The Spiritual Life in Its Essence and Its Synonyms

Sacred Scripture and the Catholic tradition speak of the same reality under a constellation of names. This plurality is not a defect of vocabulary: it is a richness, because each name illuminates its own facet of the communion between man and God. Spiritual theology has never sought to eliminate this polysemy; it has sought to map it.

Why Multiply the Synonyms?

Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that God, being absolutely simple, cannot be designated by a single human formula^[1]. Our intellect is limited to partial concepts: what we call eternal life emphasizes duration, beatific vision emphasizes knowledge, union emphasizes love, Kingdom emphasizes God’s sovereignty, holiness emphasizes separation from sin, beatitude emphasizes happiness, divinization emphasizes transformation. None of these terms taken in isolation exhausts the reality; taken together, they sketch a fuller picture of it.

That is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church characterizes the beatitude to which God calls man by several expressions:

“The New Testament uses several expressions to characterize the beatitude to which God calls man: the coming of the Kingdom of God (cf. Mt 4:17); the vision of God: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’ (Mt 5:8; cf. 1 Jn 3:2; 1 Cor 13:12); entrance into the joy of the Lord (cf. Mt 25:21, 23); entrance into God’s rest (Heb 4:7–11) […]” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1720^[2]

Several expressions, one mystery. The Magisterium itself thus invites us to handle these synonyms as complementary angles of a single contemplation.

A Map of the Principal Synonyms

This map is not a ranking. It is a grammar. The reading hypothesis proposed here by the author of this article: these terms, though distinct, can almost all be substituted for one another in discourse — to say “living in God,” “living in the Kingdom,” or “living with Heaven in view” is to say the same thing under different lights. This is not the thesis of any particular author, but a convenience of exposition, which does not prejudge the real distinctions between these states — notably between doing and living in, see below.

The first synonym, the oldest, is union. The Bible itself uses to describe it the image of marriage between God and His people, then between Christ and the Church, then between God and each soul. This is the nuptial horizon of all Catholic spirituality.

Spiritual Marriage in the Mystical Tradition

The Song of Songs sings: “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (Sg 6:3). Saint Paul applies this nuptiality to the Church: “As the Church is subject to Christ, as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her” (Eph 5:24–25), so that “this mystery is great: I say this with reference to Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:32). And Revelation crowns the whole history of salvation with the marriage of the Lamb: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rv 19:9).

The mystical tradition takes up this language. Saint Teresa of Avila speaks, in the Seventh Mansions of the Interior Castle, of the spiritual marriage between the soul and God, deeper than the preceding spiritual betrothal^[3]. Saint John of the Cross, in the Spiritual Canticle, unfolds the same image: the soul is the Bride, God is the Bridegroom, and the whole spiritual life is the path toward this union^[4].

“Love has no other office than to reunite and join the beloved with the one who loves, so that they are no longer but one.” — Saint John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love, stanza 3, n. 28^[5]

The image is dense. It says in a few words that love necessarily tends toward unity: that is its inner logic. Loving God, then, is not contemplating Him from a distance; it is drawing near to Him unto the most intimate communion.

A Union More Intimate Than Human Marriage

The tradition takes care to specify that mystical union exceeds human nuptiality in its depth. Saint Thomas Aquinas explains it: in beatitude, “the creature is united to God by operation, that is, by knowing and loving Him”^[6]. Now this union by operation is more intimate than bodily union, because it touches the spirit itself, and the spirit penetrates further into its object than body into body.

Saint Teresa of Avila takes up this intuition from experience:

“This union is as different from the one we have spoken of as marriage can be from betrothal.” — Saint Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, Seventh Mansions, ch. 2, n. 2^[7]

The Doctor of the Church stresses that in spiritual marriage, “Our Lord wills that the soul understand His way of conceiving it” — an interior knowledge, by experience, which is itself a fruit of love.

If union is the goal, living in God is its continuous formulation: not a one-time event, but an entire life spent in divine communion. The tradition pushes this formula so far as to speak of divinization (in Greek theōsis), one of the boldest terms in Christian theology.

“Abiding in God, and God in Him”

Saint John condenses the whole Christian life into one word: abiding. “Abide in me, and I in you” (Jn 15:4), Jesus says to His apostles. And the same John, in his first letter, draws the consequence:

“God is love: he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” — First Letter of Saint John, 4:16^[8]

This is the fundamental equation of the spiritual life. God is not merely a being whom one observes or prays to from the outside: He dwells in the soul of the just, and the soul of the just dwells in Him. This twofold indwelling is what Catholic theology calls the Trinitarian indwelling, namely that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit dwell Themselves in the soul of the baptized.

Sharing in the Trinitarian Life

Christ Himself, in His great priestly prayer, says it in striking terms:

“That they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.” — Gospel according to Saint John, 17:21^[9]

The spiritual life is therefore not only “union with God” in the singular: it is participation in the communion of the divine Persons Themselves. The Catechism of the Catholic Church recalls:

“God can make known to us His mystery and grant us a share in it: it is in the ‘communion’ of the Holy Spirit that we enter into the communion of love which is in God Himself.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §260^[10]

The expression “participation in the divine nature” comes straight from Saint Peter:

“Through these promises, you have become partakers of the divine nature.” — Second Letter of Saint Peter, 1:4^[11]

It is on this verse that the Greek Fathers founded their whole theology of theōsis.

Saints and Fathers on Divinization

The classic formula comes from Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (296–373), defender of Christ’s divinity at Nicaea:

“The Word became man that we might be made divine.” — Saint Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, ch. 54, n. 3^[12]

Saint Thomas Aquinas restates the same doctrine in the West:

“The only-begotten Son of God, wishing to make us sharers in His divinity, assumed our nature, so that, having become man, He might make men gods.” — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Opusculum 57, In festo Corporis Christi, lect. 1^[13]

And the Catechism enshrines it in its teaching:

“The Son of God became man to make us God.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §460^[14]

Divinization is not an absorption that would destroy the creature; it is an elevation by participation. The soul remains a creature, but it is rendered conformed to God by grace, and this conformity will be completed in glory.

Among all the synonyms, the beatific vision is the only one that designates exclusively the life after death. It is the distinctive mark of heavenly beatitude: seeing God as He is, without mirror and without enigma.

“We Shall See Him as He Is”

Scripture promises this vision in explicit terms. Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians:

“For now we see in a manner that is obscure, as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now my knowledge is partial; then I shall know fully, even as I have been known.” — First Letter to the Corinthians, 13:12^[15]

And Saint John, in his first letter, adds the dimension of likeness:

“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We know that when it is revealed we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” — First Letter of Saint John, 3:2^[16]

To see God “as He is” (sicuti est, in Latin) means seeing Him without intermediary. That is the proper object of heavenly beatitude.

What the Magisterium Teaches

Pope Benedict XII fixed the doctrine of the beatific vision in the bull Benedictus Deus (1336):

“The souls of the just […] have seen and do see the divine essence with an intuitive and even facial vision, without the mediation of any creature in the role of object seen, but the divine essence manifesting itself to them immediately, nakedly, clearly, and openly.” — Pope Benedict XII, bull Benedictus Deus, 29 January 1336^[17]

The Catechism of the Catholic Church takes up this doctrine in its treatise on Heaven:

“To live in heaven is ‘to be with Christ.’ The elect live ‘in Him,’ but while retaining, or rather finding therein, their true identity, their own name. […] This mystery of blessed communion with God and with all who are in Christ surpasses all understanding and all representation.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1025–1027^[18]

The beatific vision is therefore not the dissolution of the person into the divinity, but the fulfillment of the person in the light of God.

Why Is This Reality Reserved for the Hereafter?

Saint Thomas Aquinas explains that the intuitive vision of the divine essence exceeds the natural capacities of the creature: no created intellect can, by its own powers, pierce the mystery of God^[19]. God must grant this vision Himself by showing Himself directly, which is fully realized only at the end of the earthly pilgrimage, when the soul is definitively separated from the conditions of the present life.

This does not mean that knowledge of God is inaccessible here below: it is accessible, but in another mode — through faith, through the sacraments, through prayer, through contemplation, through the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” which are “the beginning of glory”^[20]. The beatific vision remains the exception: it is the consummation, not the beginning.

If the beatific vision names the goal, holiness and beatitude name the quality of the soul called to that goal. They are the two faces — negative and positive — of the same state.

Holiness: “Be Holy, for I Am Holy”

God is holy, that is, separated absolutely from sin, evil, and disorder. The Hebrew word qadosh expresses this separation, which is not haughty distance but fullness of purity. And God calls man to the same holiness:

“Be holy, for I am holy, I the Lord your God.” — Leviticus 19:2; taken up in 1 Peter 1:16^[21]

Holiness is therefore the universal vocation of the baptized. Vatican II reaffirmed it in the constitution Lumen Gentium, chapter 5: “It is therefore quite evident to all that the call to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity is addressed to all who believe in Christ, whatever their state or form of life”^[22].

Beatitude: “Blessed!”

The other face is positive: beatitude (makarios in Greek; beatus in Latin) designates the happiness of the satiated soul. And it is with this word — “blessed” — that Jesus begins His solemn public teaching:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 5:3^[23]

The entire program of the Christian life is thus inaugurated by a promise of happiness. The Catechism comments:

“The Beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness. This desire is of divine origin: God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to Himself, who alone can satisfy it.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1718^[24]

Holiness and beatitude meet: holiness is the condition of beatitude, and beatitude is the crowning of holiness. They are two ways of saying that the soul has become what it was made for.

Two further synonyms deserve to be distinguished: eternal life, which stresses duration, and the Kingdom of God, which stresses sovereignty.

Knowing God = Living Eternally

Saint John, in Christ’s priestly prayer, gives an exact definition of eternal life:

“Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.” — Gospel according to Saint John, 17:3^[25]

Eternity is not merely endless duration: it is a quality of life — the very life of God, without succession, without wear, without loss. Knowing God is entering into that quality. And this knowledge is not speculative: it is the experience of communion, which can begin already with living faith.

The Kingdom Is in the Midst of You

The other synonym — the Kingdom of God — is the one Jesus uses most often in His preaching. And He made a decisive declaration to His hearers:

“The Kingdom of God does not come in a way that strikes the eye. No one will say: ‘Behold, it is here,’ or: ‘It is there.’ For behold: the Kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” — Gospel according to Saint Luke, 17:20–21^[26]

The Greek entos hymōn can be translated “in the midst of you” or “within you.” Both senses converge: the Kingdom is a present reality, recognized not by spectacular outward signs, but established in the hearts of those who welcome Christ. That is why the very prayer Jesus teaches asks: “Thy Kingdom come” (Mt 6:10) — a reign inaugurated here below and completed in Heaven.

All these synonyms, taken separately, remain descriptions. What is their common core? The Catholic spiritual tradition answers unanimously: loving God. And this answer is no moralizing platitude. It follows from what God Himself is.

God Is Love

It is the briefest, and the densest, sentence in all Christian theology:

“God is love.” — First Letter of Saint John, 4:8; 4:16^[27]

Saint John does not merely say that God loves, which would be a simple action. He says that God is love, which touches the essence. Love is not an attribute of God: it is His very nature, contemplated in the Trinitarian life — the Father eternally loving the Son in the Holy Spirit. Pope Benedict XVI opens his first encyclical precisely on this verse:

“‘God is love: he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him’ (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity what is at the heart of the Christian faith.” — Pope Benedict XVI, encyclical Deus caritas est, 25 December 2005, n. 1^[28]

If God is love, then to enter into God is to enter into Love; to live in God is to live in Love; and the essence of the spiritual life is therefore, without detour, loving.

The First and Greatest Commandment

Christ, questioned by a doctor of the Law, leaves no ambiguity about the hierarchy:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great, the first commandment.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 22:37–38^[29]

This is not one commandment among others: it is the first, in order of importance and in order of foundation. All the others derive from it. Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that charity — that is, the love of God — is “the form of all the virtues”^[30]: without it, the other virtues are not truly Christian; with it, they become paths of holiness.

The Primacy of Charity

Saint Paul, in his famous hymn to the Corinthians, says that without charity nothing has supernatural value:

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge of God, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” — First Letter to the Corinthians, 13:1–2^[31]

This explains why the whole Catholic tradition places the love of God at the center. The entire spiritual life comes down to learning to love God. This is what Saint Alphonsus’s canonical formula will condense.

The word love is debased today. For the Catholic tradition, to love is not first a sentiment, but an active decision: willing the good of the beloved. And since we cannot give God a good He does not already possess, loving God takes the characteristic form of pleasing Him.

Loving Means “Pleasing”

Human experience confirms this structure of love. The more we love someone, the more we want to please them: it is almost a law of the heart. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, on the eve of her death, formulated it in a sentence that sums up her whole spirituality:

“You can therefore, like us, attend to ‘the one thing necessary,’ that is, that while devoting yourself to exterior works, your aim be single: to please Jesus, to unite yourself more intimately to Him.” — Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Letter 257 to her sister Léonie, 17 July 1897^[32]

Three months before her death, the Doctor of the Church designates neither prayer, nor asceticism, nor the apostolate as the ultimate end, but “pleasing Jesus.” Everything else — including holy works — is only a means in service of this single goal.

God’s “Pleasure” Is Not Human “Pleasure”

The precision matters. Pleasing God does not mean answering a whim or flattering a weakness — God lacks nothing. It means according ourselves to what God wills, because He wills only the good. God’s “pleasure” is His will of love for the creature, and answering it is entering into the good order He wills.

Christ Himself took this filial posture to the very end:

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.” — Gospel according to Saint John, 4:34^[33]

“I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” — Gospel according to Saint John, 6:38^[34]

It is by doing the Father’s will that Jesus “loved to the end” (Jn 13:1). The Christian disciple is called to reproduce this structure: loving God means having no other food than His will.

If loving God means pleasing Him, then the whole spiritual life is concentrated in the will of God. The formula became famous through Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787), Doctor of the Church and patron of moralists:

“All Holiness Consists in Loving God”

“All holiness consists in loving God, and all our love for God consists in doing His will.” — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, The Practice of Loving Jesus Christ, ch. 17, n. 21^[35]

It is a double equation. Saint Alphonsus first identifies holiness with the love of God, which the unanimous tradition confirms (cf. 1 Cor 13). Then he identifies this love with the accomplishment of the divine will, which turns spirituality into a discipline of willing rather than a cascade of emotions.

Saint Alphonsus insists with a firmness rarely found elsewhere in his writings:

“We must therefore resign ourselves without reserve to all the dispositions of Providence toward us: putting a good face on every event, happy or unhappy, that God wills; on the state God wills; on the health God wills. Directing all our prayers to this goal: that God make us accomplish His holy will.” — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, The Practice of Loving Jesus Christ, ch. 17, n. 21^[36]

“Thy Will Be Done” — At the Heart of the Our Father

The same equation lies at the heart of Christian prayer. In the prayer taught by Jesus, after the first two petitions concerning God’s glory and reign, comes the petition that makes them explicit:

“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 6:10^[37]

The Catechism comments, citing Origen:

“By adhering to Christ, we can become one spirit with Him, and thereby accomplish His will; in this way, it will be perfect on earth as in heaven” (Origen, or. 26) — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2825^[38]

“It is through prayer that we can ‘discern what is the will of God’ (Rom 12:2; Eph 5:17) and obtain ‘endurance to do it’ (Heb 10:36). Jesus teaches us that one enters the Kingdom of Heaven, not by words, but ‘by doing the will of my Father in heaven’ (Mt 7:21).” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2826^[39]

The petition is therefore not formal. Asking that God’s will be done is asking that our will be united to His.

Christ, Model of Perfect Accomplishment

The Epistle to the Hebrews applies this doctrine to Christ Himself, in terms that sum up the whole economy of Redemption:

“Behold, I come, O God, to do thy will.” — Letter to the Hebrews, 10:7 (citing Psalm 39:8–9)^[40]

Christ is the perfect man precisely because He perfectly accomplishes the Father’s will. And it is by being united to Him through the sacraments and grace that the baptized learn to do the same.

Saint Alphonsus, in his Preparation for Death, goes further still. He distinguishes doing God’s will from willing what God wills. The nuance is decisive.

From “Doing” to “Willing”

One can do God’s will grudgingly, out of duty, through gritted teeth. That is already obedience, and it is already good. But perfect love is not content with execution: it inwardly wills what the other wills, until having with Him but a single will.

Saint Alphonsus writes it in very clear terms:

“Loving God: that is what our whole salvation and all perfection consists in. […] The perfection of love consists in the conformity of our will to God’s; for love, as the Areopagite says, has as its principal effect, in those who love, to unite their wills so well that they have but one heart and one will.” — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death, 36th consideration, first point^[41]

Saint Alphonsus cites here a venerable text: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who in his treatise On the Divine Names (ch. IV, §15) writes that love is “a certain unitive and concretive force” urging lover and beloved to form but one^[42]. The proper effect of love is unity of will.

Saint Teresa of Avila: True Union

Saint Teresa of Avila, in the Interior Castle, denounces a frequent confusion: mistaking mystical union for extraordinary phenomena (visions, ecstasies, tears). True union, she says, lies elsewhere:

“Do not believe it consists in interior consolations, nor in sublime raptures, nor in visions, nor in the spirit of prophecy. Our union with God, as we must desire it, consists in this: that our will be one with His, so that there be nothing we understand He wills that we do not will with our whole desire.” — Saint Teresa of Avila, Book of the Foundations, ch. 5, n. 10^[43]

And further on:

“All that one who devotes himself to prayer must aspire to is to place his will in conformity with the divine will. For the rest, one must be well convinced that in this consists the highest perfection.” — Saint Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, Second Mansions, single chapter, n. 8^[44]

The Doctor of the Church exactly rejoins Saint Alphonsus: the conformity of the two wills is the summit, not a preliminary toward something else.

Saint Francis de Sales and the Divine “Good Pleasure”

Saint Francis de Sales (1567–1622), Bishop of Geneva and Doctor of the Church, devoted an entire book of his Treatise on the Love of God to conformity to the divine good pleasure. His teaching completes Saint Alphonsus:

“It must be held as most certain that what God wills is always the best; and that all He ordains or permits, though it seem to us grievous and bitter, is nevertheless most good, because it comes from so good a will, which is the will of God.” — Saint Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, book IX, ch. 1^[45]

The language differs — Francis de Sales speaks of “good pleasure” (in Latin beneplacitum) — but the doctrine is identical. Loving God means consenting to His good pleasure; and this good pleasure, because it is divine, is necessarily good.

One Heart, One Will

The image that recurs under every pen is that of a single will shared by two. Saint Vincent de Paul, quoted by Saint Alphonsus, condenses it:

“The perfection of love does not consist in ecstasies, but in doing God’s will well; and among all men he will be the most perfect whose will is most conformed to God’s: so that our perfection consists in uniting our will to God’s so closely that His and ours are but one same willing and not-willing.” — Saint Vincent de Paul, quoted in Abelly, The Life of the Venerable Servant of God Vincent de Paul, book 3, ch. 5^[46]

It is the infallible index of spiritual advancement: not mystical phenomena, but the ever deeper identity between what I will and what God wills.

The preceding analysis opens onto a most beautiful circular structure. Loving God means doing His will. Now what does God will? That we love Him. So loving God means willing that we love Him — that is, willing love itself.

God Wills That We Love Him

Scripture says it insistently. The first commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God” (Dt 6:5; Mt 22:37): it is God’s primordial will for man. The Catechism takes it up:

“Man’s first vocation is to love God.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1604 (on human love reflecting divine love)^[47]

And Saint John roots it in the very essence of God: “We love because He first loved us” (1 Jn 4:19). The structure is therefore dialogical: God loves first, and man answers by loving in turn. What God wills is this loving response.

The Inner Spring of Prayer

This circularity illuminates the very structure of Christian prayer. When the baptized prays “Thy will be done,” he in reality prays: “May I will what Thou willest” — and therefore “may I love Thee more,” since that is precisely what God wills. Prayer is no longer a simple request: it is a synchronization of the two wills.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux restated it with childlike simplicity:

“I feel that my mission is about to begin, my mission of making the good God loved as I love Him, of giving my little way to souls.” — Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Novissima Verba, 17 July 1897^[48]

The Doctor of the Church does not say she wants her own glory in Heaven. She says she wants God to be loved — that is, she wills what God wills. The circle has closed.

All that precedes in this article describes doing God’s will: two wills — mine, which I submit, and God’s, which I follow — the conformity of the faithful servant, the human holiness of the virtues. That is already the spiritual life, and it is immense. But living IN the Divine Will is something else, and infinitely more: no longer two wills in accord, but a single one — mine effaced to let the Divine act in me; no longer a meritorious human act, but, according to what Jesus told Luisa, a divine act, posited by God in me, which has God’s own value: infinite and eternal.

This gratuitous gift is not a deduction of theologians: it was revealed to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865–1947), of Corato, to whom Jesus dictated the Book of Heaven, and it is from her that it is accessible — by knowing it, esteeming it, desiring it with a firm desire never taken back.

From Doing to Living In

Doing God’s will is conformity: I keep my will and submit it to God’s. Living in the Divine Will is the gift: I give my will, and God gives me His to live and act in me as it lived in Adam before the Fall. The one is won through the effort of the virtues; the other is received. The theologian Joseph Iannuzzi has shown, in his Gregorian thesis, that this doctrine in no way contradicts the earlier tradition: it extends its nuptial and deifying line, in the same perspective as the Greek Fathers on theōsis^[49].

A Sober Mention, a Reserved Development

Saint Alphonsus, Saint Teresa of Avila, and Saint Francis de Sales had identified the summit of the spiritual life as “the unity of our will and the divine will”: that is doing carried to its perfection. Living in goes further: that the human will no longer merely conform itself, but let itself be continually moved by the divine will, like an instrument in God’s hand — a single will, an act that never ends.

The full development of this gift exceeds the scope of this article. It is the subject of dedicated articles on Ignispedia (cf. The Divine Will and related articles). What must be retained here: only this section reveals the gift; all the rest of the article describes doing, which leads to it and prepares for it.

The preceding teaching would be abstract if it remained suspended in the hereafter. Yet the Catholic tradition teaches unanimously that the spiritual life begins here below. All the synonyms described so far — save the beatific vision itself — are already accessible in the earthly condition.

“The Kingdom Is in the Midst of You”

Jesus’ declaration in Lk 17:21 is without appeal. The Kingdom is not only a future event: it is “in the midst of you” even now. Saint Paul confirms it: “The Kingdom of God is not a matter of food or drink, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17).

This presence of the Kingdom already here below has four principal signs which the tradition identifies:

Where these signs manifest themselves, the Kingdom is already at work. The spiritual life is therefore an experiencable reality, not a distant postulate.

All the Synonyms (Save the Vision) Are Accessible

Let us review each name briefly:

• Union with God: accessible through sanctifying grace and the spiritual marriage described by Teresa of Avila — already here below.
• Life in God: Saint Paul writes to the Galatians “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). So it is in this life already.
• Trinitarian life: through the sacraments and grace, the baptized are inserted into the communion of the Three (CCC §260).
• Divinization: begun already at baptism (CCC §1265, §1266), completed in Heaven.
• Holiness: the universal vocation of the baptized according to Vatican II.
• Beatitude: Jesus says “blessed” in the present tense; Thomas Aquinas speaks of a beatitudo inchoata, that is, a happiness already begun here below, like glory in germ.
• Eternal life: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” (Jn 3:36) — even now.
• Kingdom: “in the midst of you” (Lk 17:21).
• Life in the Divine Will: a gratuitous gift revealed to Luisa Piccarreta, received through firm desire — beyond mere conformity.

Only the beatific vision in the strict sense (intuitive vision of the divine essence) remains reserved for the heavenly homeland, because it presupposes separation from the material conditions of the earthly pilgrimage^[50].

The Saints, the Happiest of Men

That is why the testimony of the saints is so decisive. Those who most loved God and most perfectly accomplished His will were the happiest, by far, already on this earth. Saint Charbel, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Philip Neri, Saint Francis Borgia, and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati attest to it in physiologically precise terms (joy that prevents sleep, enlargement of the heart, spontaneous dancing). The article He Who Lives for Heaven Is Far Happier Already Here Below unfolds this experiential dossier.

“What peace is that of a soul that loves God! For it tastes the peace of God Himself, which surpasses all feeling, that is, all the pleasures and satisfactions that the senses and the world can give.” — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Preparation for Death, 21st consideration^[51]

It is this experience that the whole spiritual life comes to open. Not a postponement of happiness to later, but an already tangible beginning of beatitude.

The analysis now converges toward a practical conclusion. If the spiritual life is the happy life, if the essence of the spiritual life is loving God, and if the love of God translates into willing what God wills, then willing what God wills is, of itself, happiness.

Three Premises, One Conclusion

The Catholic tradition has often reduced this doctrine to a simple three-step reasoning:

1. God’s will is always accomplished. God being almighty, what He wills, He does; what He permits, He uses for a greater good. If an event happens, it is because He at least permitted it for the good of souls.

2. Man’s greatest happiness is seeing his own will accomplished. That my will be “thwarted” is the fundamental spring of all moral suffering; conversely, seeing one’s will accomplished fills the soul in its relation to events.

3. Therefore, if I will what God wills, my will shall always be accomplished. Since God’s will is always accomplished (premise 1), and my will now coincides with His, my own will shall, in fact, always be accomplished. And therefore I shall always have happiness (premise 2).

This is the Alphonsian equation of happiness. It mechanically articulates the spiritual life with man’s happiness. Saint Alphonsus sums it up: “All holiness consists in loving God, and all our love for God consists in doing His will” — and all man’s happiness consists in seeing his will accomplished.

Why Is the Spiritual Life Happiness Itself?

The conclusion is striking. Loving God and being happy are not two distinct things: they are the same thing, under two angles. Love, by uniting itself to God’s will, places the soul in the only position where it can enjoy total and lasting fulfillment. That is why Catholic spirituality has always been able to say boldly: the more you love God, the happier you are.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux formulated it thus:

“I would not wish to enter Heaven one minute sooner by my own will. The only happiness on earth is to apply oneself to always finding delightful the portion Jesus gives us.” — Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Letter 257 to Léonie, 17 July 1897^[52]

Three months before her death, already consumed by tuberculosis, the Doctor of the Church says she is in happiness. It is the existential verification of the syllogism.

An Opening on Suffering

An objection nevertheless presents itself. If God’s will is always accomplished, and if willing what He wills is happiness, how is suffering to be explained? How can God will, or permit, the evil that appears in the world and in our lives?

This objection is central, and it receives a clear answer. God neither wills nor causes evil: He only permits it, and permits it only because He is powerful and good enough to draw from it a greater good — ultimately the salvation of souls (Catechism, §311–312, after Saint Augustine)^[53]. According to the promise of Scripture, “all things work together for good for those who love God” (Rom 8:28): it is Providence that guides every event, even painful ones, toward the good of those who love Him. Evil is therefore never willed for its own sake; it is permitted by a God who remains master of His plan of love.

The Catholic tradition has unfolded this answer, from Saint Augustine to Saint John Paul II by way of Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, and Saint Padre Pio. The next article — God’s Will Is Always Accomplished: What Is the Meaning of Suffering? — examines this question in detail, showing why God permits suffering and how it fits into His plan of love.

But the principle remains: the spiritual life, in its essence, is the love of God lived to the point of perfect conformity of will. All the rest — works, prayers, asceticisms, sacraments — is its concrete implementation. “Teach me to do thy will” (Ps 143:10): that is, from King David to the last of the baptized, the prayer of every spiritual life.

Go deeper with Via Divina — This article summarizes the basic teaching on the essence of the Catholic spiritual life, given in the free Via Divina formation. To live its concrete “how” day by day, discover the full formation: open the Via Divina formation.

• Do Not Procrastinate: It Is the Most Important Thing in Your Life — the preceding course in the same journey.
• God’s Will Is Always Accomplished: What Is the Meaning of Suffering? — the following course, on the mystery of suffering.
• He Who Lives for Heaven Is Far Happier Already Here Below — the happiness of the just already on this earth.
• The Divine Will — on the deepest synonym.
• Willing What God Wills: The Greatest Happiness — the practical conclusion of the syllogism.