orld, they were surrounded with a halo of brilliant
light; as we read of the angels who appeared at the birth of Christ,
and of those who appeared to the holy women that were going to embalm
the body of Jesus. Hence it is that in the paintings of Christian
art, the head, or the whole body of Christ, of the Blessed Virgin,
and of the saints, is always surrounded by this halo of light.

* Exod. xvi.

This is the light, the brilliancy which is promised to the saints by
our Blessed Lord himself, when He says: "Then shall the just shine as
the sun in the kingdom of their Father."* Thus shall the soul that is
now united to God, in the Beatific Vision, and already a partaker of
the divine nature, communicate her own dazzling splendor to the body,
and surround it with an aureola of glory, which will form a portion
of her blessedness for evermore.

* Matt. xiii.

But, although all the just must rise in glory and in the perfection
of human nature, you must not, therefore, infer that all shall rise
in the same degree of beauty and splendor of form. For, as the
resurrection is a reward to the just, it follows that each one shall
have a body glorified in proportion to his own individual merits. Any
contrary doctrine would sound like heresy. If you were told, for
instance, that the murderer who dies on the scaffold, after making an
act of perfect contrition, will rise on the last day with a body as
beautiful and glorious as that of the Blessed Virgin, or of the
Apostles, martyrs, and holy virgins, your whole soul would revolt at
such a doctrine. You would maintain, that if the resurrection is a
reward to the just, the beauty of their bodies should bear some
proportion to their merits. You would certainly be right in
maintaining this; for it is the very doctrine taught by St. Paul,
when he says: "One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the
moon, and another the glory of the stars, for star differeth from
star in glory: so also in the resurrection of the dead."* Each one,
therefore, shall rise in that particular degree of glory which he has
deserved by the more or less holy life he has led in this world.

* 1 Cor. xv. 41.

It will no longer be as it is in this world, where personal beauty is
a free gift of God, but no reward. Hence we see personal beauty in
pagans and infidels, as well as in Christians. Its possession does
not, in the hast, denote sanctity; nor does its absence denote moral
depravity; and, therefore,