“If you love me, do not weep. If you only knew the gift of God and what Heaven is! If only you could hear the angels’ song from where you are, and see me among them! If you could only see before your eyes the eternal fields with their horizons, and the new paths in which I walk! If only you could contemplate for one moment the Beauty that I see, Beauty before which all others fail and fade!
“Why do you who saw me and loved me in this land of shadows, why do you think you will not see me and love me again in the land of unchanging realities?
“Believe me, when death breaks your chains as it has broken mine, when, on the day chosen by God, your soul reaches Heaven where I have preceded you, then you will see her who loved and still loves you. You will find her heart the same, her tenderness even purer than before.
“God forbid that on entering a happier life, I should become less loving, unfaithful to the memories and real joys of my other life. You will see me again transfigured in ecstasy and happiness, no longer waiting for death, but ever hand in hand with you, walking in the new paths of light and life, slaking my thirst to the full at the feet of God from a fount of which one never tires, and which you will come to share with me.
“Wipe away your tears, and if you love me truly, weep no more.”
(St. Augustine; the passage is what he imagined his deceased mother would say if she could converse with him from heaven)
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