This morning, while watching the newly crawling baby search for things to choke on, I flipped through a book of John Paul II’s poetry. I liked the following section, from a cycle of poems on St. Veronica, written just about the time he was elected pope.
I think it evokes two dynamics. First, eternity is here to be found. But second, we have to search. In the context of the poem cycle, interesting to think how Veronica seized her moment. But there is no reference to her here, because we too are called to seize the moment.
No ready footpaths for man.
We are born a thicket
which may burst into flame, into the bush of Moses,
or may wither away.
We are always having to clear the paths,
they will be overgrown again;
they have to be cleared until they are simple
with the mature simplicity of every moment:
for each moment opens the wholeness of time,
as if it stood whole above itself.
You find in it the seed of eternity.
-Karol Wojtyła
