l for all the experience of
the Way. As the years flow by we do not look back on them with regret as
the unrenewable experiences of a vanished youth, but we think of them as
the bearers of experiences by which we have profited, and of goods which
we have safely garnered, waiting the time when their stored values can
be fully realised.

Over all the saints whom the Church has seen rejoicing in the heavenly
life, rises the form of Mary, Mother of God. S. John's vision of the
"great sign in heaven" in its primary meaning has, no doubt, reference
to the Church itself; but the form of its symbolism would be impossible
if there were not a secondary reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It
is the thought of her and of her office as Mother of the Redeemer that
has determined the form of the vision. The details are too clear to
permit of doubt, and such has been the constant mind of Catholic
interpreters.

And how else than as Queen of the heavenly host should we expect her to
be represented? What does the Church teaching as to sanctity imply?

It implies the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision. The normal Christian
life begins in the sacramental act by which the regenerate child is made
one with God, being made a partaker of the divine nature, and develops
through sacramental experience and constant response to the will of God
to that spiritual capacity which is the medium of the Beatific Vision
and which we call sanctity or purity. "The pure in heart shall see God."

But the teaching of the Church also implies that there is a marvellous
diversity in the sanctity of the members of the Body of Christ. Each
saint retains his personal characteristics, and his sanctity is not the
refashioning of his character in a common mould but the perfecting of
his character on its own lines. We sometimes hear it said that the
Christian conception of heaven is monotonous, but that is very far from
being the fact. It is only those conceptions of heaven which have
excluded the communion of saints, and have thought of heaven as the
solitary communion of the soul with God; which have in other words,
excluded the notion of human society from heaven, which have appeared
monotonous. As we read any series of the lives of the saints, and
realise that it is these men and women and multitudes of others like
them, that make up the society of heaven, we get rid of any other notion
than that of endless diversity. And thus studying individual saints we
come