December 20 2005

Within Our Reach: Joy — by Fra Giovanni Giocondo (posted on www.gratefulness.org)

Fra Giovanni Giocondo (c.1435–1515) was a Renaissance pioneer, accomplished
as an architect, engineer, antiquary, archaeologist, classical scholar, and
Franciscan friar. Today we remember him most for his reassuring letter to
Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi on Christmas Eve, 1513.



I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep. There
is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much, very
much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come
to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven! No peace
lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.

Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is
joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see. And to see, we have only
to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as
ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor,
woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's
hand that brings it to you.

Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there. The
gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not
content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will
find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you
have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through
unknown country home.