Eternal Visions

The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary includes a lovely hymn in which we ask Mary to obtain several realities for us: “the victory of hope over anguish, / of joy and beauty over boredom and disgust, of eternal visions over temporal ones, of life over death.”

The third of these particularly struck me as I was praying this hymn last night: “of eternal visions over temporal ones...”

Our visions can be so narrow. We often see only through the lens of this world. We are bound by time and space, but we rarely seek to look beyond them.

Therefore, when tragedy strikes, when suffering increases, when we face all sorts of trials and experience so many sorrows, we often fail to see beyond our hurt and our anxieties and our fears. We become focused on how horrible everything is, how frightened we are, how we cannot find a way out. We wonder where God is and why He has let such things happen.

We are stuck in our temporal visions.

So we ask our Lady to replace those temporal visions with eternal visions. We pray to catch a glimpse of our worst situations through God's eyes. And as we do, we learn many things. We discover that suffering has meaning and value, that it conforms us to Christ, that it cleans and polishes us, that it allows us to spread God's grace to others, that it helps us grow and learn, that it leads us to rely on God completely, that it prepares us for Heaven. We realize that God is perhaps closer to us than ever when we face difficult times and that He wants us to draw closer to Him so He may comfort and console us.

We come to understand that God has a plan for us, even if we don't see it fully, and that His plan is perfect even though some parts of it may hurt greatly. In the end, if we cooperate and remain in His grace, He will work everything out for our good. He will lead us to eternal life, home to Heaven, where our eternal visions will be permanent and where all our suffering will be only a memory.