ASCENDIT DEUS IN IUBILATIONE, ALLELUIA!

The Grand Priory of England wishes all our readers all joys of the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord.

Members of the Order are not insensitive, perhaps, to the pleasure of worldly honours, so the thousand-year old words of St Eadmer of Canterbury, 1060-1124, secretary, friend and biographer of St Anselm, will surely resonate fruitfully.

"If Mary tasted great joy when her Son lived bodily beside her, and as much joy when this same Son, after destroying death, rose up from Hell; would she have known less joy when her Son, before her eyes, entered the heavens with this earthly flesh that, as she knew well, he had received from her?

"Who has ever suggested such a thing, or who has ever believed that her bliss at this moment could be compared even to all the joys that came before? 

"Good mothers of this world experience great joy when their sons are granted earthly honours; would not this mother - definitely a good mother! - have rejoiced, with ineffable joy, when she saw her only Son penetrating the Heavens with power and domination and, rising up, reaching the throne of God the Father Almighty?”

ET DOMINUS IN VOCE TUBÆ, ALLELUIA!

(The picture shows the Ascension by Gustave Doré, 1979, housed at the Petit Palais in Paris)