The mystery of the Ascension is clarified by Daniel Rops in the Introduction of Part Two.
Inscribe 1939 December 25 - Christmas
at the cathedral.
"Christians of today!. . .
Others have passed before you. Still others will come after you, soul upon
soul in the Father's sight. Christians of today!. . . In your short time
on earth, give Me the utmost of your love for My glory. Oh, may your
period in the history of the world be for My heart a golden - age of
abundant harvest!"
HE AND i, Gabrielle Bossis
Introductions E. M. B.
Comments from Daniel Rops (mystery of the Ascension),
Jean Danielou, Etiene Gilson
PART TWO
"Ask that through this little book
I may come as I once came,
healing, drawing people to Me.
What a triumphal entry
into the silence of hearts!"
He and I
"My
Me is God,
nor do
I recognize any other Me
except
my God Himself".
Saint Catherine of
Genoa
Introduction
"An utterly extraordinary and
beautiful story" wrote Daniel Rops
of Lui et moi (He and I), this book alleged to contain the words
of Our Lord to a French lay woman called Gabrielle Bossis.
As I begin this introduction for Part
Two, it is Ascension Day, when we
are reminded more than ever of the fact that the mysteries of the sacred Body
of Christ Jesus are, like His merits, for us. That not only is the incarnation
applicable to us and the resurrection our lively hope, but the mystery of the ascension is engraved in the very atomic
structure of our bodies awaiting its unfoldment through our union with Him by
whom and of whom we are made. So that as man divests himself of his small self
to clothe himself in Christ - as he brings Christ forth - then
he can truly say with the poet and without any flight into fancy, "I
know that I am august".
Far from destroying faith as some have
imagined, science only gives it wings. Faith alone gives rise to hope, but
faith enlivened and enlightened by science reveals to us the stupendous truth
that we are of the very ''substance of things hoped - for".
"True science and true faith", says Jean Danielou, "meet in a common knowledge of reality". - Reality? For the theologian it is
that "unravelled world whose margin fades forever and forever as we move''.
For the authentic mystic it is the Promised Land, and by joyous atonement with
Christ - centre and circumference of all things from
the farthest star to the tiniest atom of our bodies – he enters into that land
and possesses it. It is the eternal kingdom eternally present within him. It is
that "realm of the mirror of peace" to which the Voice refers.
As pilgrims en route to that
Promised Land, readers of "He and I" gradually become aware of
the fact that there is unction in these words. To work among them is
to be submerged in a sea of light. This book
is a song of love, of God - love, an air with variations of the same joyous and
liberating theme: At - one with the All and so at - one with
all; our true self - expression - the expression of Himself through us.
In Part One the song is more
tremulous. There are moments of hesitation, of doubt. The voices of the
two that are one seem to be singing separately. The pauses between the notes
are more frequent. In this second and last part, there are more and more
of those passages to which Daniel Rops
refers, where the mystic, having "surmounted
the first obstacles and come closer to God, sounds a note of simple and
joyous plenitude, of serenity in love" as her soul finds its full
fine flowering in the Uncreated Light. - As we listen to the notes and the
grace notes, to the tones and overtones, we realize that this is much more than
a dialogue between a soul and its God. It is the great Christ - hymn of praise
- Deep calling unto deep, or "Myself to
Myself", as the Voice says. It mingles with the paeans of praise in this
Christward movement, this second
Pentecost that is sweeping over our planet; with the glad hosannas of
the - triumphal entry into Jerusalem - the
New Jerusalem of hearts - of a risen and glorified Christ who has
returned, who is returning and who will return again. - No rumours of evil, no menacing
discords of our age can ever drown it out. For "as birds flying, so will
the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver it; and
passing over he will preserve it". (Isaiah 31:%.)
The story is told of a monk who went
out one exceptionally fine spring morning to hear the meadowlark sing, and when
he returned all his friends had died; three hundred years had gone by. To go
out in the springtime of our spiritual youth, to listen to the Voice, is to
pass beyond time. It is to experience however fleetingly what Etienne Gilson describes as "man's supreme bliss":
a foretaste of "the face - to - face vision of motionless
eternity". - What I said of Part One I
say again of this second Part. This is a book of many doors. - "May the peace of great doors be for
you". E> M. B.(For you by Carl Sandburgh.)
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