Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger  (1841-1875)

Quote:The Church introduces us into the depth of the Mystery. What she has just been reading to us is but the explanation of that word of Elizabeth’s which sums up the whole of today’s feast: when they voice sounded in mine ear, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. O Voice of Mary, voice of the turtle, putting winter to flight, and announcing spring-tide flowers and fragrance! At this sweet sound, John’s soul, a captive in the darkness of sin, casts off the badge of slavery, and suddenly developing germs of highest virtues, appears beauteous as a bride decked in nuptial array: and therefore, how Jesus hastes unto this well-beloved soul! Between John and the Bridegroom, oh! what ineffable outpourings! what sublime dialogues pass between them, from womb to womb of Mary and Elizabeth! Admirable Mothers! Sons yet more admirable! In this happy meeting, the sight, the hearing, the voice of the Mothers belong less to themselves than to the blessed fruit each bears within her; thus their senses are the lattices through which the Bridegroom and Friend of the Bridegroom see one another, understand one another, speak one to the other!

The animal man, it is true, understands not this language. Father, the Son of God will soon exclaim: I give thee thanks for that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones. Let him, therefore, that hath ears to hear, hear; but, Amen I say unto you, unless ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven, nor know its mysteries. Wisdom shall nevertheless be justified by her children, as the Gospel says. The simple-hearted in quest of light, with all the straightforwardness of humility, let pass unheeded those mocking flickers that sport across the marshes of the world; they know right well that the first ray of the Eternal Sun will disperse these thin phantoms, leaving sheer emptiness before those who run in pursuit of them. For their part, these wise little ones already feed upon that which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, having a foretaste, here below, of eternal delights.

Ineffably is John the Baptist experiencing all this. Accosted by the divine Friend who has been beforehand in seeking him, his soul at once awakens to full ecstasy. Jesus, on his side, is now making His first conquest; for it is to John, that is first addressed amongst all creatures (Mary of course excepted) the sacred Nuptial-song uttered in the Soul of the Word made Flesh, making His divine Heart throb with emotion. Yes, it is today (our Epistle tells us so), that in concert with the Magnificat, the divine Canticle of Canticles is likewise inaugurated, in the entire acceptation that the Holy Ghost wishes to give it. Never more fully than on this happy day shall the sacred ravishments of the Spouse be justified; never shall they find a more faithful response! Let us warm ourselves at these celestial fires; let us join our enthusiasm to that of Eternal Wisdom who makes His first step, this day, in His royal progress towards mankind. Let us unite with our Jesus in imploring the Precursor at last to show himself. Were it not ordered otherwise from on High, his inebriation of love would verily have made him at once break down the wall that held him from appearing, then and there, to announce the Bridegroom. For well knows he that the sight of his countenance, preceding the Face of the Lord Himself, will excite the whole earth to transports; he knows that his own voice will be sweet when once it has become the organ of the Word calling the Bride unto Him.

Quote:Mary, having learned from the archangel that Elizabeth was about to become a mother, is preoccupied with the thought of the services that will soon be needed by her cousin and the infant; she, therefore, starts at once on her journey across the mountains, amidst which stands the house of Zachary. Thus does the charity of Christ act, thus does it press, when it is genuine. There is no state of soul, in which under the pretext of more exalted perfection, the Christian may be allowed to forget his brethren. Mary had just contracted the highest union with God; and our imagination might perhaps be inclined to picture her, as it were, in a state of powerlessness, lost in ecstasy during these days in which the Word, taking Flesh of her flesh, is inundating her in return with the floods of his Divinity. The Gospel, however, is explicit on this subject: it particularly says that it was in those days even, that the humble Virgin, hitherto quietly hid in the secret of the Lord’s face, rose up to devote herself to all the bodily as well as the spiritual needs of a neighbor in such condition. Does that mean to say that works are superior to prayer, and that contemplation is not the better part? No, certainly not; for indeed never did Our Lady so directly and so fully adhere to God with her whole being as at this very time. But the creature when he has attained the summits of the unitive life, is all the more apt and fitted for exterior works, inasmuch as no lending of himself thereto, can distract him from the immovable center wherein he is fixed.

A signal privilege is this, resulting from that division of the spirit and the soul, to which all attain not, and which marks one of the most decisive steps in the spiritual life; for it supposes a purification of man’s entire being so perfect, that in very truth he is no other than one spirit with the Lord; it entails so absolute a submission of the powers, that without clashing one with the other, they yield, each in its particular sphere, obedience simultaneously to the divine breathing.

So long as the Christian has not yet crossed this last defile, defended with such obstinacy by nature to the last, so long as he has not yet won that holy liberty of the children of God, he cannot possibly turn to man, without, in some way, quitting God. Not that he ought, on that account, to neglect his duties towards his neighbor, in whom God wishes us to see no other than Himself; but, nevertheless, blessed is he who (like Mary) loses naught of the better part, the whole he attends to his obligations towards others! Yet how few are such privileged souls! and what a delusion it is to persuade ourselves to the contrary!

We shall return to these thoughts on the day of Our Lady’s triumphant Assumption; but the Gospel to which we have just been listening makes it a duty for us, even now, to draw the attention of the reader to this point. Our Lady has especially on this feast a claim to be invoked as the model of those who devote themselves to works of mercy; and if to all it is by no means given to keep their spirit, at the same moment, more than ever immersed in God, all, nevertheless, ought constantly to strive to approach, by the practice of recollection and divine praise, to those luminous heights whereon their queen shows herself, this day, in all the plenitude of her ineffable perfections.

Quote:The Epistle that has just been read to us is the confirmation of what we were saying above, as regards the special character of this festival. It was by his own Blood that the Son of God entered into heaven; this divine Blood continues to be the means whereby we also may be introduced into the eternal alliance. Thus, the Old Covenant founded, as it was, on the observance of the precepts fo Sinai, had likewise by blood consecrated the people and the law, the tabernacle and the vessels it was to contain; but the whole was bug a figure. “Now,” says Saint Ambrose, “it behooves us to tend to Truth. Here below, there is the shadow; here below, there is the image; up yonder, there is the Truth. In the law was but the shadow; the image is to be found in the Gospel; the Truth is in heaven. Formerly a lamb was immolated; now Christ is sacrificed, but he is so only under the signs of the mysteries, whereas in heaven it is without veil. There alone, consequently, is full perfection, unto which our thoughts should cleave, because all perfection is in Truth without image and without shadow.” Yea! there alone is rest: thither, even in this world, do the sons of God tend; without indeed attaining fully thereunto, they get nearer and nearer, day by day; for there alone is to be found that peace which forms saints.

“O Lord God,” cries out in his turn another illustrious Doctor, the great Saint Augustine, “give us this peace, the peace of repose, the peace of the seventh day, of that Sabbath whose sun never sets. Yea! verily the whole order of nature and of grace is very beautiful unto thy servitors, and goodly are the realities they cover; but these images, these successive forms, bide only awhile, and their evolution ended, they pass away. The days thou didst fill with thy creations are composed of morning and of evening, the seventh alone excepted, for it declineth not, because thou hast for ever sanctified it, in thine own Rest. Now what is this Rest, save that which thou takest in us, when we ourselves repose in thee, in the fruitful peace which crowns the series of thy graces in us? O sacred Rest, more productive than labor! the perfect alone know thee, they who suffer the divine Hand to accomplish within them the Work of the Six Days.”

And, therefore, our Apostle goes on to say, interpreting, by means of other parts of Scripture, his own words, just read to us by holy Church, and therefore today if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts. The Blood Divine hath rendered us participators of Christ: it is our part not to squander, as though it were worthless, this immense treasure, this initial incorporation which unites us to Christ, the divine Head; but let us abandon ourselves, without fear and without reserve, to the energy of this precious leaven whose property it is to transform our whole being into him. Let us be afraid lest we fall short of the promise referred to in our today’s Epistle, that promise of our entering into God’s Rest, as Saint Paul himself tells us. It regards all believers, he says, and this divine Sabbath is for the whole people of the Lord. Therefore, to enter therein, let us make haste; let us not be like those Jews whose incredulity excluded them forever from the promised land.

Quote:On that stupendous Day, Good Friday, we heard for the first time this passage from the Beloved Disciple. The Church, as she stood mourning at the foot of the Cross whereon her Lord had just died, was all tears and lamentation. Today, however, she is thrilling with other sentiments, and the very sane narration that then provoked her bitter tears, now makes her burst out into anthems of gladness and songs of triumph. If we would know the reason of this, let us turn to those who are authorized by her to interpret to us the burden of her thoughts this day. They will tell us that the new Eve is celebrating her birth from out the side of her sleeping Spouse; that from the solemn moment when the new Adam permitted the soldier’s lance to open his Heart, we became, in very deed, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Be not then surprised, if holy Church sees naught but love and life in the Blood which is gushing forth.

And thou, O soul, long rebellious to the secret touches of choicest graces, be not disconsolate; say not: “Love is no more for me!” How far away soever the old enemy may, by wretched wiles, have dragged thee, is it not still true that to ever winding way, yea, alas! perhaps even to every pitfall, the streamlets of this Sacred Fount have followed thee? Thinkest thou, perhaps, that thy long and tortuous wanderings from the merciful course of these ever pursuant waters may have weakened their power? Do but try: do but, first of all, bathe in their cleansing wave; do but quaff long draughts from this stream of life; then, O weary soul, arming thee with faith, be strong, and mount once more the course of the divine torrent. For, as in order to reach thee, it never once was separated from its fountain head, so likewise be certain that by so doing, thou needs must reach the very Source Itself. Believe me, this is the whole secret of the Bride, namely, that whence soever she may come, she has no other course to pursur than this, if she would fain hear the answer to that yearning request expressed in the Sacred Canticle: Show me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou restest in the mid-day! So much so indeed, that by re-ascending the sacred Stream, not only is she sure of reaching the Divine Heart, but moreover she is ceaselessly renewing, in its waters, that pure beauty which makes her become, in the eyes of the Spouse, an object of delight and of glory to him. For thy part, carefully gather up today the testimony of the Disciple of love; and congratulating Jesus, with the Church, his Bride and thy Mother, on the brilliancy of her empurpled robe, take good heed likewise to conclude with St. John: Let us then love God, since he hath first loved us.

Quote:It would be difficult to insist more than does our today’s Liturgy on the episode of Peter’s captivity in Jerusalem. Several Antiphons and all the Capitula of this Office are drawn from thence; the Introit has just sung the same; and here our Epistle comes giving us every line of that which seems to interest the attention of Mother Church, in so special a manner today. The secret of her preference can easily be divined. This festival celebrates the fact, that peter’s death confirms the Queen of the Gentile world in her august prerogatives of Sovereign Lady, Mother, and Bride; but then, the starting point of all this greatness of hers was the solemn moment in which the Vicar of the Man-God, shaking the dust from off his feet over Jerusalem, turned his face westwards, and transferred to Rome those rights which the Synagogue had repudiated. Now it was on quitting Herod’s prison that all this happened. And going out of the city, says the Acts, he went into another place. This other place, according to the testimony of history and tradition, is no other than Rome, then about to become the new Sion, where Simon Peter arrived some weeks afterwards. Thus, catching up the angel’s word, the Gentile Church sings this night in one of her Responsories at Matins: “Peter, arise, and put on thy garments: gird thee with strength to save the nations; for the chains have fallen from off thy hands.”

Just as, in bygone days, Jesus, slept in the bark that was on the point of sinking, so Peter was sleeping quietly on the eve of the day doomed for his death. Tempests and dangers of all kinds are not spared, in the course of ages, to Peter’s successors. But never is there seen on the bark of Holy Church the dire dismay which held aghast the companions of Our Lord on that vessel tossed as it was by the wild hurricane. Faith was then lacking in the breasts of the disciples, and its absence was that which caused their terror. Since the descent of the Holy Ghost, however, this precious faith, whence all other gifts flow, can never be lost in the Church. Faith it is that imparts to superiors the calmness of their Divine Master; faith maintains in the hearts of the Christian people that uninterrupted prayer, whose humble confidence silently triumphs over the world and the elements, yea, even over God himself. Should the bark of Peter near the abyss, should the Pilot Himself seem to sleep, never will Holy Church imitate the disciples in the storm of Lake Genesareth. Never will she set herself up as judge of the due means and moments for Divine Providence, nor deem it lawful for her to find fault with him who is watching over all: remembering that she possesses within her a better and a surer means than any other, of bringing to a solution, and that without display or commotion, crises the most extreme; never ignoring, that if intercessory prayer falter not, the angel of the Lord will surely come at the given hour to awaken Peter and break his chains asunder.

Oh! how far more potent are a few souls that in their unobtrusive simplicity know how to pray, than all the policy and all the soldiers of a thousand Herods put together. That small community assembled in the house of Mary, mother of Mark, were few indeed in numbers; but thence, day by day and night by night, arose one continual prayer; fortunately, that fatal naturalism was unknown there, which under the specious pretext of not tempting God, refrains from asking of him the impossible, whenever there is question of the Church’s interests. This pest of naturalism is a domestic enemy harder far to grapple with, at a critical moment, than the crisis itself! To be sure, the precautions taken by Herod Agrippa not to suffer his prisoner to escape his hands, do credit to his prudence, and certainly it was an impossible thing asked for by Holy Church, when she begged the deliverance of Peter, at such a moment: so much so indeed, that even those who were praying, when their prayers were heard, did not at first believe their own eyes! But the prevailing force of their strength was just in that, namely, to hope against all hope, for what they themselves knew to be holy foolishness; that is to say, to submit in prayer the judgment of reason to the sole views of Faith!

Quote:In the Epistle, Rome has celebrated the day on which Juda’s obstinacy in rejecting the Vicar of the Man-God won for the gentile Church the honors of the Bride. See how in joyous gratitude she now recalls the memory of that blissful moment when first earth hailed the Spouse by His divine title: Thou art Christ, Son of the Living God! Oh! happy word awaited for centuries, and for which John the Baptist has been preparing the Bride! But the Precursor himself had quitted the world ere its accents awakened an echo in earth too long dormant. His role was to bring the Word and the Church face to face; after that he was to disappear, as indeed he did, leaving the Bride to the spontaneity of her own effusions. Now is not the pure gold of the Divinity wherewith his Head is adorned, the first of the Beloved’s excellencies pointed out by the Bride in the sacred Canticle? Thus, therefore does she speak on the plains of Cesarea Philippi; and her organ is Simon Bar-Jona, who for having thus rendered her heart’s full utterance, remains forever the “Mouth of Holy Church.”

Faith and love with one accord, hereupon, constitute Peter Supreme and most ancient summit of Theologians, as Saint Denys calls him in his book of the Divine Names. First verily, both in order of time and in plenitude of dogma, he solves the problem, the involvable formula of which had stretched to the utmost the theology of prophetic times. “The words of him that gathereth the people,” said the Wise man, “the words of him who scattereth truths; the vision which the man spoke with whom God is, and who being strengthened by God abiding with him said: I have not learned wisdom … Who hath ascended up into heaven, and descended, so that he may know the name of Him who made the earth? And what is the name of His Son? Who can tell it?” Then, after this mysterious exordium, leading up to the mysterious question, the Wise man, without pursuing it further, concludes with a confiding reserve yet mingled with timidity: Every word of God is fire-tried: he is a buckler to them that hope in him. Add not anything to his words, lest thou be reproved and found a liar.

What then, O Peter, art thou more wise than Solomon? and can that which the Holy Ghost declared to be above all science, be confided as a secret to a poor fisherman? Yes, even so. None knowth the Father, but the Son; yet the Father Himself hath revealed to Simon the mystery of his Son, and the word which attests it may not be gainsaid. For that word is no lying addition to divine dogma: it is the oracle of Heaven which, passing through human lips, raises its happy interpreters above the level of mere flesh and blood. Like Christ, whose Vicar it causes him to become, his one mission is to be Heaven’s faithful echo here below,—that is, the Word of the Father. Here we have the entire Mystery of the Church, at once of heaven and of earth, and against which hell may not prevail.