Sixth Day

€t And I beheld : and lo a Lamb stood upon Mount Sion, and with Him an hundred forty-four thousand, having His name and the name of His Father written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of great thunder : and the voice, which I heard, was as the voice of harpers, harping on their harps. And they sang as it were a new canticle, before the throne, . . . and no man could say the canticle, but those hundred forty - four thousand . . . for they are virgins. These follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth."t¹

There are some, pure as the light, who even here on earth belong to this generation. They already bear the name of the Lamb and of the Father written on their foreheads. The name of the Lamb by their resemblance and conformity with Him Whom St. John calls the u Faithful and True," Whom he shows us clothed in a robe stained with blood. These Christians are also faithful and true, and their robes are stained with the blood of their perpetual immolation. " The name of the Father," because He radiates the beauty of His perfection in them, all His divine attributes being reflected in such souls, which are like so many strings of an instrument, vibrating and giving forth the canticum novum,

" They follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth," not only by the wide and level roads but by the thorny paths, among the brambles by the way. They are virgins — that is, free, set apart, detached. . . ."

" Free from all except from their love," separated from all, above all from self, detached from all, both in the supernatural and natural order. What a going out from self does that imply ! What a death to all ! As St. Paul says : " I die daily l" *

The great saint wrote to the Colossians: "You are dead ; and your life is hid with Christ in God."f This is the condition : we must be dead ; otherwise, we may be hidden in God at certain times, but we do not habitually live in the Divinity, because our feelings, our self-seeking and the rest, draw us forth from Him.

The soul that gazes upon its Master with the simple eye which makes the whole body full of light, * i Cor. xv. 31. t Col. iii. 3.

is "kept from the iniquity"* within it. The Lord makes it enter the "spacious place,""]" which is nothing else than Himself; there all is pure, all is holy.

O, blessed death in God! O, sweet and delightful loss of self within Him Whom we love ! Henceforth the creature can say : " With Christ I am nailed to the cross. And I live, now not I ; but Christ liveth in me. And that 1 live now in the flesh : I live in the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and delivered Himself for me." J

Footnotes

1. Col. i. 15. t Apoc. xiv. 1-4.. ↩