Simple Thoughts on the Rosary: Glorious Mysteries: The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin
Higher still. All this excess of glory and happiness, this beauty and splendour, this delightful companionship with Angels and Saints, this reunion with those we love—all this is not the essential bliss of Heaven, but a mere accessory, the additional joy which comes to the Blessed from creatures. The essential happiness is that which the soul receives immediately from God in the Beatific Vision, that happy-making sight which banishes all pain and sorrow and infuses eternal joy. As children of God, one thing alone can content us when the mists of this world are swept away—the Face of our Father who is in Heaven. Even in this life, even before the Incarnation had revealed our Father to us as it has done, the cry of the human heart was for that Face. “I have sought Thy Face... Turn not away Thy Face from me” (Ps. 26). “Cast me not away from Thy Face” (Ps. 50). “Thou shalt fill me with joy with Thy countenance” (Ps. 15).
The babe in its mother’s arms looks up into her face and is content. Now and again she plays with it, hiding her face. But if the hiding lasts, if the veil does not quickly drop, there will be wailing cries.
O my Heavenly Father—Father, Mother, all in all to me, I the least of Thy children, I too long to see Thy Face. However my heart has been stained and spoilt, however far it has wandered from Thee, it is the heart of Thy child still. “Show me Thy Face” (Cant. 2). “When shall I appear before the Face of God?” (Ps. 41).
IV.—These that are clothed in white robes, who are they, and whence came they?—Apoc. vii. Who are these without spot before the throne of God?
Souls that awhile ago were struggling with temptation and with sin. That were full of imperfections. That had their strivings and their falls, their good and bad days, their disappointments, their discouragements. There were times when Heaven seemed so distant and shadowy as to be almost unreal. And the interests of time were pressing, and the world and the things of sense were all but overpowering in their claims.
But Faith kept us safe. We saw dimly, indeed; through a glass in a dark manner. But we did see. And what we saw we hoped for. The sight of our Home lured us on. We shook ourselves free from what was entangling us, and set our faces steadfastly to go to Jerusalem.
And here we are at last! Faith did not deceive us. It was all true that she showed. But was that true and real which so nearly ensnared us? Seen from this height, in the light of Truth, it looks so thin and vague and unattractive, that we can scarcely believe it could once have been a danger.
V.—What I do thou knowest not now but thou shalt know hereafter.—John xiii.
One of the joys awaiting us in Heaven is to hear from the lips of our Lord Himself, as we kneel at His feet, the secrets of His dealings with us in the past. “The judgments of the Lord are true, justified in themselves” (Ps. 18). What He does needs no justification. It must always be right, always the best for us. If we are loyal to Him this is as clear to us as the sun at noon. Yet, with all our trust, we look forward to the fulfilment of His promise: “What I do thou knowest not now but thou shalt know hereafter.” The day comes when He deigns to explain to us His mysterious ways with us in life. Why the cross was not lifted though we prayed so earnestly and so long. Why a grace that seemed necessary was refused us, and plans that concerned His glory went unblessed.
He reminds us how the sisters at Bethany sent to Him in their distress. “Lord, he whom Thou lovest is sick.” No petition, but a message, every word of which spoke of trust more powerful than any pleading. It went straight to His Heart. Yet He left them in their sorrow and desolation. And their brother died. Not even then did He go to comfort them. In loneliness and heaviness of heart, and not a little wonder at the Master’s ways, they followed their dead to the grave. And went back to the desolate home and began their days of mourning. Then He came to them. His disciples who knew His love for that little household had marvelled too at His delay. And still more at His words to them: “I am glad for your sakes that I was not there.”
Our Lord’s friends knew the tenderness of His Heart. And thus it was that when at last He came, both sisters as they fell at His feet told Him in the same words that had He been with them and seen their pain, their brother’s death simply could not have happened.
He owns to this Himself. “I am glad for your sakes that I was not there,” He had said to the Apostles. Glad because of the gain to their faith by the resurrection of Lazarus, and because of the exercise of faith, confidence, and patience on the part of Martha and Mary. But He speaks as if He could not have trusted His Heart in the sorrowing household: “I am glad for your sakes that I was not there.” Even when the hour of consolation was come, when in a few moments the brother they mourned would be restored to them, even then their tears drew forth His own. “Jesus, therefore, when He had seen her weeping, and the Jews weeping also, troubled Himself in spirit... And Jesus wept.”
“I am glad for your sakes.” So will He say to us in the hour when His hand shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. “O child, I am glad now of all the distress there has been in the past; of the hours of patient suffering, and waiting, and disappointment; of the pain in partings; of the broken-hearted sorrow beside the grave. I am glad that in view of this hour of recompense I did violence to My pity and My love, restraining both that your heart may rejoice now with exceeding great joy, that according to the multitude of sorrows in your heart My comforts may give joy to your soul” (Ps. 93).
VI.—“Requiescat in pace.”
“May they rest in peace,” is the prayer of Mother Church for us when life here is done. “May he rest in peace,” as she turns away from the deathbed that she has tended, and soothed, and sanctified up to the last; as she commits to the earth the body that is to be held in trust for the Resurrection. “May he rest in peace,” as she follows the soul on its journey to the Judgment seat and pleads for it there. “May they rest in peace,” as she gazes wistfully after her children from her altars, and in every hour of her office, remembering them long long, perchance, after their dearest on earth have forgotten them.
What is this peace that she bespeaks for us? For the body it is the well-earned repose after the burden and heat of the day through which it has toiled in the Master’s service. It is the consignment to earth of the grain that must die before rising again to its new and proper life.
And the soul—where is its rest? Where but in the Bosom of God whence it came. He must pillow it there or it will throb and ache with torturing pain, with the ceaseless craving of unsatisfied desire, for the term of its separation from Him, or for ever. “Thou hast made us for Thyself O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”
May the soul rest in peace upon the Bosom of God even here? Can it amid this scene of turmoil and unceasing change lie there in security, untossed, untroubled? Not with the freedom from fear and sorrow that awaits it hereafter, not with the fulness of joy that is to be its portion when the Father’s arms close over it for ever and shield it from the least passing breath of ill. Not, then, with “the abundance of peace” which is to come.
Yet even in this life it may truly rest in peace, for the God of peace is its portion, its refuge, its home even now. Even now we may cast our care on Him so unreservedly, trust Him so fully, abandon ourselves to Him so entirely, that the cares and disappointments, the bereavements, all the physical and mental trials of this changeful life will not disturb our rest. They may be surface troubles, or they may pierce to the quick and leave a life-long wound. None the less, the deepest depth of our soul where its vital and most secret energies are stored, may be at peace, for like Deicola who ever smiled we may say: “No one can take my God from me.”