Our Lord Jesus Christ came not to revolutionize human nature, but to make it truly noble and holy. He would have us learn that eternity is not so much a future state, to which the stream of time is bearing us on, as a present but unseen state, and that in fact we have all now entered on eternity. It is around us now, and we can none of us get out of it. We have begun, and must go on living for ever. And God is not a being, dimly thought of, separated from us above our heads, in the far off blue sky, but not far from any one of us, the Maker and Ruler, in whom we live, and move, and be, and if we will receive Him as such, the Father, who has so loved us as to give His Son to live and die on the cross for us. Christ teaches us that the service God would have us render Him is humble, loving obedience. It is by this, and not by keeping up outward forms and ceremonies, and profession of true faith, that we go on towards that eternal life, which what we call death will not introduce us to, but perfect as something already begun. My sheep (said Christ), hear my voice, and they follow me, and I give them (it is, indeed, now given) life everlasting. Would that all of us, and all around us, laid this well to his heart. Worldly and irreligious men and women are dying already, in eternal death. "She that liveth in pleasures is dead while living." But the same Saint Paul would have us to say: Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. This is eternal life begun; make haste, and take care to secure it.
- text taken from Daily Bread - Bring a Few Morning Meditations for the Use of Catholic Christians by Father Richard Waldo Sibthorp