Meditation for youth during Holy Week, written in 1946

1. Man wants to live.

The most profound longing of our spirit is to live. If one experiences beauty, one longs to continue possessing it. Those who commit suicide do not do so out of hatred for life, but because of its sadness. This is why nature resists death. It is difficult to die, man defends himself -”do not lose hope”-. And those who believe men die, weep because of death and dress in mourning to honor the dead. Because man does not wish to die, but to live.

Nonetheless, to our eyes everything seems to be death, separation and suffering! One must be very young or very holy not to experience pain and suffering. “With pain you shall give birth. You will earn your bread with the sweat of your brow. All the days of your life you will cultivate the ground with toil but thorns and thistles it will yield to you. You will have sickness and misery. You will die…” The child is born crying… man dies with a grimace of terrible pain. Sickness, can anyone escape it? In Chile alone there are 400,000 people who suffer from tuberculosis… Kings and presidents become ill… And death, is there anyone who has escaped it?

I visited the Ford Factory under the management of Henry Ford II, a Catholic. His father, still young, had just died. There were 300,000 men working for him and Henry Ford II will also die… His wife went to her marriage ceremony in a bus in order not to crumple her wedding dress, the dress is now crumpled, she will also die … Only her beautiful soul will survive!

Economic ruins. War has made this so common that no one is now impressed. Those magnificent cities, the glory of the world, now nothing but a mountain of ruins. Those men who yesterday were rich, today are dressed in paper… Goering, Hess and the Emperor of Japan on the side of the conquered. Mussolini and Hitler, Europe’s masters of yesterday. They spoke, they commanded, they ruled. Where are they today?

The faculties of the brain are depleted, they diminish: the keenness of sight is lost, hearing impaired: the harmonies of music are not perceived, the eyes no longer delight in colors, the feet can no longer carry one to the mountains… ideas become obscure, and a man must climb the last rungs of the ladder of life alone, sad and melancholic. After considering a life where there has been much pain, crisis and agonizing discord, it is easy at times to think it has been a total failure. We believe in love then see the police trying to separate our children; union is preached yet we observe disputes over a scrap of gold… Is this living? Can an existence like this satisfy us?

2. The greatness of our spirit.

Our soul is spiritual, created by God to His image and likeness. Like Him in its nature and like Him in its tendencies: with an irresistible hunger for what is good, for kindness, for beauty, for truth: always asking more and more.

Everything here below tires it, cannot fill it. No matter how great the love, there remains always the desire for something more. For this reason man is the king of creation. He is the only one capable of understanding and reaching out to the infinite. To live… to remember our destiny. The infinite. That which has no limits to its perfection.

God who is beautiful, more beautiful than the rising sun; tender, more than a mother; loving and intimate, more than the most heavenly moment in love; strong, robust, magnificent in His grandeur. Holy, holy, holy, without blemish. What more could I dream in the most outrageous of raptures? This dream will become real in all that it possesses of beauty, and much more… Understanding, tenderness, intimacy, company?… Yes, you will have them all and without limit!

And eternity… not in the shadow of seconds, or years of seconds, but for always. Without end! To live forever. To look at eternity in those moments of depression. This will pass… But not that! This is only for an hour but that is forever.

To look at my life in the light of eternity… My loves in the light of eternity… My profession… the use of my time… in the light of eternity. The sacrifices that God asks of me… My life of study, the time given to tangible realities that are only a shadow of reality in the face of the great reality, the eternal… What has this to do with eternity?

The sanctity to which God calls me, that seems so austere to me; the life of prayer, mortification, my apostolate where discouragement devours me… in the light of eternity. The apostolate which means “souls for eternity”, souls that will be happy for all eternity, freed from the fire. Catholic Action… the priesthood… the missions… China, the Congo… The Jesuit Fathers in the Congo, Father Jogues and Brébeuf in Canada! Father Damian in the leprosarium. All sanctity, all holiness, in the light of eternity: This is living!

Joy, and how happily one lives when one thinks on eternity! That’s my home… Sufferings? They will pass away but eternity remains. Death? No, rather “until we meet again”, yes, “until heaven!” “See you soon!”

Lord, how few think like this! How seldom I do! And yet this is the way a Christian thinks, and any other vision of life is pagan! But this vision is impossible without a life of intense prayer, recollection, meditation, but any sacrifice is worth the cost to obtain this treasure. The kingdom of heaven is like a man who discovered a treasure in a field and having discovered it, sold all to buy that field. (cf. Mt 13,44). Sell all. This is what the saints have done, the martyrs, it is what true Christians do.

3. In what eternal life consists

Eternal life is the possession of God… the filling up of my intelligence, hungry for truth with ever-new aspects. It is not gazing and being satisfied but rather the ever-deeper penetration of an inexhaustible book, because my intelligence is permanently finite. It is a journey infinitely new and eternally long.

“Today you will be with me”, said Jesus to the thief (cf. Lk 23,43). There was no need to add “in paradise”, because to be with Jesus Christ is Paradise. Jesus Christ! The noblest heart, friend par excellence, in heaven, with me, he will be my friend. Living is to live with him!

Our loved ones, loved in Christ, possessed in him, in heaven. In the moment of death, absence will end: To be able to live, converse, gaze and unite with them… with nothing to separate us because both love in the same way, see things in the same way, without fear of misunderstanding, and nothing, not even death - which no longer exists - nor weariness, nor sleep will disturb this love which will be eternal.

To live! This is life! Lord may I realize the truth so that I can come to your light!
Light without defect, joyful light, true light, light that is life!
Lord I want to believe, so that I may arrive at love
Lord I want to believe, so that I may be able to reach it
Lord I want to believe, because I wish to live your life with you.
With Jesus Christ, my friend, with my Mother Mary,
With my loved ones, with your Angels and Saints,
Forever more. Amen. Amen. Amen