priest directs his thoughts to the Holy Trinity, which is the source of all graces because the divine life common to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost begins, as it were, with the Holy Trinity’s external communication (nos. 799-804). He then addresses the kingship exerted by Jesus Christ jointly with the Father and the Holy Ghost for the ages of ages over all creatures and times. The ages include all finite beings and their operations. The congregation approves the priest’s statement about the greatness of Jesus Christ and affirming saying Amen.

Then the celebrant says to the faithful: May the Lord be with you through his supernatural influences, as it is fitting that Our Father Who is in heaven be with his children. They answer: And with your spirit.

With all his thoughts elevated above earthly things, the minister of God adds: Lift up your hearts; may our affections follow our thoughts and our love direct itself to the great and noble objects of which we speak. The people answer: We have our hearts turned to the Lord. What invaluable good it is for our hearts to rise to God and rest in Him! Let us give thanks to the Lord, the author of every perfect gift (James 1:17). It is right and just, the people answer; it is an obligation of justice.

Now the priest, representing the faithful, thinks of and speaks only to God. It is truly worthy, he says, just, equitable and salutary that we give thee thanks always and everywhere, Lord Who are holiness itself, governing all things with wisdom and order; Almighty Father from Whom all beings come by creation and Who have made all things with fatherly love. Eternal God in whom time and all beings float like fish in the Ocean. We give thee thanks through Jesus Christ Our Lord for all that thou hast made and placed outside thyself. For thou hast acted as a loving father by creating heaven and earth for thy angelic and human children, preparing a kingdom for them from the foundation of the world, seeing in them the mystical members of thy Son Jesus, Who has for His retinue all that thou hast drawn from nothing. We thank thee for all this through Jesus Christ Our Lord because, as we received everything through Him, thou wouldst accept no homage except through Him. It is also through Him that the angels praise thy majesty, the Dominations adore it, the Powers stand trembling in thy presence.

These angels of the second and third hierarchy, with the Virtues of heaven, are specially charged with governing the universe under the high direction of the Cherubim (nos. 275-278; 448; 455 & ff.). They see the reasons for things especially in Jesus Christ and make all nature work according to His requirements and those of His Mystical Body. This is why the angels praise the majesty of God through Christ with all the beings they guard and lead. The Dominations worship Him through Jesus Christ with all the agents they choose to execute the divine plan. The Powers, full of a holy fear of Christ, tremble at seeing the universal order compromised concerning the Man-God and are ceaselessly attentive to prevent any creatures from deviating from the divine plan fully enclosed in Christ. As they tremble, they communicate their holy trepidation to the entire creation which they govern. The Virtues strengthen and regulate the various energies of beings so that everything moves correctly toward Christ (numbers cited).

Therefore, the whole universe is Christian. Times, spaces, stars, planets, ether, everything is presided over by the humble worshipers and faithful servants of Christ. They make it all converge toward Christ so that everything celebrates the Creator properly. Everything joins the concert presided over by Jesus Christ and sings in unison with the Incarnate Word with the same exultation, wisdom, goodness, holiness and greatness of the Most High: the Virtues of heaven, the blessed Seraphim, the heavens that make up the Empyrean, the influences that rule the moving universe, and the intelligently created heavens where the Seraphim occupy a sublime place.

O God, Whose word is all-powerful, O infinite Master of heaven and earth and our loving Father, command us to join the universal harmony so that our weak voices may sing with all heavenly voices: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of angelic armies, God of spiritual and material multitudes and their entire orders. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory, which shines and is celebrated everywhere.

Hosanna in the highest, which in Latin means ‘save us in the highest heavens’ (salva quaeso in excelsis or de excelsis) by projecting from there influences on the humanity of Christ, on Mary, the angels, the Saints, the Empyrean, that may they flow abundantly on us and save us. Yet thy very salvation, O God, has come down from heaven: the Lord has manifested His salvation and revealed His righteousness in the sight of nations. The ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God (Ps 97:2-3). Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! Glory (another meaning of the word Hosanna) to Him Whom the heavens of heavens cannot comprehend and Who nevertheless gave us for Savior His own Son! 529 1025. Yes, it is increasingly evident that the entire universe is the house that God built for His divine incarnate Son and His adopted children; that this house is surrounded with glory; that its already glorified inhabitants fill it with praises of the Man-God and the Most High; that we form a society with these happy citizens of the higher heavens; that all creatures, praising God through the mouths of the blessed spirits who govern them, will share their glory when all children of God arrive at their destination; that only that which is not or cannot become heaven will be eternally excluded from Paradise; that the faithful servants of Jesus Christ will be established with Him over all the goods of God (Mt 24:46-47). O Israel, O holy people, how great is the house of God, and how vast is the place of His domain (Baruch 3:24)! This place is His house, and His house is this place. This place is vast and has no bounds for our mortal eyes; it is high, immense (ibid. 25). And if God gave us His own Son, how could He not have given us all things with Him? (Rom 8:32).

1026. The Te Deum is another hymn the Church sings in unison with the whole universe: We praise thee as God, O Creator, we recognize thee as the Lord of all beings. In thee, the whole earth worships the Eternal Father. To thee, all angels, heavens, Powers, Cherubim and Seraphim perpetually address this song: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Everything is Paradise started or finished. The Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs, the Holy Church celebrate thee everywhere as Father of immense majesty and as infinite Heaven, adorable Son, consoling Spirit. O Christ, thou art the King of glory, the great home of all shared glory that floods the angelic heaven and the Empyrean, which veils itself descending to the lower heavens, comes down to us as grace to raise us to heavenly splendors, and finally to glorify everything. Thou hast opened the heavenly kingdoms to believers, O thou Who sits at the right hand of God in the glory of the Father. Please help us, thy servants, whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood before thou cometh again as Judge. Grant us to be among thy saints in eternal glory. Save thy people, O Lord, and bless thy inheritance. Rule thy children by thy grace and lift them to thy eternity, that infinite and eternal Heaven that permeates all things and is above all created heavens.

The whole universe appears in our prayers and songs. All heaven is Christian. Everything thus belongs to the Church, whether triumphant, suffering, or militant. The three are animated by fledgling glory, which is grace, and one day, when consummated, that grace becomes full-fledged glory, so with due proportions, we can employ the same language about the mobile universe.

529

3 Kgs 8:27.

III. Christian Friends of God Are the Future Kings of the Universe. Special Relationships between Higher and Lower Heavens 1027. 1. Pater Noster, the most common and sublime of prayers, also makes us consider the universality of beings as the kingdom of God and future domain of His children: Our Father who art in heaven...

While Our Father is here and everywhere, we say who art in heaven considering His greatness, His beatific glory that fills the upper heavens, and the goods He reserves for us as Father, which are all His goods: super omnia bona sua constituet eum. Explaining this passage, St. Thomas appropriates these words of Origen: “The faithful servant of God must reign with Christ, to Whom the Father has given all things.” Christ “will establish his faithful ministers over all creatures.” 530 Says Cornelius a Lapide: “God will make His faithful ministers kings and lords of heaven, earth, and the whole universe ... The goods of God are of two kinds, exterior created goods such as heaven, earth and all creatures contained therein, and interior and uncreated goods such as God’s immense majesty, goodness, sweetness, wisdom, power, honor, glory, and other essential or personal perfections. Since God is the ocean of all things, He is also the ocean of all goods. God will establish his faithful servant on these two kinds of goods, making him rule not only over all creatures but also over all the immense and infinite goods that God contains in Himself so his servant enjoys these goods with God being eternally beatified and glorified... Moreover, God gives Himself as possession and inheritance according to these words: The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup (Ps 15:5). ” Therefore, if God gives Himself to His children, if He has given them His only begotten Son, His Holy Ghost, His Mother, is it not evident that He created all things for His chosen ones and makes the whole universe their empire? This makes it easy for us to get a fair idea of Paradise considered as a place!

That is why the Lord spread the heavens like a tent that serves as a home (Isaias 11:22). Relationships there are so close, communications so easy, the senses of the Blessed so perfect, their agility so great, the divine and glorious environment so clear and limpid, the light projected by the angels and saints so resplendent, the material so subtle and malleable, the spaces so easily crossed by those inhabitants that their immense individual dwelling is as it were only a tent in heaven, the house of the Heavenly Father or City of God. O Paradise! O House! O City! May we one day dwell in you, with Our Father Who is in heaven and Who will grow us to the point of making us His worthy children, participants in His immensity, greatness, power, happiness, and all His perfections!

1028. 2. We must dedicate this third point, especially to the relationships that unite the heavens, and particularly the upper heavens, with our earth. These words, Our Father Who art in heaven, summarily indicate such relationships. By them, we see that we are a family with these noble spirits, these glorified children of God that praise the Creator throughout the universe, and that all heavens, properties of our Heavenly Father, are part of our inheritance. He who reigns supreme everywhere is our Father; those who rule all worlds according to our Father’s wishes are our brothers; all the beings they govern, along with the glory promised to us, constitute our future kingdom. Thus, our relations with the heavens and their relations with us are very close and continual. Every act of virtue that we practice here below is a conquest achieved in heaven; we are conquerors by the grace our Heavenly Father sent us and by the loving care of our heavenly brethren. The lower heavens serve us faithfully, while the upper heavens help us to earn our glory and their glorification.

530

Catena aurea, in Matth., XXIV, 47.

How great are the children of God even while undergoing their trial on earth! Everything in the universe works for them because their Father is in heaven, and He arranges all things for His children’s utility, glory and happiness. By living in a manner worthy of their Father, they increase the glory of the upper heavens and extend the limits of the Empyrean by deserving the glorious renovation of the mobile universe as a reflection of their resurrection (nos. 420 & ff .).

1029. “By saying, Our Father who art in heaven, we name the One we are praying to and where He lives.

Let us now see we ask Him. The first thing is: Hallowed be thy Name ”(St. Augustine, De Sermone Domini in monte, l. 2, c. 12). The Lord commands us to ask that God be glorified by our life, as if saying, ‘make us live so that all things glorify thee through us,’ for to sanctify means to glorify” (St. Thomas on St. John Chrysostom, Sum. Aurea, in chap. VI Mt. 9.). This request is as vast as the concert of creatures that glorify God. All creatures can glorify God through us only as long as we are in a close relationship with them.

Hallowed be thy Name: the name means the thing named, known and manifested. In our case, it is God Himself considered as an object of knowledge, praise and love. Hallowed be thy Name means ‘mayest thou be known in order to be glorified as holy always, everywhere and in every way by wanting only the true good as order requires; by loving each thing according to its degree of goodness, detesting evil according to its degree of detestability, neither commanding nor advising anything unworthy of holiness, disposing of all things for the good and especially the supernatural good. This concerns simultaneously all divine dispositions and created beings.

By asking that the Name of God be sanctified, we pray as true children of God, citizens of the universe, future kings of heaven and earth, whom we are commanding from now on, so to speak, to sanctify the Name of God. It is to Our Father Who is in heaven that we say: Hallowed be thy Name; we want Him to be celebrated as holy in heaven, on earth and everywhere. In this prayer, we actually join our voices with angelic choirs singing in the Empyrean and throughout the universe: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, God of hosts. This celestial song resonates in our mouths, and its harmonious notes, augmented by our filial accents, ascend toward heaven. That is how close our relations are with the heavenly Jerusalem and all things that must one day complete it.

1030. Thy kingdom come. “This kingdom will be established when all rebels will have been tamed and all the elect delivered so that God will be, as St. Paul says, all in all (1 Cor 15:28).” 531 This reign is also the good of all beings we have at heart, as well as the glory of the immense and infinite God. “Concerning the government of the whole world, we ask that the devil stop reigning here and that God reign in each one of us to the exclusion of sin” (St. Jerome, Rom., 6). “We ask that thy kingdom come, the kingdom that God promised to us and the blood of Christ has merited for us ... so that we may reign in the empire of Christ” (St. Cyprian, De Orat. Dom.). “The kingdom of God will come regardless, but we rekindle our desires for this kingdom so that it may come for us and we may reign in it” (St. Augustine, Ad Prob., Epist. 121, ch. 11). “We do well to ask for the kingdom of God, that is, the celestial kingdom, for there is also an earthly kingdom; but he who has renounced the world is greater than its honors and reign; therefore, he who dedicates himself to God and Christ does not ask for earthly kingdoms, but for heavenly kingdoms”(St. Cypr., loc. cit.).

531

Martini, in hunc loc.

We ask for grace, glory and their full triumph in us, in our neighbor, and all beings as far as each can benefit from it. The reign of God, for which we as children of God ask our Father Who is in heaven, is particularly supernatural. Asking for this reign to come is to ask that glory come down from the Empyrean in the form of grace and multiple help to elevate and supernaturalize us and finally glorify us.

It is to ask that this grace and aid be efficacious. And since God’s supernatural reign encompasses all things created for rational beings, we also ask for our future glory to reflect on the future material kingdom (nos. 420 & ff.).

As mentioned, we also ask grace to descend upon us from the Empyrean. For Christ, being “established on the heavenly throne as God and Lord, sends divine gifts to men from on high, as the Apostle wrote to the Ephesians 4:10: “He ascended above all heavens, that he might fill all things...with his gifts... Christ’s ascension is the cause of our salvation not by way of merit but as an efficient (and exemplary) cause, as we said when speaking about His resurrection. It is directly the cause of our ascension, which somehow begins with our Head, to which the members must unite. In ascending to heaven, Christ acquired and obtained for us forever the right to a heavenly abode and its corresponding dignity.” 532 St. Thomas wants us to relate the Ascension of Christ to our own as he reasoned about Christ’s resurrection concerning our resurrection. 533 Let us follow this process faithfully.

1031. God freely decreed that we ascend to heaven only through Christ, Who ascended above all heavens. The ascension of Christ is the efficient cause of our ascension as His humanity, in which He ascended, is in a way an instrument of His divinity by which He operates to raise us. By its presence, this virtue reaches all places and times; and this virtual contact is sufficient for the efficient causality of which we have spoken. The ascension of Christ is also the exemplary cause of our ascension. 534 God only gives grace and glory through the humanity of Jesus Christ. This holy humanity is both in heaven and our churches’ tabernacles. From them, it makes grace radiate over the entire wayfaring humanity to apply Redemption and save it. From atop all heavens, it fills the whole universe with its gifts by glorifying the Empyrean and helping all moving worlds to prepare for their final renovation. Since it is “from there that Christ sends us divine gifts,” these gifts consist mainly of the energetic and multifaceted attraction that He exercises on us to lift us to Him. From above all heavens, He especially fills all things with His gifts; but through the ineffable Eucharist, He fills us especially with Himself just as, having reached our homeland, we will drown in the splendors of His heaven. In either case, Christ is excellently the kingdom we ask of God by saying: May thy kingdom come. “Christ himself,” says St. Cyprian, “can be that reign of God, the arrival of which we desire every day. Being himself the resurrection, we will be resurrected in Him so we can say that He is the kingdom of God because we will reign in Him” (loc. cit., no. 1030). The reign of God being especially the domination of grace and glory, which are radiances of Christ, we ask all this at the same time when begging Our Lord to exercise His kingship.

1032. Supernatural government operates with a local order analogous to that which governs nature. At first sight, it may seem that being equally everywhere, God, the Author of grace and glory, also radiates supernatural gifts from everywhere. However, that is not so. He wants to follow also here a particular order similar to the one we observe in nature. As long as we do not conceive God as circumscribed in St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, 3, q. 57, a. 6.

Ibid., Ad 1m.

534 Ibid., q. 56, a. 1.

532 533

some part of the world, says St. Thomas, “one can admit that He is the principle of the movement of heaven by acting on the first heaven and the east side; for according to the order of nature, the principle of all bodily motions begins in a given under the motion of God. And that is why Sacred Scripture says that God is especially in heaven, according to Isaias (66:1): ‘Heaven is my throne,’ and Psalm 113:16: ‘The heaven of heavens belongs to the Lord.’” 535 Likewise, as author of the supernatural, we add, God imparts His motions on the humanity of Christ above all heavens and on earth to convey supernatural waves to all creatures according to their capacity. The Savior brought the good news to all creatures: Praedicate evangelium omni creaturae.

Grace and glory concern them all, for they find their end in it. Particularly remarkable is that, because of the order that God established, they all have a close relationship with the Eucharistic Christ and with Christ sitting above all heavens. The Eucharist is a powerful leaven of glory whose infinite love has enriched the wayfaring world. It ennobles the whole universe perceptible to our eyes. Our tabernacl’s' immense radiance projects vibrations of life, resurrection, and ascension throughout mobile nature (no.

370).

Behold the Man whose name is the East. He projects the dawn of the light of glory onto our tried regions. He will germinate in Mary’s womb by Himself without manly concurrence. He shall sprout by Himself on our altars, become the chief author of the consecration of bread and wine, and shall build a temple to the Lord. This temple, St. Jerome says, is the Church Militant 536 along with all that is life-giving, we add. He will build a temple to the Lord, the Prophet repeats. He will bring glory and spread it over all his Elect and throughout the Empire, that is, in the Church Triumphant (St. Jerome, ibid.). He will ascend above all heavens, sitting on His heavenly throne and reigning over all creatures, filling them all with His gifts and authority. As a priest, He will sit on His priestly throne and there will be a peaceful alliance between His royal throne and His priestly throne 537 (Zechariah, VI, 12, 13).

He will be king notably on His throne of glory, the heavenly Jerusalem, and priest especially in the Eucharist, which is His throne of grace and timely help (Heb 4:16) for all wayfaring things on their way to glory. These two thrones are in perfect harmony with each other. They both carry the same divine Personage, distributing by His humanity glory above and grace below so that whoever can receive grace ends up in glory.

The universe, God’s immense temple, is formed as it were by three concentric temples. The first and largest is the heavenly Jerusalem. The second is the mobile universe with everything that pursues its end. The third is Purgatory. These parts of the temple of God are united with one another by the influences of Christ and will eventually participate in His glorious destiny. O how marvelous are the relations that unite the various heavens among them and with our earth! As it were, they make a single body, the head of which is Jesus Christ, Who, by grace and glory, makes His whole body share His condition as wayfarer and victor.

1033. Yes, the triumph of Jesus Christ will come according to our prayer: Adveniat regnum tuum.

Wayfaring humanity and the moving universe will finally be delivered from bondage and come to the freedom of the glory of the children of God or participation in that glory’s freedom (nos. 327-331).

Contra Gentiles l. 3, c. 68, n. 5.

Martini, Comment., In hunc loc.

537 The main object of this prophecy is Jesus Christ. The high priest Jesus, son of Josédec, is only a prefigure of Him. 535 536

St. John wonderfully describes the beginning of this glorious, universal and absolute reign. I saw, he said, a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth was gone, and the sea is now no more. And I John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people, and God himself with them shall be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away. And he that sat on the throne, said: Behold, I make all things new. And he said to me: Write, for these words are most faithful and true. And he said to me: It is done. I am Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the end. To him that is thirsty, I will give of the fountain of the water of life, freely. He that shall overcome shall possess these things, and I will be His God; and he shall be my son (Ap 21:1-7).

1034. I saw a new heaven and a new earth replacing the mobile heaven and our globe. The Empyrean, being glorified, has not changed. The first heaven and the first earth have disappeared, and the sea is already no more. This is the heaven to which our earth and our sea belong; their first state has ceased, and their appearances and qualities are no longer the same. Just as the first heaven and the first earth disappeared to form a new sky and a new earth (rather than to leave a void after them), so also the sea is no longer in its original state. It participates in the new condition of the earth that carries it. A liquid element subject to evaporation, it promptly felt the action of the general kindling of the lower heavens.

So the Seer says: the sea is no longer in its original state. “It is the ‘figure of this world,’ says St. Augustine, ‘which will pass through the conflagration of fires as the flood was formed by an unleashing of this world’s waters.” 538 All fires of our visible nature will form a flood of flames that will transform the lower heavens along with the earth. Saint John only names one heaven here, but St. Peter names the heavens ... and earth as reserved for fire (2 Pet 3:7).

Convinced that the visible stars are incorruptible, St. Augustine and many other authors limited the final conflagration to our atmosphere and planet. But it seems to us that, according to Sacred Scripture, the purifying fire will in some way reach the whole mobile universe, that is to say, all that must be part of the glorious renovation. In this circumstance, stars will fall from the sky, and the virtues of heaven will be shaken, proof that the now visible heavens are subject to corruption, as astronomers seem to have firmly proven elsewhere (no. 60). Many other passages of the Holy Scriptures support this opinion (See no. 1017; Ps 101:26-27 etc.).

Note also that this fire will have the effect of purifying what is defiled and transforming bodies so they are properly suited to the state of the Blessed, something that undoubtedly concerns our mobile and corruptible heavens. On this point, let us listen to the great St. Augustine. “With the conflagration of corruptible elements, the qualities that suited our corruptible bodies will be utterly destroyed by fire, and the substance [of the heavens and earth thus changed] will have qualities that, through admirable transformation, will be suitable for the [human] bodies that have become immortal. So, renewed and put in a better state, the world will be suitable to the state of men, also happily renewed in their flesh” (loc; cit.). In passing, note that according to the holy Bishop of Hippo, the renewed world will be part of the material Paradise.

538

De Civit. Dei, 1. 20, c. 16.

1035. I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, adorned as a bride for her husband. This is the mobile universe’s glorious invasion by the Empyrean and its happy inhabitants. Materially speaking, heaven is completed, and the Elect take possession of the entire kingdom of their Father. What St. John says here is suitable to both Jerusalems but more to the first, that is to say, the Church and the Blessed, than to the second, that is to say, the place itself or Empyrean” (Cornelius a Lapide). The Blessed descend and project their light on the renewed worlds, and thus the Empyrean takes its complete and definitive extension. 539 The new Jerusalem comes down from the already glorified heaven and God because God is more intensely in the upper heaven, which He inundates with perfect glory and bliss.

The new Jerusalem that descends toward our regions is adorned like a bride for her husband, for, being glorified, it appears wholly penetrated by God, Who is there in all things (1 Cor 15:28). It the mystical body and empire of Christ, in whose splendors it is fully drowned. It is a bride adorned with glory because it receives that glory from Jesus Christ, to whom it is indissolubly linked. Grace and the Church Militant are a distant and veiled radiance of these glories of the Church Triumphant, but for this very reason, St. John’s description suits them to a certain extent.

1036. The strong voice coming out of the throne is the voice of a creature—the humanity of the Word, Mary’s, or one of the main personages of the heavenly court, as God is always represented as sitting on a throne. We believe that it is the voice of Jesus Christ considered as man because His humanity, the tabernacle of the Word, is the model of the heavenly tabernacle permeated by the presence and glory of God. 540 Everything splendid this tabernacle has comes from the Incarnate Word. The whole set of heavens is only a tabernacle compared to the infinite heaven of divine immensity in which the glorified universe floats like a small, light and shining cloud. In our view, a simple reading suffices to understand the other words of St. John. They explain the happiness of the Elect. Let us only observe that the one who conquers will possess all these things the prophet has just enumerated: the new heaven, the new earth, and the Jerusalem which is coming down—meaning that Paradise will be the entire celestial universe. To that will the many relationships that unite us now with the upper heavens lead. lV. The Place of Hell and the Influences It Exerts By Its Envoys. The Need and Way to Overcome These Influences. Prayer to Mary.

1037. Having described the transformation of the mobile universe by spreading the splendors of the Empyrean, St. John also tells us about hell, the opposite of the heavenly Jerusalem. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, they shall have their portion in the pool burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death (Ap 21:8). Where will this pool be located? Certainly not in the luminous ocean of the Empyrean, This Jerusalem is new and also definitively completed as to its inhabitants and the size of the material city. It is also new in relation to the mobile universe, which ceases to move under the influences of grace to move under those of glory. This novelty is analogous to that of the New Testament vis-a-vis the Old. 540 Moreover, in a sense, all the glory of the intelligent and material Empyrean is nothing but the full radiance of the glorified humanity of Jesus Christ (nos. 214-216). Therefore, only Jesus can say: Behold the tabernacle of God with men. See above (no. 243) how the humanity of Christ is the throne of God. 539

which forms the material temple of God and the Elect. Will it be on our earth? The earth is part of the heavens and has undergone a glorious renovation which must likely be understood to mean the entire globe, both inside and out. The Seer of Patmos tells us: And I heard the voice of all the creatures which are in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea and in it, saying: To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, benediction, and honor, and glory, and power forever and ever. And the four living creatures, which lead the mobile universe (nos. 273-279), said: Amen (Ap 5:13), in their name and in the name of all that depends on them. It does not appear that hell would take part in such a spontaneous and loving concert of praise.

Hell, Job tells us, is this dark land covered with the darkness of night, a land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and no order, but everlasting horror dwells (10:21-22). It is a world apart where nothing is in order, where everything is misery, darkness, horror. How could this passage be understood as referring to the new land that St. John mentions? The wicked, Job says, will be driven out of light into darkness and removed out of this world: et de orbe transferet eum (18:18).

Quoting St. Basil, St. Thomas says that “at the end of time, when God purifies the world [by fire], He will separate the elements in such a way that all that is pure and noble remains in the heights for the glory of the Blessed, and all that is despicable and filthy is cast into hell for the sorrow of the damned” (Supplem., q. 97, a. 1).

Elsewhere, St. Thomas also says that “all the impurities of the elements will accumulate in hell" and the purifying fire “will also act after [and not just before men’s] resurrection ); it will envelop reprobates and cast into hell all that is found unclean in the fire or as the elements are sorted out. . .

This fire will be caused by the conflagration of all fires of the world, as St. Augustine says, that is to say, by the concurrence of all lower and higher causes that can generate fire toward the middle (of the world) ” (Libr. 4, Dist. 42, q. · 1, a. 4, ad 2m and. 3m). According to St. Thomas, this central place (circa locum medium) is undoubtedly the center of the world, the center of the sphere occupied by the purifying flames. And since this fire is generated by the unleashing of all the world’s fires and by the partial concurrence of all higher causes that can ignite this fire, it seems obvious that the flaming stars that girate above our heads will contribute mightily to this conflagration. Moreover, they belong to those skies that will pass with a crash, that will be dissolved and set ablaze, whose stars will fall, etc. (nos. 1017, 1034).

Now, it is licit to believe that our earth is not the center of this celestial ocean subject to the flames. So we think that somewhere in the center of the universe there must be a sort of dark star where the shadow of death reigns, where misery, disorder, eternal horror, are in their own place, into which all the slag of the mobile universe will flow. This star does not circulate because it has no other end to attain.

Having been prepared for the devil and his angels (Mt 25:41) who were scattered in the upper heavens and fell from heaven like lightning (Lk 10:18), it forms a place which is no heaven at all and does not dominate anything but is dominated by all heavenly things. It is the burning pool, the pit, the well of the abyss, the place of torments and tears, the last world because it is inferior to all other creatures: hell.

1038. In writing this, we believe we are basically in agreement with the entire tradition, which has always tended to say that Hell is at the center of the universe (nos. 25, 26). If it was believed that this center was the flaming core of our earth, this was only a questionable peculiarity that does not modify the principle generally regarded as the most admissible, and which even explains, in part, the hesitations

of authors who have written on this subject. As for the criminals whom the earth has swallowed up and whose accounts we find in Sacred Scripture and Church annals, this does not seem to us to prove that Hell is in our terrestrial globe but rather that one goes there plunging away from the Empyrean. If the unfortunate people of whom we are speaking were actually damned and their spectacular disappearance into the bosom of the earth meant that they took the road to hell, the desired effect was obtained; the lesson was intelligible to the spectators, which it probably would not have been if, when falling, those criminals had followed the straight line leading to the center of the universe.

1039. Does this horrible and central prison, this kind of chaotic star, exert an attraction on wayfaring beings? Judging by the moral order of which the physical order is a crude image, one cannot deny that mobile beings have some inclination to rush towards this abyss just as they have some tendency to reach for the heights. Hence the two opposing movements that one notices in nature, the combination of which forms the equilibrium that maintains things in a state of trial or pursuit of the definitive good.

This disposition is visible notably in man, who, by reason and particularly by grace, gravitates toward the heights, the general, immense and infinite good, and by his senses, especially by sin, tends downward to the particular and irremediable disorder. In man, the struggle between these two tendencies constitutes his passing trial. He comes out of it either to plunge into the eternal central prison where all evil is finally agglomerated, or to enjoy full freedom in the immensity of creation (in tam immensa creatura -- Ecclus 16:17), and in the glory of God’s power (2Thess.1:9), which will form the great and indestructible ocean of all good.

O men! look at your rights and duties in this picture. How sublime your rights are! They are all summed up in this divine statement: You are gods (Jn 10:34). Your destiny is to enjoy God Himself, Who makes Himself your inheritance, the divine Persons, all of Christ’s divine perfections, Mary, the whole celestial society, and the universe gloriously renewed for you (no. 1027). Heaven cannot be too big and too beautiful for gods. One who contemplates the immensity of sovereign Greatness and participates in it as a child of the Most High (Ps 81:6) is not too small to reign with Jesus Christ and Mary upon all material works of the Creator. For their Father and them, all these things are nothing but God’s tabernacle with men. No one can attain this destiny without grace from above. Fortunately, this grace abounds and superabounds even where sin abounded (Rom 5:20), so much the heavenly Father truly is our Father!

Our duties flow from this. The glory of heaven shines on us in the form of grace through Jesus Christ, Who is the very throne of grace (Heb 4:16) in order to lift us by a divine attraction to Our Father Who is in heaven. Let us follow this upward movement. Let us pray without ceasing to maintain and increase the rain of heavenly influences upon us. Let us repair our losses and enrich ourselves with new graces by receiving the sacraments, stores of divine energy placed within our reach. Let us break free from the solicitations of the Infernal Abyss’ emissaries who blind us with unbelief so we cannot see the ineffable goods reserved for us; distract us with brilliant lies to focus on fleeting things, strive to replace in our hearts with natural and sensual love the divine charity that makes us converse in heaven (Phil 3:20).

Theological virtues constitute the Christian life that already inspires us with the influences and vibrations of the higher heavens. Happy are those who live this heavenly life! God will come one day to be glorified in them and in all who have believed (2 Thess 1:10).

1040. Blessed be God, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, according to His great mercy, has regenerated us to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, for an

incorruptible, undefiled, and unwitherable inheritance reserved in heaven for you who, by virtue of God, are kept by faith for the salvation that must be revealed at the end of time (1 Pet 1:3-5).

As St. Paul says (Heb 12:22-29), this regeneration through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, this virtue of God, this faith has brought us near the mountain of Zion, the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, the multitude of many thousands of angels. The New Testament Church is an ascent to the Empyrean much higher than the one that took place before Jesus Christ. At the same time, it is a much more perfect descent from heavenly Jerusalem to us—a descent that will be surpassed only by the universal diffusion of the light of glory: Vidi sanctam civitatem, Jerusalem novam, descendentem de coelo a Deo. We have, therefore, approached the Church of the firstborn who are inscribed in heaven, that is, Jesus Christ, Mary, the glorious angels, all the resurrected saints who ascended into heaven with the Savior, and all the righteous souls who have flown to the Fatherland. Their names are inscribed in divine knowledge and the book of life and in heaven, where their spiritual and material homes are clearly determined.

We have drawn near to God, the Judge of all, and Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant. We are raised high toward the place where the infinite Heaven shows itself in all its splendor and where our Savior’s splendid Heaven unfolds, which will make our souls forever the spouses of God (Hosea 2:19).

But let us be careful not to reject the One Who speaks to us from on high, this Jesus Who is our salvation and gives us grace as a pledge of glory. Let us take advantage of this grace, widely distributed by the Church Militant, to be agreeable to God, to serve Him with fear and respect so that we may take possession of the immutable kingdom.

O heavenly City, let my tongue cleave to my jaws If I do not remember thee: If I make not Jerusalem the beginning of my joy (Ps 136:6).

I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: We shall go into the house of the Lord (Ps. 121, 1).

O, Mary! O Queen of heaven and earth, of angels and men, 541 Queen of mercy, grace and glory, 542 thou art our salvation in the Lord; 543 thou are the assured salvation of all Christians who honestly and sincerely have recourse to thee. 544 Be the generous dispensary of heavenly treasures for all of us, poor wayfarers, 545 thou who distributest joy to all creatures. 546 O Sun of the sky, who sees and illuminates everything (Ecclus 42: 16), that is to say, who, as princes are wont to do, sends special sparks of eternal retribution to whoever has rendered thee the least

St. Albert the Great, sup. Missus est, chap. 223.

Id. Biblia Ma., super libr. Apoc.

543 St. Bonaventure, In Cantic. Psalt. B. M. V. 544 St. Ephrem, Serm. de laud. B. M. V. 545 St. Bernardine of Siena, tome 3, Serm. De Assumptione B. V. 546 St. Gregory the Miracle Worker, Orat. 2 in Ann. B. M. V. 541 542

service. 547 If this work contributes somewhat to making thee loved and praised, please remember for my sake that in thee is found all the grace of the way and the truth, and all hope of life and virtue (Ecclus. 24:25).

True, all the good I have been able to do comes to me through you, “an empyrean by the splendor of thy wisdom. 548 But since thou art “the ocean of graces” 549 of which thou hast the fullness, 550 thy benefits are as inexhaustible as thy goodness.

Please continue being “the shining morning star that sparkles in my eyes until the eternal day dawns to me, 551 and fulfill this precious promise rightly attributed to thee: Those who make me known will have eternal life (Ecclus 24:31).

JAS started 20 Feb ended 12 May 2021

St. Albert the Great, Serm. 2, in Assumptione B. M. V. St. Bonaventure, Serm. 1 De B. M. V. 549 St. Sabba, in Men. Graecor., 8 Feb. 550 St. Jerome, De Assumptione B. M. V. 547 548

551

St. Andrew of Crete, Orat. De Dormit. B. M. V.