“Lord; look on Thy people. Many are falling from Thee. _Ne in aeternum
irascaris nobis. Ne in aeternum irascaris nobis_.... I unite myself with
all saints and angels and Mary Queen of Heaven; look on them and me, and
hear us. _Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem tuam._ Thy light and Thy truth!
Lay not on us heavier burdens than we can bear. Lord, why dost Thou not
speak!”
He writhed himself forward in a passion of expectant desire, hearing his
muscles crack in the effort. Once more he relaxed himself; and the swift
play of wordless acts began which he knew to be the very heart of
prayer. The eyes of his soul flew hither and thither, from Calvary to
heaven and back again to the tossing troubled earth. He saw Christ dying
of desolation while the earth rocked and groaned; Christ reigning as a
priest upon His Throne in robes of light, Christ patient and inexorably
silent within the Sacramental species; and to each in turn he directed
the eyes of the Eternal Father....
Then he waited for communications, and they came, so soft and delicate,
passing like shadows, that his will sweated blood and tears in the
effort to catch and fix them and correspond....
He saw the Body Mystical in its agony, strained over the world as on a
cross, silent with pain; he saw this and that nerve wrenched and
twisted, till pain presented it to himself as under the guise of flashes
of colour; he saw the life-blood drop by drop run down from His head and
hands and feet. The world was gathered mocking and good-humoured
beneath. “_He saved others: Himself He cannot save.... Let Christ come
down from the Cross and we will believe._” Far away behind bushes and
in holes of the ground the friends of Jesus peeped and sobbed; Mary
herself was silent, pierced by seven swords; the disciple whom He loved
had no words of comfort.
He saw, too, how no word would be spoken from heaven; the angels
themselves were bidden to put sword into sheath, and wait on the eternal
patience of God, for the agony was hardly yet begun; there were a
thousand horrors yet before the end could come, that final sum of
crucifixion.... He must wait and watch, content to stand there and do
nothing; and the Resurrection must seem to him no more than a dreamed-of
hope. There was the Sabbath yet to come, while the Body Mystical must
lie in its sepulchre cut off from light, and even the dignity of the
Cross must be withdrawn and the knowledge that Jesus lived. That inner
world, to which by long effort he had learned the way, was all alight
with agony; it was bitter as brine, it was of that pale luminosity that
is the utmost product of pain, it hummed in his ears with a note that
rose to a scream ... it pressed upon him, penetrated him, stretched him
as on a rack.... And with that his will grew sick and nerveless.
“Lord! I cannot bear it!” he moaned....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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