since in beholding God face to face the created intelligence finds perfect happiness, the vision is termed "beatific." Methodist co-founder Charles Wesley, in his 1747 hymn "Maker, in Whom We Live", described union with God through the Holy Spirit as "beatific sight": Spirit of Holiness, let all thy saints adore / thy sacred energy, and bless thine heart-renewing power. / No angel tongues can tell thy love's ecstatic height, / the glorious joy unspeakable, the beatific sight. In the Catholic Church Official teaching Nature of the vision of God The beatific vision is when God, though transcendent, opens himself up to man and gives man the capacity to contemplate God in all His heavenly glory. Contemplation is the prayer of silently focusing on God and heeding His word; in other words, contemplation is the prayer of uniting with God. Sanctifying grace and the vision of God The beatific vision, then, is ultimate union with God; indeed, it comes from sharing in God's holy nature via sanctifying grace. Effect of the vision of God Because God is beatitude and holiness itself, the beatific vision entails ultimate beatitude and holiness. Recipients of the vision of God The beatific vision is a grace and a privilege intended for every man and angel, since God created men and angels to enjoy the beatific vision; the beatific vision is the ultimate purpose of each person's and angel's life. Jesus and the vision of God Because Jesus is God and man, His human nature experienced the beatific vision from conception to His ascension into heaven. Despite this, Jesus did suffer as man. Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas defined the beatific vision as the human being's "final end" in which one attains to a perfect happiness. Thomas reasons that one is perfectly happy only when all one's desires are perfectly satisfied, to the degree that happiness could not increase and could not be lost. "Man is not perfectly happy, so long as something remains for him to desire and seek." But this kind of perfect happiness cannot be found in any physical pleasure, any amount of worldly power, any degree of temporal fame or honor, or indeed in any finite reality. It can only be found in something that is infinite and perfect – and this is God. And since God is not a material thing but is pure spirit, we are united to God by knowing and