Just a little while, and I will see you again.
These words are without a doubt some of the most consoling in the Holy Gospel, designed as they are to ward off that most deadly of temptations: give up and turn back. Our human frailty is such that we all too often listen to those insidious words of the Tempter: “you’ll never make it; it’s too far; it’s too hard; you can’t persevere for a hundred years doing all these prayers and penances, etc.”
Just a little while, says the Divine Truth. So short is our life that we will hardly remember it when it is over. We even have difficulty remembering the brief years we have already spent here. But our life will pass, like the flower that blossoms today and fades tomorrow.
Just a little while, says Our Beloved Lord. Your difficulties at the moment may be many, your challenges hard to face, your cross heavy to bear, but what you have suffered already you will never suffer again. It is over, finished, and today you are closer to your eternal reward than you have ever been.
Just a little while, says our Good Shepherd. The path by which He leads us sometimes seems long. It winds, it goes up and down. There are crags and torrents. There are precipices on each side. Perhaps more dangerous still, there are many attractions along the way which seek our attention and could cause us to stray. But He leads us with His rod and His staff, and He knows where we are going.
So where are we going? I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one shall take from you. The whole of our life is about going to the One we love. It is about going to Love, being absorbed into Love, that very Love which created us and longs at every moment for our love. The time we have to learn true love is so very short. Just a little while. Let’s learn the lesson well, for we have only today to learn it.
Mother of Pure Love, Sweet Lady of Cana, transform those little efforts we make each day and which often taste like insipid water, into the delicious wine of Divine Love. Our own love is weak, it is fragile, but through Your intercession it can become strong, lasting, eternal. Tell Jesus we have no wine. We have no love in our hearts. Give us yours, sweet Mother, for with it, we will no longer drag our feet along the way, for the true Lover runs with enlarged heart.
“The Lover flies, runs, and rejoices, he is free, and is not held…. Love feels no burden, values no labours, would willingly do more that it can; complains not of impossibility, because it conceives that it may and can do all things” (Imitation of Christ, Bk 3, ch. 5).
