Simple Thoughts on the Rosary: Glorious Mysteries: The Resurrection
See the Eleven gathered together at night in the Upper Chamber discussing the events of the day. The women’s story had not been believed, but now Peter has seen the Lord, and unbelief is giving way to trembling hope and joy. See Peter in the midst confirming his brethren according to our Lord’s injunction. See the door opening, and the two disciples from Emmaus coming in. They find a very different state of things from what they left in the morning. Before they can speak, the rest cry out: “The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.” Watch them listening to Peter, and then, as the Eleven crowd round, adding their own testimony, telling “what things were done in the way, and how they knew Him in the breaking of bread.”
Notice how the doors are shut for fear of the Jews. All noises without are hushed, for it is late. And still the disciples tell and hear unsatisfied the joyful news. Those who have seen our Lord repeat their tale again and again. Those who have not seen Him listen with beating hearts and wistful eyes. Oh that they, too, might look upon Him risen from the dead!
See! See! There in His wonted place—with radiant wounds in hands, and feet, and side—there with the smile they know so well—He stands. He looks with love upon them all. And hark! He speaks: ‘Peace be to you. It is I, fear not.”
To us, too, He comes at Benediction, when it is late. Dear evening visit of our Lord, how did our forefathers get on without it? How we should miss it now! Is it like His coming to the little flock in Jerusalem gathered together within closed doors for fear of their enemies? Or like His visits to the sick and the sad when He was on earth? Or does it recall John’s vision of “One like to the Son of Man in the midst of the golden candlesticks?” Or the eternal Benediction, where the Blessed with their harps and golden vials full of odours fall down before the Lamb and sing with a loud voice: “The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and benediction. To Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb benediction, and honour, and glory, and power for ever and ever. Amen” (Apoc. 5.)
Perhaps it is like all these. There is the stealing away at nightfall from those who believe not in the Divine Presence amongst us: the gathering round the empty place where He is wont to stand: the hush... and then the sudden Coming, and the burst of joy and triumph. “The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.” And so are we.
He stands “in the midst.” Of whom? Of His servants, little and great—the poor, the outcast, the heavy laden, the little children, as in the days of His life on earth. And now as then they bring to Him all manner of troubles, doubts, plans, difficulties, needs of every sort. Some come to Him for the souls confided to them; some for their own. Some to have their joy sanctified by His blessing; others to lay down their burden awhile at His feet. Some few there are who come to Him, not for His promised refreshment, but for Himself, to pour out their souls before Him in praise and thanksgiving, in sympathy, in reparation, in love.
“When it was late and the disciples were gathered together, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them: ‘Peace be to you.’” Peace is His word to each and to all. Peace, His peace, in the midst of the world’s rush and excitement and unrest; in the midst of its business, and its gaieties, its dangers and its cares Peace amid the storm of persecution, the heart-sinking at failure, the monotony of well-doing, and watching and waiting for better things.
Peace in the harder trials of life, the coldness of the nearest, the peril of the dearest.
Peace in the struggle with self-—sharp, daily, unrelenting. In the struggle with God Himself; in the weary search for Him who hides; in the separation from Him who seems to have forsaken.
Peace is His word to us all. Peace, like the rays of His monstrance, radiates from Him on every side. How could it be otherwise when He Himself is in our midst. “It is I, fear not. It is I Myself. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid (John 14). If the world hates you, know that it hath hated Me before you.... The servant is not greater than his Master (John 15). In the world you shall have distress, but have confidence, I have overcome the world.... You will indeed have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man shall take from you” (John 16).
We shall see Him “in Patria” when time shall be no more... and the mystery of God shall be finished (Apoc. 10). And I heard a great voice from the throne saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and He will dwell with them. And they shall be His people: and God Himself with them shall be their God” (Apoc. 21).
“Come up higher,” will be the sweet invitation to the eternal Benediction, where is “the voice of harpers harping on their harps (Apoc. 14): where the Temple is filled with smoke from the Majesty of God (Apoc. 15): where the great multitude which no man can number, of all nations and tribes, and peoples and tongues, stand before the throne in sight of the Lamb, and cry with a loud voice: “Salvation to our God who sitteth upon the throne and to the Lamb ... Amen. Benediction, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, honour, and power and strength to our God for ever and ever. Amen” (Apoc. 7).
Shall we think, then, amid that glory and that peace, of the days when we gathered round the little throne on earth, “the tabernacle of God with men,” to behold “the Mystery of God,” to wait for His coming in the midst of us, and to hear Him say: “Peace be to you”?
I am risen and am still with thee.—Ps. cxxxviii.
Broken by our unkindness, Heart of Christ, Truest of friends, Thou speedest back to us, as though ’twere Thine To make amends. To comfort and to gladden, all Thy task, Upbraiding not; All wrongs, all memories save those of love Past and forgot.
VII.—See My hands and feet, that it is I Myself; handle and see.—Luke xxiv.
When all was over on Friday afternoon, and the body of their Victim lay lifeless and cold in the grave, the priests, fearful of His assurance that He would rise from the dead the third day, “made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting guards.”
But “He that dwelleth in Heaven shall laugh at them: and the Lord shall deride them ”’ (Ps. 2).
Very early on the first day of the week, while it was yet dark, our Lord rose again. His sacred body, united once more to the Soul, rose glorious and immortal, every vestige of its humiliation gone. He rose in stillness and in solitude: only legions of adoring angels, and perhaps the holy souls from Limbo, to witness His Resurrection. His hour of triumph had come. The most glorious victory earth has ever seen was His, a victory that by proving His Divinity beyond the possibility of cavil, was to become the central point of the Church’s faith, so that the preaching of the Gospel, was to be called the preaching of the Resurrection. Yet He would have no human eye as witness, no stir in the tomb, nothing to give notice by the faintest sign of what had passed within.
How differently we should have arranged His triumph! There were a million and a half or two millions of His people in Jerusalem. He might, had he so willed, have roused them from slumber by a terrific earthquake, which, if it did not shake the city into ruins, would have hurried them panic-stricken out of their dwellings into the surrounding valleys. Then, in the sight of King Herod, and the Governor, and priests, and Pharisees, of the vast multitude out of every nation under Heaven, He might have risen in glory from the tomb.
His thoughts are not our thoughts. The meekness and humility which had marked His earthly life seemed to cling to Him still. It was not Himself but His Angel who so terrified the guards that they became as dead men. He went quietly hither and thither among His friends, attractive and loveable as of old, but with a new tenderness, almost playfulness of manner now that the burden which had lain on His Heart for three and thirty years was lifted from Him. We see Him coming, and hiding, and calling them by their name, as when He went to the Sepulchre in search of Magdalen. Revealing Himself unexpectedly in the inn at Emmaus, or in the Upper Chamber on Mount Sion; or using His Omnipotence to provide breakfast for the disciples on the seashore of Tiberias. We find Him walking with them, eating with them, giving Himself to be handled by them, making it His study to convince them that He was in very deed the Master they had loved and followed in the days gone by. The natural questioning of their hearts would be: “Is it in truth the Lord Himself? If it is He, is He changed towards us by our miserable falling away from Him? Is the same familiar intercourse to be allowed us as before, the same confidence, the same love?” “Jesus knew that they had a mind to ask Him” these vital questions, and He anticipates them. “Peace be to you. It is I, fear not. See that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see Me to have. And when He had said this He showed them His hands and His feet” (Luke 24).