Quo Vadis

March 28, 2023

In this video we share Our Lady, the Saints and the Hope of Heaven.

In his earthly sojourn, Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori told a story shared with him by a Jesuit superior who encountered the soul of a departed priest gone into Heaven.

This was what the disembodied priest related to the Jesuit:

“Now I am in heaven, Philip II, king of Spain, is in heaven as well.

We both are enjoying the eternal rewards of paradise, but they are very different for us.

My happiness is much greater than his, for it is not like when we were still on earth, for then he was royalty and I was a commoner. We were as far apart as the earth and sky, but now it has been reversed: As lowly as I was compared to the king on earth, I now exceed him in glory in heaven.

However, we are both happy, and our hearts are completely satisfied.”

One of the most wonderful statement about Heaven is from Pope Saint Gregory the Great, as he assured us that in Heaven, we are to unite with those known on earth.

Citing the communion of saints and the apparently seamless knowledge of those in Heaven, Saint Gregory said: “Beside all this, a more wonderful grace is bestowed upon the Saints in heaven: for they know not only them with whom they were acquainted in this world, but also those whom before they never saw, and converse with them in such familiar sort as though in times past they had seen and known one another: and therefore when they shall see the ancient fathers in that place of perpetual bliss, they shall then know them by sight, whom always they knew in their lives and conversation.

For seeing they do in that place with unspeakable brightness, common to all, behold God, what is there that they know not, that know him who knoweth all things?’

Then, too, Salesians must be familiar with that vision that Saint John Bosco had with his departed student Saint Dominic Savio in 1876, when the latter, in a vision, appeared to him in Heaven.

Some excerpts from Saint John Bosco’s experience are as follows:

“It suddenly seemed to me that I was standing on a small mound or hillock, on the rim of a broad plain so far-reaching that the eye could not compass its boundaries lost in vastness.

All was blue, blue as the calmest sea, though what I saw was not water. It resembled a highly polished, sparkling sea of glass.

Stretching out beneath, behind and on either side of me was an expanse of what looked like seashore.

“Broad, imposing avenues divided the plain into grand gardens of indescribable beauty, each broken up by thickets, lawns, and flower beds of varied shapes and colors.

Each species and each single plant sparkled with a brilliance of its own.

“None of the plants we know could ever give you an idea of those flowers, although there was a resemblance of sorts.

The very grass, the flowers, the trees, and the fruit – all were of singular and magnificent beauty.

Leaves were of gold, trunks and boughs were of diamonds, and every tiny detail was in keeping with this wealth.

The various kinds of plants were beyond counting.

“Each species and each single plant sparkled with a brilliance of its own.

Scattered throughout those gardens and spread over the entire plain I could see countless buildings whose architecture, magnificence, harmony, grandeur and size were so unique that one could say all the treasures of earth could not suffice to build a single one.”

What Saint John Bosco saw was not the ultimate level of Heaven but what Saint Dominic Savio described as Heaven’s mere lower level “abode of happiness, where one experiences every joy, every delight.”

Saint Dominic said that at that level, souls experience only “natural happiness, though greatly magnified,” as against the superior supernatural happiness.

And to think that such Heaven would be without end for those who choose God in this life, the dire messages of Catholic mystics of our days should not cause us panic, for the messages are for conversion that directs towards heavenly life everlasting.

Mirrored from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCR9Wjs4lKk