The heavens.

As soon as the souls of the righteous are completely purified, they will receive the reward of the beatific vision. This beatific vision has different degrees. It depends on the degree of merit. This vision perfectly satiates one’s desires and is imperishable. The beatific vision is our ultimate goal. Here, we are talking about heaven. Heaven is a direct glimpse of the incomprehensible trinity. God gives Himself to the purified soul without delay. He does not wait a moment. Our earthly sorrows are only transitory. They are like darkness that fade away. The ardent longing for the divine embrace strengthened the martyrs’ terrible torments. I see the heavens open, cried the Christian first martyr Stephen. I see Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Yes, Jesus stood and waited for the soul of his first Christian witness to fly out of the prison of the flesh and take it with him into the bosom of the Father, in one of his beautiful letters that Blessed Theophanies Vénard sent from jail on the eve of his Passion. As soon as I bow my head under the executioner’s axe, I shall immediately find myself in the presence of the Lord Jesus and say to him. Here is thy martyr, Lord. Saint Cyprian, the bishop and martyr, writes. We are down here only transiently as pilgrims and strangers.

We look forward to the day leading us all to our true home. We await the day that will deliver us from the snares of this world and allow us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Who would not hurry from a foreign land to his homeland? Who would not long for the sooner to hang those whom he loves? We look to heaven as our fatherland. There we have our ancestors. So we have reason to hurry. A significant number of friends await us up there. What a joy it will be for us to embrace them there in the kingdom of heaven, where death does not reign, where the certainty of eternal life reigns. How immense is this everlasting, infinite happiness?