Pope Leo’s first words were those of the Risen Christ: Peace be with you! And at Mass with the cardinals the next day, he said: “Jesus showed us a model of human holiness that we can all imitate, together with the promise of an eternal destiny that transcends all our limits and abilities.”

Said more simply: eternal life is our destiny, the gift of Jesus to all those who try to imitate Him. We each receive this gift as part of the great flock of the Good Shepherd. In the Gospel Jesus rejoices that the flock hears his voice and follows him, and He gives them eternal life. Eternal life is social. It is a gift to be given and shared with all who will receive it.

Proclaiming the message and gift of eternal life for the human race is the mission of the Pope and of the whole Church because it is first the mission of Jesus. It is why we are here today. Mass faces us with the eternal, it feeds us eternal life through the Word proclaimed and made Eucharist. We are sent to share it as best we can with everyone in our lives. Consider and savour that: we are born to live the eternal life of God together, not just this earthly, mortal life in which we can so often feel isolated. Also: eternal life is not just for after death. It doesn’t mean a life like this one with no time limit. Eternal expresses the quality of God’s own life. We have already received the beginnings of it in baptism. Baptism birthed us into the life of God, eternal life. Strengthened by Confirmation, it is then fed in us through the Eucharist, the living bread come down from heaven to give life, eternal life, to the world.

The nature of God’s eternal life is love, because God is love. It is therefore also communion, because it is a life and a love shared between the persons of the Blessed Trinity and then with all to whom He gives it. It knows no sin, no darkness. It knows no end because it has no beginning. It does have a beginning in us, when we are baptised, but it has no beginning in God. Because eternal life is love and communion it is also mission. The Church is born from the life-giving waters and blood of Christ crucified. So, the Church, too, needs to bleed and pour out those life-giving waters into the world. Mission is not primarily about defeating ideas and false beliefs: it is about being poured out in Christ’s life and love for the sake of those who do not yet have them.

Eternal life is not an idea to be understood or analysed. It is, precisely, a life to be lived, a power to be welcomed in faith and love, to be experienced as the presence and love of God in our hearts and minds and bodies. Ask the Risen Lord to make Himself known within you. Ask Him to show you how He wants you personally to witness to His life and love with others in the circumstances of life. If we ask for this grace with sincerity and perseverance, the Lord will draw us more and more deeply into His Life, into His Heart. We will become more and more friends of God. We will become more and more like Him and others will be drawn to Him through us. This is the process of becoming whole and holy in God. It is this which is the key to drawing the world back to God or more deeply into God.

That’s not to say that the mortal life we now live is not a great gift. We have to cherish and nurture it, defend and protect it. But we miss the point of it if we don’t live it searching for eternal life. In fact, if we engage with the eternal life already alive in us now, it will teach us how best to live even this mortal life. It will give us the proper perspective to see and evaluate the meaning and utility of things. Eternal life refines and amplifies our human love and our human reason, because God Himself now has access to our humanity and confers on it His own divine love and wisdom. If we consciously cultivate the gift of eternal life already in us, it will ennoble our relationships and give them a quality and depth which mere human affection cannot give, no matter how beautiful it is. God’s life in us will purify our affections and direct them in accordance with the will and heart of God. To make space for the life of God in our daily lives is not some extraordinary or weird thing to do. It is the very purpose for which we have any life at all. The more we seek God, open our hearts and minds to Him, the more we become truly human, truly fulfilled and, in the end, even truly divine.

Heaven is where the eternal life we have already received here on earth will find its fullest expanse and expression. In heaven, the pledge of divine life received in the sacraments and in the works of genuine love we have done will give way to its fullness. Like Jesus, we will be both fully human and fully divine by adoption. The nobility of our human dignity reaches its supreme fulfilment in God. We all stand before a great and wonderful reality which surpasses our capacity to imagine or to understand. We catch glimpses of it in the book of Revelation with its vivid descriptions of God, the worship of God and the new heavens and new earth which God will create. It may seem beyond us now, but we each have a place in that new world. It is our destiny which, to repeat the words of Pope Leo, “transcends all our limits and abilities.” This being so, we need daily to look closely at our lives, examine our values, decisions and conduct, consider how we use our time and talents and choose what fits with eternal life rather than this life.

In the book of Genesis, we hear how Esau sold his birthright to his younger brother Jacob because he was hungry for a plate of lentil soup. When he later realised his folly, he wept copious tears to get it back, but in vain. Our birthright is eternal life in all its fullness. Let’s not sell it for some figurative plate of soup. Rather, let’s recognize with joyful amazement the divine dignity of our eternal vocation and pursue it now with every fibre of our being: to live with God and with all the redeemed in the glory of eternal life.