by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J
Part One: Grace Considered Extensively. Chapter I: Why Grace?
“Every one that calls upon my name, I have created Him for my glory, I have formed him and I have made him” (Isaias 43:7).
Why do we have sacraments? To give us grace. But is grace the ultimate, the “end of the line?” Is it an end in itself, a gift of God which we are simply to have, a treasure just to be hoarded? No, grace is not just an ornament. It is that, but more; it is a marvelous reality that points and inclines us to something. To what? To the Beatific Vision, Love, Enjoyment (or Fruition – a word St. Thomas might prefer) of the Divine Essence and Persons. The end of grace is a sharing in the activity and happiness of God, in the Beatific Vision of the Divine Essence. In this almost incredible Vision, there will be no species, idea, or thought between God and this inmost “me,” nothing created will intervene; the Divine Essence itself will be united to my mind as the quasi-species and the term of this Vision.
Benedict XII declared: “We define that the souls of the saints… behold the Divine Essence with intuitive vision, face to face, in such wise that nothing created intervenes as object of vision… and from this vision and enjoyment they are truly happy and have eternal life and rest.”
Happiness. Has the Beatific Vision been a motivating force in my life? There is a difficulty for many in seeing why the Beatific Vision will give eternal happiness, and a problem in giving a desire of it to youth. A child asked: Happiness? Just looking at God for all eternity? It is difficult to give others such a realization of the Beatific Vision that they desire it, that they want more than everything else to have God in this way and are willing to pay the price. Yet the Beatific Vision should be a powerful motivating force. We must let the idea grow more real and vivid within us, and then perhaps we can help others to realize it better.
All of us desire to be happy. We might sit down and think out the things that make us happy. Happiness comes to us in bits. Some may be caught by, lost in beauty, nature, art, music, love, color, companionship. But then they come to realize that all this is made, is finite, and therefore behind it there is something else: God has put the goodness, the beauty in each thing. Some happiness lasts just for a moment, some longer, to teach us that happiness may grow day by day, year after year.
If we ask children to draw up a list of things which make them happy – we may call them “happy-making” objects – each list will be different. These objects, of course, change with age. But this is one of the easiest ways of finding out what you are inside: by looking at the tendencies that are part of you. Your response can indicate the powers and tendencies in you. Happy-making objects may be graces – by which God draws you, builds you…
If we should stop in one of these happy-making objects, find one all-satisfactory, we know what God will do – especially to those of us in Religion: He will take it away, so that we may learn to find the unique and infinitely happy-making Object, God. He is the supremely Happy-Making Object. He has eminently and virtually all the “bits” of happiness we have had and loved. Here these happy-making objects have a function: to stretch and expand our mind, will, soul, so that God may come in more and more. Thus we grow in our capacity for the Beatific Vision.
All happiness in the world is a ray from the essence, the heart of God. All the rays of grace focus on the Beatific Vision. That is why we say that grace is pointing up: it points us towards the Heart of God, the essence of God – to be possessed in the Beatific Vision.
Deiformity. In order to enjoy fully, we must have, possess. Will the beauty, the perfection of God, will God be mine? Yes, I will not just be looking at God, I will be possessing God. But God possesses God by seeing the infinite, so if we do not see the infinite we do not see nor possess God. Shall we? Yes. And as God sees Himself? After the manner of the infinite? Yes, we shall see Him after the manner of the infinite, intuitively, facially, through the Divine Essence. But there must be a difference? God’s vision of God is infinite, ours will be finite. For God has a Light of Glory, so to speak, that is infinite, while the light of glory in us will be finite. There is always a limit, a measure to ours, but none to God’s; therefore our share in the Beatific Vision is according to this measured light of glory. The more sanctifying grace we have at death, the more light of glory we will get.
The expressions that we are “divinized,” “deified,” “deiform” refer in their fullest sense to this sharing the divine activity of the Beatific Vision. We shall then be supremely deiform, “like unto God,” doing what God does in the manner that God does it, but finitely, according to the finite degree of our light of glory. Where God has the Beatific Vision by His very nature, we will have it by grace, by gift of God. God’s aim for us is not to keep us down but to lift us up – as close to Him as we will let ourselves be drawn. The more we become like Christ, the more we become like God, deiform: “I am the Way – to the Heart of God.” In this Vision there will be nothing of God that we do not see, but we will not see Him infinitely, with the infinite clarity, intensity, profundity with which He sees Himself. But we shall really see intuitively and facially the divine essence, persons, attributes, and processions. We shall ecstatically contemplate with unceasing, unending fascination the Deity in its infinite purity and goodness, love and wisdom, beauty and majesty, power and sanctity – in the measure of our finite lumen gloriae. We shall be supremely active and alive!
The Key. The Beatific Vision is the key and explanation of most everything in the supernatural order. It was the reason for the Incarnation and the Redemption. Why did Christ come as man? Why the Sacraments? Why the Mass? Why Grace? Why the Church? That we might have the life and light of glory. “I am come that they may have Life and have it more abundantly.” We call Christ the Eternal Light, the Life of God. As members of His Mystical Body, as branches of His Vine, we share in the nature and activity of God. St. Augustine expressed it very strongly: “If God humbled Himself to become man, it was in order to make them gods” (Serm. 166). Christ took upon Himself our human nature that it might be made deiform, as like the divine nature as possible, having a share in the nature and activity of God. Christ died for all men, that all might be saved and reach the Beatific Vision. And Our Lady is Mediatrix of Graces to help men achieve this end.
We do not have the Beatific Vision here below. But many achieve a very high degree of knowledge of God. Some mystics even more. They “experience” God, the presence and activity of God. By mysterious spiritual “senses” they seem to sense the presence of God, feel the nearness and dearness and “touch” of Someone, of God, as we might experience the presence of someone in a mist. This is an ineffable experience of God, but not the Vision of God. Those who “experience” God and “savor” Him find in this their supreme earthly happiness, a joy, however, incomparably removed from that of heaven.
Conclusion. To our question, then, “Why do we need grace,” we may now answer: If our end, the Beatific Vision, is supernatural, then the means to achieve this end should be supernatural, too. And these supernatural means are: grace. We need grace, then, to achieve our supernatural end, the Beatific Vision.
Is this Vision absolutely supernatural for us? Yes. Pius XII said: God was entirely free to “create intellectual beings without ordering and calling them to the Beatific Vision.” “Out of His infinite goodness God ordained man to a supernatural end.” No created nature had any claim to this vision. It is utterly beyond the reach of our natural powers, merits and exigencies: it is a form of knowledge that is proper to the Three Divine Persons alone, a Vision of the Triune God in His intimate life.
To achieve our end in the Beatific Vision: we need grace.
