Quando che sia a le beate genti.[19]
Even as Christ ‘for the joy set before Him endured the Cross,’
So they find in their ‘pain’ their ‘solace.’[20]
When we pass into the third kingdom, up and up through sphere after sphere of the heavens, each more radiant with the light of Love, we feel ourselves “reflecting, as a mirror, the glory of the Lord, transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” “One star,” indeed, “differeth from another star in glory.” There is higher and lower in the abode of bliss, in the “many mansions” of the Father’s House. Dante questions one whom he meets in the lower sphere—Piccarda—on earth a playmate of his childhood. “Are you happy? Are you content? Have you no wish to be placed higher still?” Her answer enunciates the basal principle of heaven—“Brother, the quality of our love stilleth our will and maketh us long only for what we have, and giveth us no other thirst.... In His Will is our peace”—
Frate, la nostra volontà quieta
Virtù di carità, che fa volerne
Sol quel ch’ avemo, e d’ altro non ci’asseta.
...
E ’n la sua volontade è nostra pace.[21]