Daily Meditation: Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Altar to the Lord - our task is not finished until it is built

04/30/2025

Once upon a time, some great spiritual masters sent their disciples to a desert island, and told them, ‘Transform this island and make it beautiful. When you have completed your task, you will hear a bell ring announcing our arrival.’ The disciples set to work straight away and gradually turned the island into a real paradise. Everything was ready, magnificent, but the bell did not ring. The disciples then made the island even more beautiful, but still they heard no bell. Upset and anxious they began to pray and meditate, and all of a sudden it dawned on them: they had not built an altar to the Almighty. Everything had been taken care of but that. They immediately set to work again, and no sooner was the altar finished than the tinkling of a bell was heard. Shortly afterwards, the masters solemnly arrived and placed a luminous pentagram on their disciples’ foreheads to symbolize their spiritual qualities and virtues. Of course, this story is symbolic. It teaches us that however great their earthly achievements, human beings can consider their task to be finished only when they have built an altar to the Lord;* in other words, when they have succeeded in manifesting the five virtues of the pentagram: love, wisdom, truth, kindness and justice.