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Only God, who is absolute Being, is pure act—full and infinite Reality, to which no shadow of mutability attaches.

In eternity only shall we, too, be accomplished: not pure act, to be sure, for even there our being will be dependent on God; but sharers in the immutability of God insofar as we shall no longer contain any element of mere potentiality but have our whole being realized in one eternal moment. There (and there alone) we shall be past all becoming, having attained to a being free from all changeableness. All values in us will have matured to full actuality, with no room left for any potential ones. All that we are will be set out in its definitive shape.

It is not owing to original sin alone that in our earthly existence we are subject to the law of becoming. The state of man in the Garden of Eden, too, was no status finalis but a status viae. Man with his nature still unsoiled by sin was also meant to develop and was confronted with a task. He was meant to mature in knowledge and to supplement creation with a spiritual culture of his own devising; and again, to people the earth with his progeny. Yet, this was to take place in an undisturbed organic order—without any disharmony, labor or suffering.

But for original sin, there would have been no death. Instead of the painful and terrifying separation of soul and body, mankind would have known only an uncatastrophic passing on to a higher form of being—that status finalis in which “God is all in all.”

Nevertheless, immense as is the contrast between the state of the fallen world and a paradisiac mode of existence, the latter too would have borne the sign of that duality which lies in the mixture of act and potency, and which essentially sets apart the status viae from the status finalis.

Earthly man suffers a tension between original sin and his redemption

Owing to original sin, however, earthly life is subject to the law of duality in yet another sense: a duality which even subsists after Christ’s redemption of the world. On the one hand, we still suffer from the effects of original sin; on the other hand, we are redeemed beings: “reconciled to God,” that is, through the most sacred Blood of Christ, By holy Baptism we are given participation in the life of Christ. So long as we remain in the state of grace, nothing can separate us from God: but yet we are still wanderers in a valley of tears.

As members of the Mystical Body of Christ, already on earth we are in an ineffable fashion united with God, participating in the divine life of the Holy Trinity: “seeing” and yet not seeing, “face to face” but “darkly as through a glass” (1 Cor. 13:12). We have not yet attained to an eternal and irrevocable communion with God. We are no longer at the epoch of Advent: for the eternal Word of God has become flesh, and wrought our redemption. Nevertheless, we are still in a phase of hope—a stage of expectation. As measured by the eternal glory which awaits us, our status viae still means an Advent.

Jesus said to us: “In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33); but again He said: “Watch ye therefore, because you know not the day nor the hour” (Matt. 25:13). We still walk in the valley of tears, afflicted with crosses of all kinds. We still have to “fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church” (Col. 1:24); and yet we know “that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come” (Rom. 8:18). We are still burdened with tasks; we must still hurry on from one moment to another; we are still caught in the movement of time; we are still constrained to activity—and yet, already on earth, contemplation forms the deeper and more important part of our life.

Already we have found the pearl of the merchant of the Gospel; we are no longer unquiet seekers—for “already our hearts are at rest in God” (St. Augustine, Confessions).