Can we see the saints?

[Myles Domini]

The Church defines visions under three classifications: Corporeal, Imaginative and Intellectual. The first two are widely known and, more or less, understood by the average Catholic.

Corporeal visions are exemplified by apparations like those at Lourdes or Fatima where individuals see an image exterior to themselves that is actually and physically present.

Imaginative visions on the other hand are interior but not false and typically take place in sleep e.g. St Joseph's dream in Mt 2.

Intellectual visions on the other hand employ seeing more clearly with the eyes of the soul than with the eyes of the body to paraphrase St Teresa of Avila. No physical form is percieved by the essence is more clearly 'seen' than if there were physical form.

Now it is clear to me that the saints can be seen in corporeal and imaginative visions. But what about in intellectual visions? Is it possible/neccessary to see anything but God via intellectual visions? Does the glorification of the saints transformed by God's grace make their essence unviewable outside a state of rapture?

I recall St John of the Cross stating that at the highest levels of mysitcal union the soul and God became so identical that they would appear indistinguisable and yet would remain seperate substances. Does this transfiguration of the individual mean that to see the saints as they are in essence, glorified by their union with God in heaven, one must see them without early eyes too? Or is spiritual seeing solely needed for the vision of God? Can we see the saints with our earthly senses or does that extra accident need to be added to the soul to see them too?

Go for it Church Scholars...

[photosynthesis]

can you say a little more about intellectual visions? I'm not really sure what you're talking about.

[Myles Domini]

[url="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/317500.htm"]St Thomas Aquinas on Rapture[/url]

[philothea]

I'm not close to a Church Scholar, but I've read a lot on Mystical Theology.



I can't recall any instance of a saint being part of an intellectual vision, and I can't immediately see any purpose in it, since an intellectual vision is more like an action imposed on a person than a concept or message.

Hmm.

Maybe if the vision pertained to, say, a founder and his Order? I can't imagine how a saint would be percieved in that sense, but it doesn't seem impossible.



(Some use I am... pfft.)

Edited November 10, 2005 by philothea

[Myles Domini]

Philothea dont worry I know what you mean. I'm no Church scholar either but I fancy I know a little bit of this and that (so to speak). What prompted me to ask were things like the corporeal visions of Our Lady e.g. Guadelupe. Our Lady has the tendency to alter her appearance it seems anyone who looks at the image of Guadelupe will obviously see it contrasts with Fatima for instance. I thought that perhaps this could be accounted for by saying that the form seen was not Our Lady in her essence but the form percieved by mind and not through spiritual sight. Yet, I remain uneasy about saying something like this because to my knowledge rapture usually indicates a vision of the Divine. But I wondered in light of St John of the Cross' words about the soul in the heights of union whether deification impacts our ability to percieve those who have recieved the Beatific Vision most particularly the Queen of Heaven.

Any ideas phatpham?