MARY IN HER SLEEP.
WE can begin to love God in this life, but it is only in the next that we shall be able to love Him perfectly. In the expression we I do not intend to speak of the Most Holy Virgin, because she is the Daughter of beautiful Love, the one only dove, the perfect Spouse. Yes; the charity of Mary surpassed that of the Seraphim. 'If all the daughters have gathered riches, thou hast surpassed them all.'
The Saints and Angels are compared to stars, but Mary is beautiful as the moon, distinguished amidst the Saints as the moon amidst the stars. As her charity surpasses in heaven that of all the blessed, so did she exercise it with greater excellence on earth; for never having sinned, even venially, her love never met with any obstacle, and thus increased at every instant. What progress, then, must she not have made in the exercise of holy love? Say not that the Most Holy Virgin, like all men, was subject to the necessities of life. It may be said, in the words of the Canticles, that her sleep was the sleep of Love, the celestial Spouse saying, 'I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, that you stir not nor awake my love till she please.'
The Queen of heaven and earth granted to her chaste body that repose only which was necessary to restore its strength, in order to serve God more perfectly; and we may say that her sleep never interrupted the exercise of holy love, because it proceeded from an act of most excellent charity. Does not St. Augustine teach that we must love our body, that it may serve us in those works which God requires of us, and because it forms part of ourselves, and is one day to share our eternal felicity?
The Most Holy Virgin, indeed, had other reasons to love her body with a virtuous love, because it was not only pure, submissive, and docile to all the functions of holy love and embalmed by Divine sweetness, but it was, moreover, the living source of the Sacred Body of Our Saviour. Thus it belonged to her in an incomparably singular manner, so that before yielding to sleep she could truly say to it, 'Rest from your fatigues, O throne of the Divinity, tabernacle of the new Covenant, ark of all Sanctity; recruit your strength through the repose which I allow you to take.'
Ah! sweet Jesus! what must have been the thoughts of your Most Holy Mother whilst sleep refreshed her body and her heart was watching! We may imagine that her most frequent thought was of her Divine Son, Who had so often slept upon her bosom as the lamb reposes upon the soft wool of its mother. She would also feel that she rested in His adorable side, opened by the lance on Calvary, as a white dove rests in the cleft of a rock. Thus her sleep, which was a sweet repose and an agreeable solace to her body, became a kind of ecstasy to her soul, through the spiritual effects and operations it produced.
If she also represented to herself her future glory, like Joseph, the saviour of Egypt, and saw herself clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet—that is to say, surrounded by the glory of her Divine Son, and resplendent with the glory of the Saints who form her crown as she rules over the universe, of which she is the Queen; or if, like Jacob, she foresaw the wonderful fruits that Angels and men would obtain through the Redemption, O! conceive, if possible, children of Mary, the delights caused by such spiritual entertainments!
There is one kind of diamond which has this special property—that nothing can diminish its fine water or the brilliancy which nature has given it. The Heart of the Virgin Mother, like this diamond, never ceased to glow with the sacred fire of love that she had received from her Divine Son. However, though the brilliancy of precious stones does not diminish, yet it does not increase; whilst the love of the Most Holy Virgin never remained in the same state, but made continual and incredible progress until she entered heaven. With good reason, then, is Our Lady called the Mother of pure Love—that is to say, the most lovable amongst all creatures, and the most beloved by her only Son, Who is loved by her as the most lovable and loving of Sons.
SPIRITUAL FLOWERS.
Forgetfulness of God is the sleep of the soul. The soul has been asleep all the time that it has forgotten its God.—St. Augustine.