The Book of the Holy Rosary: Part III, Chapter X. The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin
“After these things I heard as it were the voice of much people in heaven, saying: Alleluia! Salvation and glory and power is to our God. And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of great thunders, saying, Alleluia! for the Lord our God the Almighty hath reigned. Let us be glad and rejoice and give glory to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath prepared herself. And it is granted to her that she should clothe herself with fine linen, glittering and white. For the fine linen are the justifications of saints. And He said to me: Write: Blessed are they that are called to the marriage-supper of the Lamb. And He saith to me: These words of God are true” (Apoc. xix.)
The circle of the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary terminates in presenting to our minds a picture of the humble maiden of Israel who has been raised to the dignity of the Queen of Heaven, receiving an eternal diadem from the hands of her Divine Son, in the midst of the jubilee and acclamations of the whole assembled court of angels and saints; and in so doing, it displays before our thoughts a vision of the rest and glory which we are invited to share, by faithfully persevering in the true path of a Christian life unto the end.
“I am Alpha and Omega,” says Jesus in the Apocalypse, “the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are they that wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb: that they may have a right to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city. Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and unchaste, and murderers, and servers of idols, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie. I, Jesus, have sent my angel, to testify to you these things in the Churches. I am the root and stock of David, the bright and morning Star. And the Spirit and the Bride say: Come. And he that heareth, let him say: Come. And he that thirsteth, let him come: and he that will, let him take of the water of life without price” (Apoc. xxii. 13).
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ,” says St Paul, “we are of all men most miserable” (1 Cor. xv. 19). “For I think,” as he says elsewhere, “that God has set forth us Apostles, the last as it were, men appointed to death; we are made a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake; we are weak, we are without honour. Even to this hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, are buffeted, and have no fixed abode. We labour, working with our own hands: we are reviled, and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it; we are blasphemed, and we entreat; we are made as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all even until now” (1 Cor. iv. 9). St Paul here seeks no refuge whatever in any species of illusion as to the easiness of the course through which God has called him to earn for himself a share in the glory and blessedness which is shown, as it were, in a vision to the faithful, dispersed over the whole face of the earth, in the last Glorious Mystery of the Rosary. He diligently places before his own mind the true nature of the reward that is held out to him, and he leaves God Himself to determine the amount of labour and suffering which he must undergo in order to win his reward. Whether that which he is called to go through on earth be better entitled to the name of “easy” than of “difficult,” never for a moment forms a question in the Apostle’s mind; his course lies before him, and his mind harbours but one thought how to accomplish it. “Forgetting those things that are behind,” he says, “and stretching forth myself to those things that are before, I press toward the goal, to the prize of the heavenly calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. iii. 13). So said also the Lord Himself: “I have a baptism (that of His own blood) wherewith I am to be baptized, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!” (Luke xii. 50.) St Paul, however, reveals to us the manner in which even the Lord Himself was sustained in bearing the burden with which He acknowledges Himself to be straitened: “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith, who having joy set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth at the right hand of God” (Heb. xii. 2).
So it had ever been from the ancient days. “For they that say these things,” says St Paul, speaking of the Patriarchs, “do signify that they seek a country. And truly if they had been mindful of that from whence they came out, doubtless they had time to return. But now they desire a better, that is to say, a heavenly country; therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city. Moses, when he grew up, preferred to be afflicted with the people of God, rather than to have the pleasure of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure of the Egyptians.” His motive for this being, as St Paul states, that “he looked unto the reward.” Again, Moses feared not the fierceness of the king, “for he endured,” St Paul says, “as seeing the Invisible.”
“And what shall I yet say?” continues St Paul; “for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, Barac, Samson, Jephthe, David, Samuel, and the prophets, who by faith conquered kingdoms, wrought justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, recovered strength from weakness, became valiant in battle, put to flight the armies of foreigners: women received their dead raised to life again. But others were racked, not accepting deliverance, that they might find a better resurrection. And others had trial of mockeries and stripes, moreover also of bands and prisons. They were stoned, they were cut asunder, they were tempted, they were put to death by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, in goat-skins, being in want, distressed, afflicted: of whom the world was not worthy; wandering in deserts, in mountains, and in dens, and in caves of the earth. And all these being approved by the testimony of faith, received not the promises; God providing some better thing for us, that they should not be perfected without us” (Heb. xi.)
According, then, to the inspired Apostle, not only all who were before Christ, and who saw the promises only by the testimony of faith, went through their appointed course, “looking unto the reward,” but Christ Himself also set the same example in His own person for His Church for all ages, to the intent that each Christian soul should in this mortal pilgrimage learn to accept at the hands of God the appointed burden, and bear it, looking for the reward, following the pattern of the Lord of all, and turning his eyes to Him “who, having joy set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth for ever at the right hand of God.” And that the Apostle himself fully understood it to be the wisdom and duty of the Christian in this mortal pilgrimage incessantly to set before his mind the example of his Master and the nature of the reward promised, is beyond all question plain from his words, and more plain than ever from his mode of life. “For I reckon,” he says, “that the sufferings of this present time, are not worthy to be compared to the glory to come that shall be revealed in us” (Rom. viii. 18). And again, “For that which is at present momentary and light in our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. iv. 17, 18). And at the close of his life, which had been spent “in labours more abundantly than they all,” in order to earn the reward for which he looked, the Apostle says, “I am even now ready to be sacrificed, and the time of my dissolution is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord the just Judge will render me in that day: and not only to me, but to them also that love His coming” (2 Tim. iv. 6).
Thus, to sum up what has been said, the example of the servants of God, who saw the promises by faith afar off, the words and example of the Lord Himself, who died upon the Cross; the words and example of St Paul, and the other apostles; to which may be added the examples and the doctrine of the saints and martyrs of the Church, all conspire to impress upon the mind of the Christian this deeply important practical truth, that the Christian life upon earth is a pilgrimage and a service, in which for the present God measures both the duration and the amount of burden that each one is required to bear, and in which for the future, as the just Judge, He will apportion His reward according to the measure of faithfulness and perseverance which He may find in His servant.
The concluding Mystery of the Rosary, the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin and the joy of all the saints, then renders the Christian the invaluable service of bidding him contemplate and fix his mind upon the glory and the joy that is set before him. It stirs up the spirit of the Christian warrior within him to fight the good fight of faith, by forcibly turning his gaze to the “Mount Sion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the company of many thousands of angels, and to the Church of the first-born, who are written in the heavens.” He has been called into the army of Christian warriors, that he may be found worthy to form one of this holy and blessed company. He has been marked in his forehead with the sign and seal of its King; he has commenced his pilgrimage and engaged in its service; but he finds that he cannot proceed in his course without fighting the good fight of faith. Surely, then, in the presence of the most glorious vision of the Coronation of the Queen, such an one cannot fail to say to himself: I am a soldier of Jesus Christ, and warfare is the life of a soldier. The city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, an eternal place among the company of the many thousands of angels who have rejoiced to behold Mary the Mother of God crowned as their Queen, is clearly a prize worth a soldier’s attempt to win, the unspeakable glory of the victory must be worth the fight to obtain it. Moreover, the joys of the glorious heavenly city cannot but be unspeakably great. “Eye hath not seen,” says the Scripture, “ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive of the good things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Cor. ii. 9). As a Christian I bear the name of One who, having joy set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth at the right hand of God. I will then strive to follow His example; I cannot do less. I will bear the burden that He is pleased to assign to me; and so having joy set before me, I will go forward on my way bearing indeed my burden, but nevertheless glorying and rejoicing in spirit, as remembering the words of the Holy Ghost speaking to me in the Psalm, and saying, “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. They went forth on their way and wept, scattering their seed. But returning they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves with them” (Ps. cxxv. 6).
As it is but natural to suppose, the joys of the glorious “Coronation of the Blessed Virgin” form so constant a theme of praise in the writings of the Fathers of the Church, that there could be no difficulty in making a large selection from their writings. But where the well is so deep, and where the utmost extent of selection here practicable would unavoidably present only a mutilated and inadequate picture of what the Fathers have written, we may be pardoned for being satisfied with but a single extract, which may serve as a sample of the kind of treasures with which the sacred writings of the Church abound.
“Among the chief festivals of the Saints, my beloved brethren,” writes St Ildephonsus of Toledo, “this day’s great and glorious solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, has dawned upon us, on which the ever Venerable and Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed to the courts of heaven, where, as we sing, “the King of kings, the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary, sits upon His starry throne,” where thousands of thousands of angels minister unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stand around Him; in the midst of whose praises and acclamations the glorious Mother of God was on this day exalted from the earth, carried up in triumph and exultation, received into heaven, and placed in Paradise. This, my brethren, is that sacred and venerable solemnity, which was foreknown indeed, and foreordained before the formation of the world, but only on this day accomplished. To us, indeed, dearest brethren, it is an annual solemnity specially celebrated upon this day, while to the angels and the citizens of the heavenly city it is continuous and perpetual. For the very reason, however, that to us in our present condition the festival cannot be perpetual, it ought to be celebrated with so much the greater solemnity above all other festivals of the saints, inasmuch as to the Mother of the Lord belongs the gift of a perpetual virginity, and other ineffable privileges. For if, according to the Apostle, Christ the Lord, the just Judge, gives rewards to every one according to his works, in like manner, as that which was born from Her has nothing with which it can be compared, and as the gift which she has received is one that is unspeakable, how shall He not give to this most sacred Virgin, His own Mother, a glory and reward that knows no equal, and that is incapable of being estimated or comprehended. I do not say a reward among other sacred virgins, but such a reward as she alone has deserved, above the whole and entire universe of the saints. For she came blessed and glorious to the palace of heaven, where Christ the Bridegroom of the Church came forth to meet her, and placed her in the bridal chamber on the right hand of the Majesty on high. For thither hath He assumed her, the first in dignity among His elect, where, according to the words of David, the Queen stands at the right hand of God, in a vesture of gold girt about with divers colours.
“Without doubt, therefore, my dearest brethren, the Blessed Virgin now sits raised in glory upon her throne in virtue of her unspeakable grace and dignity as Mother of the King. For Daniel testifies that thrones were set in heaven, and that ‘the Ancient of days sat’ (Dan. vii. 9), without ever saying that their numbers were filled up. From which, as also from the number of assessors that are to sit with Him when the Son of this most sacred Virgin shall sit on the throne of His Majesty, it clearly appears that the throne of this most Blessed Virgin, which was prepared before the foundation of the world, must on this day have been raised higher in glory, and have become an object of veneration to all the Angels; and not without just reason, for she herself had been made the throne and resting-place of God, descending into whose sacred womb, the Wisdom of God the Father had been made flesh and had dwelt among us” (St Ildephonsus, Sermon on the Assumption).
As the proper fruit of meditating upon the glories of the heavenly kingdom, as we are taught to do in the Fifth Glorious Mystery, where the Blessed Mary sits as Queen at the right hand of Jesus Christ, her Divine Son, in the midst of rejoicing saints and angels, will be to fill the mind with a longing desire to taste the joys of that blessed company, we may conclude our volume with the following appropriate spiritual counsel of Thomas à Kempis: “Son, when thou perceivest the longing for eternal blessedness to be poured over thee from above, and thou desirest to go forth from the tabernacle of the body that thou mayest contemplate my brightness without shadow of changing, enlarge thine heart, and receive this holy inspiration with all the eagerness of thy soul. Render most ample thanks to the heavenly goodness which deals with thee after so princely a manner, visits thee so mercifully, inflames thee so lovingly, lifts thee up so powerfully, lest thou shouldst fall to the earth by thine own weight. Think not that it is by thought or endeavour of thine that thou comest to receive these things, but they come to thee solely through favour of the heavenly grace and the goodness of God, in order that thou mayest make greater advances in virtue and in humility, and prepare thyself for future trials, and that thou shouldst study to cleave to Me with the whole affection of thy heart, and to serve Me with a fervent mind.
“I know thy desire, and I have heard thy frequent sighs. Already thou wouldst wish to be in the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. The house of eternity and the heavenly country full of joy delights thee, but the hour is not as yet come. The present time is of another sort, a time of war, of labour, and of trial. Thou wouldst fain be filled with the highest good, but thou canst not have this now. I am He. Wait for Me, saith the Lord, until the kingdom of God shall come” (Book iii. ch. xlix.)