Thought for the Day – 16 January – Heaven 1

Thought for the Day – 16 January – Meditations with Antonio Cardinal Bacci (1881-1971) – Thursday of the First week in Ordinary Time, Year A

Heaven 1

“Faith teaches us, that the soul which is in the state of grace and has expiated all the temporal punishments due to it’s sins, goes immediately to Heaven when it is separated from the body.
There, the soul enjoys eternal happiness.   It sees God, face-to-face.   It sees Him without any intervention of created things but, as He is, in Himself, in the Unity and Trinity of His infinte perfections.

In this beatific vision, the intellect remains completely satisfied, because, in God, there is every truth, beauty and goodness.
The will abandons itself entirely to the will of God, desiring nothing else and loving nothing else but God alone.
There springs from this abandonment, a love which satisfies every desire, an inexpressible joy and a boundless peace.
The happy soul will see the Blessed Virgin, too and she will smile upon it with maternal tenderness.
It will see the Angels and Saints gathered around the King of Kings and the Queen of Heaven, singing their praises.
St Paul, who was taken up to the third Heaven, tells us, that it is impossible to imagine or to describe, the unknown joys which are experienced there.
In comparison with the eternal happiness of Heaven, the poor pleasures of this world are empty shadows.
We cannot imagine the happiness of those, who have gained Heaven, by their good lives upon earth.
The concept of Heaven is so beautiful and immense, that it caused the Saints to desire death as a means of going there.
They welcomed suffering, too, because it brought them nearer to their goal.”

Antonio Cardinal Bacci