In “Companion Frames” Fr Walter Farrell, O.P. notes:
Beginnings of life. Essential happiness of heaven: Its nature
For some men, then, death begins the life of heaven. Much has already been said about the essential, constitutive happiness of heaven, particularly in the beginning of the second volume of this work where the question was treated at considerable length. It will be enough here to recall that the fundamental happiness of heaven consists in the possession of God, the faint shadows of Whose perfection, beauty, and goodness accounted for all that was real, all that was beautiful, all that was good in the space of our mortal days. Another way of saying the same thing, but from the side of man, would be to point out that heaven is the highest perfection of man’s highest faculties constituting his complete fulfillment. The two are seen as one when we remember that we possess God through the beatific vision, that face to face, intuitive knowledge which comes from the immediate union of the essence of God with the intellect of man; from that grasp of God flows the unceasing joy of heaven into the will of man, marking the full satisfaction of all his deepest desires and leaving him at complete peace.
That vision of God is an act that begins but never ends. Divinity is not enclosed in the finite limits of a human concept enabling man to say “I know it all.” Rather the act of knowledge begun by the union of the divine essence and the human intellect is an eternally enduring moment of penetration into the depths of divine riches; man will never be finished seeing what he will never fully comprehend, though the simplicity of the divine essence assures him of seeing it all. In the essence of God, each man also sees all that pertains to him, all to which he has any link; and along with this knowledge, there is, of course, the knowledge he has gathered in this life and that which comes by the infusion of species directly by God.
There are several points to be noted here, though they have been brought out before. There is, for instance, the fact that heaven demands the most intense and unceasing activity of mind and will from every man; it is not an eternal vacation in the sense of there being absolutely nothing to do. The deep and lasting peace of heaven is not a statement of eternal stagnation but of complete coordination of all man’s faculties operating at their fullest; it is a statement of absence of conflict, not of the absence of any signs of life. The complete satisfaction of man’s desires in heaven is not to be confused with the satiety that strikes a man down into heavy slumber after a full dinner, or disgusts him with the thing that has satisfied his appetite; these things are true only of the sense appetites in this life. The spiritual appetites of man, whose echoes will be so completely satisfying to man’s senses, are not dulled by satisfaction but made more alert, their quiet is not that of a dozing incapacity for further activity but the quiet of a love that has found all its energies engaged in adequate expression of that love.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If you are on Santorini and you have walked from Fira to Oia, hand in hand with your bride, and you have settled in a choice spot, and uncorked a great wine (made from grapes only grown on Santorini) and you are settling in for an hour or so to watch a sunset that glows with a glory more brilliant than an Welder’s Arc, you make think you will never be so happy – but then you die – and if you die saved and sanctified you will see God who made all that you have ever seen; God who is infinitely more beautiful than anything He created or anything you have ever seen or imagined.
In “Companion Frames” Fr Walter Farrell, O.P. notes:
Beginnings of life. Essential happiness of heaven: Its nature
For some men, then, death begins the life of heaven. Much has already been said about the essential, constitutive happiness of heaven, particularly in the beginning of the second volume of this work where the question was treated at considerable length. It will be enough here to recall that the fundamental happiness of heaven consists in the possession of God, the faint shadows of Whose perfection, beauty, and goodness accounted for all that was real, all that was beautiful, all that was good in the space of our mortal days. Another way of saying the same thing, but from the side of man, would be to point out that heaven is the highest perfection of man’s highest faculties constituting his complete fulfillment. The two are seen as one when we remember that we possess God through the beatific vision, that face to face, intuitive knowledge which comes from the immediate union of the essence of God with the intellect of man; from that grasp of God flows the unceasing joy of heaven into the will of man, marking the full satisfaction of all his deepest desires and leaving him at complete peace.
That vision of God is an act that begins but never ends. Divinity is not enclosed in the finite limits of a human concept enabling man to say “I know it all.” Rather the act of knowledge begun by the union of the divine essence and the human intellect is an eternally enduring moment of penetration into the depths of divine riches; man will never be finished seeing what he will never fully comprehend, though the simplicity of the divine essence assures him of seeing it all. In the essence of God, each man also sees all that pertains to him, all to which he has any link; and along with this knowledge, there is, of course, the knowledge he has gathered in this life and that which comes by the infusion of species directly by God.
There are several points to be noted here, though they have been brought out before. There is, for instance, the fact that heaven demands the most intense and unceasing activity of mind and will from every man; it is not an eternal vacation in the sense of there being absolutely nothing to do. The deep and lasting peace of heaven is not a statement of eternal stagnation but of complete coordination of all man’s faculties operating at their fullest; it is a statement of absence of conflict, not of the absence of any signs of life. The complete satisfaction of man’s desires in heaven is not to be confused with the satiety that strikes a man down into heavy slumber after a full dinner, or disgusts him with the thing that has satisfied his appetite; these things are true only of the sense appetites in this life. The spiritual appetites of man, whose echoes will be so completely satisfying to man’s senses, are not dulled by satisfaction but made more alert, their quiet is not that of a dozing incapacity for further activity but the quiet of a love that has found all its energies engaged in adequate expression of that love.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If you are on Santorini and you have walked from Fira to Oia, hand in hand with your bride, and you have settled in a choice spot, and uncorked a great wine (made from grapes only grown on Santorini) and you are settling in for an hour or so to watch a sunset that glows with a glory more brilliant than an Welder’s Arc, you make think you will never be so happy – but then you die – and if you die saved and sanctified you will see God who made all that you have ever seen; God who is infinitely more beautiful than anything He created or anything you have ever seen or imagined.