2. How great this loss is, and how great a grief arises from this loss, those who have experienced the loss know.
Mary Magdalene saw her beloved Jesus fall seven times beneath the great weight of the cross, she beheld Him hang for three hours upon the cross, she saw Him taken down from the tree and laid in a sepulchre, and yet not one Evangelist says that she shed a single tear. But on the most festive day of the Resurrection, when the angels sang their paschal hallelujah in full choir, when mourning was laid aside for garments white and clean, when the dead themselves rose for joy from their graves, and the dawn blushed a fairer pink than heretofore, and the sun, rejoicing as a giant to run his course, scattered brighter than wonted beams, THEN Magdalene wept inconsolably, nor deigned to look at the angels who asked, Woman, why weepest thou? for, says the Evangelist, she had bowed down her face to the earth, as though beaten down and crushed beneath the burden of her sorrow.
But why this strange paradox! that she should not weep at the time for tears, and now not laugh at the time for laughter? Magdalene’s answer explains all: They have taken away my Lord. This was her sole and worthy cause of tears—the absence of her Lord. “She wept more,” says Augustine, “because He was removed from the sepulchre, than because He was slain upon the tree.” When He was on the cross, she stood by; when He was entombed, she sat over against the sepulchre; dying she was near Him, risen she was parted from Him—therefore flowed her tears. Truly may St. Bernard say: “So sweet is Jesus to all who taste of Him, so beautiful to all who behold Him, so dear to all who embrace Him, that a little moment of absence is greatest cause of sorrow.” But oh! what will it then be, to lose Him for ever and ever!
3. To this example of a female disciple who loved much, let us add that of a male disciple who loved very much, that from both we may learn what it is to lose Jesus. Peter, inseparable, as it were, from Christ, according to his own testimony, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life,—Peter, I say, when he saw his Master rise from the supper of the law, and gird Himself with the towel, pour water into a basin, and stoop to wash his feet, refused to permit Him to do it: Thou shalt never wash my feet. Oh, Peter! hast thou forgotten thy words to thy Lord: Bid me come to Thee on the water? And why wilt thou not dip thy feet in water when thy Lord cometh to thee? Thou art ready to go with Him to prison and to death, and that thou mayest go the better, He who giveth His angels charge concerning thee, is conforming thy feet that they may bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Ay! He is placing His hands beneath thy feet to bear thee up Himself, lest thou stumble at the stone of stumbling and rock of offence. Why delay? Why shrink back? Why recoil? God loveth not headstrong piety, nor an obstinate self-will! Listen, Peter, to what Christ answers thee: If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me. So many words, so many lightnings! by these Peter is threatened, not with prison and darkness, not with horrors and wretchedness, not with pyres and wheels, but with the absence of Christ Himself, Thou hast no part with Me.… Touched by this lightning-stroke, Peter exclaims: Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
4. …
5. Fatal will be that last sentence: Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire. Here observe that the first portion of the sentence refers to expulsion from Christ’s presence as the chief pain of hell. Of which says St. Chrysostom: “This pain is worse than to be tortured in the flames.” And St. Bruno: “Let torments be added to torments, let cruel ministers cruelly rack, let all kinds of scourges increase their severity, but let us not be deprived of God, whose absence would be the worst of tortures.” And that this may be confirmed by the mouths of three witnesses, B. Laurentius Justiniani says, “The interminable want of the beatific vision will excel all other woes.”
Certainly the damned would feel no pain if they could see Jesus. Three children were cast into the burning fiery furnace of Babylon, and they trampled on the flames, they sang among their torments, and called upon all creatures to unite with them in praise. Would you know the reason? We have it from the mouth of the hostile king: Lo! I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. The form, the very image only, of the Son of God was sufficient to remove all power from the fierce element, to turn torment into jubilee, punishment into delight, a furnace into a joke (focum in jocum; a pun), a torturer’s pyre into festive flames. No less would the damned rejoice if they could thus behold the Son of God, and would set at nought fire, hell, and damnation.
6. Oh! if after myriads of years they were given a chance of obtaining one thing from Christ, would they ask of Him any thing else but that which the blind man required—Lord, that I may see? Why did the damned Dives ask that Lazarus might come with a drop of water at the tip of his finger to cool his parched tongue? Why did he not rather demand a refreshing shower, or a pleasant rill of cool water to flow into his throat? It was because he desired the presence of the glorified Lazarus. By that presence all his pains would be relieved, his hell would be turned into Paradise. The longed-for Lazarus is the very Son of God, who suffered poverty at the gate of the rich, asking for a little crumb of comfort, but in vain; rejected by the Jews, the dogs of Gentiles came, and found healing in His wounds.
Now the damned desire of the Father that He should send His Son, who with the finger of God’s right hand, the Holy Spirit, might touch the stream of celestial joys, and let one drop distil into the consuming fire, to refresh the lost for one moment, to give them for one instant a glimpse of the beauty of that radiant countenance. But in vain; in vain they ask, they cry, they weep; they shall see the face of Jesus no more.
The sentence was pronounced against the children of outer darkness when God said, My face will I turn also from them. The hiding of that countenance is the source of all ills. My face will I turn from them! they have set the face of men before them in the place of Mine. They have loved the beauty of human countenances rather than the glory of Mine which is divine. My face will I turn from them! I, who turned not My face from those who spat upon it, and buffeted Me. My face will I turn from them, and My face is as the sun, and they shall never see light; My face, which is the source of all gladness; Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, and they shall be sad; My face, the prospect of beholding which tempers more than did the hopes of possessing Rachel. They shall labour for ever without rest, or solace, or refreshment. And this is the sum of their woes, that Jesus, whom they lost in the way of life, they find not again, and shall not see or grasp through ages evermore.