Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “I come from Heaven”! These were the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary, when, appearing in an apparition to the three shepherd children in Fatima, she replied to Lucia who asked where she came from. The Message of Fatima, of which this year is the 90th anniversary, reminds us that we were created for Heaven and it is toward Heaven that we should orient our existence here on earth. Because our destiny is Paradise, the place of everlasting happiness, we bear within us, as our greatest longing, a desire to be happy, to experience profound joy and true peace. The things of the earth can never satisfy our spiritual reality which we call soul which can only be nourished with spiritual things, things of heaven, not those of earth. The search for happiness which lies in every human heart, stems from this reality of the spirit which is in every person and is so immense that it fills every human heart with an immense desire for fulfilment and joy.
To imagine that we could quench our thirst with only one drop, which evaporates as soon as it is found, is pure illusion. If a thirsty man were to chase only the drops, he would soon die of thirst! How often sadly we deceive our selves that we are quenching our thirst for Heaven, the Infinite, Eternal One, with minute drops of earthly joys and pleasures, which can never satisfy the human soul. They evaporate the moment they are consumed. Then, instead of stopping to reflect and look deep into our heart to find the Reason for this insatiable longing for love, we continue our insane running after thousands of little drops, which announce happiness and which always evaporate! In this way instead of drinking at the Source of living water, letting ourselves be loved by God, we run after the drops, deceiving ourselves and becoming prisoners of a vicious circle, like dog biting its tail.
We Christians should not expect to find Heaven, true joy, perfect peace, freedom of spirit in earthly things. We should not think that eternal life starts only after death! Those who think of death in this way are bound to live for the things of this world and put off until after death the things of heaven.
This would be a serious distortion of our faith in the Lord Jesus who promised us that eternal life, the Kingdom of God, starts with our first encounter with Him: “'The coming of the kingdom of God does not admit of observation21and there will be no one to say, "Look, it is here! Look, it is there!" For look, the kingdom of God is among you!” (Lk 17, 21).
Our life is already participation in the Kingdom of Jesus, communion with eternal life, if we allow ourselves to be more and more pervaded by the things of heaven, gradually removing the things of earth which are transitory, they pass and are consumed by time.
Nothing earthly, received from people or the world is eternal. Only the Good Lord who is the Eternal One, gives us eternal gifts, but to receive them we must have faith in Him, like the Saints who were able to proclaim with their life : “the rock of my heart is God, God is my destiny for ever” (Ps 73, 26). To follow the Lord they left themselves, their great or small selfishness, rejecting the attraction of earthly things to be drawn by the incomparable attraction of the things of Heaven, far superior to those of earth! The saints placed their destiny in the hands of God and never regretted it, believing that it is the Lord who guides all the events of life, good and bad, until He himself becomes: their destiny for ever! They sought first the Kingdom of God and its justice and the rest was given in addition according to the Lord's promise (cfr. Mt 6, 33), in which they believed to the letter and which was literally fulfilled!
Such is the faith of the saints: taking seriously every word of Jesus and savouring its realisation. Busying themselves solely with loving God and God in every creature, the saints learned to savour the things of Heaven and to lose the taste for earthly things, just as Jesus promised: “no one who drinks the water that I shall give will ever be thirsty again: the water that I shall give will become a spring of water within, welling up for eternal life” (Jn 4, 14). Every day each of us is offered a choice: wing towards heaven or crawl on the earth. This is why Our Lady appears, she comes form Heaven to show us where our true homeland and to lead us there, in fact “She is the refuge, the path which leads to God ” (Benedict XVI, greeting in Portuguese at the Angelus on 14 October 2007). (Agenzia Fides 17/10/2007; righe 50, parole 813)
