VISIO QUINTA, cap. XL
Many Dwelling Places in the Father's House
The vision opens with Christ's promise of many dwelling places in the Father's house, interpreted as heavenly resting places shaped by each person's merits and love for God.
In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.✦ This is how you should think about it: the Son of God, when he promised eternal life to his faithful ones, said that in the heavenly dwelling place that belongs to my Father, there are very many resting places, each one according to each person's merits, so that each person makes a place for himself there, just as in earthly life he seeks God by loving him.✦
The Struggle of Self-Denial and Its Heavenly Reward
God delights in those who deny themselves and overcome bodily desires for love of Christ, adorning their dwelling with ornaments of struggle and filling the heavens with praise for His miracles in them.
For in a person who denies himself, as though he were not even human, and yet cannot entirely abandon the felt taste of sin in his bodily vessel — but in this way, for the love of Christ and for the hope of true faith, he gains the victory over bodily desires in his suffering — God takes great delight in this, because he yields to the spirit rather than to the flesh. This person's dwelling place too is adorned with countless ornaments for the eagerness of the struggle with which he fights against himself, and for each of these efforts he will receive a single reward, and in these rewards he will even rejoice with harps sounding, because God does not forget the brilliance of any labor. And so every harmony marvels at God in praise, that an earthly person, who is of the earth, should look up in faith to that height where God is, and that the same praise should sound above the heavens with every kind of music, because of the miracles God works in that person.
The Fruitfulness of Those Who Sustain the World
Those who leave the world draw many to God through the Holy Spirit, becoming a joy and sustenance to all, even as the earth is fruitful in bringing forth life.
For it is from these people that those who have left the world come, filling the whole world with good repute by the dew of the Holy Spirit, and by the grace of the same Spirit drawing a great number of people to themselves, so that through their words and deeds very many are reborn in God. This kind of person is a joy to everyone; and just as water, which is necessary for people, sustains every need they have, so also through this person the rest of the people are sustained. And just as the earth is fruitful by bringing forth growth, so also God has established that human beings should be begotten one from another.
Two Ways of Life Under God's Providence
God foresaw two groups among humanity: those who procreate and those who embrace celibacy in Christ, and both secular and spiritual communities are adorned and rejoiced over in heaven.
And just as God himself in the first creation created the earth and brought forth water, so he also foresaw that human beings would be separated into two groups: one, namely, to procreate children, but the other to desist from procreation in the tunic of the Son of God. But secular people who listen to their teachers for the sake of God—who guard them as angels guard people—God elegantly adorns with heavenly joy according to their merits. Therefore spiritual communities also rejoice greatly over them, just as angels too rejoice over them, since they are in their company.
The Blessing of Spiritual Increase
The blessing God gave to fish and birds for increase is applied to the spiritual generation of the baptized and the fruitfulness of virtues in each believer, assigned to the fifth day.
The blessing given by God to the fish and the birds for their increase in the spiritual generation of the baptized, and why it should be fulfilled in the fruitfulness of the virtues of each believer — and why these things are assigned to the fifth day.✦
Read the original Latin
« In domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt . » Hoc considerandum sic est: Filius Dei fidelibus suis vitam aeternam promittens dixit: In coelesti habitaculo quod Patris mei est, receptacula quamplurima secundum merita hominum sunt, ita ut unusquisque mansionem sibi illic faciat, quemadmodum in corporali vita Deum diligendo quaerit. Nam in homine qui se ipsum abnegat, quasi homo non sit, et tamen sensibilem gustum peccatorum in corporali vase suo per omnia deserere non potest; sed hoc modo victoriam corporalium desideriorum propter amorem Christi, et propter spem verae fidei in passione habet, Deus valde delectatur, quoniam spiritui magis quam carni consentit. Hujus quoque tabernaculum cum innumerabilibus ornamentis propter studium victoriae quo contra semetipsum pugnat ornatur, atque pro singulis hujusmodi laboribus singula praemia recipiet, in quibus etiam viventibus citharis guadebit, quia Deus nullorum fulgentiam laborum obliviscitur. Unde et omnis harmonia Deum laudando miratur, quod terrenus homo, qui de terra est, in altitudinem illam in qua Deus est, in fide aspiciat, et eadem laus cum omni genere musicorum supra coelos sonat propter miracula quae Deus in illo operatur. Ipse enim ex illis est qui saeculum reliquerunt, cum rore Spiritus sancti totum mundum bona opinione replentes, et cum gratia ejusdem Spiritus multitudinem hominum ad se trahentes, ita ut per verba et opera eorum quamplurimi in Deo regenerati sint. Iste namque homo omnibus jucundus existit; et quemadmodum aqua quae hominibus necessaria est, omnem necessitatem eorum sustentat, sic et per istum reliquus populus sustentatur. Sed et sicut terra germinando fecunda existit, ita etiam Deus homines alterum ab altero procreari constituit.
Et ut ipse Deus in prima creatione terram creavit et aquam produxit, sic etiam homines in duas partes separari praevidit, alteram scilicet, ut filios procrearent, alteram vero ut in tunica Filii Dei a procreatione desisterent. Saeculares autem homines, qui propter Deum magistros suos audiunt, qui eos ut angeli homines custodiunt in coelesti gaudio Deus secundum merita illorum eleganter exornat. Quapropter et spiritales populi super eos multum gaudent, quemadmodum etiam angeli super ipsos laetantur, quoniam in societate eorum sunt.
Quod benedictio piscibus et avibus ad incrementum a Deo data in spiritali generatione baptizatorum, et in fecunditate virtutum cujusque fidelis impleatur, et cur ista quinto diei ascribantur.
Scripture echoes
- ↩John.14.2 — In my Father's house there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you? I go to prepare a place for you.
- ↩John.14.2 — In my Father's house there are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you? I go to prepare a place for you.
- ↩Gen.1.22 — And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth."
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