416th Meditation
“When I contemplate with open eyes what You, my God, have created, I already possess heaven here” (St. Hildegard of Bingen).
We need eyes that see and ears that hear (Mt 13:16). Once these are opened, we begin to contemplate the glory of God. We discover everywhere the Father’s love in action, either to make His love known to us directly, or to fill us in superabundance with His beauty, or to heal the sick, remove evil from us and impel us to do all the infinite good that the infinitely Good One willed that we should do.
The eyes of faith begin to see what is unveiled before them, but which remains dark and veiled when we neither believe in nor know the loving Father from whom everything proceeds.
The mere contemplation of the works of Creation can arouse in us astonishment and even rapture. When this enrapture leads us to recognize the glory of the One who created all these things, our eyes are opened wider and wider and blindness fades away.
Can there be anything more beautiful than to discover everywhere the love of God? When we walk through life like this, with our eyes open, heaven begins to shine in our life, for everything in it exhales the love of our Heavenly Father, which in heaven we will be able to fully and unrestrictedly welcome with all the openness of our being.
While we are on our way there, we can already glimpse heaven. Each time we meet our Father, He opens our eyes more and more so that we can begin to truly see and experience His presence here on earth as a joy-filled reality. Then we will already possess heaven here, as St. Hildegard of Bingen says.