A Touch of Eternity

By Marta Alves © 2010

 

You have been touched by eternity when you take care of a terminally ill patient. But wait… We are all terminally ill… The day we were conceived we began our trek to eternity. We are touched by the mystery of eternity every time we deal with another human being. Life is a journey and in this journey we travel with companions along the way. Some are more pleasant than others. What makes our journey enjoyable is to walk with Christ. He is our light and our salvation.

To walk with a terminally ill patient is to walk with Christ:  Christ bearing His cross. Christ full of sores and suffering from the beatings, Christ in sweat and blood soaked. – What can we do? We can take a cloth and wipe His sores and His sweat. We can try to help Him with His burden. We can cry as we walk with Him the Way of the Cross. – So we do with somebody sick in body or mind. We try to make their burden lighter. What makes the burden lighter is our love.

Does God need our love to live? No- but God has made us to love Him and love cannot be forced so God has given us free will. We are free to decide to love God or not.

Not loving God is emptiness and sorrow. Loving God is joy and peace that is reflected in the love of our neighbors.

Who is our neighbor? …Anyone and everyone around us.  In loving others as Christ loves us.  We grow in holiness and our inner peace overflows to others.

The more we love, the more the love of God flows through us and dwells in us.

A touch of eternity is the moment when we realize that all that matters is love:  to love God with all our hearts; to follow Christ’s example and walk the road of pain and love with others without complaint; to be there realizing that life is a gift and time is precious. Every moment of every day is to be treasured because there may be no other.

A touch of eternity is when we know that the light of life is dimming in the eyes of our loved one and when we are able to bow our heads and hand over their lives to the Divine Mercy of Jesus. 

 

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