The Anatomy of Melancholy

Through these figures, this mirror, these spiritual eyes of contemplation, we may perceive some likeness of his beauty and the love between his Church and him. Likewise, in Psalm 45, the beauty of his Church is compared to a “queen dressed in the gold of Ophir, embroidered garments of needlework, so that the king might take pleasure in her beauty.”

To inflame us still further, John, in his Revelation, describes that heavenly Jerusalem, its beauty and, within it, its maker, “likening it to a city of pure gold, like clear glass, shining and adorned with every kind of precious stone, needing neither sun nor moon, for the Lamb is its light and God’s glory illuminates it”—to make us understand its infinite glory, beauty and happiness.

It is not that it is no more beautiful than the created things to which it is compared, but that this vision of him, this radiance of his divine majesty, cannot otherwise be expressed in terms we can grasp. “No tongue can tell, no heart can conceive it,” as Paul says. Even Moses, Exodus 33:18, when he wished to see God in his glory, was told that he could not bear it: “No one could see his face and live.”

“An overpowering object of sense destroys the faculty of sense”: a powerful object overwhelms sight, according to that philosophical axiom. “You cannot bear the sun’s radiance, much less the Creator’s.” If you cannot bear the sun’s rays, how can you bear the radiance and brightness of him who made the sun?

The sun itself and everything we can imagine are only shadows of it. It is “a surpassing vision,” as Augustine calls it, the purest essence of beauty, “which far exceeds the beauty of the heavens, sun and moon, stars, angels, gold and silver, woods, fair fields and whatever is pleasant to behold.” All those other beauties fail, change, are subject to decay and can become repulsive. “But this is an immortal vision, a divine beauty, an immortal love, an inexhaustible love and beauty.” We shall never tire or grow weary of seeing it: the more we see, the more we shall desire him.

For, “as one writer says, where this vision is, there is perfect beauty; and where that beauty is, all pleasure and happiness flow from the same fountain. Neither can beauty, pleasure and happiness be separated from the vision or sight of him, nor that vision from beauty, pleasure and happiness.”

In this life we have only a glimpse of this beauty and happiness. Hereafter, as John says, we shall see him as he is. Your eyes, as Isaiah promises, 33:17, “shall behold the King in his glory.” Then we shall be perfectly in love, enjoy this beauty and happiness to the full, and desire, behold and love him alone as the most lovable and most beautiful object, the “supreme good,” or highest good.