In our time more than in the past, people are so absorbed by earthly things that at times they find it difficult to think about God as the protagonist of history and of our own existence.

In the face of the enigma of death, the desire for and hope of meeting their loved ones again in Heaven is alive in many, just as there is a strong conviction that a Last Judgment will re-establish justice, and the expectation of a definitive encounter in which each person will be given his reward.

For us as Christians, however, “eternal life” does not merely mean a life that lasts for ever but rather a new quality of existence, fully immersed in God’s love, which frees us from evil and death and places us in never-ending communion with all our brothers and sisters who share in the same Love.

Thus, eternity can already be present at the heart of earthly and temporal life when the soul is united through grace with God, its ultimate foundation.

Everything passes, God alone never changes. A Psalm says: “Though my flesh and my heart waste away, God is the rock of my heart and my portion for ever” (Ps 73[72]: 26). All Christians, called to holiness, are men and women who live firmly anchored to this “Rock”, their feet on the ground but their hearts already in Heaven, the final dwelling-place of friends of God.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us meditate on these realities with our souls turned toward our final and definitive destiny, which gives meaning to the circumstances of our daily lives. Let us enliven the joyous sentiment of the communion of Saints and allow ourselves to be drawn by them towards the goal of our existence: the face-to-face encounter with God.

Let us pray that this may be the inheritance of all the faithful departed, not only our own loved ones but also of all souls, especially those most forgotten and most in need of divine mercy.

May the Virgin Mary, Queen of all the Saints, guide us to choose the world of eternal life at every moment, “and life everlasting”, as we say in the Creed; a world already inaugurated by the Resurrection of Christ, whose coming we can hasten with our sincere conversion and charitable acts.

Pope Benedict XVI

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.

People are made for happiness. Rightly, then, you thirst for happiness. Christ has the answer to this desire of yours. But he asks you to trust him. True joy is a victory .. Christ holds the secret of this victory.

Pope Saint John Paul II