Eighth Day
" They rested not day and night, saying : Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was, and Who is, and Who is to come. . . . The four-and-twenty ancients fell down before Him that sitteth on the throne, and adored Him That liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying : Thou art worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory, and honour, and power. . . ."1
How can I imitate, within the heaven of my soul, the ceaseless work of the blessed in the heaven of glory ? How can I maintain this constant praise, this uninterrupted adoration ? St. Paul enlightens me when he writes to his disciples : " That the Father . . . would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened . . . unto the inward man. That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts ; that being rooted and founded in charity. . . ,"f
" To be rooted and founded in charity " is, it seems to me, the necessary condition of worthily fulfilling the office of a Laudem Gloria. The soul that enters into, that dwells in " the deep things of God," that consequently does all "by Him, with Him, in Him," with the purity of intention that gives it a certain resemblance to the one, simple Being — this soul, by its every aspiration, every action, every movement, however commonplace, becomes more deeply rooted in Him it loves. Everything within it renders homage to the thriceholy God ; it may be called a perpetual Sanctusy a perpetual "Praise of glory."
" They fell down, ... and adored . . . and cast their crowns before the throne."
And first of all the soul should " fall down," should plunge into the abyss of its own nothingness, so sinking into it that, according to the beautiful expression of a mystic writer, " it finds the true, invincible, and perfect peace that naught can trouble, for it has cast itself so low that none will descend to follow it." Then, it can adore!
Adoration ! Ah ! that word comes from heaven. It seems to me that it can be defined as the ecstasy of love ; love crushed by the beauty, the strength, the vast grandeur of Him it loves. It falls into a kind of swoon, into a profound and deep silence — that silence of which David spoke when he cried: "Silence is Thy praise."2 Yes! that is the most perfect praise, for it is sung eternally in the bosom of the tranquil Trinity ; it is also " the final effort of the soul that overflows and can speak no more."
" Exalt ye the Lord ... for the Lord our God is holy," | as the psalm says. And again: "They shall always adore Him for His own sake." \ A soul which meditates upon these thoughts, which understands their meaning with the " mind of the Lord," lives in heaven beforehand, above all that is passing around it, above the clouds, above itself !
It knows that He Whom it adores possesses in Himself all happiness, all glory, and "casting its crown " before Him, as do the blessed, it despises self, loses sight of self, and finds its beatitude in Him Whom it adores, whatever its sufferings or
X Ibid,) lxxi. 15 (French version).
grief, for it has gone out from self and passed into Another. The soul, in this attitude of adoration, resembles the well, spoken of by St. John of the Cross, which receives the waters flowing from Lebanon, so that those who look on it may exclaim : " The stream of the river maketh glad the city of God."*
Footnotes
Chapter 8 of 16