The sun has risen in his splendour, while the sweet chants of the sanctuary have been greeting the coming of the divine Orient. The appointed ministers of the sacred psalmody have been giving, in the name of the whole world, the solemn tribute of Lauds to God the Creator and Redeemer; and now that the king of day is up, we behold a very busy scene outside the precincts of the holy place: the children of men are all intent on a work, in which neither the desire of lucre, nor the thirst for pleasure, have any share. Tidings of salvation have been heard; the voice of rejoicing is in the tabernacles of the just: “God is preparing to visit His creatures; Emmanuel, Who is present in the Sacred Host, is about to go forth from His sanctuary; He is coming into your cities and your fields, to hold court in your green forests; the Lord God hath shone upon you, He hath appointed this solemn day; prepare His throne with shady boughs, and cover the way to the horn of the altar with flowers!” (Psalms)
This announcement has excited a holy enthusiasm in the souls of men. For several previous days, many a faithful heart has had something of the feeling which animated David, when he vowed his vow to the God of Jacob: “I will not enter into the tabernacle of my house, I will not go up into the bed wherein I lie, I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or rest to my temples, until I find out a place for the Lord, and a tabernacle for the God of Jacob” (Ps. 131: 3-5). O beautiful resting-places where are to stand the feet of the King of peace! Short-lived but exquisite designs! The product of that sacred poetry which comes from the supernatural love of the Christian! We see them today, save where cold heresy has come to keep man from being too earnest in his worship of his Saviour! On every truly Catholic heart, even on some who, at all other times, seem to be out of the influence of grace, the Mystery of Faith makes its power tell; and many a wife, and daughter, and sister, who have seen the other feasts of the year of grace pass by and produce no effect on those dear to them, on this bright morning have beheld them all busy in preparing decorations for the triumphant procession of Emmanuel (Whom they have so long neglected to receive), and spending themselves in getting the best of everything they can give, or procure, for the God Who is so soon to pass by that way, and, passing, to give these dear ones the blessing of a conversion! It is the wakening up of the Faith of their Baptism; it is the grace of the Sacrament of Love working at a distance; a grace of a reminder of other and happier days, of First Communion perhaps; and when Jesus passes through the crowd, He will look at them, and they shall remember, and shall be converted to the Lord (Ps. 21: 28).
The grand Feast has, at length, dawned upon us; and everything is speaking of the triumph of faith and love. During the Feast of the Ascension, when commenting on these words of Our Lord: “It is expedient to you that I go” (John 16: 7), we were saying that the withdrawal of the visible presence of the Man-God from the eyes of men on earth, would bring among them, by the vivid operation of the Holy Ghost, a plenitude of light and a warmth of love which they had not had for Jesus, during His mortal life among them; the only creature that had rendered to Him, in Her single self, the whole of those duties which the Church afterwards paid Him, was Mary, who was illumined with Faith.
In his exquisite hymn, Adore Te Devote, St. Thomas Aquinas says: “On the Cross the Divinity alone was hid; but here the Humanity, too, is hid;” and yet, on no day of the year is the Church more triumphant, or more demonstrative, than She is upon this Feast. Heaven is all radiant; our earth has clad herself with her best, that she may do homage to Him, Who has said: “I am the Flower of the fields, and the Lily of the valleys” (Cant. 2: 1). Holy Church is not satisfied with having prepared a throne whereon, during the whole of this Octave, the Sacred Host is to receive the adorations of the faithful; She has decreed that these days of solemn and loving exposition be preceded by the pageant of a triumph. Not satisfied today with elevating the Bread of Life immediately after the Consecration, She will carry It beyond the precincts of Her churches, amidst clouds of incense, and on paths strewn with flowers; and Her children, on bended knee, will adore, under heaven’s vaulted canopy, Him Who is their King and their God.
Those joys, which each separate solemnity of the year brought us, seem to come back upon us, all of them at once, today. The royal prophet had foretold this, when he said: “He (the Lord) hath made a remembrance of His wonderful works: He hath given Food to them that fear Him” (Ps. 110, 4-5). Holy Church is filled with enthusiasm, holding in Her arms that Divine Spouse, Who said: “Behold! I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Matt. 28: 20). Nothing could be more formal; and the promise has been faithfully kept. It is true, we beheld Him ascending from Mount Olivet; He went up into Heaven, and there He sitteth at His Father’s right hand: but ever since the memorable day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost took possession of the Church, the sacred mystery of the Last Supper has been celebrated, in virtue of those words spoken by Jesus: Do this in remembrance of Me; and from that day forward, the human race has never been deprived of the presence of its Head and its Redeemer. No wonder, therefore, that Holy Mother Church, possessing, as She does, the Word, the Son of God, is suddenly filled with wisdom. The Sacramental Species, it is true, are there shrouding the mystery; but they are only existing for the purpose of leading into the invisible…”
[These are the last words written for this work by Abbot Prosper Louis Pascal Gueranger. He was on the point of completing this section of The Liturgical Year, when death came upon him on January 30, 1875.]
