Salesian Literature

Chapter 11  :  Our benevolent love shares in the praise of the Redeemer and his Mother

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Up and up we go in loving benevolence through the whole scale of creatures, from the non-sensitive through to the reasonable and intellectual, inviting them all to praise God.  From the Church militant we pass to the Church triumphant, where we continue to make our way up through the angels and saints until, above them all, we meet with our blessed Lady.  Here praise is peerless; she magnifies God with a devotion and a delight that is far above anything which all the rest of creation together could ever achieve.

 

The praises, however, which this cherished Mother who gives birth to all noble loving (cf. Eccl. 15:2, 2; 24:24) offers to God in concert with all creation, perfect and wonderful as they are, still fall infinitely short of the infinite praise due to his goodness.  There is no comparison, in fact; so that, although such praises gratify the benevolence of a heart in love with God, they do not satisfy it.  It must push on still further, and invite its Saviour to praise and glorify his eternal Father with all the blessings a Son’s love has to offer.  For us nothing is left now but silence; what else but wonderment?

 

What a song is the Son’s praise for his Father!  From the others the eternal Father accepts his need of praise, as it were the scents of one or two flowers here and there; at the blessings which his Son provides, he surely cries: How it breathes about this son of mine, the fragrance of all the flowers of earth when the Lord’s blessings is on it! (Gen. 27:27).

 

Human and angelic are the blessings which God receives from the Church militant and the Church triumphant; for all that they are directed towards the Creator, they originate in a creature.  The Son’s praises, however, are divine; not only are they for God like the others, but they have their origin in God, since the Redeemer is truly divine.  Truly divine too are his praises: to God they are given, from God they come.  To creatures, for the utterance of praise, God sends his inspiration, gives his grace; the Redeemer, who is God, supplies his own – and, on that account, his praise is infinite.

 

A man who spends some time listening to the dawn chorus in nearby woods hears the delightful warbling of a host of chaffinches, linnets, goldfinches, and other small birds.  If, at last, he hears a masterly nightingale, its wonderful voice filling both air and ear with perfect melody, surely he would prefer this one woodland chorister to all the others.  That is how it is with us, when we have heard the concerted praises of creation, each thing striving to outdo the others in the common praise of the Creator; for, at last, we hear the Saviour’s voice – praise which has about it an infinity of merit, value and sweetness that far surpasses every hope or expectation of the heart.  It is as though the soul awakened from a deep sleep, to be suddenly enraptured by a melody of entrancing loveliness …

 

“There, I hear it; the voice I love!  That voice which knows no peer, that voice beside which all other voices pale into silence.  See, there he is now, standing on the other side of this very wall of the humanity he shares with us!  See, he can be glimpsed through the wounds in his body, through the hole in his side, as it were through each window in turn; he is looking at us too, peering through every chink.” (cf. Cant . 2:8,9).

 

The heart of Christ is the throne of God’s love; of that we can be certain.  Through the cleft in his pierced side the Saviour’s love watches over the hearts of human kind; king of all hearts he is, so his eyes are on them always.  The love of God’s heart, or rather the heart of God’s love – like someone looking through the lattice – has clear sight of our hearts, gazes on them lovingly; our view of it, however, is indistinct, something of which we catch only glimpses.  Could we but once hear the divine praises as they pour from his sacred heart – only think of the joy we should know, only think how our hearts would leap heavenwards, to hear that praise for ever!

 

What sweetness our hearts shall know, when our voices – in harmony with the Saviour’s – share in the infinite symphony of praise from this well-beloved Son to his eternal Father!

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