But if there be a hierachy of saints it is impossible that we should think of any other at its head than Blessed Mary. Whatsoever diversity there may be in the attainments of the saints, there is one saint who is pre-eminent in all things, who,—because in her case there has never been any moment in which she was separate from God, when the bond of union was so much as strained,—is the completest embodiment of the grace of God. That is, I think, essentially what is meant by the Coronation of our Lady,—that her supremacy in sanctity makes her the head of the heirarchy of saints, that in her the possibilities of the life of union have been developed to the highest degree through her unstained purity and unfailing response to the divine will.

It is of the last importance, if the Catholic conceptions are to be influential in our lives, that we should gain such a hold on the life of heaven, the life that the saints, with Saint Mary at their head, are leading to-day, as shall make it a present reality to us, not a picture in some sort of dreamland. Our lives are shaped by their ideals; and although we may never attain to our ideals here, yet we shall never attain them anywhere unless we shape them here. Heaven must be grasped as the issue of a certain sort of life, as the necessary consequence of the application of Christian principles to daily living. It is wholly bad to conceive it as a vague future into which we shall be ushered at death, if only we are "good"; it must be understood as a state we win to by the use of the means placed at our disposal for the purpose. Those attain to heaven in the future who are interested in heaven in the present.

And a study of the means is wholly possible for us because we have at hand in great detail the lives of those whom the Church, by raising them to her altars, has guaranteed to us as having achieved sanctity and been admitted to the Beatific Vision. They achieved sanctity here—that is, in the past. They achieved it under an infinite variety of circumstanies,—that is the encouragement. They now enjoy the fruits of it in the world of heaven,—that is the promise.

And nowhere can we better turn for the purpose of our study than to the life of Blessed Mary. There is the consummate flower of sainthood; and therefore it it best there that we can study its meaning. And for two principal reasons can we best study it there. In the first place because of its completeness: nowhere else are all the elements of sanctity so well developed. And in the second place because of the riches of the material for understanding Blessed Mary that is placed at our disposal by the labour of many generations of saints and doctors. All that devout meditation can do to understand the sanctity of Blessed Mary has been done.

Our limit is necessarily reduced, our selection partial and our accomplishment fragmentary. We cannot however miss our way if we follow in the steps of Holy Revelation in making love the central quality. S. Mary's greatness is ultimately the greatness of her love. It began as a love of the will of God. She appears as utterly selfless, as having devoted herself to the will of God as He shall manifest that will. And therefore when the time comes she makes the great sacrifice that is asked of her without hesitation and without effort: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." And all her life henceforth is loving response to what is unfolded as the content of the accepted revelation. That is a noteworthy thing that I fancy is often missed. It is not uncommon for one to accept a vocation as a whole, and then subsequently, as it unfolds, shrink from this or that detail of it. But in the case of S. Mary the acceptance of the vocation meant the acceptance of God, and there was no holding back from the result of that.

That must be our guide in the pursuit of the heavenly life: we must understand that we are not called to accept this or that belief or practice, but are called to accept God—God speaking to us through the revelation He has entrusted to His Catholic Church. We do not, when we make our act of acceptance, know all or very much of what God is going to mean; but whatever God turns out to mean in experience, there can be no holding back. The note of a true acceptance of vocation is precisely this limitless surrender, a surrender without reservation. S. Mary could by no means understand what was to be asked of her: she only knew it was God Who asked it. She could not foresee the years of the ministry when her Son would not have where to lay His head, followed by the anxiety of Holy Week and the watch by the Cross on Good Friday; but as these things came she could understand them as involved in her vocation, in her acceptance of God.

And cannot we get the same attitude toward life? In the acceptance of the Christian Religion what we have accepted is God. We have acknowledged the supremacy of a will outside ourselves. We say, "we are not our own, we are bought with a price," the price of the Precious Blood. But if our acceptance is a reality and not a theory it will turn out to involve much more than we imagined at the first. The frequent and pathetic failures of those who have made profession of Christianity is largely accounted for by this,—that the demands of the Christian Religion on life turn out to be more searching and far-reaching than was supposed would be the case. Religion turns out to be not one interest to be adjusted to the other interests of life, but to be a demand that all life and action shall be controlled by supernatural motive. Those who would willingly give a part, find it impossible to surrender the whole. The world is full of Young Rulers who are willing "to contribute liberally to the support of religion," but shrink from the demand that they "sell all." "I seek not yours, but you," S. Paul writes to the Corinthians; and that is also the seeking of God—"Not yours but you." And because the limit of our willingness is reached in contribution and does not extend to sacrifice, we fail.

But Blessed Mary did not fail because there was no limit to her willingness to sacrifice. Her will to sacrifice had the same limitless quality as her love; and because of the limitless quality of her self-giving her growth in the life of union was unlimited, or limited only by the limitations of creaturehood. When therefore we think of her to-day as Queen of Saints we are not thinking of an arbitrarily conferred position; we are thinking of a position which comes to her because she is what she is. She through the unstinting sacrifice of her love came into more intimate relations with God than is possible for any other, and through that relation came to know more of the mind of God than any other. The power of her intercession is the power of her understanding, of her sympathy with the thoughts of God. When we come to her with our request for her intercession we feel that we are sure of her sympathy and her understanding. Her experience of human life, we think, was not very wide: can she whose life was passed under such narrow conditions understand the complex needs of the modern man or woman? It is true that her actual experience of human life was not very wide; but her experience of God is very wide indeed, and she is able to understand our experience better than we can understand it ourselves because of her understanding of God's mind and will. It is seeing life through God's eyes that reveals the truth about it.

Hence the blunder and the tragedy of those who seek to know life by experience, when they mean experience gained by participation in life's evil as well as in its good. They succeed in soiling life rather than in understanding it; for participation in evil effectually prevents our understandings of good. It is on the face of things that the farther a man goes into sin, the less is righteousness intelligible to him. Our Lord's rule "He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine" is not an arbitrary maxim, but embodies the deepest psychological truth. There is but one path to full understanding, and that is the path of sympathy. And therefore are we sure of our Lady's understanding and come to her unhesitatingly for the help of her intercession. She understands our case because she sees it revealed in the mind of her Son.

It cannot be questioned that much of the weakness of religion to-day is due to the fact that Christian ideals make but faint appeal. By many they are frankly repudiated as impossible of attainment in a world such as this, and as weakening to human character so far as they are attained. Christians, of course, are unable to take this point of view, and, therefore, they treat the ideals with respect, but continue to govern their lives by motives which are not harmonious with them. It is tacitly assumed on all sides that a consistent pursuit of Christians ideals will assure failure in social or business life. This, of course, is tantamount to a confession that social and business life are unchristian, and raises the same sort of grave questions as to the duty of a Christian as were raised in the early days of the Church under the heathen empire. With that, however, we may not concern ourselves now. We are merely concerned to note and to emphasise the fact that, whatever may be true of society or business, our religion is lamentably ineffective because of its failure to emphasise the ideals of sanctity and to present those ideals as the ideals of all Christian life, not as the ideals of a select few. While religious teachers asquiesce in the present set of compromises as an adequate expression of Christian character, we may expect a decline in the Church as a spiritual force, whatever may be true of it as a social force.

If Christian ideals are to resume their appeal to the membership of the Church as a whole it is requisite that they be studied by the clergy and intelligently presented. But little is to be hoped in this direction so long as our theological training ignores religion and concentrates its attention on something that it takes for scholarship. The raw material that is sent by our parishes to the seminaries to be educated for Holy Orders is commonly turned out of the seminary with less religion that it entered. The outlook for the presentation of Christian ideals is not hopeful. We seem destined to drift on indefinitely in our habitual compromises.

All the more is it necessary that we should lift our eyes to the heavens where humility and meekness, where sacrifice and obdience, are, in the person of Blessed Mary, crowned as the most perfect expression of sanctity, as the qualities that raise man nearest God. And what consoles us in the present depressing circumstances of the Church is that we are permitted to look through S. John's eyes into the world of heaven, and there see "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and with palms in their hands." Somehow, we feel, under whatever distressing and discouraging circumstances, the work of God in the regeneration of souls goes on. No doubt it is a work that is largely hidden from our eyes, from those eyes which are blinded to the reality of spiritual things. Humility and meekness are the qualities of a hidden life; they do not flaunt themselves before men's eyes. But in their silence and obscurity great souls are growing up, growing to the spiritual status of the saints of God. In our estimate of values we shall do well to lay to heart the utterances of WISDOM: "Then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such as have afflicted him, and made no account of his labours. When they see it, they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the strangeness of his salvation, so far beyond all that they had looked for. And they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say among themselves, This is he, whom we had sometime in derision, and a proverb of reproach: we fools accounted his life madness, and his end without honour: how is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints! Verily we went astray from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness shined not unto us, and the sun of righteousness rose not upon us."

When we have attained to the point of view as to life's value which is expressed in the ideal of sanctity then we shall know how to estimate at their true worth the constant criticisms which are directed against those ideals and those who seek them. The saints, we are told, were no doubt estimable men and women, but they were weak, and for the purpose of the world's work, useless. But is this true, to keep to a specific example, of the Blessed Virgin Mary? What is there about her life that suggests weakness? And what can be the meaning of calling such a life useless to the world? Take but one aspect of it. It has for centuries furnished an ideal of womanhood. It is contended that the women who have taken Blessed Mary for their ideal have shown themselves weak and useless?—that those women are stronger in character and of more value to the world who have thrown over the ideals of sanctity and built their lives upon the social ideals prevalent at present? I no not care to attempt any characterisation of the feminine ideal which is commended to us at present; it is sufficient to say that it is difficult to understand how it can be considered socially valuable; still less how it can be considered an advance on the character qualities which distinguish the Christian ideal of sanctity.

In the midst of the present confusion of values it is for us of vast significance that we have in this matter the mind of Christ. There need be no confusion in our minds. What Christ commended has proved to be practical of accomplishment, the evidence of which is the great multitude which no man can number who to-day sing about the throne of God and of the Lamb. What God approves is evidenced by the Coronation of the Blessed Mother over all the multitudes of the saints of God. Blessed Mary is the embodied thought of God for humanity, the realised ideal of a human life. He that is mighty hath magnified her, till she shines resplendent in spiritual qualities over all the hosts of the elect.

But though so highly exalted she is not thereby removed to an inaccessible distance. She who is privileged to bear the incredible title, MOTHER OF GOD is our Mother as well. Upon the Cross our Lord said to us in the person of His beloved Disciple, "Behold thy Mother"; and it is a mother's love that we find flowing to us from the heart of Mary. Have we been cold to her, and inappreciative of her love? Have we felt that we have no need of her in the conduct of our lives? If so, what we have been doing is to isolate ourselves from the divinely provided fount of human sympathy which ever flows from our star-crowned Mother. Is life so rich in sources of help and sympathy and love that we can afford to over-pass the eagerness of God's saints to help us, the willingness of the very Mother of God to intercede? Is not the life that shuts out from itself the society of heaven pitifully impoverished?

Too many of us are like the man who owned the field wherein was the buried treasure. Limitless aid is at our disposal, but on condition that we want it and will seek it. Let us try to understand what it is to have at our disposal the love and sympathy of the saints of God,—that they are not remote inhabitants of a distant sphere whose present interests have led to forgetfulness of what they once were, whose present joy is so intense as to make them self-centred, but that their very attainment of perfection implies the perfection of their love and the completeness of their sympathy. The perfection of God's saints and their attainment of the end of their course in the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision, has but made them more sensitive of our needs and more eager to help.

The spiritual wisdom and power of the Mother of God is at our disposal to-day. To the feebleness of our prayers may be added the spiritual wisdom and strength of her intercession. He Whose will it is that we should pray for one another, wills too that the prayers of His Blessed Mother should be at the disposal of all who call upon her. Let us take the fact of the intercession of the Queen of Saints seriously as a source of power ever open to us.

Thou who art God's Mother and also ours, thou who lookst constantly into the Face of the Son, thou who art the fullest manifestation of the love of the Blessed Trinity, thou Mary, our Mother, pray for us now and in the hour of our death.

All hail, O Virgin crowned with stars and moon under thy feet, Obtain us pardon of our sins of Christ, our Saviour sweet; For though thou art Mother of any God, yet thy humility Disdaineth not this simple wretch that flies for help to thee. Thou knowest thou art more dear to me than any can express, And that I do congratulate With joy thy happiness. Thou who art the Queen of Heaven and Earth thy helping hand me lend, That I may love and praise my God and have a happy end. And though my sins me terrify, yet hoping still in thee, I find my soul refreshed much when to thee I do flee; For thou most willingly to God petitions dost present, And dost obtain much grace for us in this our banishment. The honour and the glorious praise by all be given to thee, Which Jesus thy beloved Son, ordained eternally; For thee whom he exalts in heaven above the angels all, And whom we find a Patroness when unto thee we call. O Mater Dei, memento mei. Amen.

Dame Gertrude More, O.S.B. Ob. 1633.

THE END