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.