The vision of God

You ask how it is possible for the creature, finite and limited, to see the Creator, since He is infinite and has no visible form.

Brother, the vision of God does not consist in seeing with the visual organ, such as you can now imagine or understand; by this must be understood the vision of the spirit or intelligence. It is a vision without image; it is a perception, a knowledge, an expansion of irresistible love; it is the real vision of the magnificent and inexpressible manifestations of the divinity, the ineffable certainty of the presence and of the infinite love of God, instead of the vision of a determined form which, consequently, would be finite and could not be God.

Moreover, every visible thing soon becomes known and analyzed in depth, because it is limited and, consequently, cannot be a source of eternal and infinite goodness. In this manner of representing the vision of God, one falls inevitably into ideas that are unintelligent and backward, as well as into the immobility of the blessed ones in ecstasy forever in paradise. Now, those who, after having exhausted the trials of the transitory lives, have reached the summit of the spiritual scale, do not cease to be active, for, as the Spirit purifies itself and draws near to God, it participates ever more in the divine perfections; and, since God is the center and the focus of the eternal activity of life, it results that the pure Spirits act incessantly, in order to contribute with all their liberty and all their force to the realization of the wills of the Eternal. They feel that the focus of infinite charity envelops them, that the light which streams from the face of God illuminates them, and that the omniscience of the Lord opens to them His treasures, and that the Almighty makes them free and strong to dominate the elements, to direct the vital forces, to influence the intelligences of the elevated Spirits, though not yet arrived at the summit, and to contribute eternally to the maintenance of the harmony of creation. The words of the apostle Paul: “videbimus Deum facie ad faciem” and “videbimus Deum sicuti est” must not be taken literally, because the creature can never limit God to its measure, nor become infinite, which follows literally from Paul's text. Instead, let us understand that the pure Spirits will have ever more perfect notions of God as they grow in perfection; that never again will error cloud their understanding; that the delights and the love of this good and of this harmonious beauty without limit will be unveiled to them ever more, century after century, but without ever succeeding in imposing on the divinity either limits, or forms, or images more or less analogous to those that are created by the imagination of earthly man.

Farewell; work with courage, because, through work and through the exercise of the faculties that God has given you, you do now, with difficulty, only what you will do in another manner, and with delights without end, for all eternity, when all these same faculties shall have received the necessary development.

[Anonymous.]