Heaven, so many think, is society. Just as no one can live in isolation,
so no one can survive in isolation. No one can enjoy God in heaven who
sees his brother suffering in hell, for the sin and the merit were
common to both. We think with the thoughts of others and we feel with
the feelings of others. To see God when God shall be all in all is to
see all things in God and to live in God with all things.
This splendid dream of the final solidarity of mankind is the Pauline
anacefaleosis and apocatastasis. We Christians, said the Apostle (I Cor.
xii. 27) are the body of Christ, members of Him, flesh of His flesh and
bone of His bone (Eph. v. 30), branches of the vine.
But in this final solidarization, in this true and supreme
_Christination_ of all creatures, what becomes of each individual
consciousness? what becomes of Me, of this poor fragile I, this I that
is the slave of time and space, this I which reason tells me is a mere
passing accident, but for the saving of which I live and suffer and hope
and believe? Granting that the human finality of the Universe is saved,
that consciousness is saved, would I resign myself to make the sacrifice
of this poor I, by which and by which alone I know this finality and
this consciousness?
And here, facing this supreme religious sacrifice, we reach the summit
of the tragedy, the very heart of it--the sacrifice of our own
individual consciousness upon the altar of the perfected Human
Consciousness, of the Divine Consciousness.
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