But Stephen, filled with the holy Spirit, looked up intently to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:55-56 NABRE)
The veil between this physical world and the spiritual one is indeed a thin one. So thin in fact, that there are times when we almost catch a glimpse through it. As though we were sitting in a darkened room looking out a window through a lace curtain. We know there is a beautiful day outside, but we can't quite see it. The sunshine is just out of sight. The songs of birds just out of hearing. The breeze just beyond our touch.
It is at moments like the Transfiguration, the Ascension, Stephen's final living moments recounted in today's passage, and even certain moments in our own lives when the veil is pulled aside briefly to offer us a simple, powerful, real reminder that there is, certainly, a spiritual reality we cannot quite encounter by natural means.
And yet, there is a connection between this here-and-now, time-and-space reality of ours and the endless, eternal, spiritual reality. Our lives encounter both. Our souls long for connection to the source of our existence, and Jesus offers us the answers we seek and a way to make sense of the impossible, seeming contradictions which veil the spiritual in mystery.
Today, on this Seventh Sunday of Easter, as we continue to celebrate not only the risen Christ but his Ascension as well, I will remember the eternal and spiritual truth that exceeds this limited physical reality I experience each moment.
Saint Peter of Tarentaise, 12th-century French Cistercian monk, archbishop, and reformer, pray for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment