everyone.”1 All that is finished forever. The temporal life of the Savior will not begin again. But the memory of it will be remembered in the heavens. And then—Péguy did not say so but it must be added—from above, God will lend us his eyes to observe the sweep of time, his gaze that is above time, where nothing is forgotten, where the whole history of time remains present in all its innate freshness. There were unspeakable sufferings in the life of Jesus, but divine and unfailing joys as well. As a little child, he enjoyed his Mother’s tenderness. Later, when he looked upon the world, how well he knew how to observe it: the flowers of the field, the mustard seeds, the fig trees that bud at the approach of summer, the wheatfields that turn golden, the red sky heralding good weather or storm. He observed the work of men, the fisherman, the sower who goes out to sow, the woman grinding the grain or searching her home to find a lost drachma. He observed all of this with profound humanity, purity, with a rapture, a joy that made him rediscover the creative thought hidden within human beings, next to which the vision of painters and poets is but little. He looked into the eyes and the hearts of little children. His soul wasn’t contracted, but opened wide. And yet, during the thirty-three years of his life, he never lost sight of the fact that he would die nailed to a bloody cross. The thought of the glory of his Father and of the world’s redemption was enough, in every circumstance, to make his soul thrill. 1 Charles Péguy, The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, 1897. 19
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzMzNzY=