Tag Archives: Glory

Your Saints in Glory

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At the moment
You lift Your saintly friends
From the Earth,
And plant them
In the Heaven of Your Being,
At that precious moment,
And by that fateful act,
You endow
The sons and daughters
Of Your Covenant,
Remaining in this world,
With more,
Not less.

When Your friends
Journey forth,
All the Earth
Is, henceforth, blessed,
And not, otherwise,
Disposed or deprived.

As Your Servants,
Enter Your Realms of Light,
Their charisms become infinite,
In their capacity to bless.

When the smallest of the small
Cries out,
In the name of Your forever Friends,
These other Christs
Answer with Your power to succor.

In the Now of Your Essence,
They share Your Glory.
In Heaven,
There is only one glory,
Which cannot increase.
United to You,
Who, are unchanging,
This new rain falls to
the Earth,
And it’s consenting
creatures, here,
Can and do change,
In the shower
Of Your abundant dew fall.

We are, henceforth,
The beneficiaries of new riches,
Streaming from Your Side,
The Door, by which Your saints
Entered Eternity.

Glory upon glory falls,
As golden droplets,
Upon the land
Of sunrise and sunset.

Your gifts do not cease
With the death
Of those who are Yours.
Heaven is united to earth,
And in the celebration
Of their new birth,
Rejoices.

©2012 Joann Nelander

The Saints Crowned in Glory

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The Church Militant and the Church Triumphant ...

Image via Wikipedia

The Saints are longing for us,
longing that we share their glory.
No harm in such
ambition,
says Bernard.

This glory is to be spread abroad
by God’s sovereignty
and generosity.
This glory is  none other
than the glory in which the Father
robed His dying Son.

It is  now reflected in His Saints,
who in life picked up their cross,
and followed  Him upon their knees.

The battle they fought on Earth now is ours.
They continue with us,
the Church Triumphant,
pleading for the Church Militant.

Blessed are those who were poor in spirit,
who were merciful, loving their enemies,
who mourned and who were persecuted,
who were pure of  heart,
and sought peace
through the wood of the Cross.

Blessed are all those gathered
to the Father’s  bosom.
Blessed are they and generous,
interceding for the saints,
as they look for us to follow in their steps.

Brothers and Sisters,
radiant in glory,
beam forth Christ.

All happiness to His Saints
rewarded now and forever.
All glory to the Father,
the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen!

By Joann Nelander

Your Glory I Give Them

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From a homily on the Song of Songs by Saint Gregory of Nyssa, bishop

The glory you gave to me, I have given to them

When love has entirely cast out fear, and fear has been transformed into love, then the unity brought us by our savior will be fully realized, for all men will be united with one another through their union with the one supreme Good. They will possess the perfection ascribed to the dove, according to our interpretation of the text: One alone is my dove, my perfect one. She is the only child of her mother, her chosen one.

Our Lord’s words in the gospel bring out the meaning of this text more clearly. After having conferred all power on his disciples by his blessing, he obtained many other gifts for them by his prayer to the Father. Among these was included the greatest gift of all, which was that they were no longer to be divided in their judgment of what was right and good, for they were all to be united to the one supreme Good. As the Apostle says, they were to be bound together with the bonds of peace in the unity that comes from the Holy Spirit. They were to be made one body and one spirit by the one hope to which they were all called. We shall do better, however, to quote the sacred words of the gospel itself. I pray, the Lord says, that they all may be one; that as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, so they also may be one in us.

Now the bond that creates this unity is glory. That the Holy Spirit is called glory no one can deny if he thinks carefully about the Lord’s words: The glory you gave to me, I have given to them. In fact, he gave this glory to his disciples when he said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit. Although he had always possessed it, even before the world existed, he himself received this glory when he put on human nature. Then, when his human nature had been glorified by the Spirit, the glory of the Spirit was passed on to all his kin, beginning with his disciples. This is why he said: The glory you gave to me, I have given to them, so that they may be one as we are one. With me in them and you in me, I want them to be perfectly one.

Whoever has grown from infancy to manhood and attained to spiritual maturity possesses the mastery over his passions and the purity that makes it possible for him to receive the glory of the Spirit. He is that perfect dove upon whom the eyes of the bridegroom rest when he says: One alone is my dove, my perfect one.