The Priest at Prayer, May 22

The Priest and the Eternal Truths

ETERNAL LIFE

Third Meditation - Further Glimpses into Eternal Life

I.
Let us listen once again to the Beloved Disciple, who drank deeply from the Wisdom of the Father the mysteries of eternal life.

"See how God has shown his love towards us; that we should be counted as his sons, should be his sons. . .

"Beloved, we are sons of God even now, and what we shall be hereafter has not been made known as yet.

"But we know that when he comes we shall be like him; we shall see him, then, as he is." (1 John, iii, 1-3.)

Our final destiny will be a surprise beyond the reach of human words; we shall become like God, like God in happiness and bliss and perfection, and like God the Source of happiness; because we shall see Him intuitively, without the veil of intellective "species", without the shadows of analogy, without mental processes, without creaturely intermediaries "who can­not tell me what I long to hear" (St. John of the Cross), and without the obscurities of faith. We shall live eternally in God's embrace, His Fatherly Eye the Splendor of our eyes: in lumine tuo videbimus lumen (Ps. xxxv, 10); and that glorious gaze will transform us into the image of His Brightness, into His other self.

These eyes of mine, so avid to see and still so unsatisfied with all they have seen until now; eyes that drink in every honeyed drop of created beauty and are still athirst for more - non saturatur oculus visu (Eccles.i, 8); O Lord, keep them pure and worthy for the radiant and eternal Vision of Thee!

II.
While extolling God's Providence, King David, in Psalm 35, seems to have caught a glimpse of the bliss of heaven:

Filii autem hominum, in tegmine alarum tuarum sperabunt. "Under the shelter of those wings the frail children of earth will find confidence" - all the elect will be gathered under the wings of Divine Love, under God's motherly protection, no longer a prey to the miseries of a world that has passed away.

Inebriabuntur ab ubertate Domus tuae, et torrente voluptatis tuae potabis eos;

"With rich store thou wilt nourish them, bid them drink deep at thy fountain of contentment" - perpetual hunnger of a heart ever filled at the Banquet; perpetual thirst of a mind ever quenched at the Fountainhead of all delight;

Quoniam apud te est fons vitae, et in lumine tuo videbimus lumen.

"for in thee is the Source of all Life, and thy brightness will break on our eyes like dawn." In that Light, O God, where Thou dwellest - Light I could never approach were I not lifted up by Thy Mercy, like a tiny child snatched up into its mother's arms - I shall drink in light through every pore of my being.

Blessed are they, Lord, who dwell in Thy House; they shall praise Thee unendingly.

III.
Why continue? Even the Divine Revelations, when confined within the narrow limits of human utterance, are little more than the babblings of a child!

Think, ponder, contemplate, imagine, dream; multiply your longings a hundredfold; let all your visions of happiness crystallise into naked reality; harness all the inventive genius of the human race; what is the summit of all out anxious striving in comparison with what God has prepared for those that belong to Him? Little more than a "hop, skip, and jump" of childish play; a mere shadow of the triumphant reality.

The truest ever spoken about Eternal Life is con­tained in the words of St. Paul, which again are but a quotation from Isaias:

The eye hath not seen, nor ear heard: neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared. for them that love him.­(1 Cor. ii, 9.)

Not in the whole ken of human vision, nor in the vast range of human hearing, nor in the almost fathom­less depths of the human heart - in the heart that has never yet pronounced the word "satisfied" - can be compassed, even mentally, the good things God has in store for those that love and fear Him. Happy the soul created for such glory and such a kingdom!

Resolution
When my heart is seized with a thirst for pleasure that incites me to drink from muddy streams, I shall be patient; I shall remember that these "stolen waters" never quenched nor even mitigated my thirst, but rather rekindled it; I shall remain calm, keeping in mind that soon, very soon, I shall come to the well-spring of eternal Life, and plunge into the floods and torrents of God's delights. This will be my treasured hope, and. a bridle to my passions.
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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

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Please pray for our priests and pray for vocations to the priesthood!