Though Scripture does not state in explicit terms that Jesus was favoured with the beatific vision, still it contains passages that imply this privilege: Jesus speaks as an eyewitness of things Divine (John 3:11, sqq.; 1:18; 1:31 sq.); any knowledge of God inferior to immediate vision is imperfect and unworthy of Christ (1 Corinthians 13:9-12); Jesus repeatedly asserts that He knows the Father and is known by Him, that He knows what the Father knows. There is a difficulty in reconciling Christ’s sufferings and surpassing great sorrow with the beatitude implied in His beatific vision. But if the Word could be united with the human nature of Christ without allowing Its glory to overflow into His sacred body, the happiness of the beatific vision too might be in the human soul of our Lord without overflowing into and absorbing His lower faculties, so that He might feel the pangs of sorrow and suffering. The same faculty may be simultaneously affected by sorrow and joy, resulting from the perception of different objects (cf. St. Thomas, III, Q. xiii, a. 5, ad 3; St. Bonav., in III, dist. xvi, a. 2, q. 2); the martyrs have often testified to the ecstatic happiness with which God filled their souls, at the very time that their bodies were suffering the extremity of torment.
