The Coming Age
When we get to heaven—if we get to heaven—we shall realize that the Credowas true, instead of just going on believing it was true. We shall be conscious of God as our Father; we shall recognize that everything which happened on earth was part of an almighty design. We shall find it quite natural that there should be three Persons in the Godhead, and that the second Person should be both God and man; God’s only Son, our Lord, the visible object, now, of our worship, thanking us for all the little services we did for him. We shall have no difficulty in seeing that our Blessed Lady became his Mother and yet remained a Virgin. And although pain and suffering will then be only a distant memory of the past, no part any longer of our daily experience, we shall be able to look into and understand the sufferings which our Lord underwent when he was crucified by Pontius Pilate, and take from them the measure of his love….
And the strange old people we used to see in stained glass windows will be real people to us then; brought to light when our Lord descended into hell. The Resurrection will not merely be something that seems quite natural; we shall be conscious of it at every instant as the very condition of our being; for we, too, shall have become part of that risen life which our Lord brought back with him from the tomb. We shall see him, ascended, sitting at the right hand of his Father, thank him for the merciful judgements he passed on us, living and dead. We shall feel the presence of the Holy Spirit within us; we shall know the Church for Christ’s glorious bride; we shall be in conscious communion with all the saints; our sins, instead of looking black, will be rose-hued, like clouds at sunset, with the grace of final forgiveness. We shall be risen, soul and body; soul and body pulsing at every moment with the energies of an everlasting life.
Monsignor Ronald A. Knox
Monsignor Knox († 1957) was a British Catholic apologist and translator of the Bible. [From The Creed in Slow Motion. © 2009, Ava Maria Press, Inc., PO Box 428, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556.
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