“No one can say what traces of the present will remain in the future, what pots or jaw bones will break the surface of the soil. And no one can know what those future peoples will think about the remnants they uncover from the past.
“But you can know what is in your heart, and you can bury your own intention for the future like a seed. You can entrust your hopes and dreams and hearts’ desires into my keeping just as the oak entrusts the acorn to the soil.
“This is what prayer is. Sometimes the season of renewal and return is as short as a day, a month, a season, or a year. And sometimes it is incomparably long. Know that no prayer that you make in praying the rosary is ever lost, unheeded, or unheard. Every prayer will be answered. Time is an illusion. Everything happens now, and that now has no beginning, no present, and no end.”
[Photo of oldest known human footprints from 3.6 million years ago]