P ensiamo, dear children, spiritual teaching, that the feast of the Ascension of Our Lord gives us. It is a twofold teaching, which covers the philosophy of life, or, rather, the concept of Christian life. We must, first of all, look up , that is, think of the reality of the future, which is our true destiny, a destiny that only we sense the fullness of our being, the happiness of passing all the faults and the sufferings of this present life, the restoration of our vital unity of our mortal body with our immortal soul and this virtue and the joyful communion of Christ, our true Savior and the first fruits of the glorious promise that mysterious existence. Look up: it's what we forget to do, when we lack faith, and when we put all our hope in seductive but ephemeral reality of time. It is the cloud that obscures the horizon of this world.
And, in teaching, look down, that is of concern back to the ground and the time now where we spend our human experience; new look, but guided by the vision , we said, of Heaven, to give things of the earth their fair value and to make of our passage through time a journey, a pilgrimage, conscious of its responsibility and its goal, and this new look to our work should give a higher sense, a certain optimism, a subject of intense action, wise, beneficial, just as Christ taught us. Once again the lesson of religion urges us to a magnificent courage in the good to be done, and invincible hope of eternal encounter with Christ and with all our dead revived in its peace and happiness.
( Paul VI, Regina Coeli, 23 June 1968)
0 comments:
Post a Comment