Words do not exist to express, even remotely, what our life will be like in the Heaven that God has promised to His children. We know, as has been recently recalled, that "we shall be with Christ and we shall see God (cf. 1 Jn 3:2); an admirable promise and mystery in which our hope essentially consists. If the imagination cannot reach that far, the heart arrives instinctively and profoundly."
What we now glimpse through revelation—and which we can barely imagine in our current state—will be a most joyful reality. In the Old Testament, the happiness of Heaven is described by evoking the Promised Land after such a long and arduous journey through the desert. There, in the new and definitive homeland, all good things are found; there, the fatigues of such a long and difficult pilgrimage will come to an end.
The Promise of Our Lord
The Lord spoke to us in many ways about the incomparable happiness of those who, in this world, love God through their works. Eternal beatitude is one of the truths that our Lord preached most insistently: The will of my Father, who sent me, He declares, is that I should lose none of those He has given me, but raise them all up on the last day. Therefore, the will of my Father… is that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. "Oh Father," He will say at the Last Supper, "I ardently desire that those whom You have given me may be with me where I am, so that they may contemplate my glory, which You have given me, because You loved me before the creation of the world."
Eternal beatitude is compared to a banquet that God prepares for all people, in which all the longings for happiness carried in the human heart will be satisfied.
Seeing Face to Face
The Apostles frequently speak to us of this happiness for which we hope. Saint Paul teaches that now we see God as if in a mirror and through dark images; but then we shall see Him face to face, and the joy and happiness there are indescribable.
The happiness of eternal life will consist, above all, in the direct and immediate vision of God. This vision is not only a most perfect intellectual knowledge but also a communion of life with God, One and Triune. To see God is to encounter Him, to be happy in Him. From the loving contemplation of the three Divine Persons, an unlimited joy will follow within us. All the demands for happiness and love in our poor hearts will be fulfilled, without end and without limit.
"Let us think about what Heaven will be like. No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man what things God has prepared for those who love Him. Can you imagine what it will be like to arrive there, and meet God, and see that beauty, that love which pours into our hearts, which satisfies without sating? I ask myself many times a day: what will it be like when all the beauty, all the goodness, all the infinite wonder of God is poured into this poor clay vessel that I am, that we all are? And then I understand well those words of the Apostle: no eye has seen, nor ear heard… It is worth it, my children, it is worth it."
HCD