The Glory of God

The material below is take from Spiritual Theology by Fr. Jordan Aumann, O.P., Chapter 2. If you desire to read the entire chapter or even the entire book you can download it for free here.

These few quotes speak to the concept of God’s glory and the means to attain it.

The Son of God came into this world that we might have life and have it to the full (John 10:10). Indeed, "the ultimate purpose of all things is that, in Christ, all persons made by God,s creative love might freely come to him and share the abundant life of the Blessed Trinity."

This mysterious evolution by which Christ himself is formed in us is the principal purpose of divine revelation and the basis for all growth and development. To this evolution is ordained the divine light of faith, to it the entire gospel, to it the institution  of the Church and even the incarnation of the divine Word. For faith is ordained to charity, which is the bond of perfection; and the dogmas of our faith... are not so much for finding intellectual satisfaction as for motivating us to seek the gift of God, the living water of the Holý Ghost, and the power of his vivifying grace. The Gospel was written that "believing, you may have life in his name" (John 20:31), and the purpose of the Church is the sanctification of souls.

The life received from Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit respects our human condition at the same time that it elevates us to the supernatural order and makes us capable of performing actions that are likewise supernatural.

The spiritual life has three distinct goals or, if one prefers, it has one ultimate goal and two relative or proximate goals. The ultimate goal of the spiritual life, as of all things in creation, is the glory of God; the proximate goals are our sanctification and salvation.

"I am the Lord, this is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols" (Isa. 42:8). It follows, therefore, that God created all things for himself; all created things exist in and for God.

The extrinsic glory of God should be understood first of all as a sharing in the beauty, truth, and goodness that constitute God’s intrinsic glory. Thus the statement of St. Paul: "Since the creation of the world, invisible realities, God’s eternal power and divinity, have become visible, recognized through the things he has made" (Rom. 1:20).

… by a prodigy of love that we can never sufficiently admire, much less worthily acknowledge, he condescended to super-naturalize us from the beginning by elevating us to nothing less than his own status, to make us share in his life, his infinite power, his own operations, and his eternal happiness.

… the glory of God is seen as a striving for greater perfection whereby God is praised and glorified. In fact, in spiritual writing the phrase "glory of God" usually signifies the adoration and praise that are stimulated by the recognition of God’s perfections as reflected in the beauties of the universe or the good deeds of individual persons.

As Christian souls make progress along the road to perfection, they come to an ever clearer realization that their personal sanctification and even their perfect happiness in heaven are not the ultimate goal of the spiritual life; rather, one's sanctification and salvation are the most excellent and efficacious means of giving glory to the Trinity.

Beatitude or perfect happiness, says St. Thomas, constitutes Man's ultimate perfection. It cannot be realized in this life, which is a time of pilgrimage and vigil, because St. John writes: "What we shall later be has not yet come to light. We know that when it comes to light we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is .... Our love is brought to perfection in this, that we should have confidence on the day of judgment" (1 John 3:2; 4:17).

Does this mean that only those souls can enter glory that have reached a high degree of grace and spiritual perfection? To answer this question it is necessary to make a distinction between salvation as being saved, and salvation as the state of glory or the actual enjoyment of perfect happiness in heaven. Salvation is achieved by all those who die in the state of grace, even in a minimal degree, but this does not mean that all the souls of the just enter immediately into the beatitude of glory. It is explicitly defined by the Church that those who die in the state of grace and are in no need of further purification will enter glory immediately after death, but those who still need to be purified will enter heaven only when their purification is completed.