The sacred period of forty days following the
blessed and glorious Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, wherein by divine
power he raised up in three days the true Temple of God which the impious Jews
had destroyed—that period, dearly beloved, prescribed by God's holy providence
that we might have the instruction we needed, has now come to an end. By thus
prolonging his corporal presence, our Lord intended that faith in his
Resurrection should rest on irrefutable proofs. The death of Christ had deeply
troubled the hearts of his disciples. The anguish of the Cross, the yielding up
of the spirit, the burial of the lifeless body, had gravely saddened their
minds; the lethargy of doubt overshadowed them. Throughout the period from the
Resurrection to the Ascension of our Lord, divine providence had in view that
which God wished to teach to his own, to
impress upon their minds and hearts, the certitude that the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ was
as true as his birth, his passion and his death.
Whence the blessed Apostles and all the disciples,
though they had trembled at the outcome of the crucifixion and been left in
doubt about the Resurrection, were so strengthened by the clear perception of
this truth, that when our Lord was ascending, not only were they not sad, but
were even filled with great joy. And a truly great and ineffable cause of
rejoicing it was, when in the sight of a holy multitude, human nature ascended
above the dignity of all celestial creatures, to pass above the angelic rank,
to be raised beyond the highest archangels, to advance unimpeded from height to
height until it was admitted to the presence of the Father, there to sit at his
right hand and share the glorious throne of him to whose nature it was united
in the person of the Son!
And since the Ascension of Christ is our
ascension, and where the glory of the head has gone before, thither is the hope
of the body summoned, let us exult, beloved brethren, with befitting joys, and
rejoice with devout thanksgiving. To-day, not only have we been confirmed in
the possession of Paradise, but in Christ have even penetrated to the heights
of heaven. The blessings which the ineffable grace of Christ has merited for us
outweigh those which the envy of Satan deprived us of; for those whom the
venomous enemy cast down from the happiness of their first estate, these the
Son of God has made to be of one body with himself and placed at the right hand
of the Father.
No comments:
Post a Comment