It seems that the liturgy wants to suggest to us that we truly experience heaven when we seek and find someone who really loves us.
Today’s readings can be found here.
Mary’s Easter, which we celebrate liturgically today, not only tells us of her ultimate destiny—which has already been fully realized in her in body and soul—but reminds each of us that we are called to the same goal.
It is beautiful, however, that in order to explain to us what it means to be saved in body and soul, today’s Gospel has us read the passage from Luke about Mary’s visit to Elizabeth.
It seems that the liturgy wants to suggest to us that we truly experience heaven when we seek and find someone who really loves us, and that the first symptom of the resurrection is joy—the same joy that makes the baby leap in Elizabeth’s womb, and that makes Mary sing the Magnificat.
In this sense we do not necessarily have to wait until we die to experience the same Easter as Mary; where we offer true love and acceptance, there we arouse that contagious joy that not only fills the other’s heart but returns to us a hundredfold as well.
St. Thomas said that “good is self-diffusive,” but today we could describe it with a term that’s very much in vogue these days: it’s contagious. So let us be “infected” by the light of this feast and resume our journey knowing that we are walking toward the same destiny as Mary, and not toward nothingness.
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Father Luigi Maria Epicoco is a priest of the Aquila Diocese and teaches Philosophy at the Pontifical Lateran University and at the ISSR ‘Fides et ratio,’ Aquila. He dedicates himself to preaching, especially for the formation of laity and religious, giving conferences, retreats and days of recollection. He has authored numerous books and articles. Since 2021, he has served as the Ecclesiastical Assistant in the Vatican Dicastery for Communication and columnist for the Vatican’s daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.