Page:Sermons in Irish-Gaelic - O'Gallagher.djvu/81

 Rh His mother. He took her by the hand to the presence of the Eternal Father and said to Him: "This is the woman, Father, whom you selected from all eternity to be my mother; this is the woman who always performed my will, and who never yet inclined in the least to violate your law; this is the woman who has been an example and a pattern of chastity and of honesty to all men and women of the world."

"Whereas, O Mary," said the Eternal Father, "that you have, while on earth, performed my will, and that you never defiled your conscience with any stain of sin, I confer on you as a present and as a reward to have a share in my power." "Well, I impart to you," said the Son, "the gift of being the dispensing agent of my mercy. I bestow, in like manner, on you, said the Holy Ghost, to be a sharer in my wisdom and in my goodness. We ordain in your favor that you be, from this day forward, queen above angels and archangels—above all men and women who are saints in the Court of Paradise. The holy mother of God was raised above the choirs of angels to the regal throne in heaven.

O Mary, Queen of creation, great, indeed, is the dignity and the honor you have obtained—high above the saints of the world; but you have not obtained anything of which you were not worthy. I praise you from my heart and from my will. That is, indeed, true, which Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, said to you—that "thou art blessed above women" (Luke, c. i, v. 43.)

It does not, dear friends, seem wonderful to me that the soul of Mary, radiant with glory, was able to raise itself in the twinkling of an eye from earth aloft to heaven, because every spiritual being, good and bad, has inherent power of speeding, in a short interval, from clime to clime, and from one region of space even to any other. But it does seem to me wonderful how it was that the earthly body which encased that soul was B