He continues: Here God dwells among men. He will make his home among them. They shall be his people, and he will be their God. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone (21:3-4).

This is the promise we have been given by God. This is our faith. This is what we pray for every time we pray, in the Lord’s Prayer, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." We long for that day.

I saw the New Jerusalem. While we are journeying towards that day, our faith teaches us to look for that city. We are invited to be alert, to catch a glimpse of that kingdom, because it comes not only at the end, but now!

In the midst of our world of travail and suffering and endless questions, the New Jerusalem comes now.

Yes, our faith teaches us to look for that victory, to catch a glimpse of that beauty. I believe that Donna’s life as a dedicated artist and a woman of faith has taught us something more about what it means to look for that beauty, to find it, and to give expression to it.

What has struck me for some time now about Donna’s paintings is the light that seems to radiate from within. It is a light that speaks of something eternal, captured in the ordinary. Captured in the earthly, in a bowl of fruit, for example. Or in a bouquet of irises. Or in a human face.

In each of these, something of this eternal light becomes visible. She saw it, and through her artistic gift, she depicted it.

Donna’s work as an artist can become a parable for us about our vocation as Christians: to be on the alert for the New Jerusalem, for the beauty of God manifesting itself in our lives. This requires the kind of vigilance that the Gospel of the wise and foolish bridesmaids speaks of.

The wise bridesmaids carry with them the oil of vigilance, of expectation and readiness, for one never knows just when the Bridegroom might come.

It can happen at any moment! Do I see? Do I hear? Am I ready?

Some people are noteworthy for their vigilance. They are all focus, all attention, all expectation for the opportunity God will give.

When writing about the coming of the Word in prayer, St. Ambrose says somewhere that this Word passes swiftly. We must be alert to "catch him" when he passes. Otherwise, he will escape us.

I was thinking last night of Donna’s painting of the irises. Irises don’t last long. If you are going to paint them live, you have to be there—now. Now is the moment to capture their passing beauty, their brief revelation of the eternal. In this sense, the painting becomes a symbol of the coming of Christ in our lives.

Each of us has a gift to see something of that coming. This is what it means to be a believer. Each of us sees some part of it—in nature, in still life, in a human face, in the work of our hands, in the Word of God itself, in the sacraments.

We each have a gift to see something of that Beauty of the Eternal and to express that vision in the way we love, by means of the gifts God has given us.

It comes out in a thousand ways. But it’s all a means of perceiving and responding to the New Jerusalem, the glory that is given, Christ in our midst.

Was Donna or are any of us always awake to that gift? I think we would answer "no." Not always.

Besides, Christ can come in unexpected ways, such as in a member of my family who irritates me or tries my patience. That was Christ? At times Donna did not so perceive him!

We all fail in that gift of perception that is offered us by the Spirit. But Christ is always inviting us to stay awake—to receive the gift, to love the gift as it is comes.

A couple of weeks before she died, when I was visiting Donna in hospital in Ottawa, we were speaking about a little talk I gave to the staff of St. Raphael’s Handicraft Center in the early 80’s. At the time I was all boiling with the discovery of Hans Urs von Balthasar and what he taught about art and beauty and the "theological aesthetic."

I had just finished reading it in French (it wasn’t available yet in English) a big, fat book he had written on the subject, and I had wondered if the staff would be interested in a one-hour presentation.

So we gathered one afternoon and I tried the impossible and gave a stumbling resume of that beautiful, complex and in some ways overwhelming book.

Donna said to me, "You know, that was an important afternoon for me, because I began to get a vision of what beauty is in a way I had never seen before. Beauty in its true depth is about Christ and his coming, and the paradox of his divine glory revealed in creation, in human beings, and in suffering."

I know for a fact that Donna gave herself to that vision, to that truth of Christ’s radiant presence in creation, not above it, or behind it, but within.

However, this reflection on the mystery of God at work in our lives would be incomplete if I stopped there—because Donna’s life did not stop there, nor do our lives, nor did Christ’s life.

In a sense the parable from Matthew does not tell the whole story. It is not only a matter of being the welcoming and vigilant bridesmaid, who joins the wedding feast and celebrates the Master.

At some point, the Bridegroom looks at me anew, if I may put it that way, and says, "Now, you are my bride."

There came a day, it seems to me, when Donna was chosen to be interiorly set free, because that is what it means to be Christ’s bride. What Hans Urs von Balthasar taught us, and what we talked about that long-ago afternoon, was that beauty only shines forth fully in selflessness. And only Christ knows the way to that selflessness for each one of us.

Our whole life as disciples of Christ can be seen as a journey, following Our Lord on the path of greater selflessness. But as for the final passage into that selflessness—only Christ knows that way. He has to give it. He is the one who says, "Now I take over. Now what you do recedes, so that what I do in you may be brought to completion."

In our humanity, we often see this purifying work of the Bridegroom as the taking away of life, the removal of our gifts or at least of the expression of them. But I think that he sees this process very differently.

He sees it as leading to the full expression of gifts, a fullness of life that only he can fathom, that only he can give.

And now Donna has died. Do you think that she, who so longed for beauty, sees less beauty now? Do you think that she whose hands gave expression to such creativity on earth will not in eternity pour forth beauty beyond all telling? Isn’t this what she longed for? Won’t the Bridegroom fulfill beyond all expectation the longing of his bride?

We look upon so much of life’s sufferings as loss, whereas in Christ these become gift and gain. But his ways are certainly not our ways! Our faith keeps assuring us: He is good, and he loves us to the end.

Today we celebrate the truth of the New Jerusalem, with its impossible, beautiful, unimaginable selflessness—the selflessness of the Lamb who gave all, and who is filled with the radiance and beauty of his Father.

We pray, too, for our sister, Donna, that she may rejoice in that gift forever. She longed for it. She watched for it. She prayed for it. And in the end, she said, "Fiat—let it be done to me according to thy word."

That’s all anyone can do. The rest is in the hands of a merciful and loving Lord, whom we praise and thank for all his gifts.

[See some of Donna Surprenant’s paintings.]