Dom Prosper Gueranger:
The first week has been devoted to the joyous celebration of our Emmanuel’s return to us. He has been visiting us each day in order to make us sure of His Resurrection. He has said to us: “See me! Touch me! Feel! it is indeed I!” (Luke xxiv. 39) But we know that His visible presence among us is not to last beyond forty days. This happy period is rapidly advancing; the time seems to go so quickly! In a few weeks He for whom the whole Earth has been in such expectation will have disappeared from our sight. Expectation and Saviour of Israel, why will you be as a stranger in the land, and as a way-faring man turning in to lodge? Why will you be as a wanderer? (Jeremias xiv. 8, 9) —So much the more precious are the hours, then! Let us keep close by His side. When we cannot hear His words, let us fix our eyes on Him. But when He does speak, let us treasure this week in considering Him as the Risen Jesus, dwelling among men and winning their admiration and love. We have contemplated Him in the humility of His swathing-bands and Passion. Let us now exultingly feast on the sight of His glory.
He presents Himself to us as the most beautiful of the sons of men (Psalm xliv. 3). He was always so, even when He veiled the splendour of His charms under the infirmity of the mortal flesh He had assumed, but what must not His beauty be now that He has vanquished death and permits the rays of His glory to shine forth without restraint? His age is forever fixed at that of thirty-three: it is the period of life in which man is at the height of his strength and beauty without a single sign of decay. It was the state in which God created Adam, whom He formed to the likeness of the Redeemer to come. It will be the state of the bodies of the just on the day of the General Resurrection — they will bear upon them the measure of the perfect age (Ephesians iv. 13) which our Lord had when He arose from His tomb.
But it is not only by the beauty of His features that the body of our Risen Jesus delights the eye of such as are permitted to gaze upon Him: it is now endowed with the glorious qualities of which the three Apostles caught a glimpse on Mount Thabor. In the Transfiguration, however, the Humanity shone as the sun because of its union with the Person of the Word. But now, besides the brightness due to it by the Incarnation, the glorified body of our Redeemer has that which comes from His being Conqueror and King. His Resurrection has given Him such additional resplendence that the sun is not worthy to be compared with Him, and Saint John tells us that He is the Lamp that lights up the heavenly Jerusalem (Apocalypse xii. 23).
To this quality which the Apostle of the Gentiles calls Brightness (Phillipians iii. 21) is added that of Impassibility by which the body of our Risen Lord has ceased to be accessible to suffering or death, and is adorned with the immortality of life. His body is as truly and really a body as ever, but it is now impervious to any deterioration or weakness. Its life is to bloom for all eternity. The third quality of our Redeemer’s glorified body is Agility, by which it can pass from one place to another, instantly and without effort. The flesh has lost that weight which in our present state prevents the body from keeping pace with the longings of the soul. He passes from Jerusalem to Galilee in the twinkling of an eye, and the Spouse of the Canticle thus speaks of Him: “The voice of my Beloved! Behold He comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills! (Canticles ii. 8).
Finally, the body of our Emmanuel has put on the quality of Subtility (which the Apostle calls “Spirituality” (1 Corinthians xv. 44)) by which it is enabled to penetrate every material obstacle more easily than a sunbeam makes its way through glass. On the morning of His Resurrection He passed through the stone that stood against the mouth of the sepulchre, and on the same day He entered the Cenacle, though its doors were shut, and stood before His astonished disciples.
Such is our Saviour, now that He is set free from the shackles of mortality. Well may the little flock that is favoured with His visits exclaim on seeing Him: “How fair and comely are you” (Canticles I. 15).
O dearest Master! — Let us join our praises with theirs, and say: Yes, dearest Jesus, you are beautiful above all the sons of men! A few days back, and we wept at beholding you covered with wounds, as though you had been the worst of criminals. But now our eyes feast on the resplendent charm of your divine beauty. Glory be to you in your triumph! Glory, too, be to you in your generosity, which has decreed that these our bodies, after having been purified by the humiliation of the tomb, will one day share in the prerogatives which we now admire in you!
