Revelations of St. Bridget/Chapter 23. Life of the Blessed Virgin after our Lord’s Ascension
CHAPTER XXIII.
LIFE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN AFTER OUR LORD’S ASCENSION.
The Blessed Virgin speaks.
I lived a long time in the world after the Ascension of my Son; and God so willed it, that many souls, seeing my patience and life, might be converted to him, the Apostles of God and other elect confirmed. And even the natural constitution of my body required that I should live longer, that my crown might be increased. For all the time that I lived, after the Ascension of my Son, I visited the places in which he suffered and showed his wonders. So rooted, too, was his Passion in my heart, that whether I ate or worked, it was ever as if fresh in my memory. So, too, my senses were withdrawn from earthly things, because I was only inflamed, as it were, with new desires, and in turn, torn by grief. Nevertheless, I so tempered my grief and joy, that I never omitted aught of God’s services. And I so dwelt among men, as not to expect nor take even aught of what is pleasing to man, except scanty food. That my Assumption was not known to many, nor proclaimed by many, God, who is my Son, so willed, that faith in his own Ascension should be first implanted in men’s hearts, because the hearts of men were hard and loth to believe his Ascension; how much more would they have been so, had my Assumption been proclaimed in the very beginning of the faith. — Lib. vi., c. 61.
Some years after the Ascension of my Son, I was one day much afflicted with a longing to rejoin my Son; then I beheld a radiant angel, such as I had before seen, who said to me: “Thy Son, who is our Lord and God, sent me to announce to thee, that the time is at hand, when thou shalt come bodily to him, to receive the crown prepared for thee.” “Dost thou,” I replied, “know the day or hour when I shall leave the world?” The angel answered: “The friends of thy Son will come and inter thy body.” Saying this, the angel disappeared, and I prepared for my departure, going, as was my wont, to all the spots where my Son had suffered; and when one day my mind was absorbed in admiring contemplation of divine charity, my soul was filled therein with such exultation, that it could not contain itself, and in that very consideration, my soul was loosed from the body. But what magnificent things my soul then beheld; with what honor the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost then honored it, and by what a host of angels it was wafted up, thou canst not conceive, nor will I tell thee, before thy soul and body are severed, although I have shown thee some of all these things in that prayer which my Son inspires thee. Those who lived with me, when I gave up the ghost, knew well, from the unusual light, that divine things then took place in me. After this, the friends of my Son, divinely sent, interred my body in the valley of Josaphat; countless angels, like specks in sunlight, attending, but malignant spirits not daring to approach. For fifteen days my body lay buried in the earth; then, with a multitude of angels, it was assumed into heaven.
After my Son ascended to heaven, I lived in the world fifteen years, — the time from my Son’s ascension to my death. And when dead, I lay in the sepulchre three days; then I was taken up to heaven with infinite honor and joy; but my garments in which I was interred, remained in the tomb, and I was then attired in such vesture as my Son and Lord, Jesus Christ. Know, too, that there is no human body in heaven but the glorious body of my Son and mine. — Lib. vii., c. 26.