| FROM MISERY TO MAJESTY IN MARRIAGE INCREDIBLE INSIGHT FROM VICTOR HUGO (Les Miserables)
Easter grace is being outpoured. Available to each of us right now is the present power of Jesus Christ to heal, transform, revive, and strengthen. Easter Story Week 3:
Marriage season is upon us. Not unlike the apex of a rollercoaster, numbers and experience of sacramental marriage have dramatically declined precisely because so many have reduced it to something that is merely natural. In Jesus Christ, God offers something supernatural. An occasion to participate in His very life. It's all the difference between a life of misery and one that is majestic.
This evokes the magnificent musical, Les Miserables. Woven of incredible transformation, redemption, and sacrifice, let’s draw into the story of extraordinary divine-human encounter, Hugo’s magnificent account of Marius and Cossette's wedding night, a poignant portrait of our appointing and anointing through marriage to participate in supernature:
There was tumult, then silence. The bride and groom disappeared. A bit after midnight, the... house turned into a temple…. On the threshold of wedding nights, an angel stands, smiling, a finger to its lips. The soul enters into contemplation before this sanctuary where the celebration of love takes place.
There must be glimmers above houses like this one. The joy they contain must escape through the stones of the walls as light and dimly streak the darkness. This sacred and fateful celebration is simply bound to send a celestial shimmer into infinity. Love is the sublime crucible in which a man and a woman melt together; the one being, the triple being, the final being, the human trinity, the result. This birth of two souls in one must move deep night.
The lover is priest; the rapt virgin filled with fear. Something of this joy travels up to God. Wherever there is a real marriage, meaning where there is love, the ideal is involved.
A nuptial bed creates a pocket of dawn light in the darkness. If it were given to our eye of flesh and blood to see the fearsome and lovely sights of the higher life, we would probably see the forms of the night, winged strangers, the blue bystanders of the invisible, bend down, a throng of dark heads, over the luminous house, satisfied, blessing, pointing out to each other, sweetly alarmed, the virgin bride, and wearing the reflection of human bliss on their divine faces.
If at that supreme moment, the newlyweds, dazed with sensual rapture and believing themselves alone, were to listen, they would hear in their room the muted sound of fluttering wings. Perfect happiness implies the solidarity of angels. This little dark nook is overhung by the whole heavens. When two mouths, sanctified by love, come together to create, that ineffable kiss is simply bound to set the mysterious stars shuddering throughout immensity.
This is the real bliss. There is no joy beyond these joys. Love is the sole ecstasy here. Everything else weeps.
To love or to have loved is enough. Don’t ask for anything more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is an achievement.
[This is an abbreviation of a much more colorful version at GregorianRant.us (Substack).]
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So blessed to be united with you in building the Kingdom,
Greg Schlueter
Mass Impact | Image Trinity
Greg@MassImpact.us | (814) 449-8808
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Also in this episode, we do a deeper dive into the Gospel:
"I am the good shepherd" (John 10:11-18)
And we discuss these consequential news stories:
- Iran Launches Drone Attack Against Israel
- Multiple Texas Universities Ditch ‘Diversity’ Programs
- ‘The Quiet Part Out Loud’: Bill Maher Says Abortion ‘Kind of’ Is Murder
- Catholic Accountability Project
- Biden Admin to Impose Pro-Abortion Rule on Employers
- Pediatrician: ‘Trans’ Procedures for Kids ‘Faulty from the Foundation’
- Pew Research: 6 in 10 U.S. Catholics Say Abortion Should Be Legal
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