The Golden Rose
by VP
Posted on Sunday December 17, 2023 at 10:53AM in Meditations
"The lights of hope and joy, the shadows of despondency and sorrow are ever flitting over the surface of human life, teaching the heart the solemn lesson of detachment from earth and giving it glimpses of heaven, that city of perpetual brightness whose "light is the Lamb," the uncreated splendor of the Father. We need this succession of light and shade; continual prosperity would make us love the world, and we would forget that the days of our pilgrimage are few and evil, whilst lasting adversity would deaden the elasticity of the heart and drive it to despair. The Church knows the requirements of our nature in this respect and provides for them. The penitential seasons of Advent and Lent are succeeded by the joys of Christmas and the glories of Easter. The sorrows of Holy Week are interrupted by the Gloria of Holy Thursday, and then again the last notes of the Angelic Hymn die away in the wail of the Miserere of Tenebrae and the Improperia of Good Friday.
Advent has its Gaudete Sunday,
when the Church bids her children rejoice in the Lord always, because
He is near, because He is soon to be manifested to the world as the Babe
of Bethlehem; so too on the fourth Sunday of Lent a cry of joy resounds
through the office, Rejoice O! Jerusalem! Rejoice thou barren that
bearest not. The time for the reconciliation of the penitents is
approaching; the children that were dead in sin will come to life and be
restored to the arms of their mother, and in anticipation her heart
beats high with gladness. Then her eye turns to Palestine, ranges the
dark sky that overhangs the scenes of the Passion and rests on the
horizon just reddening with the first faint streaks of light from the
Easter Sun. Sorrow and penance yield for a moment to the exultation of
triumphant love and from her lisp breaks forth an anthem of gladness
Laetare, Laetare, Rejoice, Rejoice."
The Sacramentals of the Holy Catholic Church; Or, Flowers from the Garden of the Liturgy By Rev. William James BARRY, 1858
