"Keep Wrestling" - Carlo Carretto

Painting: Jacob Wrestles with the Angel by Gustave Dore, late 19th Century
Union is not yet mature, desire still lacks clarity.
A great struggle is still necessary, and the night is night just for this.
Then daybreak will come, and everything will change.
But as long as we are on this earth we shall keep wrestling, like Jacob on the bridge, with the visible and the invisible, the earthly city and the heavenly city, the natural and the supernatural, the health of the body and the eternal salvation of the soul, the desire to live here below and the hope of going up above, the hunger for bread and the insatiable desire for heaven, the dream of enjoying the seasons of life and the knowledge of entering the one eternal season of the Kingdom.
But the battle is long and demanding.
And we may become limp, as did Jacob, if for no other reason than to remind us that the conquest of God is not in the race, but in the patience of death.
Only afterwards will it be possible to enter completely into the Kingdom, and we shall be mature enough to embrace God chastely and with Him to embrace all creation.

- Carlo Carretto, The God Who Comes, p. 51