First Day
“Nescivi! I knew not.”1 So sings the bride of the Canticles after having been brought into the inner cellar. That, it seems to me, should be the song of a “Praise of glory” on the first day of her retreat, when the Master makes her sound the depths of the abyss, that she may learn to fulfil the office which will be hers in eternity, but which she also ought to perform in time, which is the beginning of eternity.
Nescivi! I know nothing, I desire nothing but “that I may know Him . . . and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death.”2 “Whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Son,”3 Who was crucified by love. When I become identified with this Divine Example, dwelling wholly in Him and He in me, I shall fulfil my eternal vocation, by which God chose me in Him, in principio, which I shall fulfil in æternum, when, in the bosom of the Trinity, I shall be the ceaseless “Praise of His glory” in laudem gloriæ ejus.4
“No man hath seen God at any time : the only begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.”5 It might be added that none has penetrated the mystery of Christ in all its depths, unless it be our Lady. St. Paul often speaks of the “knowledge” he had received of it, yet all the saints dwell in shadow, compared with our Lady's light ! The secret she kept and pondered in her heart is unspeakable ; no tongue can tell it, no pen express it.
This Mother of grace will so shape my soul that her little child may be a living, striking image of her “Firstborn,” the Son of the Eternal, the perfect " Praise of the glory " of His Father.
Footnotes
Chapter 1 of 16