Our Lady’s Assumption, By Daniel A. Lord, S. J. Part 3.

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

But what has all this to do with us of the immediate present?
Saints are often canonised by the voice of the people. Moved by the dear signs of their heroic virtue, the Christian world cries aloud for their canonisation. In ancient days they rushed to the Vatican, summoned forth the Holy Father, and cried: “Give us a saint.” And he would reply: “The voice of the people is the voice of God. You have a saint.”

To-day the persistent cries of the Christian world hastened the canonisation of the Little Flower of Jesus and the Cure d’Ars in much the same fashion. It was almost as if the Holy Father had yielded to the voice of the people demanding a saint.

Somewhat the same thing has occasionally occurred in the case of dogmas. The people, either because they saw their beloved Faith attacked, or perhaps because they were moved by a divine impulse to stress some particular article of Faith, have clamoured that a truth long believed be proclaimed as divinely revealed.

A CLAMOROUS WORLD

An instance of this seems to be taking place about us today. A united Catholic world, suddenly, and apparently spontaneously, begs the Holy Father to proclaim the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary into heaven as an article of faith. From every civilised country petitions signed by millions of names have been sent to the Pope, all begging that Mary be given this signal honour.

The beautiful feast, long observed, with its consoling doctrine, long believed, has rested for centuries in the heart of the Christian world. Catholics have been content to celebrate the day and lovingly cherish their belief. Now they beg that the age-old tradition become a binding dogma.

Certainly so widespread and important a demonstration on the part of the faithful cannot be without deep significance. The Holy Spirit has a way of arousing men’s hearts to a realisation of sharp perils and pressing needs.

Perhaps, as the eyes of the Catholic world are focused on the Assumption of Mary into heaven, the Holy Spirit is drawing men’s hearts from the insistent claims of time to the almost forgotten claims of eternity. Surely the earth has pressed in upon us with a beauty and charm, a luxury and fascination overpowering in their grip on our senses. Can it be that just at this moment our eyes are lifted to Mary spurning earth and entering heaven, so that, seeing her glory, watching her triumphant passage through death into eternal life, earth may lose much of its power to fascinate and bind us to itself?

Perhaps the Holy Spirit is using the dogma as a way of showing afresh the importance of pure women. Our modern literature has grown often terrifyingly evil. The virtue of women is astoundingly flouted from the screen, the stage, the magazines, the best-seller. Philosophies of loose living have taught young men and women to regard purity as a bit of a joke, and vice as the inevitable pastime of youth. Purity has been considered prudery, and wanton women have found a widespread and quite frightening popularity with the public.

Now, if ever, the world needs Mary. It needs her purity and her sinlessness. It needs to be reminded that for the innocent Mother of God was reserved the glory of the Assumption; that, because her body was so wonderfully pure, it broke the binding chains even of the grave. The vision of the pure Mary, lifted body and soul into heaven, should do much to bring into sharp relief the beauty of purity and the dignity of motherhood, and the importance to the world of women whose lives are moulded on that of the Mother of God.

THE WORLD WAITS

Whatever the reason for this sudden desire on the part of the Catholic world for a definition of the dogma of the Assumption, we may say that Christendom waits almost on tiptoe for the Holy Father to speak.

Perhaps he will not. But whether the petitions be granted or not, the sudden rebirth of interest in the feast and doctrine of the Assumption has given the modern world a new consciousness of the dignity and splendour of God’s Mother. Men have re-awakened to how much Christ prizes purity and virginity. They feel a new interest in the saintly woman who follows the flower-marked footsteps of Mary. Youth grows reverent before women who are like their Heavenly Mother.

ALMOST INEVITABLE

The Christian world; until the dawn of Protestant doubt and denial, felt that, whatever other traditions might need deep faith and the humble acceptance accorded to mysteries, here was one tradition that simply cried aloud for acceptance. The human heart found the Assumption not only beautiful, but inevitable.

The body of Mary was unique among all the bodies ever formed to house an immortal soul. It was predestined by God to be the first temple of the Incarnate Divinity. It was the first shrine of God made man.

More than that, it was the fountain from which the Holy Spirit drew the sacred materials with which He formed, by an astounding mystery and miracle, the body worn through life by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

Nothing in all human history has been so distinctive as this privilege accorded to Mary’s body.

THE PUREST BODY

Art and devotion have never doubted that Mary’s body was uniquely beautiful among all the daughters of Eve. “The living ark of the living God,” St. John Damascene calls her. Uniquely sacred, uniquely beautiful, uniquely honoured, from her flesh and blood were taken the flesh and blood of God made man. Within her was performed: that mystery of the Incarnation which is the central doctrine of Christianity.

All comparisons fail beside the beauty and sacredness of this. The Ark of the Covenant was regarded as sacred by the Jews, and was decorated by the most exquisite art of the period, because it held the book of God’s laws, the jars of manna, and, for a time, the tablets on which God had graven the Commandments.

When the ark was in danger of falling into pagan hands, the Jewish armies fought with a resistless courage and daring. When actually, because of the sins of the Jews, the ark fell into the hands of the Philistines, the Hebrew nation mourned in sackcloth and ashes, and gathered every ounce of their strength to rescue this precious shrine from the sacrilege that polluted it.

Yet the body of Mary held, not the dead elements and records of the Old Law, but the Divine Author and Source of the New.

Our Lady’s Assumption, By Daniel A. Lord, S. J. Part 2.

A SATISFIED EMPEROR

This is the beautiful tradition that St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, repeated for the Emperor Marcian as he sat with his fair wife, Pulcheria, among the venerable Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon.
The Emperor bowed his head in quick and approving assent. . That was precisely as it should have been. Why, it could not have been otherwise. He and his Empress looked at each other and smiled their agreement. They rose, and, as they passed through the midst of the Bishops, the last effort had been made, even to so much as consider finding the pure body of God’s Mother upon earth. Eyes sought her gladly and spontaneously in heaven. But the Christians knew that, even were they sure of the place of her tomb, they would find it empty.

AN ANCIENT TRADITION

The tradition of Mary’s Assumption into heaven is lost in the mists that surround the earliest days of the Church. We find great saints of the Eastern Church preaching on the subject at very early dates. St. Andres of Crete, St. John Damascene, and St. Modestus of Jerusalem talked eloquently of Mary’s Assumption in the seventh and eighth centuries. In the West, by which we mean the Europe of today, St. Gregory of Tours spoke of the Assumption as a universally accepted fact, and he lived during the years 539 to 594.
In the Church, as we very well know, the observance of a feast may often precede the wide discussion of a dogma or doctrine. The Apostles and their immediate successors said Mass from the very beginning. Fragments of the prayers they used have come down to us. But theologians discussed the Mass and even invented the name “Mass” at much later dates. In fact, discussions usually arise only when someone has the temerity to deny something that has long been believed or practised.
At first, men use the holy gifts of God gratefully. They accept His revelations and His truths as beautiful and true. They see no particular reason for discussing or cutting into fine argumentative pieces what is clearly beautiful and an intimate part of their life’s best devotion.

FROM THE BEGINNING

So we find the Christian world keeping the Feast of Mary’s Assumption far back in the days when Christians were more interested in loving God than in writing about Him, in showing devotion to Mary than in analysing the reasons why they did so.
Clear records show that in Palestine, from where St. Juvenal brought his beautiful tradition to the Emperor at the Council of Chalcedon, the Feast of the Assumption was observed with solemnity before the year 500. How long before that it was observed, no one knows. Records were carelessly kept in those days, and what records were written were even more easily lost through persecution and the pillage of barbarians.
We do know, however, that feasts did not easily and quickly come into existence. The faithful reluctantly accepted anything new and strange. So, if a feast was fully and widely celebrated by the year 500, we may be sure that its real origin goes back several centuries.
By the year 600 we know that the Feast of the Assumption was celebrated throughout what is now modern France and large parts of Germany. Interestingly, France accepted the feast from the ancient monks of Egypt; so, in all probability, those grand old Egyptian monks, who loved Mary with the buoyant enthusiasm one finds in children and saints, had kept the Feast of the Assumption through long centuries before.

WORLD-WIDE TILL PROTESTANTISM

In fact, every important form of Christianity, schismatic or orthodox, the extensive Greek Catholic Church, quite as much as the Roman Catholic, agreed in admitting the fitness and beauty and truth and antiquity of the belief in Mary’s Assumption by her Son into heaven.
Today, as centuries ago, Roman and Greek Catholics agree in this tradition.
It was left for the Protestants of. the sixteenth century, as their decidedly doubtful privilege, to throw aside the tradition and consign Mary’s body that had tabernacled Christ to the corruption of the grave.
That attitude was not, however, surprising. In fact, it was in part with the whole Protestant revolt. The early Protestant revolutionists, who attacked the Church with any type of weapon at hand, were quite as violent in their attacks upon Mary. The hostility manifested by the sects towards the woman who had loved Christ and served Christ best is something of which modern Protestantism is often deeply ashamed.
By an inconceivable state of mind, the early Protestants demanded that Christ be honoured by dishonouring His Mother.
They claimed that Christ could be raised to new heights by dragging down His Mother to new depths. Protestantism’s rejection of the Assumption was only part of its astonishing rejection of Mary as Mother and Queen. It almost demanded that Christ leave the body of His Mother to worms and the filth of the tomb. Strange, incredible denial of Christ’s grateful heart.

Our Lady’s Assumption, By Daniel A. Lord, S. J. Part 1.

THE year is 451 A.D. The place is the city of Chalcedon in Asia Minor. The occasion is the famous council, to which Christian history turns back respectfully.
All of that seems remote enough from our day and age. Yet it is linked, with that close unity which is Catholic, to the present moment and to a widespread movement that is capturing the attention of the Catholic world.

Into the assembly of the deliberating Fathers walked the Roman Emperor Marcian. His eyes are eager, and he makes of the assembly a surprising request.

“Find for me,” he begs, “the body of God’s Mother It is my imperial desire and determination to build for it a beautiful shrine. Surely this immaculate body is the world’s most precious relic and deserves for its monument a mighty basilica. If you will find me the immaculate body of Mary, I will have it sealed in the sacred security of a golden casket and placed under an altar of marble and precious stones. Find for me, I beg of you, reverend Fathers, the body that was once the shrine of the Incarnate Word of God.”

AN UNFULFILLED WISH

There was a childlike simplicity about the request. The assembled Fathers hesitated. They knew where the bodies of Peter and Paul rested in the honoured security of the Vatican. The Cross of Christ, recovered by St. Helena, mother of Constantine, was once more safe in the keeping of the Church. The bones of the martyrs and the virgins slain during the first days of Christianity had been placed in beautiful reliquaries or under the altars of a thousand churches. But no city or cathedral or shrine or reliquary had ever so much as claimed to possess the body of the Mother of God. That was a relic which the Church had never been permitted to possess.

Then arises in the midst of the assembly St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem. The story that he tells is the simple narrative of what happened after the death of Mary, a story that was handed down in the memory of the Christians of Jerusalem. The assembled Fathers know it well. But we can imagine the Emperor leaning forward and listening with strained and delighted interest.

AN ANCIENT NARRATIVE

The day had come, said St. Juvenal, in substance, when the common doom of all Adam’s children was to fall upon the Mother of God. It had fallen upon her Son; now it was to seek out His Mother. Mary lay upon her bed waiting for death.

Time had touched her with a light hand, for it is sin, not time, that ages and destroys. She was beautiful in her maturity; lovely even in the evening of life.

Moved by a common impulse that was the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles, scattered to the far corners of the earth in their apostolate, returned to the death-bed of their Queen. They had clung to her in the terrifying days that followed the death of Christ. . They had delayed fearfully about her in the interval that followed the departure of her Son in the Ascension. They were with her in the vitalising Pentecost when the Holy Ghost came upon them and lifted their timorous spirits to heights of apostolic heroism.

From her dwelling, the Cenacle, they had gone out to their world-wide mission, leaving her in the care of John, her adopted son. But she had always been their Mother and Queen, their strength in sorrow, their inspiration in their apostolate, the bond of their unity with one another and with Christ, their Master and her Son.

MARY DIES

Now, with death near, they re-assembled about her bed, sons reunited about their dying Mother, messengers of Christ hurrying back to be with Christ’s Mother in the last few hours before her soul found its blessed release and escaped joyously into the presence of her Son. What messages they must have entrusted to her who was so soon to see their beloved Master!
Quietly and without agony she died. There were no lamentations about her death-bed. Though the hearts of the Apostles were torn with grief, as they saw her eyes close in a calm, unbroken sleep, and her merciful hands fold in a final gesture of prayer upon her breast, and, though they realised with a sharp pang that they would never again hear her repeat the story of Christ’s thirty hidden years nor receive her wise counsel and encouragement in their difficult work of world conquest, they could not long be sad.

Without Christ, the world, they knew, had been for Mary an empty place. Even the Eucharistic Presence of her Son was no adequate substitute for His visible presence. She had been, since the Ascension, patiently waiting for her invitation to follow Him into His kingdom, as she had always patiently waited upon all His wishes. And though she had mothered His Apostles and embraced in a Mother’s tenderness all the world for which He had died, she was waiting eagerly and expectantly for death.

REVERENT BURIAL

Now it came, not as the feared conqueror, but as the blessed liberator, and the Apostles were glad for her sake, even though their own loss was bitterly heavy. She died, and, dying, smiled into the eyes of her Son, come to take her safely through the gates of death into His living presence.

Among the Eastern peoples burial follows quickly upon death. So the Apostles, with loving, reverent, if reluctant hands, carried the body of Mary, fair even in death, to the tomb. Her lips still smiled with the final joy of anticipation that flooded her whole being as her soul left her body. Her hands were still clasped in her almost uninterrupted gesture of prayer.
They summoned her friends and relatives, drew the burial garments over her, and mourned and rejoiced. As evening came on, they carried her body to the cool, dark tomb, and, closing the grave, returned to her empty dwelling.

Undoubtedly, during that lovely burial, they remembered, abashed and ashamed, another burial in which they had not participated. She had often told them the details of that tragic procession from Calvary to the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and shame had filled their hearts as they thought of the cowardice that had held them captive in dark corners and cellars, while the crucified Christ was borne to His borrowed grave by the hands of strangers.
Perhaps they felt that this reverent burial of His Mother was some slight atonement to Christ for their absence from His burial on Good Friday.

THOMAS IS AGAIN ABSENT

Characteristically, St. Thomas arrived a day late. Poor Thomas had a way of being absent when important things took place. Yet, hard as it was on him, his way of arriving after an event had happened was a blessed thing for posterity. Because he missed the first glad reunion of the Apostles with the risen Christ, he gave to our Faith one of its firmest arguments. First, he doubted that Christ had risen; then he laid down his own conditions on which he would accept the fact; and, finally, he carried out those conditions when his searching fingers touched the wounds of Christ, and his hand was laid in convincing proof upon the Saviour’s side. To Thomas we can be grateful for a kind of scientific sceptic’s proof of the Resurrection.
Again, he was late when Mary died. But, had he been present at the death and burial of Mary, we might never have known that Mary was assumed from the grave.

Deeply regretting that he had not seen Mary in the calm peace of death, he asked the other Apostles to return with him to the tomb and roll back the stone so that he could, for the last time on earth, see the face that was the maternal counterpart of the face of the Master he had followed in life and was tirelessly preaching in unresponsive India.

AN EMPTY TOMB

The Apostles, who were more than willing to see that sweet face again, led Thomas to the tomb. They rolled back the stone, entered the cool, dark doorway, and then stopped motionless. Perhaps they were really not surprised. Certainly they had no fear that her body was stolen. They must at once have recognised the singular appropriateness of the miracle that copied for the Mother the resurrection of her Son.

For the tomb was empty. Where her body had tested, full-blown flowers were blooming. Through the tomb blew not the slightest breath of death’s corruption. Instead, it was filled with the perfume of flowers, mingled with scents not of earth.

But the body of Mary was gone.

PERFECTLY CLEAN

The Apostles needed no one to explain the miracle. The risen Christ had clearly lifted His Mother from the earth. At His command her soul had rejoined her body, and she was body and soul with her victorious Son in His eternal kingdom.

If the victory of death over the body of Christ was short, its victory over the body that had borne the body of Christ could not be of long duration. Mary had been assumed from earth to heaven.

They knelt, these Apostles, at the empty tomb. They lifted their eyes towards the heavens, which now contained Mother and Son, reunited in the completeness of their personalities. And, when they rose again to their feet, it was to return rejoicing to the Cenacle, happy in the honour that had been paid to Mary, glad that her body was a relic too pure to be housed even in the loftiest shrine of earth.

From that moment on, the Christian world never sought for the body of Mary. Christians knew that it was reunited with her immaculate soul, and that both were with God.

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 50.

DEATH OF MARY. PART 3.

They returned into Israel, after an absence of several years. Mary retired to Mount Sion, at a short distance from the ruined and deserted palace of the ancient princes of her race, and into the house which had been sanctified by the descent of the Holy Ghost. St. John on his part went in search of St. James, who was related to the Blessed Virgin, and Bishop of Jerusalem, to inform him, as well as the faithful who composed his already numerous Church, that the Mother of Jesus was come among them to die.

The day and the hour were come : the saints of Jerusalem beheld again the daughter of David, still poor, still humble, still beautiful; for one would have said that this admirable and holy creature escaped the destructive agency of time, and that, predestined from her birth to a complete and glorious immortality, nothing in her was to decay. 1 Serious, but not ill, she received the apostles and disciples, seated on a small bed of poor appearance, suitable to her costume as a woman of the common sort of people, which she had never discontinued. There was something so solemn and affecting in her air, full of dignity and grandeur, that the whole assembly melted into tears. Mary alone remained calm in that ample and lofty chamber, where a crowd of old disciples and new Christians flocked in, alike eager to hear her and contemplate her.

The night had come on, and lamps with many branches seemed to cast, with their white light, something mysterious and solemn upon this sad and silent assembly. The apostles, deeply moved, stood round about the funeral couch. St. Peter, who had so loved the Son of God during his life, contemplated the Virgin with a feeling of sorrow, and his speaking look seemed to say to the Bishop of Jerusalem, " How much she is like Jesus Christ 1" Indeed the likeness was striking ; 2 and the stooping posture of Mary, which brought to mind that of our Saviour during the Last Supper, completed it. St. James, who had received from the Jews themselves the surname of " Just," and who knew how to control his emotions, suppressed his tears; the prince of the apostles, a man of openness and first impulse, was deeply affected, and showed it ; St. John had hid his head in one of the folds of his Grecian mantle, but his sobs betrayed him. There was not in the whole assembly a heart which was not broken, or an eye which was not moist. Mary, sharing in the general emotion, and forgetting the splendours which awaited her on high, in order to wipe away the tears which were shed on earth, began to speak, with a view to strengthen the faith of her children, to revive their sacred hopes, and inflame their charity; she spoke to them, with unrivalled eloquence, those strong and sublime things which we listen to breathless, which exalt man above himself, and enable him to undertake everything. Her speech, so sweet that the Scripture has poetically compared it to a honeycomb, became gradually powerful; the daughter of David and Solomon, the inspired prophetess who had pronounced, without premeditation, the triumphant hymn of the " Magnificat," rose to consideration so sublime, that every one forgot, in his delight, that death was at the end of this song of the swan. But the fatal hour drew near. Mary stretched out her protecting hands over the poor orphans whom she was about to leave, and raising up her fine countenance to the stars which shone outside with serene majesty, she beheld the heavens opened and the Son of Man stretching out his arms to her from the bosom of a bright cloud. 3 At this prospect, a rosy tint diffused itself over her countenance, her eyes expressed all that maternal love mingled with divine joy carried to its completion, and* adoration arrived at the state of ecstasy can express, and her soul, leaving without the least effort her fair and virginal mortal envelope, softly sunk into the bosom of God. 4

Mary was no more,—but her face, which had taken the expression of a tranquil sleep, was so sweet to behold, that one would have said that death hesitated to plant his banner on that trophy which he was to hold but for one day.

The lamp of the dead was lighted ; all the windows were opened, and the summer breezes made their way into the apartment with the pale rays of the stars. It is said that a miraculous light filled the mortuary chamber at the moment when Mary had just drawn her last breath ; it was perhaps the glory of God surrounding the spotless soul of the predestined Virgin. When the death of Mary was no longer doubtful, nothing was heard at first but weeping and deep groaning; then, funereal canticles arose amid the silence of night; the angels accompanied them on their golden harps, 5 and the echoes of the mouldering palace of David sorrowfully repeated them to the tombs of the kings of Juda.

The next day, the faithful brought, with holy profusion, the most precious perfumes and the finest stuffs for the burial of the Queen of Virgins. She was embalmed, according to the custom of her people, but her blessed remains exhaled an odour sweeter than the perfumed bandages in which they enveloped her. The funeral preparations being finished, they placed the Mother of God upon a portable litter full of aromatic ingredients: 6 they covered her with a sumptuous veil, and the apostles bore her upon their shoulders into the valley of Josaphat. 7 The Christians of Jerusalem, carrying lighted torches, and singing hymns and psalms, followed the funeral of Mary with sad and downcast looks.

Arrived at the place of sepulture, the mournful procession stopped. By the care of the holy women of Jerusalem, the tomb was deprived of its unpleasant aspect, and the sepulchral cave appeared only like a cradle of flowers. 8 There the apostles gently laid Mary, and as they laid her down, they wept. Of all the panegyrics pronounced on this circumstance, that of Hierothus was the most remarkable. St. Dionysius the Areopagite, who describes this scene as an eye-witness, relates that in praising the Virgin, the orator was almost out of himself. 9

For three days the apostles and the faithful watched and prayed near the tomb, where sacred concerts of angels seemed to enchant the last sleep of Mary . 10

An apostle, returned from a far distant country, and who had not been present at the death of the Virgin, arrived in the meantime : it was Thomas, he who had put his hand to the wounds of his Master risen from the dead. He hastened to take a last look, and to water with his tears the cold remains of the privileged woman who had borne in her chaste * womb the sovereign Master of nature. Overcome by his entreaties and his tears, the apostles removed that piece of stone which closed the entrance of the sepulchre ; but they found nothing but the flowers, scarcely faded, upon which the corpse of Mary had rested, and her white winding-sheet of fine linen from Egypt, which diffused a celestial odour. The most pure body of the immaculate Virgin was not the destined prey of the worms of the coffin: during her life, earth and heaven equally had part in that admirable creature; after her death, heaven had taken all, and glorified all. 11

1 St. Denis, an eye-witness of the death of the Blessed Virgin, affirms that at that advanced period of her life she was still wonderfully beautiful.

2 Jesus Christ stooped a little, and this made him appear something shorter; his countenance was very much like that of his mother, particularly in the lower part of it.—(Nic, Hist. Eccl., tip. 125.)

3 St. John Damascene.

4 Some of the ancient fathers, and among others St. Epiphanins, seem to doubt whether the Mother of God really died, or whether she has remained immortal, having been taken up body and soul into heaven; but the sentiment of the Church is that she really died according to the condition of the body, and the Church plainly declares this in the prayer of the mass on the day of the Assumption. —The Blessed Virgin died in the night before the 15th of August. The year of her death is very uncertain. Eusebius fixes it in the year 48 of our era; thus, according to him, Mary would have.lived sixty-eight years; but Nicephorus (lib. xi. c. 21) formally says that she ended her days in the year 5 of the reign of Claudius, that is, in the year 798 of Rome, or 45 of the common era. Then, supposing that the Blessed Virgin was sixteen years old when our Saviour came into the world, she would have lived sixty-one years. Hippolytus of Thebes assures us in his chronicle that the Blessed Virgin gave birth to our Saviour at the age of sixteen, and died eleven years after Jesus Christ. According to the authors of the Art de verifier les Dates, the Virgin died at the age of sixty-six.

5 " All the heavenly host," says St. Jerom, " came to meet the Mother of God with praises and canticles, and surrounded her with a light of intense brilliancy, and conducted her to the throne. ' Militiam ccelorum, cum suis agminibus, festive obviam venisse Genitrici Dei cum laudibus et canticis, eamque ingenti lumine circumfulsisse et usque ad tronum perdusdsse.' "

6 The coffins among the Jews in the time of Mary, were a sort of litter, made so that the body could be easily carried; this litter was filled with aromatical herbs. Josephus, describing the interment of Herod the Great, says that his litter was ornamented with precious stones, that his body reposed upon purple, that he had the diadem on his head, and that all his household followed his litter.

7 Metaphrastes affirms that the apostles bore the Virgin to the tomb on their shoulders.

8 Greg. Tut., lib. i. de Gl., c. 4.

9 Books of the Divine Names, c iii. These books of St. Dionysius, the Areopagite, have been rejected by Protestants; but they are no less authorised by an infinity of testimonies of the most ancient Fathers and Doctors of the Church, by the third ecumenical council of Constantinople, and also by others.

10 Juvenal, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who lived in the fifth century, writing to the Emperor Marcian and the Empress Pulcheria, says that the apostles, relieving one another, spent the day and night with the faithful at the tomb, mingling their canticles with those of the angels, who, for three days, ceased not to make the most heavenly harmony heard by them.

11 A very judicious remark of Godescard comes in support of the Assumption: it is that "neither the Latins, nor even the Greeks, so greedy after novelties, and so easily persuaded in the matter of relics, histories, and legends—no people, in a word, no city, no church, has ever boasted of possessing the mortal remains of the Blessed Virgin, nor any portion of her body. Thus, without prescribing the belief of the corporal assumption of Mary into heaven, the church sufficiently gives us to understand the opinion to which she inclines."—(Godescard, t xiv. p. 449.)

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 49.

DEATH OF MARY. PART 2.

Nothing has come down to us of the abode of Mary at Ephesus; bat this void is easily explained by the incessant occupations of that period. After the resurrection of our Saviour, the apostles, occupied exclusively with the propagation of the faith, considered as secondary matter all that was not directly and prominently connected with that absorbing subject. Full of their high mission, entirely devoted to the salvation of souls, they so completely forgot themselves as to have hardly left us a small number of incomplete documents on the evangelical labours which changed the face of the globe; so that their history is more like some epitaph, sublime, but almost effaced, which has neither beginning nor end. That the Mother of Jesus shared the lot of the apostles is readily conceived; the latter years of her life were spent far away from Jerusalem, in a foreign country, where her abode was not marked by any striking fact, offering only a blank surface, which has left no lasting impression on the fugitive memory of men. Nevertheless, the flourishing state of the Church of Ephesus, its tender devotion to Mary, and the praises which St. Paul gives to its piety, sufficiently indicate the fruitful care of the Virgin, and the divine benedictions which followed her wherever she was. The Rose of Jesse left some little of its perfume in the air, and this vestige, slight as it was, is a precious revelation of its passage.

The coasts of Asia Minor, studded with opulent cities, rich in wonderful vegetation, and bathed by a sea ploughed in every sense by a multitude of vessels, would have appeared to ordinary exiles a splendid compensation for the lofty and barren mountains of Palestine. It is doubtful if the Virgin of Nazareth judged thus: the footsteps of the Man-God had not sanctified this enchanted ground, and the tombs of her forefathers were not there! . . . . How often, seated beneath a plane tree, on the shore of that beautiful Icarian Sea, the waves of which expire at the feet of myrtles upon a narrow belt of sand, did Mary and Magdalen call up recollections of their native country, as they followed with their eyes some Greek galley whose prow was turned towards Syria! The spotless snows of Libanus, the blue tops of Carmel, the waters of the Lake of Tiberias, then revived in their conversations; the sites of the absent country, embellished by distance, passed by turns before them, and seemed to them a thousand times preferable to that soft and smiling Ionia, which was in fact to the land of Jehovah what the lyre of Anacreon is to the harp of David.

It was during her abode at Ephesus, that the Virgin lost the faithful companion who, in imitation of Ruth, had left her country and her people to follow her beyond the seas: Magdalen died, and Mary wept for her, as Jesus had wept for Lazarus. 1

Of all her ties of affection and relationship, there remained to the Virgin none but St. John, the good and amiable disciple to whom her dying Son had bequeathed her; she' followed him, as it is believed, in his journeys ; and it was, no doubt, in his conversations with the Queen of prophets that St. John completed the wonderful knowledge which he displays in his gospel. Assisted by the lights of Her whom the Fathers have compared to the golden candlestick with seven branches, the young fisherman of Bethsaida penetrated farther than any one into the incomprehensible mystery of the uncreated essence of the Word, and his thought soared up with a flight so bold into the mystic heights of heaven, that in comparison with him the other evangelists seem only to graze the earth. 2

Meanwhile the sowers of Christ had scattered the good seed of the sacred word over all points of the Roman world ; the gospel harvest was green, and the workmen of the Householder laboured earnestly in the holy field. Mary judged that her mission upon earth was accomplished, and that the Church could henceforth support itself by its own strength. Then, like a wearied labourer in the harvest, who seeks shade and repose in the middle of the day, she began to sigh for the fair shade of the tree of life, which grows near the throne of the Lord, and for the living and sanctifying streams which water it. 3 He who sounds the depths of the soul met this desire in the heart of his Mother, and the angel who stands at his right Hand came to announce to the future Queen of Heaven that her Son had graciously heard her. 4

At this divine revelation, which was accompanied, according to Nicephorus, with that of the day and hour of her decease, the daughter of Abraham felt the love of her absent country powerfully revive in her heart; she wished to behold again the lofty mountains of Judea,—where the recollections of redemption were still lively,—and to die in sight of Calvary, where Jesus had died. St. John, to whom her slightest desires had ever been commands, immediately prepared to depart and return to Palestine.

The Hebrew travellers probably embarked at Miletus, the famous port of which was the resort of the galleys of Europe and Asia, which navigated those seas. During their voyage on the Grecian seas, the Virgin and the Evangelist recognised as they passed, the island of Chios, the people of which, who long possessed the empire of the sea, were the first to introduce the odious custom of purchasing slaves, a custom which the gospel was gradually to abolish ; then Lesbos, the country of the lyric poets, where the hymn to the Virgin most pure was to succeed the burning odes of Sappho, and the more manly songs of Alceus. On seeing the top of the temple of Esculapius rounding in the clouds, which attracted an immense concourse of strangers to the island of Cos, the Mother of the Saviour of men was reminded of her divine Son, who, during his sojourning upon earth, had employed his divine power in curing the sick on the spot, and raising the dead to life. 5 Delos, the cradle of Apollo, Rhodes, the birthplace of Jupiter, arose in turn from the midst of the waters, with their verdant mountains and their antique temples, quite peopled with gods, soon to be banished to the infernal regions by the God crucified on Golgotha. At some distance from Cyprus, a black peak was distinguishable in the clouds, traced upon the velvet blue of heaven; it was the mountain where the prophet Elias had erected, in ancient days, an altar to the future Mother of our Saviour, and where his disciples were on the point of placing themselves under her helping protection. The next day, the galley entered with oars a port of Syria, perhaps Sidon, which had frequent commercial intercourse with Palestine, as the sacred books inform us.

1 We ready in some Greek authors of the seventh and following centuries, that after the ascension of Jesus Christ, St. Mary Magdalen accompanied the Virgin and St. John to Ephesus; that she died in that city, and was buried there. This also is the opinion of Modestus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who nourished in 920; of St. Gregory of Tours and St. Guillebaud. This last, in the account of his journey to Jerusalem, says that he saw at Ephesus the tomb of St. Magdalen. The Emperor Leo, the philosopher, had the saint's relics translated from Ephesus to Constantinople, and deposited them in the Church of St. Lazarus, about the year b99. Another tradition supported by esteemed men of learning, would have it that St. Mary Magdalen ended her days in Provence; we have adopted the contrary opinion, because it appeared to us the more probable, without, however, deciding the question.

2 The Abbot Rupert (in Cant.) assures us that the Blessed Virgin supplied, by the light she possessed, what the Holy Spirit, who was given by measure to the disciples, had not been pleased to reveal to them; and the holy Fathers all agree that it was from the Blessed Virgin that St. Luke received divers marvellous and particular circumstances of the infancy of Jesus Christ.

3 Apocal., c. xxii. v. 1, 2.

4 Tradition relates that the Blessed Virgin received the announcement of her approaching death by the ministry of an angel, who informed her of the day and hour.—(Descout, p. 235; F. Croiset, t. xviii. p. 158.)

5 The followers of Mahomet have preserved the memory of the miracles of Jesus Christ. They maintain that the breath of our Lord, which they call " bad Messih " (the breath of the Messias), not only raised the dead, but could even give life to inanimate things.— (D'Herb., Bibl. Or., 1. 1 p. 365.)

The History Of The Blessed Virgin, Translated From The French By The Very Rev. F. C. Husenbeth, D.D., V.G. Part 48.

DEATH OF MARY. PART 1

Tranquillity began to return, and the signs of the wrath of heaven had ceased to alarm the Jews, who .had just shed the blood of our Saviour. Like all wild animals, the executioners of Christ had for a moment lost their savage instincts in the hour of peril. Terrified at first at what they had done, they had feared that the tottering rocks of Calvary would crush them in their fall, and that the earth would make them go down alive into the dark depths of sheol ; but this remorse disappeared with their terrors, and they gradually returned to their spiteful and malicious nature, as they saw the heavens become again serene.

Unable to deny the prodigies which an immense number of people had seen with their eyes, and which were attested by the rent sides of the mountains, the tombs scarcely covered over again, and the veil of the temple in tatters, they attributed them to magic, and maintained that this Jesus, so powerful in word and work, was only a son of Belial, who had fascinated the people, and commanded the elements by means of the ineffable name of the God of Israel, which he had stolen by surprise from the Holy of Holies. 1 And the people suffered themselves to be led away by this ridiculous falsehood which their leaders cast before them; for there is no calumnious absurdity which does not find credulous ears to welcome it, and nimble tongues to spread it abroad. Meantime a vigilant guard, chosen from the satellites of the high priest, watched in arms around the tomb; for Jesus had announced that he would rise again on the third day, and the princes of the synagogue pretended to fear that his disciples would take him away during the night.

The third day began to appear, and the east was scarcely tinged with colour, when several women from Galilee, bringing perfumes and aromatic plants, to embalm Jesus after the manner of the kings of Juda, 2 appeared upon the mountain of punishment, pensively making their way towards the garden where the tomb of Christ was. According to tradition, Mary was with these holy women. 3 Her dejected countenance resembled a marble laid prostrate by the stormy wind of adversity; but her look did not express merely sorrow—it depicted expectation. The deicidal city was slumbering, enveloped in the transparent vapours of the morning; the flowers had half opened then-cups laden with dew, the birds were singing in the humid branches of the wild fig-trees, and one would have said that the sun scattered rubies over the blue vault of the firmament ; nature seemed to have put on again, with unusual joy, her brilliant robe of light, and that scenery so grand, and yet so dark and sad, which surrounded Jerusalem, assumed a sweet and cheerful expression which it had never had till then, and which seemed to announce a glorious mystery which it would keep secret.

On a sudden, in the midst of this smiling scene, a shock is felt; the stone which closes the sepulchre rolls over as if moved by some mighty arm; the guards fall down half dead on their faces on the ground ; and the women, who did not desert Jesus upon the cross, turn pale themselves, and fall back, fearful of seeing those frightful prodigies renewed, which accompanied the death of the Son of Man.

But an angel, whose garments equalled in whiteness the mountain snow, and whose gracious countenance shone like lightning, seats himself upon the stone of the sepulchre, and encourages the servants of Jesus Christ. " Fear not you," says a sweet voice, " for I know that ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified; he is not here, for he is risen as he said. Go and see the place were the Lord was laid." While the pious Galilean women entered with fear into the tomb, and were astonished at the sight of the winding-sheet and bands perfumed with myrrh, which were left at the entrance, the Virgin, whose face shone with accumulated joy, was leaning against an aged olive-tree at some distance. A young man, dressed in the ordinary costume of the people, was conversing with her in a low voice. This young man was the " first born from among the dead," the glorious conqueror of hell, Jesus Christ. 4 No one ever knew what passed at this solemn interview; but we may believe that Mary, whose valiant soul had undergone the greatest possible paroxysm of grief, experienced at that time a degree of joy which we could not feel without dying.

Our Lord, during the forty days which followed his resurrection, frequently appeared to the apostles, and conversed with them of the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the regeneration which would be wrought in men by baptism. Pious authors have supposed that the Virgin was the most favoured in these consoling apparitions, and that in them she experienced a foretaste of the happiness of the elect. The bitter waters of her affliction were changed into fountains of grace, and our Saviour " fed her with the hidden manna which he reserves for those who keep patience according to his word."

At length the hour arrived when the divine decrees recalled Christ to heaven; his mission of redemption was fulfilled, and the apostles, whom his resurrection had folly convinced of his divinity, had received from him the necessary instructions for converting the nations to his admirable gospel.

In the middle of the fortieth day, he went out of Jerusalem with them, and proceeded towards the heights of Bethania. This direction was not taken accidentally: there was that mountain crowned with olive-trees, where our Saviour, withdrawing from the crowd, had often prayed to his father at the hour when the silent moon shone with its opal light upon the leaden waters of the Dead Sea, the green valley of the Jordan, and the giant palm-trees of the plain of Jericho,—distant sites, which seemed to display themselves at her feet. There also was that celebrated garden where Jesus had painfully experienced the first attacks of agony. It was just that his glory should commence in the same places where his generous sufferings had begun, and that those fields, those woods, those shady solitudes, which had so often been witnesses of his meditations and his prayers, should receive the impress of the last steps he took before he reascended to heaven.

Arrived at the summit of that high mountain, whence he could discern a great part of Judea, and salute with a farewell sign the spots which he had made celebrated by his miracles and his death, our Savour stopped in an open space at a short distance from a wood of olive-trees, which spread out their pale foliage to the burning noonday sun. There, after lifting up his hands, still pierced by the nails of the cross, to his heavenly Father, as if to recommend to him his infant Church, he lowered them upon his mother and his disciples, as Jacob had done to the sons of Joseph; then he arose by his own power, and ascended slowly to heaven. This last act of our Saviour put a worthy seal upon his divine mission. During his life, " he went about doing good ;" upon Calvary he prayed for his executioners, and he ascended into heaven blessing the humble friends whom he was leaving behind him upon earth. While he had his hands still stretched out over his prostrate disciples, they saw him enter a white cloud, which took him out of their sight.

The Ascension of our Lord had not that dark and terrifying character which chilled the people with fear in the days of old. The law of Moses had been [proclaimed with the sound of trumpets, the noise of thunder, and ominous flashes of lightning; Elias had been carried up to heaven in a fiery chariot; but the Saviour of the world was gently borne upon a light cloud, with that serene and calm majesty which becomes the genius of the gospel and the touching character of its Author.

The angels, those benevolent spirits who rejoice in the happiness of men, figured also in that scene which unravelled the grand drama of Redemption. Their divine canticles had announced to the shepherds the birth of the kingly Messias ; their voice had proclaimed his resurrection from the dead ; it was fitting that their words should come to confirm his glorious ascension.

As the disciples were steadfastly looking at Jesus ascending into heaven, two men, clothed in white, suddenly appeared, and said to them, " Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven ? This Jesus, who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come as you have seen him going into heaven."

The apostles and disciples cast down their eyes, dazzled at the voice of the angels; but did the Virgin cast down hers ? Was it denied to her to see her divine Son majestically take his place at the right hand of Jehovah in the inaccessible light of the saints ? Was she really less favoured than St. Stephen and the beloved disciple ? That is hardly to be presumed. She who had been morally crucified with Jesus upon Calvary deserved to be glorified with him; it was her right: she had dearly paid for it! Yes, Mary was entitled to look with her mortal eyes into that peaceful and blessed region, the entrance of which Jesus had just opened for us by his blood, and where he himself wipes away the tears of the just; 5 then the pearl gates of the heavenly Jerusalem 6 slowly closed upon the victorious God, and the Virgin, separated for a short time from Him whom she loved, found herself alone upon the earth, like a climbing plant uprooted.

Ten days afterwards, we find her again in prayer in the upper room, where she received the Holy Ghost with the apostles.

Mary was the pillar of light which guided the first steps of the infant Church. To her the apostles attributed the numerous ears of corn which they plucked from the rebellious field of the synagogue, to lay them up in the granaries of the Householder. She accepted this tribute in the name of her Son with graceful humility, and she was seen constantly surrounded by the poor, the afflicted, and sinners; for she always loved with a love of predilection those to whom she could do good. The evangelists came to her to seek light; the apostles, unction, courage, constancy; and the afflicted, spiritual consolations ; all left her with benedictions : the Sun of Justice had set on the blood-stained horizon of Golgotha; but the Star of the Sea still reflected its softest rays on the renovated world, and poured benign influence upon the cradle of Christianity.

The Virgin remained at Jerusalem till the terrible persecution, which broke out against the Christians in the year 44 of our Lord, obliged her to depart from it with the apostles. Her adopted son then took her to Ephesus, whither Magdalen would follow her.

1 See Basn., liv. vi. pp. 27 and 28.

2 It is clear that they were going to embalm Jesus in a new way; Nicodemus had already wrapped it up in bandages of myrrh.

3 This is the only passage of the author on which the Translator feels called upon to insert a note. It is contrary to all probability, as well as to the general opinion of spiritual writers, to suppose that the Blessed Mother, who so well knew the approaching resurrection of her divine Son, would have accompanied, and so far encouraged, those who came to embalm him without hope.

4 St. Ambrose, who lived in the fourth century, says that the Virgin was the first who had the happiness to see Jesus risen; and the poet Sedulius, who flourished shortly after St. Ambrose, records this tradition in his verses. They both speak of it as of generally received belief among Christians. The Arab historians have preserved this tradition: Ismae, the son of Ali, relates that Jesus descended from heaven to console Mary his mother, who wept for him. An altar has been erected on the spot where this affecting interview took place.

5 Apocal., cap. xxi. v. 4.

6 Ibid. v.2l.

Behold Your Mother By Matthew Russell S.J. Part 9. Jesus and Mary.

A Visit to the Blessed Sacrament on the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady.

Glory be to the Father and to Thee, O Lord God, Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, and to the H0Iy Ghost- Thou art here present, O Jesus, in Thy sacred Humanity and Divinity, true man and true God, Thou who with the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest one God through all the ages of an unbeginning and never ending eternity. Out of this year of our mortal life, which is slipping away at every instant, this is the day on which we call to mind that glorious and happy day in the past on which Thou didst take up into Thy heavenly home Her who had made a home for Thee at Nazareth, Her term of weary waiting was over at last. It seems strange to us, poor ignorant creatures, that Thou couldst be content to leave Thy Blessed Mother so long after Thee, but even we can dimly conjecture the immense additions made to her inconceivable stores of grace and merit by the prayers and patience of those long years during which, the sigh of her Immaculate Heart must have been at every instant that pathetic cry of the Psalmist : "Woe is me that my sojourning is prolonged ! " (Ps. cxix. 5). But at last, on the first Feast of the Assumption, Thou didst bid her come to Thee over the waters ; or rather Thou didst come for her, and, as a loving son, didst embrace her tenderly and lift her up to her high throne in heaven. There she has reigned ever since, and there she shall reign for ever, Queen of Angels, Queen of all Saints, in the enjoyment of the ineffable joy and glory which are Thy Mother's share of heaven. Ah, if I had the pure, unselfish love that I ought to have for Thee, O Lord, and for Thy Blessed Mother, it ought to make me happy to think of Thy infinite happiness, and hers, as near to infinite as the highest and purest of creatures can attain. A holy man who did much by word and work for Thy glory, (Frederic Ozanam, founder of the St Vincent de Paul Society) O Lord, when he was on earth, and who must now be with Thee in heaven, wrote once : "When I consider how short life is, and how near may be the time of reunion with those who are now separated from us by death, I feel all the temptations of self-love and other evil inclinations pass away.'' Not alone Thy holy human creatures, O Lord, with whom we have been linked during our earthly pilgrimage, but still more the heavenly citizens to whom we have prayed during life, and, most of all, Mary our Mother, and Thou her Divine Son. In Thy merciful love Thou wiliest her to take an interest in each of us, her poor exiled children. Would that she, my heavenly Mother, could turn the eyes of Thy mercy upon me with those words that the Father spoke of Thee : " This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." The first part is true, I am dear to her, I am her child, she has a mother's heart for me—but ah ! how much is there in my life and in my heart that must displease her sadly ! May her prayers obtain for me the grace to wipe out all the sinful past with the tears of true contrition, and to use my little remnant of life in fitting myself a little better for the heavenly life that I hope for, that I must dare to hope for, but which I must labour for more earnestly than alas! I have hitherto done. " O Jesus, grant that I may always love Thee, and then do with me what Thou wilt.'' Always. In life, in death, and for all eternity : for, as long as Thy love is in my heart, it must be well with me. Amen, amen!—for ever, Lord Jesus, my God

Behold Your Mother By Matthew Russell S.J. Part 9. Thoughts On The Assumption (b)

As we have other intentions, we will try to give some illustrations of what is meant by this analogy or proportion. Poets sometimes take an unfair advantage of our simplicity. They begin a beautiful description moving onward with harmony and grace towards the complete portraiture of some grand idea, but when our fancy is warmed, and expectation is at its height, they let us down to something very commonplace indeed. They may smile at us when we cry out with Desdemona, " O most lame and impotent conclusion ! '' but we cannot help feeling, all the same, that we have been hardly dealt with. They succeed in entrapping us, because we love proportion between part and part, and appreciate whatever is rendered perfect by symmetrical evolution according to a uniform type. We require, then, in true and serious art, harmony and proportion between the colours, lights, shades, and forms, which make up a picture, whether painted with pen or pencil. If we turn from art, which Dante quaintly calls "God's grandchild," to Nature, which is His child, we can trace similar laws of proportion in the works of Him who, in the old Christian language, is styled the Great Artist. Every one of His works is perfectly disposed, after its kind, according to number, weight, and measure. In the higher forms of life, the different parts which go to make up an organised being are so manifestly in accordance with each other, and conspire so harmoniously to the perfection of the whole, that those who have studied the laws of the Divine

Art in the works of Nature can, from a few chance fragments, delineate the complete type of a species hitherto unknown.
The world of Grace, which presupposes Nature, is ordered according to the laws of a more perfect harmony. Faith opens to our mental eye regions of wondrous beauty and variety, wherein the Divine Wisdom, disporting Itself, reacheth, in a more excellent way, from end to end mightily, and disposeth all things sweetly. In this fair world Mary is the masterpiece of the divine hand. If, then, we can discern some of the rich tints which glow in that gracious figure, and trace, through part of their course, the lines which portray the Mother of God, as they move on in perfect grace, beauty, and loveliness, we can well perceive what would be out of harmony with the perfection which they inclose, though our mind faints in the effort to conceive the hidden splendour which they promise. If we examine the grand outlines of Mary's excellence, we find that they proceed in such sort as to include whatever is perfect in nature and grace, and to avoid even the shadow of whatever is harsh and unseemly. She springs in the natural course from Adam, yet she is no child of wrath. She possesses our nature in its fulness, yet never felt our nature's wounds. Whilst others grope in ignorance, faint in well-doing, turn shuddering from the right path on encountering obstacles, in order to follow, at least for some moments, the slippery road which winds down to the abyss, Mary progresses always by the narrow way, her mind ever basking in the light of God, her heart filled with love, with modesty, purity, and peace continually guiding her heavenward steps. She joins the marriage bond to the sacred vow of virginity, and maternal fruitfulness to the flower of maiden integrity. She is the handmaid of the Lord, His creature, and yet His mother. Must we not add that, though yielding to Death, she conquers Him in the tomb, by rising in renewed youth to soar like the eagle above the clouds to the blissful kingdom where her Son reigns in glory ? No other end is worthy of her Maker, No other end is worthy of her whom the Church represents as the living image of Eternal Wisdom—" I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all the grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come over to me, all ye that desire me and be filled with my fruits. For my spirit is sweet above honey, and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb. My memory is unto everlasting generations.'' (Ecclesiasticus xxiv.)

III.

Along with the arguments already given, we might bring forward several others from the inexhaustible sources of Christian tradition concerning Mary's privileges. In order, however, not to pursue the matter too far, we shall touch on only two more. Mary, by reason of her stainless origin, was exempt from the other penalties of original sin, or shared in them only after the fashion in which they were assumed by her Divine Son. Hence, we cannot admit without clear proof, and proof there is none, that she fell under that part of the primal curse: "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return."

Finally, Mary's plenitude of grace and mercy requires as its meet recompense the plenitude of glory. And glory cannot be complete in all its perfection if body and soul are not knit together in the same life of happiness. A little reflection will enable us to take in the force of this argument. Our Divine Lord represents the pursuit of eternal life as a species of traffic, and bids men trade till He come. The capital with which we are furnished is His grace, and our business, if we may so speak, prospers in proportion to the extent of our capital, and the amount of vigorous, persevering labour we employ in turning it to advantage. Consequently, our great affair progresses in the compound ratio of God's graces and our own efforts. Let us examine each of these elements as they are found in ever-blessed Mary, In comparison with her, even the greatest saints have been slack in their work. Some of them have been for years held back by a hankering after the folly of the world ; in all, the sluggishness of the body weighed down the soul, and clogged its heavenly aspirings; none, so far as we know, were always so perfectly on their guard as for a lifetime to resist the bent of nature towards sin. According to the Council of Trent, it is Mary's special privilege never to have given the slightest offence to her Maker ; and nowhere is it authentically recorded that any of the saints have been similarly favoured. Mary knew no sin, and lost no time. Nature in her perfectly recovered the strength for doing good with which it was originally endowed. Moreover, she was endowed with the plenitude of grace in order to make her worthy, as far as a creature can be, of an office whose sublime grandeur fills heaven and earth with wonder. All these stupendous gifts she turned to the best account, so that her soul, without ceasing, magnified the Lord, until her sweetness and purity and gentle lovingness drew Him down from the seat of His glory to nestle as a little Child in her bosom. It is no wonder, then, that she began far beyond where other creatures end ; that the treasure of her merit transcends the united hoardings of men and angels; that her worth out prices the whole universe of creatures; that she is addressed by the Spouse as his beautiful one, his only love, and foreshadowed by the mystic city, whose foundations are in the holy mountains, and whose gates the Lord loveth above all the tabernacles of Jacob.

And doth He hunger to crown her with the crown of immortality ? "Arise," He saith, "make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come. The winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land, the time of pruning is come : the voice of the turtle is heard in our land : the fig-tree hath put forth her green figs : the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come. My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hollow places of the wall, show me thy face, let thy voice sound in my ears, for thy voice is sweet and thy face comely " (Cant. ii.).

So are they joined in glory, the Man and the Woman, the Virgin and her Seed; the Man who ransomed us with His own dear blood, the Woman who, for our sake, consented to the payment of that dread price : Jesus, who won the daily bread by the labours of His Passion; Mary, whose motherly hands break it to the children.

They are the last of three groups that shall be the eternal wonder of the human race. The first is a human pair standing in a bright garden beside a noble tree crowded with pleasant fruit. The woman, with clouded look and eager voice, offers to the man some of the fruit which she has plucked from that fair tree. He knows the awful doom ; he eats, and all is lost.

The next pair are upon a hill around which darkness settles at noon. On its top there is a tree to which the Man is nailed by the hands and feet. The Woman stands before the tree, and on her face is traced a tablet of unutterable woe. The Man, bowing down His thorn-crowned head, gives up the ghost, and all is saved.

The third group is the same that was upon the mountain, but how changed is the scene ! The Man now sits at the right hand of God the Father, in glory and in joy, with no trace of suffering save the five resplendent wounds whence flowed our redemption. Millions and millions of bright intelligences, whose glory passes the utmost stretch of reason to conceive, bow down before Him in prostrate adoration. But far above this princely throng of worshippers, close to the Man, on whom she bends her meek eyes in loving awe and wonder, is the Woman, in whom is shrined whatever there can be in maid and mother that is lovely and pure and tender, crowned with the fulness of grace, and transfigured into the fulness of glory :—

"Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo Figlio,
  Umile ed alta piu che creatura,
  Termine fisso d'eterno consiglio:
  Tu se colei che I'umana natura
  Nobilitasti si che 'l suo Fattore
  Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura.
  In te misericordia, in te pietate,
  In te magnificenza, in te s' aduna
  Quantunque in creatura e di bontate."

"Thou Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,
  Humble and high beyond all other creature,
  The limit fixed of the eternal counsel.
  Thou art the one who such nobility
  To human nature gave, that its Creator
  Did not disdain to make Himself its creature.
  In thee compassion is, in thee is pity,
  In thee magnificence; in thee unites
  Whatever of goodness is in any creature"

(Dante, Paradiso xxxiii,, Longfellow's translation.)

Behold Your Mother By Matthew Russell S.J. Part 9. Thoughts On The Assumption (a) *

* See note to the preceding- essay.

I.

The great outlines of the devotion to the Mother of God are clearly traced in the early monuments of Christian tradition. Almost at the start of Christianity we find, to borrow Dr. Newman's words, the ever-blessed immaculate Mother of God exercising her office as advocate of sinners, standing by the sacrifice as she stood by the cross, and offering up and applying its infinite merits and incommunicable virtue in union with priest and people. Moreover, the sweet image of Mary clasping her Child to her bosom cheered our first fathers in the faith within those dark retreats to which the malice of a world, rendered savage by corruption, had driven them for refuge. Virgin-Mother and Child-God have ever been, and shall ever be, together enshrined in the hearts of the faithful, just as they have been from the beginning together assailed by the mocking blasphemies of the pagan and the subtle malice of the heretic.

The doctrine concerning Mary's privileges forms, in a true sense, the rampart of the mystery of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word. She defends in the Church militant the dogma of her Son's two Natures united in one Divine Person, as of old she protected Him in His infancy from the rage of the tyrant Herod. The Council of Ephesus vindicates the mystery of the Incarnation by declaring Mary Theotokos, Deipara, "Mother of God" She conceived the Son of God ; she brought forth the Son of God ; she is God's own true Mother, The simplest child can see that the only Son of God's Mother must needs be God. We might pursue the same train of thought with respect to her virginal Maternity. Her perpetual Virginity which the Holy Ghost miraculously crowned with the honours of motherhood, removes all notion of mere human origin from the Blessed Fruit of her womb. Thus her virginal and divine maternity illustrates and manifests the Godhead and Manhood of Jesus Christ. And hence that gentle form, crowned with the mystic lily and the red rose, and folding the little Babe with loving arms, draws us nigher to the Word Incarnate by filling our hearts with the freshness, the beauty, the sinlessness, the unspeakable dignity of his Maiden Mother.

To the Divine Motherhood the other privileges of Mary may be referred, since they either prepare the way for that sublime office or flow from it almost as natural consequences. The great fact that Mary conceived the Son of God, that the Eternal Word did not shrink from the Virginia womb, is the mystery of mysteries, the crown and sum of all the great things which He who is mighty hath wrought in her behalf.

As the perception of this grand truth, and of the simple ideas which group themselves around it, grew in depth and keenness, the other privileges of her who is full of grace came out before the mind in bolder relief. Jesus shed His light around His Blessed Mother, and the faithful followed its course, now to the wondrous message of Gabriel by which she became the Mother of God, now to the foot of the cross where she became the mother of men. But more slowly did they trace that divine light as it shone on the beginning and on the end of Mary's mortal course. It shone of old as it shines now—the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever—but the Holy Ghost turned the eyes of the faithful to Jesus and Mary united, before He led them to gaze on the solitary figure of Mary, as she came forth from the hands of the Most High, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, gleaming with innocence and grace; or, again, as she went back to the Maker's hands who made her so peerless, with the soul which knew not sin, and the virginal body which defied corruption.

Our hearts swell with joy as we ponder on the grand hymn of praise in which Pius IX, proclaimed our Lady's exemption from the sad heritage of Adam's children- By a miracle of redeeming mercy she is sanctified before sin had time to enter her soul. She rises in brightness and beauty, so that we naturally expect her setting to be even as her rising, and that clouds and darkness shall never settle permanently around aught so radiant and so fair.

That the Mother of God is in heaven both in body and in soul is a truth so dear to every Catholic heart that few would have the hardihood to call it in question. The belief in the anticipated resurrection of our Lady is spread so far and wide among pastors and people, and is so closely bound up with the other truths which faith teaches concerning her privileges, that any denial of it would imply that the gainsayer heeded not the practical teaching of the Church, and had yet great way to make in the knowledge and love of the Mother of God.

The scope of this paper does not permit us to do more than point out the theological foundations on which this doctrine is based. They are the following. The Feast of the Assumption has been kept in both the Eastern and Western Churches for more than a thousand years, as the liturgies, calendars, and several martyrologies testify. From the eighth century we have the homilies and panegyrics of many of the greatest saints in the East and in the West explaining this doctrine of the Assumption of our Lady in body and soul into heaven. We then find it pass from the Fathers to the Scholastics, by whom it was generally received. Suarez could say, in his day, that it was so widely spread through the Church that no pious Catholic could call it in question ; and that, though it was not of faith, yet it had the same degree of certainty as the doctrine (since defined) of the Immaculate Conception. Benedict XIV. roundly asserts that all theologians hold it. The definition of the Immaculate Conception has given new force to the arguments in its favour. Hence, theologians generally brand the opposite opinion with the censure of temerity or error. All these arguments show what is the universal and ordinary practical teaching of the Church on the matter. If this ordinary magisterium had proposed it as having been divinely revealed, it would, then, be of divine and Catholic faith according to the definition of the Vatican Council. It has not done so. However, when the ordinary and universal magisterium of the Church proposes something, not precisely as having been formally revealed, but yet as belonging to the order of religious truths there is then, according to the Catholic Doctors, a sure guarantee against error.

These principles furnish a reply to the difficulties against the Assumption which were urged by Tillemont, Launoy, and those who in the last century followed the same dangerous line. They tried to make out that the doctrine was founded merely on those spiritual romances known by the name of apocrypha, and that, as these documents are spurious, the doctrine must fall to the ground. We admit that an historian, if he confine himself within the limits of his own science, would find it no easy matter to draw out a convincing proof for the Assumption. Bat the same fact may fall within the domain of history and of theology. Now, as theology has means of attaining truth distinct from those of history, it reaches to facts to which history cannot come, almost in the same way as one sense detects what another cannot. It is not upon the apocrypha that the doctrine of the Assumption is grounded, but upon the general sentiment of the Church, manifested by the several documents I mentioned already. Nor does this general belief touch the circumstances narrated in the apocrypha. It is disputed where the Blessed Virgin died, whether at Ephesus or Jerusalem ; what was the year of her death ; how long she remained in the tomb ; who were the witnesses of her resurrection, and what circumstances attended it. But the universal sentiment is, that she rose from death to live in glory; and that general sentiment of the Church is never deceived in the matter of religious truth. Hence, it came to pass that the arguments urged by the opponents of this doctrine made a momentary splash, like a stone cast into a tranquil stream, but yet a little while, and all was as bright and calm as if they had never been known.

In order to show that this doctrine belongs to the order of religious truth, we shall now bring together some of the theological reasons with which it has been proposed in the course of Catholic tradition. These reasons have considerable force if they be well pondered. It is not required, however, for the argument that they prove the necessity of the Assumption by themselves. If they closely link the Assumption with other religious truths, and exhibit it as their fitting counterpart and evolution, it is clear that those who proposed the Assumption with such reasons regarded it as being in the same order as the reasons themselves. These will throw some light, too, on the bearing of the Assumption on the other privileges of Mary, and perhaps make us better disposed to follow the sweet admonition which the Poet of the Schools represents himself as receiving in Paradise from the lips of St. Bernard (Parad. xxxv. 85) :—

"Riguarda ormai nella faccia ch' a Cristo
  Piu s'assomiglia, che la sua chiarezza
  Sola ti puo disporre a vedder Cristo.'' *

* "Look now into the face that unto Christ
     Hath most resemblance, for its brightness only
     Is able to prepare thee to see Christ."
                                     (Longfellow's Translation.)

One of the great traditional ideas concerning Mary is, that she is the New Eve sharing in the privileges of the New Adam, as our first mother shared in the privileges of our first father. The first Eve, virgin and innocent, shared in the immortality proper to the first Adam. According to St. Augustine, this gift consisted in posse non mori — that is, in the power of warding off death as long as innocence was preserved. Another immortality belonged to the New Adam. He was not to keep Death for ever at arm's length, but rather, whilst yielding to his power, to rob him of his victory. But in what consists this victory if not in making the human frame pass through corruption to its primitive dust ? It is only when that dust shall have been reassumed, when what is mortal shall have put on immortality, and what is corruptible shall have put on glory and incorruption, that shall come to pass the saying that is written : " Death, where is thy victory ?'' Now, through the merits of Christ, even we are to share in this victory at the end of the world, as by the sin of Adam we have all been brought under the yoke of death. Moreover, the extent to which we are to share in the triumph over death is measured according to the closeness of our union with Jesus Christ. Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection, and then every one in his order. The New Eve is united to the New Adam, not according to the order of our fallen race, but according to an order that is proper to herself alone. She is joined to Him in the closest bands of kindred, in the closest bands of charity. Nature and grace combined to render the order of her union with Him such as can never be equalled in kind or degree ; and both claim a singular and exceptional participation in the privilege of his immortality.

II.

The holiness of Mary's virginal body seems, also, to claim at the hands of her Divine Son that special honour and reverence implied in the Assumption. As she was destined to give of her substance a human frame to the Eternal Word, her pure flesh was sanctified and dedicated to God by a most special consecration. The holiness of the Sacred Body of Jesus Christ was, according to the holy Fathers, sufficient to claim a glorious resurrection from the Almighty.It is true that the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ is anointed with the holiness of the Godhead, to which it was inseparably united in the Incarnation, and that, on this account, the sanctity of Mary must, of necessity, be infinitely less; yet it is, nevertheless, so perfect and so peerless as to guard her sacred flesh from the ravage of the tomb.

The holy Fathers speak of her as the living temple of the Most High, the holy tabernacle of the Most Blessed Trinity, the living ark of the Covenant, fashioned of incorruptible wood, and overlaid with the purest gold- They also apply to her those passages of the Old Testament, which describe the glories of the Eternal Word and his procession from the bosom of the Eternal Father. St. Ephrem sums up the Catholic doctrine when he cries out in one of his beautiful poems : "Thou (Christ) and thy Mother are indeed passing fair, for in Thee, Lord, there is no spot, nor any stain in thy Mother!'' This freedom from all stain, beginning in her Immaculate Conception, and persevering through her whole life in the perfect obedience of sense to reason, and reason to grace, though it does not keep away death, to which even her Son submitted, preserves her from death's dreadful sequel. Corruption is, in the moral order, the fit penalty of concupiscence, the medicinal humiliation of all proud and rebellious flesh. Hence, the all-pure and sacred body of Mary was exempted from that law under which all mere earthly beauty fades and withers into dust.

Our next argument is taken from analogy. About this species of argument St. Francis de Sales has a pretty story. A Calvinist preacher was working hard, and not unsuccessfully, to keep back those who at Thonon were seriously minded to return to the Church of their fathers. According to him, analogy was altogether on the Protestant side, and he defied any Catholic to meet him on that ground. St. Francis wrote a little work on the Creed to show that this fearful-looking weapon was, in the minister's hands, a mere sword of wood ; or, to drop metaphor, that the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist did not "destroy the symbol and the analogy of faith." " For, "adds the saint," the minister affected to use the word analogy, not understood by his hearers, in order to appear mighty learned."

Behold Your Mother By Matthew Russell S.J. Part 8. The Title "Mother of God."

[This theological essay and the one that follows it are not my own. I have preserved "Thoughts on the Assumption" as a relic of a very holy and gifted friend, Father William Hughes, S.J., who died on the 2nd of April, 1902, after the self-sacrificing and fruitful labours of many years in Australia, The writer of the present paper, which was published in The Ave Maria, is Father John Naughton, S.J.]

There are few subjects in religions controversy on which it is more a duty to avoid all kinds of bitterness towards our adversaries than the honour paid to our Blessed Lady. "If I believed as you believe" says an atheist to careless and indifferent Christians, " I would go barefoot through the world to proclaim the folly of living as you live." And if our adversaries knew what we know and believed what we believed, and are bound by our very faith to believe, regarding the ever-glorious Virgin, they might not—and many of them assuredly would not—yield to us in devotion toward her. But, unfortunately, there is between us a radical difference of opinion, a divergence of belief, on a fundamental point.

The truth is that non-Catholics, generally speaking—for, doubtless, there is a large class of exceptions—do not know, and, still more generally, do not recognise, the doctrine of the Divine Maternity. The idea essentially involved in the truth of the Incarnation is hidden from them. They do not believe Mary to be the Mother of God. They do not believe we hold it; and when we profess it, they conceive that we must be speaking the language of metaphor—it is only by some figure of speech ; some playing on a double sense; some poetical, but unreal, conception of the mind ; some devotional sentiment, not supposed to be severely and dogmatically true. That Mary was in very deed God's Mother, that the Eternal became her Child in all the plenitude of truth, that with all that inherent realism with which each of us is a mother's child He was hers, they neither believe themselves nor conceive that we believe.

Any one who has had much to do with intelligent converts will at once recognise the truth of what we say. When you introduce to them the subject of Mary, they will speak of her with profound reverence, and even love. She is the "Virgin of Isaias," the Woman of the Proto-gospel, of whom the promised One was born ; the noblest and fairest of God's creatures; she is the Mother of Christ and the Mother of the Redeemer—the one whose seed crushed the serpent's head. But when, with the light of faith in your eyes and the lamp of faith to guide your steps, you advance and call her, as you have been taught from very childhood to call her. Mother of God, they draw back. Stopped by an incredulity, as the Israelites were stopped when just within sight of the Promised Land, they draw back from the one great truth that constitutes all the prerogatives, all the dignity, of Mary.

And, bad as this is, there is something worse still. If, turning from the Blessed Mother, you speak of her Divine Child, there is a correlative but far more serious error. One can not fail to be struck by the profound and personal love with which they speak of Him. He is their Alpha and Omega —the One on whom they cast the.burden of their sorrow, rest all their hope, and lean for comfort and consolation. He is the "Messiah," "the Redeemer," "the Saviour,'' "the Son of the Most High,'' "the Son of God." But if, in the full light of Catholic faith, you ask them," Is He who was born of Mary—that Child in the Crib—is He God ? Is He your God?" very often you have the unutterable pain of hearing them, unconsciously indeed, but none the less really, " dissolve the Lord Jesus Christ." In very reverence they hesitate—they put up their hands to save the ark from falling. You are going too far for them. Much as they love Jesus of Nazareth, they would not like precisely to say that; and if forced to give an answer at all on a subject on which they would prefer to keep silence, they would say, "No."

Though we have said it before, it would be wrong not to say it again : there are many exceptions to this ; but, then, they are exceptions. What we have described is, as a rule, the feeling and belief of by far the greater number outside the pale of the Catholic Church, They have a fundamentally erroneous idea of the nature of the Incarnation, They have lost the key to its understanding. They ignore the Divine Maternity, or they explain it away. There was no room for her in the inn of Bethlehem ; and, with Mary, Jesus too retired into the grotto. They have some vague belief that of her a most holy and perfect but purely human child was born, to whom the Godhead was afterward united, and in whom the Divinity afterward personally dwelt; whereas no purely human child—no mere man— was ever born of Mary, The only person born of her was the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He was man indeed, but only by being the God-Man—God, in that He was born of the Father from all eternity; man, in that He, the same, and not another, was born of Mary in time.

There is, of course, no proportion, much less any equality, between these two generations of the Child ; but then, the Word in the Beginning, that was with God, before all things were made, the same it was who was made flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary. Without further comparison than that of simple truth, as truly as God was His Father, because He communicated to Him from all eternity His divine nature, so truly is Mary His Mother, because she gave Him, and He took from her, that human nature in which He dwelt amongst us, and in which we have seen the glory of the Only-Begotten of the Most High. These things are comparatively easy to us, because the teachings of faith, as well as its instincts, have long made them famiHar. There is no need to explain to the simplest Catholic that Mary was not the Mother of the divinity of Our Lord. In that divinity He was from unbeginning eternity God of God, Light of Light, before Mary herself was created. He was always God, because He was always born of the Father. From Him He had His divinity—His divine nature. But He was not always man. He was not man till He was born of the Virgin. She gave Him His human nature, and from the moment of His Incarnation He had for evermore two natures; and in one as well as in the other it was the same God who subsisted. It was the Person of the Word that constituted the bond of the hypostatic union between them, and both natures belonged alike to the Second Person of the Adorable Trinity.

In every other instance where mere man is "born, his soul and body subsist in themselves and give him an individuality of his own. His human nature finds its completion in itself, and gives him that human personality by which He is one as distinguished from another. But in our Divine Lord there was no human personality : the Person of God took its place. There was human nature complete and entire. But His human nature—His body and soul—never for a moment subsisted in themselves apart and alone, but were, in the instant of creation, assumed by, and united with, and fitted unto, the Person of God Himself. It was the Word that was made flesh. It was God that was made man. It was He who was born, and He alone to whom the Virgin gave birth; and as different mothers give birth, this to one, and that to another, the One to whom the Virgin of Israel gave birth was her Creator and her God. The greatest of all her titles, the foundation of all her dignity, the reason of all her privileges, the explanation of all the honour we pay her, is found here—that we can hail her as we do, " Mother of God."

Such is the faith of the Catholic Church—the great doctrine for which she fought so strenuously in the Council of Ephesus. Not a doctrine merely, but a dogma as well; for in it is involved the true nature of the Incarnation, with its manifold consequences. Without it there is no real Christianity; without its belief, no real Christian. Without it the whole series of fundamental truths that make up revealed religion would fall to the ground. For if Mary were not the Mother of God, then God was not born of her ; He did not become man ; He did not have amongst us here, and die for our redemption on the cross-Without the truth of the Divine Maternity the keystone of the arch were gone.

And in proportion as we have reason to be grateful to the Church for her wisdom in keeping this truth prominently and incessantly before us, have we reason to be gentle with those who do not think as we think, only because they do not know as we know. In our religious training our minds have been, with purpose aforethought, fixed on this as a great central truth till there is nothing so familiar to us in sacred history as the scene and the surroundings in which it was accomplished. Millions of times we have repeated the words with which Gabriel, descending from the heavens—when the fulness of time had come— greeted Mary: "Hail, full of grace : the Lord is with thee. "We know that when she said, "Be it done unto me according to thy word,'' swift-winged angel as he was, he had not reached the throne before the Mystery of mysteries was accomplished. In a moment—in as little time as it took to create the light, when God said, "Let it be, and it was"—that Virgin was Virgin-Mother of a Child Divine. And not that alone do we know, but, through the mercy of God revealing it to lis, we know still more—even the marvellous manner of its accomplishment. We know that the Power of the Most High—the S pirit of God proceeding eternally from the Father and the Son—the Holy Ghost—overshadowed her, and from out her purest veins formed the body, and vivified it with the soul— the adorable body and the adorable soul—of Christ; for in that instant they were both fitted unto the Eternal Word, and assumed as His own.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, what mightier thing could He who is mighty have done unto thee? ''Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb ! "May we be, each of us and all of us, part fulfilment of thy prophecy, and with every generation of the elect call thee blessed, love thee more and know thee better : that we may the better know Him whom to know is eternal life; and the better love Him whom if any one loveth not he is anathema ! Continue to be a Mother to us, and be a Mother to them who yet know thee not; that so thy only and Divine Child may be unto us all '' the First-Born of many brethren."