An excerpt "With the Church - Volume 1 - Advent to the Ascension"

by Mother Mary Loyola

Two little children had heard for the first time the Passion and been take to kiss the Cross on Good Friday. They were talking about it later:

“Well,” said one, “ it’s all over now.”

“For a little while,” replied the other.  “He’ll have to have it all over again next year.”

They were distressed, when Easter came, at the unbelief of the Apostles in the story told by the holy women:

“Do you think they’ll believe it next year?” they asked.

These babes were nearer the truth and more in touch with the Church than some of us.  She tries to bring us the realisation of our privileges by setting before us in her Liturgy, as actually taking place, mysteries of long ago, but meant for all time and for each one of us in particular. Venerable, yet ever young, oblivious of time, eager like the young to anticipate and to prolong seasons of joy, she would have us bring to her festivals this freshness of expectation, this readiness to identify ourselves with her spirit. On Holy Saturday she tells us:  “This is the night when our forefathers passed through the Red Sea with dry feet.”  And all through Easter week she is singing:  “Haec Dies - this is the Day which the Lord has made.” We have to fall in with her ways and methods.  Children can and do.  And we are reminded that unless we come as little children we shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.  

Few of the Gospel scenes enable us to enter more fully into the feelings of our Lord’s disciples than those which set before us the stupendous mysteries of the Resurrection.  We see the running to and fro as the various reports of those who had come from the Sepulchre spread, and reach headquarters.  We hear the eager questionings and objections.  We note the glad acquiescence of the women incessantly besieged for the repetition of their story, the gradual yielding of unbelief to confidence and joy.

The Church seeks to inspire us with the spirit of those who gathered about our Lord in the Supper Room, “wondering for joy.”  She would have us watch the awestruck faces, hear the whispered words, see the disciples troubled when they think they behold a spirit, and reassured when our Lord says to them: “Peace be to you.  It is I, fear not.”

The Church was there, receiving the glad tidings from the “glorious Sepulchre” of which Isaias spoke.  She was in the Upper Room, and by the Lake, and on the mountain of Galilee whither, by the appointment of the Lord Himself, His followers hastened to see Him.  For these were her first disciples, and so much is she at home among them, that her questioning of them in our own day sounds across the centuries like an echo of the words that must have been heard from many lips that Easter morning long ago:  “Die nobis, Maria, quid vidisti in via?” “Tell us, O Mary, what you saw by the way.”

We complain, perhaps, that her festivals go by year after year, leaving us much as they found us - cold, irresponsive, uninfluenced.  Might we not more profitably question ourselves as to the reason of this?  What do we do to cath her spirit?  Thomas kept aloof from his brethren and was cold and irresponsive.  But there was a remedy at hand.  He remained with them, and when our Lord came again, He came for him.  Later, when Peter said, “I go a-fishing,” and the six who were with him answered loyally, “We also are come with thee,”  Thomas is named first among them.  We are never safer, never happier and holier, than when we see and feel with the Church.