On prayer and the contemplative life · Aquinas, Saint Thomas
1. Jacob said: I have seen God face to face, and my soul hath been
Chapter 78 of 107 · 1 min read
saved. But the vision of the face of God is the vision of the Divine Essence. Whence it would seem that a man may by contemplation actually reach, even during this present life, to the vision of the Essence of God.
But S. Denis says: "If anyone saw God and understood what he saw, then it was not God he saw, but something belonging to Him." And similarly S. Gregory says: "Almighty God is never seen in His Glory, but the soul gazes at something derived from It, and thus refreshed, makes advance, and so ultimately arrives at the glory of vision." Hence when Jacob said, I saw God face to face, we are not to understand that he saw the Essence of God, but that he saw some appearance—that is, some imaginary appearance—in which God spoke to him; or, as the Gloss of S. Gregory has it, "Since we know people by the face, Jacob called knowledge of God His face."
