body, in which the Holy of holies was conceived and remained for nine months, should stay on this earth, and be so long deprived of the heavenly resting-place due to it. No! Mary was assumed into heaven. On this day the Queen of heaven made her triumphal entry with body and soul into the kingdom of heaven. With what joy and exultation that entry took place I leave to your pious thoughts. My dear brethren, shall we too one day be taken up to heaven in the same manner? Yes, if, as we hope, we die a happy death; but that shall not be the case with us until our bodies, that shall have decayed in the grave, shall rise from the dead on the last day; then with body and soul, accompanied by the whole multitude of the elect, we shall make our joyful entry into the city of God, there to be happy forever together. This entry I have described on a former occasion. But now the question arises: shall the body too have its delights in heaven, those delights that we think so much of on earth? Truly, and that too without measure or end, as I now propose to consider.
Plan of Discourse.
There shall be nothing in the kingdom of heaven to cause the body the least pain; such shall be briefly the subject of the first part. There shall be in the kingdom of heaven everything to give the body pleasure; the second part. Therefore let us now for a short time mortify our bodies in this vale of tears for God’s sake, that when we are called from this earth we may find eternal pleasures in heaven.
Such is the conclusion that we beg of Thy grace, O King of glory! through the merits of the Queen of heaven and of the angels, Mary, of whom we again say with pride and joy of heart: “Mary was assumed into heaven.”
On earth this body of ours is tried by all sorts of afflictions.
As far as bodily torments are concerned, we know so much of them by daily experience that it is not necessary to describe them in words: They consist in all those adverse things that occasion trouble, discomfort, and pain to the flesh and the senses; such as disquiet, labor, affliction, heat, cold, hunger, thirst, sickness, old age, sorrow, death, without speaking of the exterior injuries that can happen to us in so many ways. It is from these things, my dear brethren, that the evils come that afflict us in this vale of tears at all times, in all places; this is the un-