The world cannot be neutral with respect to the kingdom of God. Either it is vivified by it, or it struggles against it. If God so loved the world that he gave it his only begotten Son, it was to plant and foster in it another world where all the desires of nature would be finally more than fulfilled. If Jesus came not to condemn the world but to save it, if the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world, this means that the kingdom of God, which is not of the world, is itself growing in the world, and that the life of grace performs in it its mysterious work; in such a way that at the final end, when the world is manifestly and definitively saved, it will no longer be this world, but will, at a stroke, have been transmuted into the other world, the universe of the Incarnation, which shall have reached its state of complete accomplishment; the unimaginable world of glory that has existed from the beginning for the holy Angels and the souls of the blessed, and where the bodies of Jesus and Mary are already present; and where, having been brought to participate in the condition of spirit, its privileges and freedom, matter will be gentle and more fertile in beauty, the senses more penetrating and awed than ever.
from The Peasant of the Garonne
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