For me life seems to present more meaning as I have been processing through the death of my mom. She passed away almost 2 months ago and I continue to find more joy in living fully knowing of God's Eternal Life to come.
From the Magnificat Meditation of the Day
Faced with death, shall I be afraid? Ought I to be afraid? It seems to me, no. Well or ill, I have done what I could to keep on the track of my destiny. My eternal future is in the hands of God, I abandon myself to my heavenly Father. I shall go to Christ, that will be deliverance. I have a peaceful feeling about it. The Lord knows what I have suffered. If ever I felt the “comfort” of the spiritual life, that feeling has long ago left me. A spiritual destiny is a light bridge thrown across the abyss, or the peak of a rock rising above the ocean. If the bridge and the rock are proof against all hazards, the soul does not know it. She has a view of the world that makes her dizzy, whether it displays itself to her in its beauty or its madness. Because she is separated but not yet withdrawn from the world. The beauty, the intelligible consistence, the nobility, the justice of the divine world from which she receives life are essentially objects of faith. She lives by secret motions. The object of her love is veiled….
The divine Scriptures awaken in my soul the desire to see God; the desire to depart for eternal life. It is a desire which springs from the joy of the soul—and not from the sadness of temporal life. I love this daily life too and I love my beloved Jacques and [my sister] Véra and I love our friends, and all beauty: but perhaps God is beginning to call my soul and to train it to the hope of eternal life. At these moments of living faith and joy, the fear of God frightens me less. Sweet Jesus, have pity on me.
Raïssa Maritain
Raïssa Maritain († 1960) was born in Russia. She was a convert to Catholicism and the wife of philosopher Jacques Maritain. [From Raïssa’s Journal, presented by Jacques Maritain. © 1974, Magi Books, Inc., Albany, NY. All rights reserved.]
I found solace in these remarks and, when searching for more information on Raissa and Jacques Maritain, I stumbled onto Rabbi Mark Kinzer / Congregation Zera Avraham, as he describes with beautiful detail the impact of one, on the way to becoming a saint, and how his life made an indelible imprint on the lives of Raissa and Jacques Maritain HERE. (An excerpt from his remarks.)Jacques and Raissa were not your typical students. They thought and felt deeply about everything. They realized what this worldview implied about life: in the final analysis, all was meaningless. Truth, goodness, beauty were illusions. There was nothing worth living for – and so they were considering leaving life itself behind, and doing it together on their own terms. Then they read a book that changed everything. It was a novel by a devout Christian by the name of Leon Bloy. The final line of the novel took their breath away, and became a motto for their future life together: “There is only one sadness – not to be a saint.
Imagine living life fully and unreservedly, fulling the purpose we were created for and knowing the treasure is Eternal Life in God.
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