Then at last the morning came, and Christ was risen beyond a doubt.
Just before the sun came up, when all the sky was luminous to meet him, the two again passed up and round the corner, and into the little door in the angle. There was the same shaded candle or two, for the house was yet dark within; and they passed up and on together through the sitting-room into the chapel where each had made a First Confession the night before, and had together been received into the Catholic Church. Now it was all fragrant with flowers and herbs; a pair of tall lilies leaned their delicate heads towards the altar, as if to listen for the soundless Coming in the Name of the Lord; underfoot all about the altar lay sprigs of sweet herbs, rosemary, thyme, lavender, bay-leaves; with white blossoms scattered over them—a soft carpet for the Pierced Feet; not like those rustling palm-swords over which He rode to death last week. The black oak chest that supported the altar-stone was glorious in its vesture of cloth-of-gold; and against the white-hung wall at the back, behind the silver candlesticks, leaned the gold plate of the house, to do honour to the King. And presently there stood there the radiant rustling figure of the Priest, his personality sheathed and obliterated beneath the splendid symbolism of his vestments, stiff and chinking with jewels as he moved.
The glorious Mass of Easter Day began.
“Immolatus est Christus. Itaque epulemur,” Saint Paul cried from the south corner of the altar to the two converts. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast, but not with the old leaven.”
“Quis revolvet nobis lapidem?” wailed the women. “Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?”
“And when they looked,” cried the triumphant Evangelist, “they saw that the stone was rolled away; for it was very great”—“erat quippe magnus valde.”
Here then they knelt at last, these two come home together, these who had followed their several paths so resolutely in the dark, not knowing that the other was near, yet each seeking a hidden Lord, and finding both Him and one another now in the full and visible glory of His Face—orto jam sole—for the Sun of Righteousness had dawned, and there was healing for all sorrows in His Wings.
“Et credo in unam sanctam Catholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam”—their hearts cried all together. “I believe at last in a Catholic Church; one, for it is built on one and its faith is one; holy, for it is the Daughter of God and the Mother of Saints; Apostolic, for it is guided by the Prince of Apostles and very Vicar of Christ.”
“Et exspecto vitam venturi saeculi.” “I look for the life of the world to come; and I count all things but loss, houses and brethren and sisters and father and mother and wife and children and lands, when I look to that everlasting life, and Him Who is the Way to it. Amen.”