Jesus, Mercy Incarnate

nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away. Many Christians today seem almost embarrassed by the visions of heaven given to us in Scripture, as in the diary of St. Faustina. They wonder if the hope of such a heavenly reward is a suitable motive for the true disciple of Christ. Would it not be better, they reason, to love Christ selflessly, without any thought of reward? Yet this betrays a false understanding of what is meant by “reward.” Eternal beatitude is not a bribe to induce us to love here on earth. Rather, it is a promise that if we learn to love here on earth, we can go on loving, in an ever greater fullness, forever in heaven. A reward or prize is never a bribe if it is the activity itself in consummation. As C.S. Lewis once wrote: There are rewards that do not sully motives. Aman’s love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love for exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.... Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall seeGod, for only the pure in heart want to. 80 In other words, for those who love God self-forgetfully on earth, their reward is to go on loving God self-forgetfully and ever more fully in heaven – and it is precisely this in which their beatitude chiefly consists. We have seen that the pinnacle of the spiritual life here on earth is to attain complete abandonment to divine providence, and pure (self-forgetful) love of God. We noted that the crosses and suffer- ings of life can be like a crucible which purifies us of self-seeking in our service of God, and which compels us to rely no longer on our own strength, but solely on Christ. Yet now we can see that heaven is nothing other than the perfection of abandonment and pure love, finally stripped of the purifying instruments of suffering. For example, in the writings of St. Faustina, as we have seen, there 88 Jesus, Mercy Incarnate