_Woman, behold thy son. Behold thy mother_.
Our Divine Lord now turns, from the soul who at one bound has sprung
into the front rank, to those two souls who have never left it, and
supremely to that Mother on whose soul sin has never yet breathed, on
whose breast Incarnate God had rested as inviolate and secure as on the
Bosom of the Eternal Father, that Mother who was His Heaven on earth.
Standing beside her is the one human being who is least unworthy to be
there, now that Joseph has passed to his reward and John the Baptist has
gone to join the Prophets--_the disciple whom Jesus loved_, who had lain
on the breast of Jesus as Jesus had lain on the breast of Mary.
Our Lord has just shown how He deals with His dear sinners; now He shows
how He will _be glorified with His Saints_. The Paradox of this Word is
that Death, the divider of those who are separated from God, is the bond
of union between those that are united to Him.
I. Death is the one inexorable enemy of human society as constituted
apart from God. A king dies and his kingdom is at once in danger of
disruption. A child dies and his mother prays that she may bear another,
lest his father and she should drift apart. Death is the supreme sower
of discord and disunion, then, in the natural order, since he is the one
supreme enemy of natural life. He is the noonday terror of the Rich Fool
of the parable and the nightmare of the Poor Fool, since those who place
their hope in this life see that death is the end of their hope. For
these there is no appeal beyond the grave.
II. Now precisely the opposite of all this is true in the supernatural
order, since the gate of death, viewed from the supernatural side, is an
entrance and not an ending, a beginning and not a close. This may be
seen to be so even in a united human family in this world, the members
of whom are living the supernatural life; for where such a family is
living in the love of God, Death, when he comes, draws not only the
survivors closer together, but even those whom he seems to have
separated. He does not bring consternation and terror and disunion, but
he awakens hope and tenderness, he smooths away old differences, he
explains old misunderstandings.
Our Blessed Lord has already, over the grave of Lazarus, hinted that
this shall be so, so soon as He has consecrated death by His own dying.
_He that believeth in Me shall never die_. He, that is to say, who has
_died with Christ_, whose centre henceforward is in the supernatural,
simply no longer finds death to be what nature finds it. It no longer
makes for division but for union; it no longer imperils or ends life and
interest and possession, but releases them from risk and mortality.
Here, then, He deliberately and explicitly acts upon this truth. He once
raised Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus and the Widow's Son from the
dead, for death's sting could, at that time, be drawn in no other way;
but now that He Himself is _tasting death for every man_, He performs an
even more emphatically supernatural act and conquers death by submitting
to it instead of by commanding it. Life had already united, so far as
mortal life can unite, those two souls who loved Him and one another so
well. These two, since they knew Him so perfectly, knew each the other
too as perfectly as knowledge and sympathy can unite souls in this
life. But now the whole is to be raised a stage higher. They had already
been united on the living breast of Jesus; now, over His dead body, they
were to be made yet more one.
It is marvellous that, after so long, our imaginations should still be
so tormented and oppressed by the thought of death; that we should still
be so _without understanding_ that we think it morbid to be in love with
death, for it is far more morbid to be in fear of it. It is not that our
reason or our faith are at fault; it is only that that most active and
untamable faculty of ours, which we call imagination, has not yet
assimilated the truth, accepted by both our faith and our reason, that
for those who are in the friendship of God death is simply not that at
all which it is to others. It does not, as has been said, end our lives
or our interests: on the contrary it liberates and fulfils them.
And all this it does because Jesus Christ has Himself plunged into the
heart of Death and put out his fires. Henceforth we are one family in
Him if we do His will--_his brother and sister and mother_; and Mary is
our Mother, not by nature, which is accidental, but by supernature,
which is essential. Mary is my Mother and John is my brother, since, if
I have died with Christ, it is _no longer I that live, but Christ that
liveth in me_. In a word, it is the Communion of Saints which He
inaugurates by this utterance and seals by His dying.