The Beatific Vision and the Funeral of a Soul Friend

And That Will Be Heaven

and that will be heaven

and that will be heaven

at last   the first unclouded

seeing

         to stand like the sunflower

turned full face to the sun    drenched

with light     in the still centre

held     while the circling planets

hum with an utter joy

                        seeing and knowing

at last     in every particle

seen and known     and not turning

away

     never turning away

again

(Evangeline Paterson)

I shared in the funeral of my friend Stewart today, and was given the privilege of trying to explain the mystery that is the human life, precious, unique, surprising, the gift of presence, and communion, and inward companionship. The poem expresses the breathless wonder of our earthbound eyes seeing through the eyes of God to the face of God, and how in the end God will be all in all.

Amongst the words borrowed and used in the service were these from Julian of Norwich, Stewart's favourite theologian, and fro m Paul, who understood the limits of human thought and experience to comprehend the infinite mystery of eternal love, stooping to redeem and renew:

Thus I was taught that love was our Lord's meaning.

And I saw quite clearly in this and in all,

that before God made us, he loved us,

which love was never slaked nor ever shall be.

And in this love he has done all his work,

and in this love he has made all things profitable to us.

And in this love our life is everlasting.

In our creation we had a beginning.

But the love wherein he made us was in him with no beginning.

And all this shall be seen in God without end.

In the end the beatific vision is to gaze with joyous wonder on the brilliant dazzling darkness that is the mystery of Love Divine:

When I was a child,

I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child.

But when I grew up, I put away childish things.

Now we see things imperfectly,

like puzzling reflections in a mirror,

but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.

All that I know now is partial and incomplete,

but then I will know everything completely,

just as God now knows me completely….

and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.