"Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun?" Canticle vi, 9.
The Holy Ghost had enkindled so ardent a flame in the heart of the Blessed Virgin, that it was really a continuous miracle that she sustained so impetuous a heavenly fire without dying, and this repeatedly burst forth from her breast. For if St. Ephrem cried out in his desert cell, and placed his hands over his heart lest it should burst and split; if St. Francis Xavier, laying bare his bosom to breathe more freely, and looking up to heaven, beseeched his merciful Lord and Master to be sparing of His favors, and to remind Him that a human heart could not endure such a flood of consoling light; what must our Blessed Lady have felt, she who received more that all the saints put together? How was it that she did not expire at every moment? How was it that she was not consumed with the flames of love divine, more especially as the Son of God, Who is love itself, had willed and chosen to dwell for nine long months in her virginal womb? Cannot we say, with St. Bernard, that her chaste interior was laden with love, that she had neither heart nor life, if we be allowed to say so; but that love was her heart, and to live for God and love Him too, was one and the same thing?
The life of the Seraphim consists in seeing God, in loving Him always, in enjoying an eternity of bliss; and, as St. Gregory observes, wherever they go, they never go out of God--they fly in the bosom of His immensity, they dwell in His heart, they exercise their divine functions in the sanctuary of His divinity.
This was then veritably the life of the Blessed Virgin; she shared the rank of the blessed in heaven, far, far above the state of mortals who lived on earth; her heart was ever near to God, and God was always in her heart; her sleep was one continual dream of love, and she could say with the spouse in the Canticle: "I sleep and my heart watcheth." (chap. v. 2.)
Doubtless the death of Mary was a greater miracle, for to what can we attribute the cause? Who can tell the cause of so wonderful death? Can we attribute the cause to sin? Oh, no; she is innocence itself; her conception is immaculate, her birth was stainless, her life without reproach; and never having been a slave of sin, she needed not to pay the debt of nature. To sickness? No; she was never ill, and her body was exempt from the gradual decay of nature. To agony? No; death would appear to be too welcome to be painful. Is it to the shafts of divine love? But love was the mainstay of her life; how could it have caused her death? To her Son's Cross? But if she was to die, why did she not die on Calvary?
It is certain that never a mother loved her son so much, because no mother had a son who was hers alone--no mother had son so loving, so perfect; there never was a mother who had a heart so inflamed with the fire of divine love. Many a time and oft, many mothers have died either with grief at seeing their children die, or with fear at seeing them on the point of dying.
How was it, then, that the Blessed Virgin did not die at the death of her Son, she who loved Him so, she who saw Him suffer such a cruel death? You will tell me, with St. Bernardin, that to live without Him was a greater martyrdom than dying with Him; because, in dying with Him, she would have been martyred only once, but in surviving Him every moment of her life was simply a torture.
What wonder, then, that her life was a species of death, and that death, thus reversing the order of nature, was a renewal of her life?
It is impossible for any one to describe the excess of glory and the sublimity of the ever Blessed Virgin's throne. We need not be astonished, as Arnold de Chartres remarks, because her glory exceeds that of all others. She has a rank of her own; her pedestal is raised considerably higher than that of the angels; the glory she possesses is not solely a glory like unto that of the Word Incarnate, it is in a certain way similar: Gloriam cum matre, non tam communem judico quam eamden.
O King of glory, it is certain that magnificence and and grandeur are inherent to Your holy habitation; You have given striking proofs of this on the feast of the Assumption of Your holy Mother. You have crowned her Queen of all saints; there is no one but the King Who precedes her. She is so glorious that one would say that it it the glory of God itself, or rather that God had her with His own glory. She is so great and powerful near You that she herself cannot fathom the extent of her power.
Le Pere Nouet, S.J.
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