PRIMA VISIO, cap. III
The Image of Love in the Mystery of God
A heavenly voice reveals that man was made in God's image and shown in a wondrous vision as a radiant, unapproachable image of divine love, so that the unseen God may be known in faith.
And again I heard a voice from heaven saying to me: God, who created all things, made man in his own image and likeness, and in him marked both the higher and the lower creatures; and he held him with such great love that he destined him for the place from which the falling angel had been cast out, and ordained him to the glory and honor that the angel had lost in his blessedness. This vision you see points to this. For what you see, as it were in the midst of the southern air, a beautiful and wondrous image in the mystery of God, having the form as it were of a man, this is that in the strength of the unfailing divinity, beautiful in election and wondrous in the gifts of the secrets of the heavenly Father, love is showing man: because when the Son of God took on flesh, in the office of love he redeemed lost man.1 So his face is of such great beauty and brightness that you can more easily look at the sun than at it, because the abundance of love is in such great eminence and the splendor of his own gifts, that it transcends every understanding of human knowledge — the kind by which the soul can understand diverse things — so completely that it cannot grasp it in any way with its own perception.2 But here in this signification it is shown so that through it the one who is not visibly seen with visible eyes may be known in faith.
Faith Embracing Divine Love
Devoted faith is called to embrace the excellence of divine love so that God may be recognized as one in the Trinity and may lead humanity back to heavenly things.
That devoted faith should embrace the excellence of divine love, and that through this love God may be recognized as one in the Trinity, and that by the merit of this same faith, God himself, in protecting humanity, may lead them back to heavenly things.34
Read the original Latin
Et iterum audivi vocem de coelo mihi dicentem: Deus, qui omnia creavit, hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem suam fecit, et in ipso tam superiores quam inferiores creaturas signavit, eumque in tanta dilectione habuit, ut in locum de quo ruens angelus ejectus erat, destinaret, et ad gloriam et honorem, quem ille in beatitudine perdiderat, ordinaret; hoc visio haec quam vides demonstrat. Nam quod vides velut in medio australis aeris pulchram mirificamque in mysterio Dei imaginem quasi hominis formam, hoc est quod in fortitudine indeficientis divinitatis, pulchra in electione, et mirifica in donis secretorum superni Patris charitas est, hominem ostendens, quia cum Filius Dei carnem induit, in charitatis officio hominem perditum redemit. Unde ejus facies tantae pulchritudinis et claritatis est, ut facilius solem quam ipsam inspicere possis, quoniam largitas charitatis in tanta eminentia et coruscatione donorum suorum est, ut omnem intellectum humanae scientiae, qua in anima diversas res intelligere potest, ita transcendat ut eam nullo modo in sensu suo capere valeat. Sed hic in significatione ostenditur ut per ipsam ille in fide cognoscatur, qui visibilibus oculis visibiliter non videtur.
Quod devota fides excellentiam divinae charitatis complectatur, et per hanc Deus in trinitate unus agnoscatur; quodque ejusdem fidei merito ipse Deus homines protegendo ad coelestia reducat
Notes
- 1 ↩charitas rendered as 'love' per default policy; 'charity' is theologically viable alternative.
- 2 ↩charitas rendered as 'love'; 'charity' is a theologically viable alternative.
- 3 ↩The three quod-clauses (quod, et, quodque) all appear to introduce indirect statements or purpose/result clauses dependent on the prior vision's meaning; the subjunctives complectatur, agnoscatur, and reducat support a final/resultative force ('that…may…'). The connective -que in quodque continues the series additively.
- 4 ↩charitatis rendered 'love' per default policy; 'charity' is also allowed in theological-virtue contexts.
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