The Angels, the Lord, and Us
St. Michael's Lent, Day 2
In my morning meditation, at the beginning of the Gospel of John, I noted Jesus’ words to Philip, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (1:51).
The Solemnity of the Assumption and the beginning of St. Michael’s Lent mark a turn in the Church’s liturgical calendar. We are at the very beginning of the cycle of readings that prepare us for the Second Coming, which is a Day of Judgement, the Dies Irae, the Day of Wrath, the medievals called it. That is the Day when all will be revealed, and the judgement which cannot be appealed will be rendered. We want it to be a good day, and it can be for us, if we use the means. Our Lady’s Assumption is for us a guarantee from heaven that those who are faithful will be taken to heaven. Of course, for those who die in grace, first our souls, and then our bodies at the end of time, are taken up. But body and soul we will be with the Lord and with all his loved ones for all eternity. Between now and then, warfare. Revelation 12 showed us this yesterday, and we have the testimony throughout Scripture that the angels minister to us and fight for and with us. We also have the testimony of Scripture as to what happens if we don’t contend.
The Lord’s words the first chapter of John’s Gospel recall Jacob’s Ladder, upon which the angels ascended and descended from heaven, those hosts who surround and accompany the Lord God who is the Lord of Hosts (Gen 28). In Jacob’s Dream he is told that his “descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the east and the west and the north and the south; and by you and your descendants will all the nations of the world be blessed.” Jesus is telling us in the first chapter of John that He is the Elect One, the One in whom this promise will be fulfilled. It is His Body, the Church, that is now spread throughout the world, drawing people into Herself — and facing ferocious combat, as the forces of darkness hate the true light, because, John will tell us later, “their deeds [are] evil.” Jesus has come to do battle with the Accuser, to win back from the prince of this world what God has allowed him for a time to be his own principality, to win back for His Father the souls that the evil one won through deception.
The Angel of the Lord came to Mary, announcing that she would be the Mother of the Redeemer. The angels came and ministered to Jesus during his forty-day fast. The angels are all about us now — and time fails me to recount all the many times the Angel of the Lord and other angels appear throughout the Old Testament and in the Acts of the Apostles to assist the chosen ones in their mighty battles.
How do they minister to us? The Chaplet of St. Michael sets forth one way in which each of the nine choirs of angels assist. The Seraphim, whose name means “burning ones,” are the angels who attend directly upon the Lord. Two of their six wings cover their eyes, two of them cover their feet, and two of them bear the angels up. Their eyes are covered lest they be consumed by the Lord’s holiness; in closest proximity to the Lord, they too burn with his holiness, purity and love. The Epistle to the Hebrews will echo this scene with the remembrance that “our God is a consuming fire,” like the fire in the Burning Bush that engulfed it in flames yet held it in life.
The Seraphim, we might then say, bring us purity and perfection of love, and in the Chaplet, we pray that through the intercession of St. Michael and the Seraphim, God would make us worthy to burn with the fire of perfect charity. It was a seraph who touched Isaiah’s lips with the burning coal to cleanse and purify him, so that he could be the herald of Good News to the ancients, and to us, too, as his prophecies foretell the coming of the Messiah. The seraphs will bring us cleansing fire if w ask their help.
Where do you need more love in your life? Put another way, whom do you need to love more? This is not a pious, devotional question. Love is costly: love requires sacrifice. Perhaps your marriage or your relationships with kids and grandkids are not up to par. Perhaps you are challenged by people in your business life: associates who are not up to snuff — or so you think, perhaps unfairly —; customers or clients who are trying, either because they are demanding without reason, incapable of making decisions, or else maybe they’re just idiots — or so you think, perhaps unfairly. How are you managing your life on the road? How about your neighbors: are all those relationships up to snuff, or are there people close by who you wish would move so that you wouldn’t have to deal with them any longer? (Be careful of what you wish for.)
In my experience, what I must sacrifice most in order to love more is my insistence that I am right and others are wrong, that I am being kind and loving and others are acting harshly, that I am being reasonable and accommodating and others are being demanding. Well, sometimes, yes, those judgements are right, but not always. And even when they are right, more is required of you and me. We are supposed to be like Christ. We are supposed to love as He loves, we are supposed to be streams of living waters in the deserts that surround us, not bracken, alkaline pools that are good for nothing. Put another way: it doesn't matter if you are, or I am, right. What matters is that we love.
It is God’s love that softens stubbornness, bitterness, resentment, and that turns bitter pools into living water. I have to be able to receive this love in order for those changes to occur; and while I receive this love in worship of God, public and private, sometimes — well, let’s be honest, otherwise what’s the point: often — you and I need extra help. We need the intercession of the saints. We need the angels to block and tackle to keep the nasty critters at bay. We need the seraphim to carry the coals that touch our lips, purify our speech, cleanse our hearts, and set our souls ablaze. That’s because when you and I see others as God sees them, we cannot help but love them; and to see as God sees, we need the fire of His love. When our hearts and mouths are cleansed so that we can be agents of God’s mercy and grace, things change for all those people and situations that challenge us. We change, too. The Church reminds us that we can ask the angels to help us receive that cleansing so as to be those people.
We cannot get away from fire in the Christian faith — and not because of the candles and incense which burn at the altar. There are, in the end, two salient facts. The first is that we are all going to burn. The second is that we get to choose how. We can burn with the fire of love here on earth, allowing ourselves to be ever more possessed by God so as to love Him the more perfectly and to go about His business, working with Jesus in the Church for the salvation of souls; we can burn with regret in Purgatory for all the time we wasted here below, all the opportunities we missed, and all the sinfulness in ourselves that we tolerated when we could have purged so much the easier during our lifetimes. Or, and please, God, no, we can burn with anger, rage and hatred of God for all eternity in hell. We really are free to choose our destiny.
The path is set before us: we can burn now with love, in a fire that cleanses us, enlightens us, sets us free, and then burns as perfectly as possible for each of us in our stations in heaven, or we can burn with resentment, envy, jealousy and bitterness, which reach their culmination in the lake of fire. Purgatory, by the way, is a mercy. It is not the original divine intention: Our Lord has revealed to the saints that He does not desire it, but His justice requires it, as no one can stand in His presence with any taint of sin. Purgatory, then, that state of purgation between death and our definitive entrance into the bless of heaven, is mercy as much as it is judgement. But it is tough. The same saints teach us that however hard life is for us now, Purgatory is much, much harder, and there is nothing we can do to speed the process along once we have entered it.
Far better for us to rely upon the intercession of the Seraphim, that we obtain the pure love that truly sets us free here and now to know, love, and serve God, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Far better for us to accept the help that equips us to stand as close to God as we possibly can in the Age to Come. The alternative is unthinkable.
Please consider sharing in this work of evangelization and catechesis by praying for it and by subscribing to the page. May the good Lord bless you for whatever you do.