Part 1, lesson 23. Of the mystery of the Burial of our Lord, and in what the grace of this mystery differs from that of death

Q. What grace did the mys tery of the Burial of our Lord acquire for" us, and in what does it differ from the grace of interior death ?

A. A dead man still retains

• Ut absorbeatur quod inortale est a vita II, Cor. v, 4.

the form of the world and of the flesh; he still appears to be a part of Adam, he can yet be occasionally moved, he gives yet some pleasure to the world; but the buried man is no longer spoken of, he is no longer in the rank of men; as he is in a state of corruption, and an object of horror, he has no longer any thing that pJeases, he is trampled under foot in a cemetery, without any one being astonished at it; so perfectly is the world convinced that he is nothing, and is no longer in the number of men.

The burial of which St. Paul speaks, when he says that we are buried with our Lord bv baptism,* is the same thing as that corruption, of which our Lord speaks in St. John, when he says that unless the grain of wheat which falls on the ground dies, it remains alone and with out fruit.*

This Burial and this corrup tion are different from death, in as much as the state of death supposes only a state of consis tency, stiffness and insensibility; whilst the state of burial and corruption implies the destruc-

• Consepulti enim sumus cum illo per baptismum in mortem. Rom. vi, 4. Consepulti ei in baptismo. Col. ii, 12.

• Nisi granum frumenti cadens in terram, mortuum fuerit, nullum fructum affert. Joan, xii, 24.

tion of the whole being, and the production of the germ of a new life. The grain, after rotting in the ground, is like the tomb from which the new creature rises; and the body of a Christian, already condemned to corruption in Adam, sees from its corruption spring up the germ of a divine life, which the Holy Spirit produces in it with all the effects and move ments of sanctity that accom pany it. This mystery is founded upon that of the burial of our Lord, since this divine Saviour sprang up alive from his tomb, in which death had buried this grain of wheat of the elect.