On Praise

Extract

From the chapel of Our Lady of the Pines the young man came to the evening sea. The quiet refrain his companions had been chanting for Her in whose honour the pines for ever swayed their graceful heads still haunted his ears. Quibus Te laudibus efferam nescio, they had sung, making solemn plaint that before the Queen’s beauty all human praise of words seemed vain. And for the first time this ancient familiar phrase came as a revelation to his mind.

Looking on the dying sun as it loosed its crimson mantle along the line of sea, as if about to doff its daily raiment for the night, the young man thought on the sweet folly of praise. What is worthy of all praise, he pondered, like the beauty of God and the things God has made, is greater than all praise, nor can the praise of men be ever enough. Quia major omni laude, nec laudare sufficit, sang the Sequence of the Body of Christ. But this folly of praise was the sweet foolishness of wisdom, akin to the folly of the Cross, the audacity of love. To praise God, even to praise this sunset splendour, was an adventure in word and spirit, quantum foies, tantum aude, but an adventure prompted by love that feared not to stake its little all on the hazard of speech and thought. And for those with eyes to see and minds to know who set out bravely on the golden venture of praise there would always be reward, even if the Father smiled at their childlike prattlings.

But if words and thought were weak, there remained always the praise of silence that fled the bounds of speech, the tricks of reason.