THE HISTORY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD
PART 8
There are still three lives of the Precious Blood remaining to be treated of; but we may in reality consider them as one. There is the actual life in Heaven, which is contemporaneous with that life in the Church from the Ascension to the Doom, which we have just been contemplating. There is the life of the Precious Blood in the Blessed Sacrament, the heavenly life miraculously dowered with an earthly locality and with innumerous localities at once. There is, lastly, the eternal life of the Precious Blood in Heaven after the Doom for all eternity, when Jesus has laid down his kingdom and changed the offices of His priesthood. These are certainly in many deep senses, and with regard to many curious yet edifying questions, different lives. Yet, for our present practical purpose, they may be regarded as one. The life of the glorified Blood is a life of beatitude. It is glad in itself, and ministers gladness to others, even to the boundless uncreated jubilee of God. The Precious Blood is the Human Life of the Word. Beatitude is the natural life of God; and so joy is the natural life of the Precious Blood. In truth, is not joy the nearest definition of life that we can have: for is it not God's first intention in the gift of life?
In heaven and in the Blessed Sacrament the Precious Blood dwells, incomparably glorified, in the veins of Jesus. Its beauty there is wonderful to see, wonderful to think of. The sight of it in our Lord's translucent Body is an immense gladness to the Blessed. Earth has no beauty to which we can compare it; yet earth is not therefore poorer than Heaven; for it has this very beauty in the adorable Sacrament. But it is not only a joy to others. Its own life is an unbroken jubilee. As it goes and returns to and from the Sacred Heart it is filled with pulses of the most abounding gladness. It thrills with the exquisite delight of created life carried to its utmost ecstatic possibility. But, over and above this, there is the indefinable, unimaginable ecstasy of the Hypostatic Union, which is felt in every particle of that Precious Blood. It throbs with such pacific tumult of immortal love, as no created life could bear without some miraculous union with the Godhead. It thrills with sacred fear, with transports of intensest adoration, before the uncreated majesty of God. It is penetrated through and through with the excesses of this holy fear. That, which itself is worshipped
by the hierarchies of Heaven, trembles with a very jubilee of worship before the Throne of the Eternal.Possessed with such extremity of rapturous fear, how could the Precious Blood so tremble, and so exult, and yet live on, if it were not that it rested for its dear support upon the uncreated Person of the Word? It seems to stop the beating of one's heart to think of this unutterable repose of that created nature, that Sacred Humanity, that person less life, on the Person of the Eternal Word! The strange beauty of such a God-invented union, the delight of the Divine Person in the touch of a created nature which yet is no touch at all, for the Divine Person can suffer none, the ecstasies of the Sacred Humanity as the unction of the Word with soft sweet fire penetrates its secret sanctuaries of life, the comprehension of that humble, affectionate, pathetic, material nature within the enfoldings of the Incomprehensible, which embrace it with such forbearing gentleness of omnipotence, and yet with such a riveted closeness of invincible union - to what heart, sweetly smitten with love of Jesus, are not these things the unfading joys of prayer, the unfailing wells of tears? What a life is the life of that Precious Blood! Yet amid the untold magnificence of the Divine Union it feels its kindred to Mary, as a special joy of its abounding life. Its original fountains are still flowing in their sinless purity, beautified now with the gifts of glory, in the Mother's Immaculate Heart; and the fountain in the Sacred Heart beats in mysterious sympathy with the source from which it came itself. Singular in all its wonderful prerogatives, it yet intertwines the life of Mary with its own. Look at the Precious Blood for a moment as it lies within the Sacred Heart with a living peace, like the restless tranquility of ocean. It is itself the ocean of joy from which all other joys in creation come. It is through it that the immensity of God's gladness pours itself into all the universe, and at the same time lets itself also be mysteriously gladdened by the Precious Blood. All the joys, and they are numberless, which are still left in the fallen world, whether they be natural or supernatural, are in substance Indulgences, Indulgences which are granted because of the Precious Blood. Sinners upon earth still have joys: they come from the Precious Blood. Saints on earth are the gladdest of God's creatures. Their lives are all flight and song, like the hot-blooded lives of the birds of the air. All this. gladness is from the Precious Blood. The Saints in Heaven are spirits overflowed with joy, spirits whose quietness is transport and whose soberness is ecstasy.
It is the Precious Blood which flows over them forever. The wide, outspread vastness of angelic jubilee, the thing likest to immensity of all created things, created to mirror the immensity of God, is all an emanation from the Precious Blood. Nay, it is a changeful, changeless sea, with tides; for there are daily, hourly increases of new joys in the Angels from the conversions of sinners; and these conversions are precisely the operations of the Precious Blood. Yet that ocean of angelic jubilee washes but the base of Mary's throne. Her joy is like the fringe of the blessedness of God. It is all the multitudinous joys of creatures made one joy by her Divine Maternity, and multiplied, as well as intensified, by being one. Yet the bliss of Mary is all from the Precious Blood, the nearest gladness to the gladness of the Sacred Humanity, the first heart filled from the Sacred Heart. But who shall tell the nameless, immeasurable joys with which the Precious Blood fills the Sacred Heart itself? It cannot contain its own jubilee. It multiplies itself in order to relieve its exultation. It has inundated Heaven; but the vast shores of the empyrean confine it and restrain its
floods. By the help of its omnipotence, behold! it escapes as if by miracle, sparkles in countless daily chalices upon earth, and within the cup of each chalice it peacefully outstretches itself, unhindered in its infinity, with its grandeur enfranchised, and its love set free from all material laws. But the jubilee of the Precious Blood lies onward still and onward, whither we cannot explore it. We listen to hear its breakers sounding on the misty shore. But there comes no sound. The shores are too far off; or are there shores at all? The Word delights eternally in His Human Blood. Its golden glow beautifies the fires of the Holy Ghost. Its ministries beget inexplicable joys in the Unbegotten Father. I was upon the seashore; and my heart filled with love it knew not why. Its happiness went out over the wide waters and upon the unfettered wind, and swelled up into the free dome of blue sky until it filled it. The dawn lighted up the faces of the ivory cliffs, which the sun and sea had been blanching for centuries of God's unchanging love. The miles of noiseless sands seemed vast as if they were the floor of eternity. Somehow the daybreak was like eternity. The idea came over me of that feeling of acceptance, which so entrances the soul just judged and just admitted into Heaven. To be saved! I said to myself, To be saved!
Then the thoughts of all the things implied in salvation came in one thought upon me; and I said, This is the one grand joy of life; and I clapped my hands like a child, and spoke to God aloud. But then there came many thoughts all in one thought, about the nature and manner of our salvation. To be saved with such a salvation! This was a grander joy, the second grand joy of life: and I tried to say some lines of a hymn; but the words were choked in my throat. The ebb was sucking the sea down over the sand quite silently; and the cliffs were whiter, and more day like. Then there came many more thoughts all in one thought; and I stood still without intending it. To be saved by such a Saviour! This was the grandest joy of all, the third grand joy of life; and it swallowed up the other joys; and after it there could be on earth no higher joy. I said nothing; but I looked at the sinking sea as it reddened in the morning. Its great heart was throbbing in the calm; and methought I saw the Precious Blood of Jesus in Heaven, throbbing that hour with real human love of me.
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