Surely goodness (happiness, love etc) cannot meet a perfect completion?

[Thomas_Jennings]

I’ve tried to picture ‘infinite degrees’ of goodness, like happiness and love…and it’s wonderful (if slightly nauseating to reflect on). But no idea seems an ideal destination.

I love various goodness(es) but, in thinking about Heaven have a hard time trying to grasp a completion to those elements when they seem like ‘part of a journey’ at best.

Basically put, while I have no desire to journey on forever…no ‘end’ seems the right one and I cannot imagine thinking ‘well, that’s me done .I can just stop striving now.’

 

[fhansen]

Well, it probably isn’t possible to put it better than 1 Cor 2:19:
"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him."

The experience is simply ineffable-although God has granted “glimpses” of it to various people down through time. It’s very, very difficult-its impossible-to imagine, based on the experiences we have in this life, what heaven or the full knowledge of God would be like-and that’s how it should be because no created thing can satisfy us. “God, alone satisfies”, as Aquinas put it. And that wasn’t just an example of some priggish wishful thinking-it’s the basis of our faith: man is separated from God, looking for happiness everywhere else- happiness that is meant to be fulfilled-and we’ll only find it as we return to full communion with Him. We’re to walk in that hope*-in that trust*, our gift of faith, itself, being a dim foretaste of that future “vision”.

 

[Trisceptorc]

When reading your post, I thought about my friend’s grandparents who had been married for some 40 years. The husband of the elderly couple passed away in recent years, and the wife misses him dearly. I’m still a young guy and I’ve never been in love before, so I couldn’t tell you if love continuously deepens as time goes on. But after seeing my friend’s grandparents, I can say with confidence that once you have love, you won’t want to lose it.

I don’t know if there are infinite degrees of happiness, love, etc. In Heaven, I would hope that we would have some degree of love and happiness. Maybe we get an amount of love an happiness proportional to what we deserve? But once we have it, I’m guessing that we won’t want to be without it, just like the wife in the elderly couple doesn’t want to be without her husband.

Maybe a completion of the degrees of goodness isn’t what’s important, but perhaps just that goodness exists in abundance.

 

[Gregory_Olson]

By either Divine Scripture or Divine Tradition, all we can do on Earth about the true state of Heaven is conjecture.

It does sound to me, however, like you are in desperate need of buckling down and reading a good book by C.S. Lewis. In fact, I believe your question makes up the entire theme of The Great Divorce.

Here’s a teaser from Mere Christianity to perk your interest.

(C.S. Lewis speaking about the Second Coming) :
“But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks out on the stage, the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else–something it never entered your head to conceive–comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side.”

 

[littlestsouls2]

“The perfections of God are infinite. In Heaven the saints will see the divine perfections succeed each other without ceasing: every moment a new perfection will be revealed to them, and so it will be through all eternity.” (Fr. Paul of Moll)

That’s about all I can add!