By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 7.
Paschal Time.
Book 1.
“Hæc dies quam fecit Dominus:
Exsultemus et lætemur in ea”.
“This is the day which The Lord hath made:
Let us be glad and rejoice therein”.
After having glorified The Lamb of God, and The Passover, whereby Our Lord destroyed our enemies; after having celebrated our deliverance by water, and our entrance into The Promised Land; let us now fix our respectful gaze upon Him Whose triumph is pre-figured by all these prodigies.
So dazzling is the glory that now beams from this Man-God, that, like the Prophet of Patmos, we shall fall prostrate before Him. But He is so wonderful, too, in His love, that He will encourage us to enjoy the grand vision: He will say to us, as He did to his disciple: “Fear not ! I am the First, and the Last; and alive, and was dead; and behold ! I am living for ever and ever, and have the keys of death and of Hell”.
Yes, He is now Master of death, which had held Him captive; He holds in His hand the keys of Hell. These expressions of Scripture signify that He has power over death and the tomb; He has conquered them.
Now, the first use He makes of His victory is to make us partakers of it. Let us adore His infinite goodness; and, in accordance with the wish of Holy Church, let us meditate, today, upon the effects wrought in each one of ourselves by the mystery of The Pasch.
Jesus says to His beloved disciple: “I am alive, and was dead”: The day will come when we also shall triumphantly say: “We are living, and we were dead !”.
Death awaits us: It is daily advancing towards us; we cannot escape its vengeance. “The wages of sin is death”: In these few words of Scripture, we are taught how death is not only universal, but even necessary; for we have all sinned.
This, however, does not make the law less severe; nor can we help seeing a frightful disorder in the violent separation of Soul and body, which were united together by God, Himself.
If we truly understand death, we must remember that God made man immortal: This will explain the instinctive dread we have of death, a dread which one thing alone can conquer; and that is, the spirit of sacrifice.
In the death, then, of each one of us, there is the handiwork of sin, and, consequently, a victory won by Satan; Nay, there would be a humiliation for our Creator, Himself, were it not that, by sentencing us to this punishment, He satisfied His justice.
This is man’s well-merited, but terrible, condemnation. What can he hope for ? Never to die ? It would be folly: The sentence is clear, and none may escape. Can he hope that this body, which is to become first a corpse, and then be turned into a mere handful of dust, will one day return to life, and be reunited to the Soul for which it was made ?
But, who could bring about the reunion of an immortal substance with one that was formerly united with it, but has now seemingly been annihilated ? And yet, O, man ! This is to be thy lot ! Thou shalt rise again; that poor body of thine, which is to die, to be buried, forgotten, and humbled, shall be restored to life.
Yea, it even now comes forth from the tomb, in the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ; our future resurrection is accomplished in His; it is, today, that we are made as sure of our resurrection as we are of our death. This, too, makes part of our glorious feast, our Pasch !
God did not, at the beginning, reveal this miracle of His power and goodness: All He said to Adam was: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken; for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return”. Not a word, not an allusion, which gives the culprit the least hope with reference to that portion of himself which is thus doomed to death and the grave.
It was fitting that the ungrateful pride, which had led man to rebel against his Maker, should be humbled. Later on, the great mystery was revealed at least partially.
Four thousand years ago, a poor sufferer, whose body was covered with ulcers, spoke these words of hope: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God: This my hope is laid up in my bosom”.
