, as stated in Gen. 32:30, Jacob said: "I have seen God face to
face, and my soul has been saved." Now the vision of God's face is
the vision of the Divine essence. Therefore it would seem that in the
present life one may come, by means of contemplation, to see God in
His essence.

Obj. 2: Further, Gregory says (Moral. vi, 37) that "contemplative men
withdraw within themselves in order to explore spiritual things, nor
do they ever carry with them the shadows of things corporeal, or if
these follow them they prudently drive them away: but being desirous
of seeing the incomprehensible light, they suppress all the images of
their limited comprehension, and through longing to reach what is
above them, they overcome that which they are." Now man is not
hindered from seeing the Divine essence, which is the
incomprehensible light, save by the necessity of turning to corporeal
phantasms. Therefore it would seem that the contemplation of the
present life can extend to the vision of the incomprehensible light
in its essence.

Obj. 3: Further, Gregory says (Dial. ii, 35): "All creatures are
small to the soul that sees its Creator: wherefore when the man of
God," the blessed Benedict, to wit, "saw a fiery globe in the tower
and angels returning to heaven, without doubt he could only see such
things by the light of God." Now the blessed Benedict was still in
this life. Therefore the contemplation of the present life can extend
to the vision of the essence of God.

_On the contrary,_ Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ezech.): "As long as we
live in this mortal flesh, no one reaches such a height of
contemplation as to fix the eyes of his mind on the ray itself of
incomprehensible light."

_I answer that,_ As Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. xii, 27), "no one
seeing God lives this mortal life wherein the bodily senses have
their play: and unless in some way he depart this life, whether by
going altogether out of his body, or by withdrawing from his carnal
senses, he is not caught up into that vision." This has been
carefully discussed above (Q. 175, AA. 4, 5), where we spoke of
rapture, and in the First Part (Q. 12, A. 2), where we treated of the
vision of God.

Accordingly we must state that one may be in this life in two ways.
First, with regard to act, that is to say by actually making use of
the bodily senses, and thus contemplation in the present life can
nowise attain to the vision of God's essence. Secondly, one may be in
this life