Almost 150 years ago, Saint Therese Couderc, the foundress of the Sisters of the Cenacle, had a vision of Goodness. She had been reflecting on the goodness of God, and afterward she wrote:
“I was extremely touched by these reflections, when I saw written as in letters of gold this word Goodness, which I repeated for a long while with an indescribable sweetness. I saw it, I say, written on all creatures, animate and inanimate, rational or not — all bore this name of goodness. I saw it even on the chair which I was using for a kneeler. I understood then that all that these creatures have of good and all the services and help that we receive from each of them are a blessing that we owe to the goodness of our God, who has communicated to them something of his infinite goodness, so that we may meet it in everything and everywhere. Yet all that I am here describing is nothing; if I could but tell you something of what I experienced in that moment, what a joy it would be, but it is impossible to describe it: that which is divine cannot be described.”
What does it mean to have a vision of goodness? Indeed, what does it mean to be given any kind of vision, assuming that the vision is true?
I believe that a vision is often not so much seeing something new and strange that is placed before us. Rather I think it means the gift of sharing God’s own vision: that is, seeing with God’s eyes and knowing with God’s heart. And what is seen may well be 
something that has been with us all along, as it was with our Mother Therese. How often she had looked at the chair used for a kneeler! How often she had seen those ordinary “creatures, animate and inanimate”! But now she was seeing them more nearly the way God sees them. They were all good, and more, they were good because God had imparted to them something of the divine goodness.
So a vision, in this sense, does not imply seeing something that had not been there before—and even less does it suggest seeing something that is not there at all. Instead it means seeing people or things more nearly as they truly are—it means sharing in a small way the divine vision.
Another example of this vision, this seeing clearly, is Thomas Merton’s experience at the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, where he was granted a glimpse of the significance of being human, a glimpse perhaps impossible to convey:
“There is no way of telling people,” he says, “that they are all walking around shining like the sun….”
He goes on to say, “Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed” (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander).
And he adds: “I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.”
It is only given, that is true. We cannot make this kind of seeing happen. And we cannot see in whole the way God does. For now “we see in a mirror, dimly,” until that time of fulfillment when “we will see face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). But even today we may pray fervently for the gift of seeing people and things more nearly as God sees them. And we may choose to look at each other and at creation more carefully and more generously, as we grow in the graced desire to live more and more in union with Jesus Christ, and therefore grow in perceiving more clearly in him.
“God saw everything that he had made,
and indeed, it was very good.”
(Genesis 1:31)
See also “From Glory into Glory.”
__________
All the photos are mine. (“Faylei” is based on my middle name.)
