In the Beatific Vision our intellect is glorified, and our thirst for knowledge completely satisfied.
Man was created with a thirst for knowledge which can never be satiated in this world. Sin, which greatly weakened and darkened his mental faculties, has not taken away his desire and love for knowledge. And the knowledge which he acquired by eating the forbidden fruit, rather increased than satisfied his thirst.
But all his efforts to reach the perfection of knowledge, even in the natural order, have been fruitless. With all his boasted discoveries in astronomy, chemistry, geology, mechanics, and other kindred sciences, his knowledge of nature's secrets is still very limited. But could he even master every natural science, and compel nature to reveal her most hidden secrets, his thirst for knowledge would still remain unsatisfied.
Let us, for the sake of illustration, suppose a man so gifted that he not only knows all that can be known about this world, but soars beyond it, and learns the exact size, distances, laws, and relations to each other of the countless worlds that shine in the blue sky. Supposing these distant orbs to be peopled like ours, he knows the character, manners, laws, and languages of their respective inhabitants. He knows, moreover, all their sciences, the characters of their plants, animals, and minerals. In a word, he sees and knows every star as perfectly as he knows his own house and its inmates. What vast knowledge would not that man possess! He would certainly be far more learned than all the philosophers that ever lived, taken together. But would his thirst for knowledge be completely quenched? Would he say that his mind is so completely full that he can long for no more, or that it can contain no more? No, he could never say that; for the knowledge of the creature alone can never completely fill or satisfy the mind.
We are little, and very limited, it is true, and if we are aiming at Christian perfection, we are accustomed to look upon ourselves as such. And the oftener we compare our borrowed perfections with those of God, the more deeply convinced of our littleness shall we become. But yet, how little soever we may be, we have, in a certain sense, capacity for the infinite; and for it, only the infinite is sufficient. Hence, as all the wealth of this world could never make any man perfectly happy, so neither could the perfect knowledge of every creature perfectly satisfy his cravings after knowledge. The one is as finite as the other, and consequently neither could do that for which the infinite alone is sufficient.
Yet this is not all. Not only is the full knowledge of the whole natural order incapable of satisfying man's desire for knowledge; but not even all the knowledge of God, and of the supernatural order, so far as they can be known in this world by faith and theology, ever did or ever could make a man say, It is enough; I ask for no more. Indeed, the very reverse takes place. For if there be any knowledge that intensifies thirst for more, it is precisely the imperfect knowledge of God we have by faith and the contemplation of Him in his creatures.
Theologians have studied and learned much; they have thrown much light on the dark mysteries of revelation; yet what they know is only as a drop in the boundless ocean of God's unfathomable being. With all the vast knowledge of God which they have acquired, they are still constrained to cry out with St. Paul: "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways!"* Do what we may, read the Holy Scriptures, study, pray, meditate; we never can see and know God as He is, so long as we remain pilgrims in this world. The saying of St. Paul will ever remain true: "We now see thorough a glass in a dark manner;"+ that is, imperfectly and unsatisfactorily.
* Rom. xi. 13. + 1 Cor. xiii. 12,
In the original Greek, St. Paul uses the word mirror, which is also the word used in the Latin Vulgate, "per speculum;" that is, by means of a mirror. The meaning, therefore, of St. Paul is not that we see through a glass by transmitted light, as when we look through a telescope, but as when we see an image reflected in a mirror. Let us suppose a man so circumstanced in this world that he has never seen the sun, nor his light, except as reflected in the moon. He has heard of his immense size, and his bewildering distance from us; of his dazzling splendor, and keen, life-imparting power, whereby he gives life, growth, and beauty to every living thing. To this man, the moon is a mirror wherein the sun is imperfectly reflected; and, through he is unable to see the sun himself, he judges from the splendor and beauty of the moon that he must be grand, glorious, and magnificent beyond the power of words to express.
This illustrates the meaning of St. Paul when he says that we now see God by means of a mirror. All creatures, the sun, the moon, and the stars, the vast expanse of the ocean, the earth, trees, flowers, animals, and man especially, are a grand mirror in which the perfections of God are reflected in a dark and imperfect manner. We see, in them all, faint reflections of His divine beauty, wisdom, goodness, power, and of His other perfections; but himself as He is, we cannot see. Therefore, all the knowledge of God which we can derive from the contemplation of creatures, adding even all that he has been phased to reveal of himself, far from satisfying, rather increases the thirst of the soul for more. They who know most of God are the saints, and they are the very ones who can say, with the royal prophet: "As the hart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after Thee, O God. My soul hath thirsted after the strong, living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God?"* This is the continual sigh and cry of the saints, because the knowledge which they have of God in creatures, and even in their visions, does not satisfy their longings. But listen to St. Paul: "We now see through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known."+