In the ancient mysteries, Isis resurrects Osiris, Demeter-Persephone resurrects Dionysus: the Son – Brother – Bridegroom is resurrected by the Mother – Sister – Bride.

It is the shadow of the future, and the body is in Christ. (Col. 2:17.)

Two Marys, one at the beginning of life, the other at the end; that one gave birth – this one will resurrect.

The mystery of the Eternally Feminine in the Eternally Masculine could be overheard in the heart of the Lord only by those who reclined at that heart – the sixteen-year-old lad John, according to the ancient tradition of the Church, with a face, according to Vinchiev's wondrous conjecture, feminine, or more precisely, more terrible, holier, – masculine charm; only he could drink from the heart of the Lord, like the bee of paradise from the flower of paradise, this purest honey of the purest love, for which there is no name on the human tongue.

XXXII

In vain are all attempts to separate in John's testimony, the alloy of two metals, one of them from the other, History from the Mystery.

Lazarus died; Jesus converses secretly about his death and resurrection with Mary, his sister – this is the story – something that happened once in time. Lazarus was resurrected; Mary sees Lazarus coming out of the tomb: here is the mystery – that which is, was, and will be in eternity. Where the threshold of the door is from one order to another, the boundary line between them, we will never know with certainty; but it seems to be somewhere near the tears of the Lord. The world, to one who looks at it through tears such as these, shakes, melts, flows like molten metal; refracted in the prism of tears, the image of the world seems to be distorted, but in fact restored, straightened; only through such tears can one see the world properly: "the image of this world passes away," and another world shines through it; in what we call a "vision" or a "likeness," a "symbol," and John calls a "miracle-sign," another reality is revealed, greater than the one in which we live.

XXXIII

"When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet Him" and said:

Rabbi! if you had been here, my brother would not have died. (11, 20–21.)

Mary will say the same thing in the same words (11:32), because here Martha is Active Love, and Mary is Contemplative Love, two sisters, one being. "My brother would not have died," is the silent complaint of all creation, groaning from the beginning of the world and still not delivered. "If only Thou were" – a quiet reproach of love, as if in response to that incomprehensible, inhuman word:

I rejoice that I was not there, that you might believe.

Martha-Mary is still in this world, on the threshold separating that world from this one.

But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.