If God gives such great honor to his saints on earth, how much more in heaven?
2 min • Digitized on October 1, 2023
From The Sinner’s Guide, page 98
By Venerable Louis of Granada
Another consideration no less striking is that God has prepared this magnificence not only for His glory, but for the glory of His elect. “Whosoever shall glorify Me, him will I glorify.”
“Thou Hast subjected all things under his feet,” cries out the Psalmist; and this we see verified in the most striking manner among the Saints.
Witness Josue, whose word arrests the sun in his course, thus showing us, as the Scripture says, “God obeying the voice of man.”
Consider the prophet Isaias bidding King Ezechias choose whether he will have the sun go forward or backward in his course, for it was in the power of God’s servant to cause either.
Behold Elias closing the heavens, so that there was no rain but at his will and prayer.
And not only during life but even after death God continues to honor the mortal remains of His elect; for do we not read in Scripture that a dead body which was thrown by highwaymen into the tomb of Eliseus was brought to life by contact with the bones of the prophet?
Did not God also honor in a marvellous manner the body of St. Clement? On the day that this generous defender of the faith suffered, the sea was opened for a distance of three miles to allow the people to pass to the place of martyrdom to venerate the sacred remains.
Is it not from a like motive that the Church has instituted a feast in honor of St. Peter’s chains, to show us how God wills to honor the bodies of His servants, since we are to reverence their very chains?
A still more marvellous proof of this was the power of healing the sick communicated to the shadow of the same Apostle. Oh! admirable goodness! God confers upon His Apostle a power which He Himself did not exercise. Of St. Peter alone is this related.
But if God be pleased thus to honor the Saints on earth, though but a place of toil and labor, who can tell the glory which He has reserved for them in His kingdom, where He wills to honor them, and through them to glorify Himself?