other things, Juliana writes: "Our heavenly Father has a special complacency in all that Jesus did for our redemption and hence He gave us to Him as a reward. This gift with its reward rejoiced Jesus so much that His Father could not have offered Him anything more acceptable. We are, therefore, not only His property since He redeemed us, but we are His happiness, His reward, His glory, His crown. The Father presented us to Him. Oh, how beautiful, how wonderful, how thrilling it is to think and to know that we are His crown! This is such a joy for Jesus that He considers all His sufferings and trials, even His very cruel and ignominious death, as nothing. Moreover, Jesus is also our tender mother, who, unlike all earthly mothers, has not borne us for pains and death, but for joy, happiness, and everlasting life. The sweet and loving name of mother can be applied to no one more fittingly than to Him who is the true parent of life and of all things. The sweet mother of love knows and understands the wants of the child. She guides it tenderly and carefully, and when it is older and larger she changes her treatment of it, though not her affection for it, when she permits it to be chastened in order to destroy sin and to impart virtue and grace. If we fall through human frailty Jesus lifts us up again by His gentle mercy and loving kindness. "Once we are fully strengthened through His operation we choose voluntarily by His grace to be always His friends and servants. Yet He sometimes allows us to fall more deeply than we had ever fallen before-at least it seems so to us. Then we think that all is lost forever. But such is not the case. A mother may indeed permit that her child now and then encounter suffering if she perceives that it is useful to him. But her love can not allow her child to be in danger of sin. "Yet all this must an earthly mother bear. But Jesus, our heavenly parent, can never permit His children to be lost, for He is almighty, all-wise, and eternal love. There is no one like unto Him. May He be praised and glorified! "If our wickedness and peril are shown to us, then we feel mortified and ashamed, and know not how to help ourselves. Then, however, our kind mother does not wish us to flee from her; that would afflict her grievously. She wishes that we should rather act as children who, the greater their trouble and the worse their care, fly to their mother the more quickly; who, if they can do nothing else, cry with all their might for their mother. So, too, does Jesus wish that we, like a troubled child with its mother, should call on Him, saying, 'Dear mother, kind mother, loving mother, I have sullied myself, I have made myself unlike you, and now I can not help myself. Only you and your grace can save me.' If we do not feel the help of Jesus at once we may surely believe that, like a wise mother, He permits us to suffer and to weep a little longer because He sees that our troubles will benefit us. In short, He wishes that we, like good children, should ever preserve, in happiness and adversity, a loving confidence in His maternal love. "The flood of His mercy, His precious blood mingled with water, can wash us and make us beautifully clean. His wounds are opened to heal us with joy. His beloved hands are ever outspread toward us and ready to bless us. Yes, in every respect He proves Himself to be like a matron who has nothing more to do than to serve her offspring. It is His glory to make us happy. "And He wishes us to know this, that thus we may love Him more intensely and confide in Him undoubtingly. "Our poor soul will find no rest until it repose in Him, for He is the fulness of grace and happiness, loving and gentle, full of blessing. He is the true light and life." Penance not to be Delayed. St. Augustine says: "If a person become sick, has recourse to penance, and asks for absolution and then dies, I say we can not refuse him the absolution he demands, yet we can not assert that he has fared well. Whether he departed this life in safety or in insecurity I know not. Penance indeed we can give, but not certainty. I do not say that such a person is damned, nor can I say that his case is altogether a happy one. If you would escape all doubt, make your own case sure and certain, and leave uncertainty alone. Do penance while you are in health and when time is at your disposal. If you will do this, then I can assure you that you are safe; for at the hour of death you dislike sin chiefly because you are not able to sin any longer. If you are willing to do penance when you are no longer able to sin, then your sins have left you rather than you them." ELEVENTH ARTICLE OF THE CREED. "The resurrection of the body." All Men will Rise Again. BUT a short period of time is allotted for man to live on this earth. The hour comes speedily when his course is ended, and he is obliged to leave here and to appear before the judgment-seat of God, there to render an account of his stewardship and to hear his sentence. Man must die. Such is the curse that broods over us all, for in Adam all have sinned. "By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all" (Romans v. 12). When the solemn hour of departure arrives, the bonds that bound body and soul together through life are rent asunder; then will "the dust return into its earth, from whence it was, and the spirit return to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes xii. 7). The body decomposes, the soul appears before its Judge. Man has hardly closed his eyes in death when his soul is either happy or unhappy. But man is not to be a pure spirit like the angels; he is man, and as man is destined, with body and soul, to be either happy or damned. Hence at the end of all time, at the general resurrection, the soul will be reunited with the body, and then, for the first time, will he be, in his entirety, perfectly happy or completely unhappy. When Our Saviour says, "The hour cometh wherein all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that have done good things, shall come forth to the resurrection of life: but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment" (John v. 28, 29), He speaks only of the resurrection of the bodies, for the souls are not buried in the ground. This is plainly the resurrection of the flesh, a resurrection that is neither unnatural nor impossible. It is natural and reasonable that our bodies should be punished or rewarded, for the body is the agent of the soul for evil or for good. St. Paul says emphatically, "We must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil" (2 Corinthians v. 10). As man has done right or wrong in the flesh he shall receive retribution in the same. The resurrection of the body must take place, in order that Christ the Lord may make manifest His kingdom and dominion over all powers. He has taken away sin and crushed the head of the serpent; He has triumphed over the devil and conquered the forces of hell. In like manner must He conquer death, and as conqueror of death and of the grave, show on the last day that death is swallowed up in victory. "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" (1 Corinthians xv. 55, 56). These resurrected bodies will not be new bodies. No, they will be the same bodies in which we lived, worked, sinned, or strove against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and came off victorious. True, these bodies of ours fall to pieces and may be scattered in dust all over the earth, but they will not be annihilated entirely, for the Lord who created them will gather their parts together, and restore them again to individual existence and animation. Would this be a greater miracle for the almighty God-namely, to restore life-than to create it, as He did when He vivified and animated the "slime of the earth" at creation? Does He not, at every hour, at every instant, renew the great miracle of giving existence to countless bodies for which He creates as many immortal souls? The almighty God who takes away life can restore it again. He created man, and if He withdraw His divine breath man dies. Why, then, could He not restore that breath and that life? The last miracle is no greater than the first; with God all things are possible and nothing is impossible. |