The World We Long For

The World We Long For

1985 8 August 16 The World We Long For (398) To disbelieve in paradise is to disbelieve in one’s own self, for paradise is what everyone longs for more than anything. If, one the other hand, one believes in paradise but does not strive to attain it, one is like a person who goes to a shop to buy something, but is not ready to pay the required price.

Everyone longs for a dream world – a world of everlasting life and total satisfaction, a place immune from the limitations and disadvantages that beset us in this world. This is what man longs for above all else. Everyone in this world is striving to achieve this end, yet there is no one who actually finds what they desire. People go to great pains to make themselves healthy, but soon they are beset by illness or old-age; they accumulate wealth, but it does not endow them with inner peace; they seek power, only to find that power creates more problems for them; they surround themselves with luxuries and comforts, but soon fall prey to boredom and unrest.

All human-beings are busy building a paradise for themselves, but before they can do so death comes and they leave the world with all their longings and desires unfulfilled. They then go to a world where paradise is awaiting them. But the paradise of the next world will only be inhabited by those who have paid the price for it in this world. Those who fail to do so are depriving themselves of what they long for more than anything.

In paradise, we shall have all that we desire. But paradise lies in the next world, and it will only be inhabited by those who have sought it there. Those who build a paradise for themselves in this world will find nothing but disappointment awaiting them when they reach the next world.

And what an agonizing disappointment that will be; for they will find themselves deprived of the very thing they had been seeking all their lives. How ironic that one’s attempts to fashion in this world what is meant to be fashioned in the next, should lead one to lose out on it for all time. How tragic that one’s efforts to achieve one’s greatest longing in life are in fact condemning one to live without it.

And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

–St. Matthew