We Recognize One Another in Heaven

One of our correspondents, Dr. C…, points out this booklet to us and writes the following:

“For some time now, words that, as a Christian and a Spiritist, I refrain from qualifying, have often been pronounced by men who received the mission of speaking to the peoples about charity and mercy. Allow me, in order to soften the painful impressions they must have caused you, as they would every truly Christian man, to speak to you of a little book by the Rev. Father Blot [François-René Blot]. I do not think he is a Spiritist, but I found in his work that which, in Spiritism, makes one love God and hope in his mercy, besides several passages that touch very closely upon what the Spirits teach.” In it we highlight the following passages, which confirm the opinion of our correspondent:

“In the seventh century, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, after having related that a religious had seen, upon dying, the prophets coming before him, even designating their names, added: “This example makes us clearly understand how great will be the knowledge we shall have of one another in the incorruptible life of heaven, for this religious, even in corruptible flesh, recognized the holy prophets, whom he had never seen.” “The saints see one another reciprocally, as required by the unity of the kingdom and the unity of the city where they live, in the company of God himself. They spontaneously reveal to one another their thoughts and affections, like the people of a same household, united by sincere love. Among their fellow citizens of heaven, they know even those whom they did not know on Earth, and the knowledge of beautiful actions leads them to a more complete knowledge of those who performed them (Berti, De theologicis disciplinis). [De Theologicis Disciplinis Accurata Synopsis: Continens … — Google Books.]

“Have you lost a son, a daughter? receive the consolations that a patriarch of Constantinople addressed to a desolate father. This patriarch can no longer be counted among the great men, nor among the saints: he is Photius, the author of the cruel schism that separates the East and the West, but his words only prove that, on this point, the Greeks think as the Latins do. Here they are: If your daughter appeared to you; if, placing her hands in yours and her cheerful brow upon your brow, she spoke to you, would she not give the description of heaven? Then she would add: Why do you afflict yourself, O my father? I am in paradise, where happiness has no limits. You will come one day with my beloved mother and then you will find that I did not say too much of this place of delights, for the reality is beyond my words.” The good Spirits can, then, manifest themselves, be seen, touch the living, speak with them, describe their own situation, come to console and fortify those they loved. If they can speak and take the hand, why could they not write? “The Greeks,” says Father Blot, “on this point think as the Latins do.” Why, then, do the Latins today say that this power is given only to demons to deceive men? The following passage is still more explicit: “Saint John Chrysostom, in one of his homilies on Saint Matthew, said to each of his hearers: Do you wish to see the one whom death took from you? Lead the same life as he in the path of virtue and soon you will enjoy this holy vision. But do you wish to see him here itself? Oh! who prevents you? This is permitted to you and it is easy to see him, if you are sensible; for the hope of future goods is clearer than sight itself.” Carnal man cannot see what is purely spiritual. If, then, he can see the Spirits, it is because they have a material part, accessible to his senses; it is the fluidic envelope, which Spiritism designates under the name of perispirit.

After a quotation from Dante about the state of the blessed, Father Blot adds:

“Here, then, is the principle of solution for the objections: In heaven, which is less a place than a state, all is light, all is love.” Thus, heaven is not a circumscribed place; it is the state of the blissful souls; everywhere they are happy, they will be in heaven, that is, for them all is light, love and intelligence. This is what the Spirits say.

Fénelon, upon the death of the Duke of Beauvilliers, his friend, wrote to the duchess: “No, only the senses and the imagination have lost the object. He whom we can no longer see is, more than ever, with us. We find him without ceasing in our common center. There he sees us and affords us true help. There he knows better than we do our infirmities, he who no longer has his own; and he asks for the remedies necessary for our cure. As for me, who was deprived of seeing him for so many years, I speak to him, I open my heart to him.” Fénelon also wrote to the widow of the Duke of Chevreuse: “Let us unite ourselves in heart to him whom we lament; he has not withdrawn from us by becoming invisible; he sees us, loves us, is touched by our needs. Having happily arrived at port, he prays for us who are still exposed to shipwreck. He says to us with a secret voice: “Hasten to meet us. The pure Spirits see, hear, always love their true friends in their common center. Their friendship is immortal like its source. The unbelievers love only themselves; they ought to despair of losing their friends forever; but divine friendship changes the visible society into a society of pure faith; it weeps, but in weeping, it consoles itself by the hope of joining its friends in the land of truth and in the bosom of love itself.” To justify the title of his book, We Recognize One Another in Heaven, Father Blot cites a great number of passages from sacred writers, from apparitions and from various manifestations, which prove the reunion, after death, of those who loved one another, the relations existing between the dead and the living, the help they render to one another through prayer and through inspiration. Nowhere does he speak of eternal separation, the consequence of eternal damnation, nor of devils, nor of hell; on the contrary, he shows the most suffering souls delivered by the virtue of repentance and of prayer, and by the mercy of God. If Father Blot were to cast an anathema against Spiritism, it would be to cast it against his own book and against all the saints whose testimony he invokes. Whatever his opinions in this regard may be, we will say that if it had not been preached except in that sense, there would be fewer unbelievers. [1]

Paris, 1863. 1 small vol. in-18. – Price: 1 fr. Poussielgue-Rusand Bookshop, rue Cassette, no. 27. [The Rev. Fr. François-René Blot is the author of several works of a religious character, among them:

La Communion Réparatrice en union avec Marie — Google Books and also, L’agonie de Jésus: traité de la souffrance morale — Google Books.]