Jesus, Mercy Incarnate

are repeated references to her experience of seeing the glories of heaven as an experience of complete surrender to God. Recall her words quoted above: I rejoice greatly in His greatness and am delighted that I am so little because, since I am little, He carries me in his arms and holds me close to His Heart. Moreover, in the writings of St. Faustina quoted above, there are numerous indications that the presence of the glorified Jesus, and the vision of heaven, drewher into an experience of utterly self-for- getful love in adoration of the divine: “My whole soul drowned itself in Him.... I lose myself in Him as a drop does in the ocean.” In short, the Way of trustful abandonment and self-forgetful love never ends; it is consummated in a blissful embrace and loving immersion in the “Ocean” of Infinite Mercy. Perhaps no one has summed it up better than St. Alphonsus did in his meditation entitled simply “Hope”: On the instant that a soul enters heaven, and sees by the light of glory the infinite beauty of God face to face, she is at once seized and all consumed with love. The happy soul is then as it were lost and immersed in that boundless ocean of the goodness of God. Then it is that she quite forgets herself, and inebriated with divine love, thinks only of loving her God: “They shall be ine- briated with the plenty of Thy House.” As an intoxicated person no longer thinks of himself, so a soul in bliss can only think of loving and affording delight to her beloved Lord; she desires to possess him entirely, and she does indeed possess him, for every moment she offers herself to God without reserve, and God receives her in his lov- ing embraces, and so holds her, and shall hold her in the same fond embraces for all eternity. 81 89 Saint Faustina and Devotion to the Passion of Jesus Christ