observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you:  and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” would but confirm and strengthen all that had gone before in their experience of Him.  The Jesus of the resurrection was no pale ghost returned from the grave, intermittently to appear to them to assure them of the fact of immortality.  He was “the same Jesus” Whom they had known for three years, and whose return from the dead triumphant over the powers that had opposed Him, set quite plainly and definitely the seal of indisputable authority upon all the teaching and the example that had gone before.  The period of their probation was over:  The commission was theirs:  It remained that they should abide in Jerusalem until they should be “endued with power from on high.”

Proclaimed Queen and Mother of a God,
The Light of earth, the Sovereign of saints,
With pilgrim foot up tiring hills she trod,
And heavenly stile with handmaids’ toil acquaints;
Her youth to age, her health to sick she lends;
Her heart to God, to neighbor hand she bends.

A Prince she is, and mightier Prince doth bear,
Yet pomp of princely train she would not have;
But doubtless, heavenly choirs attendant were,
Her Child from harm, herself from fall to save: 
Word to the voice, song to the tune she brings,
The voice her word, the tune her ditty sings.

Eternal lights enclosed in her breast
Shot out such piercing beams of burning love,
That when her voice her cousin’s ears possessed
The force thereof did force her babe to move: 
With secret signs the children greet each other;
But, open praise each leaveth to his mother.

Robert Southwell, S.J. 1560-1595.

PART TWO

CHAPTER XXII

THE ASCENSION

     And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted
     from them, and carried up into heaven.

S. Luke XXIV, 51.

     O Mother of God, since we have obtained confidence in thee,
     we shall not be put to shame, but we shall be saved.

     And since we have obtained thy help and thy meditation, O,
     thou holy, pure, and perfect one!

     We fear not but that we shall put our enemies to flight and
     scatter them.

     We have taken unto us the shelter of thy mighty help in all
     things like a shield.

     And we pray, and beseech thee that we may call upon thee, O
     Mother of God, so that thou deliver us through thy prayers.

     And that thou mayest raise us up again from the sleep of
     darkness, to offer praise through the might of God Who took
     flesh in thee.

     COPTIC.