July 7
Daily Gleanings of the Saintly LifeWhitsun Day
If ye love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. S. John 14:15-17.
EACH festival of the mysteries of our faith is in turn the greatest, and all alike are equal. Each seemeth for the time the greatest, for each bringeth to our nothingness the Infinity of God. All are alike equal, for all relate to that Infinity, in which there are no degrees, no parts, no more or less, no bounds, no beginnings, no end, no time. But God, in Himself infinite, unchangeable, and one, shows Himself to His creatures in degree and measure, and divides as it were His ineffable light in the bow which is around the throne; so may we, who cannot behold His glory Who sitteth thereon, as He is, behold His beauty and love parted in the varied lines of that mercy which droppeth from above. To-day is the filling up of the Ascension. The wondrous exchange was half made on the Ascension, when Man in God was taken up into heaven, and sat on His Father's throne; the day of Pentecost fulfilled the promise of the Father, and as man now dwelt in God, so God, in a new and ineffable way, dwelt thenceforth in man. On this day God sent us God the Holy Spirit, to dwell really, truly, substantially, in the souls of men, not by mere gifts and graces, however great, but by Himself. As truly as the soul dwells in the body, even so God the Holy Ghost dwells truly and really in the hearts of the faithful, is the Life of the soul itself, unites them to Christ, is the Fountain of all graces.
Truest Sun, upon us stream With Thy calm perpetual beam, In the Spirit's still sunshine Making sense and thought divine.