Transcript

A couple of brief points about this.

Notice John begins by affirming our identity as children of God.

If you look at John's Gospel, for example, chapter 3, the way a person becomes a child of God is not simply by being created but by being born again or born anew through water and Spirit and baptism.

So he's referring here to the divine sonship, the adoptive divine sonship that we receive through grace in the waters of baptism.

He's saying we are children of God now.

The second point here is that John is shifting from the present to the future.

He's talking here about the Parousia, the second coming of Christ.

We don't have to wait to become children of God until the second coming; we don't have to wait until the final judgment or the resurrection.

We already are children of God.

But when He comes, we can't even comprehend what we shall be because when He comes, we shall become like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.

Now that is a profound statement that John is making here.

In effect, he's talking about two key expectations, two key hopes of the Christian faith.

One is for the second coming of Christ at the end of time, but the second is for what we call the Beatific Vision, the vision of God, where we shall see God face to face.

We shall see Christ in His glory, right?

In His resurrected body at the end of time.

This is one of the classic texts on the Beatific Vision in all of the New Testament, because there are a lot of passages in the Old Testament you might recall where God says over and over again, Man shall not see me and live.

Right?

Man shall not look upon the face of God.

Think here of Exodus 33 and 34, where Moses asked to see God's face and God says, Sorry, you can't see my face.

I'll let you see my backside, but you can't look upon my face and live.

So God will allow some of His glory to pass by Moses, for example, on Mount Sinai, but to see His face is not possible for a human being.

Yet in the New Covenant, that's precisely what Jesus is going to promise to His disciples in the Beatitudes, which is the Gospel for the Feast of All Saints: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

And then here in the reading for today from 1 John, it says that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

So notice here there are two elements that John is describing: likeness and vision, right?

He's describing the fact that in the Parousia, at the second coming, we will be changed; we will be made like God, we will be made holy.

And precisely through that vision of God, we shall be transformed.

You can see in that last verse he's saying everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself as He is pure.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that if we are anticipating seeing Christ and becoming like Him in the resurrection, then we need to prepare now.

We need to start living now as if we are children of God who are preparing to see His face in the glory of the resurrection.

That calls for us to cleanse our hearts from sin, as he says, He who purifies himself because of the hope that he has to one day see the face of God in the Beatific Vision.

Now that's just a brief little overview of what John's describing here, but I thought it would be interesting to bring this text because I think it's one of those passages where, you know, I think maybe most people think about going to heaven, right?

Everybody wants to go to heaven when they die.

Maybe more people might think about the bodily resurrection, although I've learned over the years that that isn't as well understood or as well known as one would think from reading the New Testament.

But the vision of God's face, this is so mysterious!

It's something that you don't always hear people say, I can't wait for that day when I see the face of God.

I want to see Him as He is.

I want to be like Him.

I want to be transformed in Him.

But that's what John's describing here.

This is the eschatological hope of the Christian in 1 John 3, as he says, you know, we can't fully comprehend it.

It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know this: we know that when He appears, we shall see Him as He is.

Now that last line, as He is, has led to a whole host of debates over the centuries about the nature of the Beatific Vision, like whether we can see God in His essence, which you'll see in the Western tradition, or that we can only see the energies of God, which you'll see in some of the Eastern writers.

And there's a whole debate about that.

I don't want to get into that debate here, but I do want to make clear that it was this text and others that led in the 14th century Pope Benedict XII to exercise the fullest extent of his papal authority in defining the Church's doctrine of the Beatific Vision.

There were some people at the time who were claiming that when the faithful died, they do not immediately get to see the face of God, but that they would have to wait until the resurrection to actually experience the Beatific Vision.

In his apostolic constitution, *Benedictus Deus*, which was issued in the year 1336, Pope Benedict XII defined the doctrine of the Beatific Vision and made clear what we, as Catholics, believe about this.

I want to read it to you because it's beautiful.

It is a little complex; it has lengthy Latin sentences, but let me just read it, and then I'll unpack it and try to draw a couple of quick points out of it.

This is a perfect example of how what's taught in the New Testament then becomes clarified and defined by the Apostolic Tradition and by the living Magisterium of the Church.

So in the 14th century, this is what Pope Benedict XII had to say about the Beatific Vision.

This is our Catholic faith; this is what we believe: By this constitution, which is to remain in force forever, we, with apostolic authority, define the following: according to the general disposition of God, the souls of all the saints who departed from this world before the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and also of the holy apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and other faithful who died after receiving the holy baptism of Christ, provided they were not in need of any purification when they died or will not be in need of any when they die in the future, or else they have been purified after death— all these souls, immediately after death, and in the case of those who need purification after the purification mentioned above, since the ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into heaven already before they take up their bodies again and before the general judgment, have been, are, and will be with Christ in heaven, in the heavenly kingdom and paradise, joined to the company of the holy angels.

Since the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, these souls have seen and see the divine essence with an intuitive vision and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature.