The Resurrection

OUR BLESSED LORD compared Himself to a seed, saying that unless the seed fell to the ground and died, it would not spring forth to life. He now by the power of God rises with the flowers of springtime in the newness of life, and gives to the earth the only serious wound it ever received the irreparable wound of an empty grave. 

The birth of the Son of God in the form of man was announced to a Virgin; the first announcement of His Resurrection was made to a repentant sinner, Magdalen, that none of us would be without hope. Thomas the Apostle would not believe until he had put his hand into His side, and his fingers into our Lord’s hands. Thus do we know that our Lord kept not His wounds but His scars as proof of His love: “With these was I wounded in the house of those who love Me.” 

The Resurrection begins to affect our lives the day of Baptism. When baptised, we are plunged into the waters as if “buried in the sepulchre to sin and death; emerging from the waters clothed with grace as the principle of Divine Love, we are like the Christ rising from the tomb in the glory of the Resurrection.” 

Though we are risen in spirit with Christ, so that “our conversation is in heaven,” our bodies will not share that glory until our own final resurrection. In the meantime our body must be crucified with Christ’s that we may rise with Christ. 

On the road to Emmaus on Easter Sunday, our Lord said to His disciples, “Was it not to be expected that the Christ should undergo these sufferings, and enter so into His glory?” 

But if that be the law of Innocence, then how shall we, the guilty, hope to escape from it? 

The Ascension

OUR BLESSED LORD did not ascend to heaven immediately after the Resurrection but remained on earth for 40 days, speaking to the Apostles about the Kingdom of God. It was during these days that He gave the details of His Church, which He said would have its visible manifestation on Pentecost. 

“And so the Lord Jesus, when He had finished speaking to them, was taken up to heaven, and is seated now at the right hand of God.” “Seated” is a figurative expression of eternal repose, which He has merited by His victory over sin. “At the right hand” is a symbol of His power of eternal intercession before His heavenly Father on our behalf. 

The Ascension of Christ is the assurance of our own ascension into heaven after the Last Judgment. Not yet ascended in body, we nevertheless enjoy the ascension of our minds in union with Him. We find our true home in heaven. It is to heaven that we look expectantly for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to save us; He will form this humbled body of ours anew, modelling it into the image of His glorified body, so effective is His power to make all things obey Him. 

O heavenly Magnet, in each Communion draw our body and blood to Thy own, that already following Thee in heart, we may later ascend with Thee in the flesh!

The Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles

MANY HAVE WISHED that Our Blessed Lord had remained on earth, that we might have heard His voice, seen His compassionate eyes, and brought our children to be blessed by His hands. But He said, “I can say truly that it is better for you I should go away; He who is to befriend you will not come to you unless I do go, but if only I make my way there, I will send Him to you.” 

If our Lord had remained on earth, He would have been only a symbol to be copied – not a life to be lived. By returning to His heavenly Father, He could then send both from the Father and Himself the Holy Spirit that would make Him live on earth in His new Body, which is the Church. 

The human body is made up of millions of cells, and yet is one because vivified by one soul, presided over by a visible head, and governed by an invisible mind. So on Pentecost, the Apostles, who were like the cells of a body, became Christ’s Mystical Body, because vivified by His Holy Spirit, governed by one visible head, Peter, and presided over by one invisible head, Christ in heaven. Our glorious Church is not an organisation, but an organism. As our Lord once thought, governed, and sanctified through a human body, which He took from the womb of His blessed Mother, so now He teaches, governs, and sanctifies through His Mystical Body, the Church, which He took from the womb of humanity overshadowed by His Holy Spirit. 

Christ was infallible when He talked through a human body; He is still infallible when He teaches through a mystical Body. Christ sanctified when He forgave sins with human lips; He sanctifies still when He forgives sins through the power of His priests. Christ governed through His human Body, and He governs still. “He that heareth you, heareth Me.” 

As a drop of blood can live in the body, but cannot live apart from the body, so neither can any of us live the fullness of the Christ Life except in His Mystical Body, the Church.

The Assumption

WHAT THE ASCENSION WAS to our Lord, that the Assumption is to our Lady. Certainly she, the new Garden of Paradise, in which grew the Lily of divine sinlessness and the red Rose of the Church, should not be delivered over and forgotten by the heavenly Gardener. She, in whose womb was celebrated the nuptials of eternity and time is more of eternity than time. If husband and wife in marriage are made two in one flesh, then shall not she, who is the new Eve of the new Adam, be also made two in one spirit with Him?

As Christ ascended into heaven to the unity of the divine nature, so Mary is assumed into heaven in the unity of Christ’s human nature. Her mystical flight is the event to which our whole generation moves. 

Our age of carnalities, which loves the “body beautiful,” is lifted out of its despair by the Assumption, to honour a body that is beautiful because it is a temple of God, a gate through which the Word of heaven passed to earth, a Tower of Ivory up which climbed divine Love to kiss upon the lips of His Mother a mystic rose. *

To this daughter of the new Eve goes up our prayer: 

The celestial traitress play
And all mankind to bliss betray;
With sacrosanct cajoleries
And starry treachery of your eyes,
Tempt us back to Paradise. 

The Coronation

Our Lady went into a strange country
And they crowned her for a queen,
For she needed never to be stayed or questioned
But only seen;
And they were broken down under unbearable beauty
As we have been. 

But ever she walked till away in the last high places
One great light shone
From the pillared throne of the king of all that country
Who sat thereon;
And she cried aloud as she cried under the gibbet
For she saw her Son. 

Our Lady wears a crown in a strange country,
The crown He gave,
But she has not forgotten to call to her old companions,
To call and crave;
And to hear her calling a man might arise and thunder
On the doors of the grave. 

—REGINA ANGELORUM by G. K. Chesterton