Not a few saints were rewarded for their fasting by glimpses of the beatific vision.
When news of this affair had reached Paris, the pope sent the general of the Minorites, Gerard Odonis, accompanied by a Dominican, to sustain his doctrine in that city, but King Philip VI., perhaps at the instigation of the refugee Spirituals in Paris, referred the question to the faculty of theology, which, on the 2nd of January 1 333, declared that the souls of the blessed were elevated to the beatific vision immediately after death; the faculty, nevertheless, were of opinion that the pope should have propounded his erroneous doctrine only "recitando," and not "determinando, asserendo, sed etiam opinando."
A Consoled is an angel walking in the flesh, whom the thin screen of death alone separates from Christ and the beatific vision.
Accordingly, his supernatural revelations resemble a course of lessons in celestial geography more than a description of the beatific vision.
The celebration is based on the doctrine that the souls of the faithful which at death have not been cleansed from venial sins, or have not atoned for past transgressions, cannot attain the Beatific Vision, and that they may be helped to do so by prayer and by the sacrifice of the mass.
