Again—“Though the rolling away of the stone, the emptying of the sepulchre, the laying aside the linen, the shining of the angels, did abundantly establish the reality of our Lord’s Resurrection, yet He mercifully appeared to the women; He suffered Himself to be handled with careful and inquisitive touch by those of whom doubt was taking hold.”
Thus the faithful voice led the people on through Easter to the Ascension. Very quiet were the words, not exhausting the joy in a burst of rapture, but leading it onward and upward in an ever-rising tide of certainty and victory “too deep for sound or foam”; very quiet, quiet and strong as the first flood-tide of the first joy of the first Easter.
Nor did he forget the doubt, the heavy weight of apprehension, the slow reviving to faith of the hearts of the disciples benumbed by sorrow; the magnitude of the weight which gives the true measure of the power which lifted it.
“For the death of Christ,” he said, “had sorely disturbed the hearts of the disciples, and a kind of torpor of distrust had slowly crept into minds oppressed by sorrow, on account of the humiliation of the Cross, the yielding up of the spirit, the burial of the lifeless body.
“For when the holy women in the gospel history had announced to the disciples that the stone was rolled away from the tomb, that the body was not in the sepulchre, and that angels bore witness that the Lord was alive, their words seemed to the apostles and disciples as idle tales; and surely this uncertainty would in nowise be allowed by the Spirit of Truth to exist in the hearts of his preachers, unless their trembling anxiety and inquiring hesitation had laid the foundation of our faith. It was for our perturbations and our dangers that provision was being made in the case of the apostles; we, in them, were being instructed against the calumnies of the impious, and against the triumphs of the world’s wisdom; we have been taught by their seeing, we have heard by their hearing. Let us give thanks to the Divine Providence, and to that necessary tardiness of our holy fathers. Doubts were felt by them, that no doubts might be felt by us.
“Those days, dearly beloved, between the Resurrection and the Ascension did not pass away in an inactive course; but in them great and sacred truths were confirmed, great mysteries were revealed. To the Magdalene He said, ‘Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father;’ that is, ‘I will not have thee come to Me corporeally, to recognize Me by the sensations of the flesh; I am putting thee off to something loftier, I am preparing thee for something greater. When I shall have ascended to My Father, then thou shalt handle Me more perfectly and more truly, being about to apprehend what thou touchest not, and to believe what thou seest not.’ When He took Himself away to the majesty of the Father, He began in an ineffable manner to be more present in His Divinity. And a truly great and unspeakable cause of rejoicing it was, when, in the presence of that holy multitude, the nature of manhood was ascending above the dignity of all celestial creatures, to pass above the angelic ranks, and to be elevated above the high seats of the archangels; and not to let any degree of loftiness be a limit to its advancement, until it should be received to sit down with the Eternal Father, and associated in the throne with His glory, to Whose nature it is united in the Son. Since then Christ’s Ascension is our advancement, and whither the glory of the Head is gone before, thither is it the hope of the body to be summoned, let us, dearly beloved, exult with befitting joys and devout thanksgiving. For to-day have we not only been confirmed in the possession of Paradise, but in Christ we have penetrated to the heights of Heaven, having won through the unspeakable grace of Christ nobler gifts than we had lost through the wiles of the devil.
“This faith, increased by our Lord’s Ascension, and strengthened by the gift of the Holy Spirit, has not been overcome by chains, nor imprisonments, nor banishments, nor famine, nor the sword, nor the teeth of wild beasts, nor by any torments invented by the cruelty of persecutors. For this faith, throughout the whole world, not only men but even women, not only young boys but tender maidens, contended to the shedding of their own blood; whatever had before caused them fear now turned into joy.
“Let us therefore, dearly beloved, follow after charity, without which no one can shine; that through this way of love whereby Christ descended to us, we also may be able to ascend to Him, to Whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost belong honour and glory for ever.”
So the tide of Christian joy flowed on fuller and fuller to Whitsuntide, when the great company of the newly baptized gathered around the fonts in their white robes, as at Easter. Then Ethne’s heart went back to that glad white-robed company of neophytes which had gathered around the well, beside the little chapel of rough-hewn stones in her own island. It was but a year since she had sat with her brother in the white robes of baptism on the cliff by her father’s house. And in looking back from the pomp of these great assemblies in the stately basilicas on that homely gathering, she felt more than ever how glorious had been that simple beginning of new life in the new world, as at the first Pentecost. “From Him, the Holy Spirit,” Bishop Leo said, “comes the thirst; from Him, the calling on the Father; from Him, the groans of suppliants. As in that first exultant choir of all human tongues, the majesty of the Holy Ghost was present, let the minds of the faithful rejoice, because now through all the world our God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is praised by the acknowledgment rendered in every tongue, and because that indication which was given in the form of fire is still witnessed, alike as a work and a gift. For the Spirit of Truth Himself makes the house of His glory shine with the radiance of His own light, and wills not to have in His temple anything dark or lukewarm.”
“The house of His glory also,” Ethne murmured to Damaris, “was that little round stone cell of Patrick’s building in our Ireland.”