The sin-stricken body weighs heavily on the soul which by nature yearns to behold its Maker. Perhaps it is the consciousness of this clinging burden which causes a man to regard himself as another in endeavouring to express his own personality. Yet the divine figure of the Word Incarnate gives assurance that self-realization may be only reached by the self-abasement of all that is human in the presence of the Divine. At this point are placed in close opposition self-idolatory and the God-centred attitude towards life which is the main-spring of life’s worship. But who will deliver us from the body of this death?

Divine revelation informs the erring mind that the culminating point in the Christian life is to be found in nothing less than eternal happiness which St. Thomas describes in no uncertain terms. But the life of grace, “semen gloriae,” is an eternal life since it holds within it the very roots of glory. It differs not in kind from that life at its apex where God is seen and all things in God, yet a ceaseless effort after spiritual liberty is demanded by a closer union with God in Christ.