l glorify our will, and change us, as it were, into new
creatures.

Then shall we find ourselves joyfully willing to do what God wills,
as He wills it, and because he so wills it--without the hast
repugnance on our part. We shall no longer have peculiar views,
private interests, or natural inclinations to clash with the will and
interests of God. His divine will and ours shall become so totally
one, that we shall seem to have no will of our own, so completely,
and, at the same time, so sweetly, shall it be identified with the
will and good pleasure of God. In a word, as our intellect is
elevated by the Light of glory, and filled with the purest knowledge
in the Beatific Vision, so also our will is purified, sanctified, and
made like God's will, in rectitude and perfect sanctity.

But not only shall our will become holy and conformed to God's will:
we shall also love God above all things, purely, unselfishly,
ardently, and for His own blessed sake; and in that love shall we, at
last, find the perfect happiness we vainly sought in the love of
creatures.

Human love is a source of partial happiness in this world, and it is
in this human love, as in a mirror, that we see faint reflections of
the unspeakable happiness which will inebriate our souls in the
Beatific Vision. But they are emphatically faint reflections; for
whether it be conjugal, parental, or fraternal love, or whether it be
the love of pure friendship--whether it be even elevated by grace to
the supernatural virtue of charity, it never did, and never will
bestow perfect happiness in this world. It depends for its existence
and perfection on conditions which can never be completely fulfilled
in our present state of imperfection; and, therefore, the short-lived
happiness to which it gives birth is always mingled with a certain
amount of bitterness.

It is in heaven, and only in heaven, that all the conditions of love
can be fulfilled; and, hence, it is there only that love will produce
pure and perfect happiness, unmingled with the disappointments, cruel
misunderstandings, and insufficiency of human love. First of all, the
love of heaven is essentially mutual. The vision of God not only
reveals to the soul His divine beauty, goodness, wisdom, and
numberless other perfections, which captivate her, and set her on
fire with a seraphic love; but it also reveals the intense and
mysterious love of God for her. The sight of that divine love
produces in her the ha