Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Henryk Siemiradzki
Father Cassilly draws our attention to the multifarious grandeur and beauty of God’s creation. He writes: “Look this rich summer morning at yonder prospect of hill and dale, orchard, field and meadow, and count if you can the varied tints of green from light yellowish to deep blue or blackish. You will easily number a hundred shades, each herb and plant and tree, singly and in mass, having its own peculiar tint, which, too, constantly changes at each hour of the day, according to the intensity of the light, the position of the clouds and the angle of view. . . . Witness the illimitable expanse of ocean and its unfathomable depths, the unexplored reach of space, sown with suns unnumbered, the almost infinite variety and fecundity of plant and animal life. Who will count the light vibrations of a single candle, or the avalanche of seeds that fall from a maple tree, not one of which perhaps is destined to germinate?”
“And if the hand of Providence is so profuse, almost wasteful, in its gifts to us in exile, what will be its munificence in the place of reward? If the seed-time be so abounding, what will the harvest be? In this life God must put a constant check and restraint on His liberality, lest He overwhelm us with His beneficence, and make this orb so entrancing that we may forget the Giver in the splendor of His gifts. This world, all in all, is but a presage of the next, and so the Divine munificence displayed in it is at most but an earnest of what we may expect.”
“The untold riches and delights that He has packed away for us into every moment of the endless age to come, are far and away beyond all we can surmise or anticipate. If the antechamber in which we are, says one of the Fathers, is so magnificent, what will the royal throne room be; if the floor of heaven so glistens with its patens of light, what must the superstructure be?”
Quotations from Francis Cassilly, A Story of Love, 2d ed. (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1917).
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