To behold God, we
must either be God or participate in the divine nature.
Well then, my good
Christian, your spiritual eye must also become divine, as it were, and your
soul must partake of the divine nature, if you are to see God face to face. The
veil which covers your weak eyes must be removed; the light of the Divine Sun
must transform your sight, must make it sunlike, that you may boldly gaze at
it. And this the Holy Spirit effects in you when, by grace, He makes you partake
of the divine nature. St. Paul describes this in beautiful words: “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.” (2 Cor. 3:18).
St. John likewise says: “We shall be like to him [God] because we shall see him
as he is.” (1 John 3:2). And the Son of God Himself says to His Father: “the
glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them; that they may be one, as
we also are one.” (John 17:22).
In Heaven we shall
know God as He knows Himself and as He knows us. “Then I shall know even as I
am known,” says the Apostle. (1 Cor. 13:12). But we could not have
knowledge like that which is peculiar to the Divine Nature unless we were
really made to participate in that nature. And if, on the other hand, we are in
reality to partake of the Divine Nature and are really to be deified, that must
be verified by our being called to partake of the divine cognition . . . In the
Beatific Vision grace makes us share in the divine happiness by raising us up
to the immediate enjoyment of the infinite and highest good. As much as the
Divine Nature is above ours, so much the divine beatitude must surpass that
which is attainable by and suitable to our nature. The animal is not capable of
the same enjoyment as man; it can only delight in the things of the senses. Man
takes delight in spiritual things, in order, harmony and beauty, especially as
these are found in truth and virtue. In like manner, the joy and beatitude of God
has an object accessible only to Himself, whose beauty and loveliness eye has
not seen, nor ear heard and which has not entered into the heart of man, but is
evident only to God Himself, to His own infinitely good, glorious, beautiful
being. But while God makes us, through His Holy Spirit, partakers of His Divine
Nature, He opens to us also the mystery of His happiness. He calls us to the
enjoyment of that happiness and makes us His associates in it. And He possesses
Himself by His nature, so He wills to give Himself to us through grace. And as
He, by our participation in His nature, places us upon His throne and
introduces us into His light, so He wills also to let us feast at His table. By
reason of our nature, He might have left us standing at a respectful distance before
His door. There we might have admiringly contemplated the greatness of His
works, the beauty of His mansion, and this would have been for us a joy and an
honor as great as our poor hearts might desire. But He wills to manifest to us
His own beauty, in the enjoyment of which He, with the Son and the Holy Spirit,
is eternally happy; that beauty which unites in itself the real and possible
beauties of His works, with all their wonderful diversity; that beauty which
angels desire to behold, one ray of which is sufficient to inebriate all
created spirits with joy. (Matthias J. Scheeben, The Glories of Divine Grace:
A Fervent Exhortation to All to Preserve and to Grow in Sanctifying Grace [Charlotte,
N.C.: TAN Books, 2000], 33, 35-36)
