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 joy above all joys, a delight far surpassing all the celestial pleasures of which we have spoken. Without this all other joys would lose their savour, they would be changed to bitterness. On one occasion, when the devil was speaking by the mouth of a person who was possessed, he said: "If the whole Heavens were a sheet of parchment, if the whole ocean were ink, if every blade of grass were pen, and every man on earth a scribe, it would not suffice to describe the intense, immeasurable delight which the vision of God affords to the blessed." And at another time he said that if God would but vouchsafe to grant him the privilege of beholding His Divine countenance for a few moments, he would, if it were possible, gladly bear in his own person all the torments of Hell until the Day of Judgment. This teaches us that if a man spent his whole life in works of most severe penance, and after his death were permitted only for one instant to gaze on the face of God, he would have received an ample recompense for all his mortifications.

Now consider how transcendent must be the bliss which the Saints derive from the contemplation, the enjoyment, the possession of the supreme God! If to gaze on the Divine countenance for one passing moment is a joy beyond all that a life of pleasure offers to the world ling, what rapture will it be to gaze for evermore, with undimmed eyes, on His infinite