Unspeakable Joys

'Madonna and Child with Saints' by Giovanni Bellini (c.1430-1516), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

​‘Of what profit to the saints are our prayers and the honour we pay them? Of what use is this feastday? Of what use to them are honours paid on earth when our Father in heaven, fulfilling the truth of his Son’s promise, has raised them to glory? Our songs of praise do not avail them nor do they need our honours, nor anything our service can offer. Surely we are the ones to benefit, when we venerate their memory. I confess that at the thought of them I am consumed by a loving desire to be with them.
 
…So let us strive to attain this glory with a passionate desire and an ambition that is entirely praiseworthy. And, that we may lawfully hope for it and reach out for such blessedness, the prayers of the saints are eminently desirable, that what we cannot attain by our own unaided efforts may be granted to us through their intercession’.
 
from the sermons of St Bernard of Clairvaux, 1090-1153

O Almighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord: grant us grace so to follow thy blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living; that through their intercession we may come to those unspeakable joys, which thou hast prepared for them that love thee; through the same Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. - Divine Worship: The Missal.