After a week of profound sadness, comes words of comfort from a friend (Thank you, Christina). Written 500 years ago, these words could not be more appropriate for this time and moment.
“There is nothing I can give you, which you have not; but there is much, very much, that while I cannot give you, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless we find rest in today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future, which is not hidden in the present instant. Take peace!
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see, and to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!
Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy, or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it, a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call sorrow, or a duty, believe me the angel’s hand is there, and the wonder of an over-shadowing presence. Our joys too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.
And so at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.”
…Fra Giovanni, 1513 A. D.
