For us who have accepted His revelation as made to the Church and by it unfailingly preserved, who have learned to find Him there where He has promised to be until the end of time, there is another sense in which we think of His words as words of encouragement and consolation.  There are hours in life which press hard upon us; there are other hours when the sense of God’s love and goodness fills us with thankfulness and joy.  In such hours we crave the intimacy of personal communion:  we want to tell our grief or our joy.  And then we take our way to the temple, and know that we shall find Him there in His Incarnate Presence in His Father’s House.  We go in and kneel before the Tabernacle and know that Jesus is here.  Here in the silence He waits for us.  Here in the long hours He watches; here is the ever-open door leading to the Father where any man at any time may enter.  He who humbled Himself to the hidden life of Nazareth now humbles Himself to the hidden life of the Tabernacle:  and we who believe His Word, have no need to envy Joseph and Mary the intimacy of their life with Jesus, because here for us, if we will, is a greater intimacy—­the intimacy of those of whom it can be said:  They evermore dwell in Him and He in them.

     Lady of Heaven, Regent of the Earth,
      Empress of all the infernal marshes fell,
     Receive me, thy poor Christian, ’spite my, dearth,
      In the fair midst of thine elect to dwell: 
      Albeit my lack of grace I know full well;
     For that thy grace, my Lady and my Queen,
     Aboundeth more than all my misdemean,
      Withouten which no soul of all that sigh
     May merit heaven.  ’Tis sooth I say, for e’en
      In this belief I will to live and die.

     Say to thy Son, I am his—­that by his birth
      And death my sins be all redeemable—­
     As Mary of Egypt’s dole he changed to mirth,
      And eke Theophilus’, to whom befell
      Quittance of thee, albeit (so men tell)
     To the foul fiend he had contracted been. 
     Assoilzie me, that I may have no teen,
      Maid, that without breach of virginity
     Didst bear our Lord that in the Host is seen: 
      In this belief I will to live and die.

     A poor old wife I am, and little worth: 
      Nothing I know, nor letter aye could spell: 
     Where in the church to worship I fare forth,
      I see heaven limned with harps and lutes, and hell
      Where damned folk seethe in fire unquenchable: 
     One doth me fear, the other joy serene;
     Grant I may have the joy, O Virgin clean,
      To whom all sinners lift their hands on high,
     Made whole in faith through thee, their go-between: 
      In this belief I will to live and die.

     ENVOY