Sect. 90The Beatitude and Glory of the Divine LifeThe Beatitude and Glory of the Divine Life

I. God possesses, or rather is, infinite Beatitude and Glory. The life of God essentially consists in the most perfect knowledge and love of the most perfect goodness and beauty; a knowledge and love which confer the highest possible satisfaction, fruition and repose—that is, the greatest beatitude. On the other hand, the activity of the Divine Life is resplendent with all the beauty of the Divine Intellect and the Divine Substance, and is therefore the highest Glory. In a word, God is Beatitude and Glory, because He is Truth and Holiness. For this reason Scripture calls Him “the Blessed God” (ὁ μακάριος, 1 Tim. 1:11, 6:15); and often points out that He alone possesses glory pure and simple, because He alone is deserving of praise pure and simple. A created spirit neither possesses nor is entitled to a felicity and glory like the Divine. Even the felicity to which it is naturally or supernaturally destined is not intrinsically connected with its nature, but is acquired from without, under the helping and sustaining influence of God. The supernatural glory given by God to His creatures by admitting them to a participation of His own Beatitude, is a splendid manifestation of the Divine Glory, which again gives God the greatest external glory, and confers upon the creature the highest conceivable honour.

II. A deeper insight into the Divine Beatitude and glory will be gained from the following considerations.

1. The reason why the Divine Felicity is absolute is because God is Himself, and possesses in Himself, whatever can be the object of beatifying possession and fruition. He is the highest good; His Knowledge and Love of Himself adequately embrace Himself as the highest good, and thus constitute infinite honour, glory, and praise. Created beings can but imitate the glory which God draws from Himself. The possession of external goods adds nothing to the Divine Beatitude: they contribute to it only in so far as God knows and loves His power and dominion, of which external goods are manifestations; consequently they may not even be called accidental beatitude, because they are only an external revelation of the internal beatitude. The beatitude of created spirits is essentially relative. It is proportioned to their capacities and merits, and consists in the possession and fruition of external goods, in the last instance, of God, on which they are dependent for their felicity. To be loved and honoured by God is an element essential to the beatitude of creatures; nay, the highest delight of the beatified spirits is not caused by the fact that they possess the highest good, but by the fact that God possesses the highest Beatitude and Glory; they rejoice in their own felicity because they know that it contributes to the Glory of God.

2. The Divine Glory is also absolute, not only because it is the highest Glory, but because it finds in God Himself an object of infinite beauty and splendour. Outside of God, there is nothing to which He owes any honour or glory; the glory which creatures deserve is a free gift of His Goodness, and is, in the last resort, the Glory of God Himself. Hence the glory of created spirits is purely relative.

Since the Beatitude and Glory of God are absolutely perfect in themselves, no Divine operation can tend to complete or to increase them. When God operates, He can only communicate out of His own perfection. But this communication takes place in two directions—without and within. The necessary operation within, by which the fulness of God’s Beatitude and Glory is communicated and revealed, forms the fundamental idea of the mystery of the Blessed Trinity.