English: The Assumption of The Virgin Mary.
Deutsch: Maria Himmelfahrt, Hochaltar
für St. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venedig.
Français: L'Assomption de la Vierge.
Artist: Titian (1490–1576).
Date: 1516-1518.
Current location:
Source/Photographer: The Yorck Project:
10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei.
DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202.
Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.
(Wikimedia Commons)
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 13.
Time After Pentecost.
Book IV.
What is this Dawn before which the brightest constellations pale ?
Laurence, who has been shining in the August Heavens as an incomparable star, is well nigh eclipsed, and becomes but the humble satellite of the Queen of Saints, whose triumph is preparing beyond the clouds.
Mary stayed on Earth after her Son’s Ascension in order to give birth to His Church; but she could not remain for ever in exile. Yet, she was not to take her flight to Heaven until this new fruit of her maternity had acquired the growth and strength which it belongs to a mother to give.
Laurence, who has been shining in the August Heavens as an incomparable star, is well nigh eclipsed, and becomes but the humble satellite of the Queen of Saints, whose triumph is preparing beyond the clouds.
Mary stayed on Earth after her Son’s Ascension in order to give birth to His Church; but she could not remain for ever in exile. Yet, she was not to take her flight to Heaven until this new fruit of her maternity had acquired the growth and strength which it belongs to a mother to give.
How sweet to The Church was this dependence !!! A privilege given to her members by Our Lord in imitation of Himself.
As we saw, at Christmas-time, the God-Man carried first in the arms of His Mother, gathering His strength and nourishing His life at her Virginal breast; so the mystical body of the Man-God, the Holy Church, received, in its first years, the same care from Mary as the Divine Child our Emmanuel.
As Joseph heretofore at Nazareth, Peter was now ruling the House of God; but Our Lady was none the less to the assembly of the Faithful the source of life in the spiritual order, as she had been to Jesus in His Humanity.
On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost and every one of His gifts rested first upon her in all fullness; every Grace bestowed on the privileged dwellers in the Cenacle was given more eminently and more abundantly to her.
“The sacred stream of the river maketh the City of God joyful”, because first of all “the Most High has sanctified His own tabernacle”, made her the “well of living waters, which run with a strong stream from Libanus”.
Eternal Wisdom herself is compared in the Scripture to overflowing waters; to this day, the voice of her messengers traverses the World, magnificent, as the voice of the Lord over the great waters, as the thunder which reveals His power and majesty: Like a new deluge overturning the ramparts of false science, levelling every height raised against God, and fertilising the desert.
O fountain of the gardens hiding thyself so calm and pure in Sion, the silence which keeps thee from the knowledge of the profane hides from their sullied eyes the source of thy wavelets which carry salvation to the furthest limits of the Gentile World.
To thee, as to the Wisdom sprung from thee, is applied the prophetic word: “I have poured out rivers”. Thou givest to drink to the new-born Church thirsting for the Word.
Thou art, as the Holy Spirit said of Esther, thy type: “The little fountain which grew into a river, and was turned into a light, and into the Sun, and abounded into many waters”.
The Apostles, inundated with Divine Science, recognised in thee the richest source, which having once given to the World the Lord God, continued to be the channel of His Grace and Truth to them.
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