Ad Jesum per Mariam

Conference on Angels: Conf. #2: How We Are United With The Angels in Heaven!

Conference on Angels: Conf. #2: How We Are United With The Angels in Heaven! When we speak of the angels, it is important to attend to one of the most important ways where the church is most sensitive to the presence of the angels. And that is during the act of our collective divine worship, which we call the liturgy. Um, And again, this is something that the church has taught from the very beginning, recognized from the very beginning, and yet that we reflect upon far too little. And so, for example, when we celebrate Mass, what we are not doing is simply celebrating Mass on our own. Every time we gather for that holy sacrifice and holy sacrament, we are united to that great liturgy which is taking place in heaven. And so, note, while our eyes see no further than what is around us, the building which we occupy, the people who are with us, this is actually the small part of what is happening. We Unite . . . Rather, in that action, we are caught up into the grander, the greater, the enduring act of worship, which takes place in heaven. This is one of the reasons why when we take the liturgy for granted, when we celebrate it in a pedestrian way, when we just go through the motions, we cheat ourselves! Indeed, we also diminish what it is that’s happening! At Mass, our gifts are on the altar, the presence of Christ is here, and these words are spoken: lift this up by the hands of your holy angel. to your altar, not here on earth, but on high in heaven. That as we are doing something here, something is happening elsewhere! Unite With What Is Going On In Heaven! And what we do here is connected to that. It is not separate from that. It is part of that same action, mysteriously and wonderfully. And the church has long understood that. But as we celebrate that great mystery, which is the source and summit of our faith, we celebrate in union with the angels. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, that as we gather around the altar and praise and honor the presence of the Lord, the angelic host is likewise doing so. Whether we’re five for mass, 500 or 5, 000. It doesn’t matter. That is, in fact, what is happening. And so having said that, we recognize then that with good reason we have long celebrated that the angel, the angelic hosts of the Lord are organized into, not armies, but choirs. Isn’t that interesting when you stop and think about it? Hear more within the Homily! What Actually Do Angels . . . We don’t speak of the nine armies of angels. We don’t even speak of the nine classifications of angels. Indeed, we speak of the nine choirs of angels. And what is a choir? It is that organized, well ordered body, which sings the praises of God during worship. When we speak then of the choirs of the angels, we’re saying something about their very essence. It is not just that they stand before the face of God, it is not just that they serve God, it is not just that they protect us, it is not just that they are messengers. All of that is true because they belong to the choirs. The ordered praises of God sung continually and unrelentingly by the angelic hosts. This tremendous body of music, chant, and song: And so, through Christian art and the Christian imagination across the centuries, especially taking the words of the Psalms, Praise the Lord with harps, praise the Lord with flute and strings, praise the Lord with pipes and drums. If you walk into the great cathedrals of the world, what do you see? . . . Do in Heaven? Read more about it on the website and hear more within the Homily! Listen to this Meditation Media. Listen to: How We Are United With The Angels in Heaven! ------------------------------------------ Image: Our Guardian Angels: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Platform: Generative AI Image by Queen of All Hearts

Broadcast on:: 04 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

In the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen. Mary, Queen of all hearts, St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, all you holy guardian angels. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When we speak of the angels, it is important to attend to one of the most important ways where the church is most sensitive to the presence of the angels. And that is during the act of our collective divine worship, which we call the Liturgy. And again, this is something that the church has taught from the very beginning, recognized from the very beginning, and yet that we reflect upon far too little. And so for example, when we celebrate Mass, what we are not doing is simply celebrating Mass on our own. Every time we gather for that holy sacrifice and holy sacrament, we are united to that great Liturgy which is taking place in heaven. And so note, while our eyes see no further than what is around us. The building which we occupy, the people who are with us, this is actually the small part of what is happening. Rather, in that action, we are caught up into the grander, the grater, the enduring act of worship which takes place in heaven. This is one of the reasons why when we take the Liturgy for granted, when we celebrate it in a pedestrian way, when we just go through the motions, we cheat ourselves, but we also diminish what it is that's happening. We lose the fact that we are caught up in something bigger than us and greater than us. We are no longer merely on earth and no longer merely earthly while the Liturgy is taking place. We are still physically on earth. There is an earthly dimension to what we do and to who we are, and yet that very earthliness is swept up into something bigger than itself. Note then how that plays out. On Sundays for most of the year with the exception of Lent and Advent, one of the things that happens is the singing of the Gloria, which is the hymn of the angels, glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to those upon whom his favor rests, peace to earth, and men of goodwill. Where does those words come from? It's the voice of the angels on Christmas. That song of the birth of the Savior is the song of the church. We sing in the words of the angels with voices that are united to the angels. The movement of the ministers in the Liturgy, for example, in those places where there will be an elaborate gospel procession with the incense and the candles and the servers. As long been understood symbolically as the company of angels moving forward to celebrate the presence of the Lord, including then that joyful note of praise, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. The angelic praise lifted high and then we hum to that marvelous moment. Right as the gifts are on the altar, they've been incensed, we've prayed our thanksgiving over them, and we're about to enter into the great action of the Eucharistic Prayer itself. And note how the preface which precedes the Eucharistic Prayer always concludes. We reference the angelic hosts, countless angels, cherubim and the seraphim, powers, principalities, thrones and dominions, sing your praises, may our voices be one with theirs. Not an hour, but in their triumphant hymn of praise. And so there's this moment of explicitly and consciously uniting ourselves with the great choirs of heaven as they sing in praise and worship of Almighty God. And what are the words we say? They are the words of the seraphim from the temple, holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are filled with your glory. And again, it is the uniting of our voices with the praise of the angels that carries us into the action of the Eucharistic Prayer. And what do we find in that first Eucharistic Prayer? The Roman Canon. That great prayer which for hundreds and hundreds of years has been the very heart of the celebration of the Eucharist. After the consecration, there's that marvelous prayer of asking Almighty God that these gifts be lifted up by the hands of His holy angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty. Note that insistence on a commerce between earth and heaven at that moment. Our gifts are on the altar. The presence of Christ is here, and yet there is lift this up by the hands of your holy angel to your altar, not here on earth, but on high in heaven. That as we are doing something here, something is happening elsewhere. And what we do here is connected to that, it is not separate from that. It is part of that same action, mysteriously and wonderfully. And the church has long understood that as we celebrate that great mystery which is the source and summit of our faith, we celebrate in union with the angels. Whether we're conscious of it or not, that as we gather around the altar and praise and honor the presence of the Lord, the angelic host is likewise doing so. Whether we're five from us, 500 or 5,000, it doesn't matter. That is in fact what is happening. And so having said that, having said that, we recognize then that with good reason, we have long celebrated that the angelic hosts of the Lord are organized into not armies but choirs. Isn't that interesting when you stop and think about it? We don't speak of the nine armies of angels. We don't even speak of the nine classifications of angels. We speak of the nine choirs of angels. And what is a choir? It is that organized well-ordered body which sings the praises of God during worship. When we speak then of the choirs of the angels, we're saying something about their very essence. It is not just that they stand before the face of God. It is not just that they serve God. It is not just that they protect us, it is not just that they are messengers. All of that is true because they belong to the choirs. The order praises of God sung continually and unrelentingly by the angelic hosts. This tremendous body of music, chant and song. And so through Christian art and the Christian imagination across the centuries, especially taking the words of the songs. Praise the Lord with timbrell and harp. Praise the Lord with loot and strings. Praise the Lord with pipes and drums. If you walk into the great cathedrals of the world, what do you see? Angels with pipes and drums. Angels and harps, recognizing that these statements are not just a call to Israel, they're not just a call to the people of God to lift their voices and song, that there's an absoluteness about these words. An absoluteness about these words that is fulfilled and realized first in heaven. It spills down to earth. And so we are most clearly and most fully united to the angels in worship, in worship. Which is why the great hymn, celebrating the angels, begins in Conspectu and Jalorum, Solomon, T.B., Deus, Mayus. In the presence of the angels, I will sing your praises, oh my God. In the presence of the angels. I will sing your praises. What a marvelous, marvelous reality that is, that there is something about the angel that doesn't simply teach me how to obey, doesn't simply point out the way I must follow. It teaches me how to praise, how to rightly worship. And so we see time and again in Sacred Scripture, it is the angel who holds the thorough-able, the incense, the angel who is pleased to receive the sacrifice and bear it upward to the Lord. It is the angel who assists and who aids the people of God in their worship that that worship might be realized rightly and correctly. This is also why then in some areas, the long-standing custom was, at the entrance to the church, to have an image of Saint Michael. And it wasn't merely a notion of Saint Michael protects the people. It is Saint Michael defends the worship. Saint Michael defends the house where the praises of God are sung. Saint Michael stands at the door so that those who gather might be protected from distraction, that those who gather might be kept safe as they worship. Now how powerful that idea is, because worship matters. And that is why here in our church, flanking the tabernacle, we have our angels. That reminder that night and day without ceasing and without pause, the angels adore, the angels worship in that infinite now of eternity. The angels sing always the praises of God. And again, we speak of praying to the angels, we seldom speak of praying with the angels. We speak of relying on the angels, we speak of being guided by the angels, we seldom speak of singing with the angels, praising with the angels, of uniting our hearts and our spirits and letting them be elevated by the worship of the angels. And yet if we take seriously what it is we do in the sacrament, there is that twinning of earthly and heavenly reality that does take place. Each and every time we gather each and every time we do it and so our worship is punctuated by angelic voices, glory to God in the highest, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. May these gifts be taken up by the hands of your holy angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty. Hey, beautiful, beautiful realization this becomes that, that we participate in something greater than what we can see, greater than what we can hear, greater than the sound of our voices can reach and that there is something that we are involved in which goes beyond ourselves and which carries us forward to that moment where we can truly unite our voices with theirs in heaven itself. If we remain faithful to their guidance while we are here on this earth. And you know the end, this is something that runs through sacred scripture. The meeting tent that Moses created, he sees first a vision in heaven that the meeting tent comes to represent however imperfectly and yet the pattern is not an earthly reality but a heavenly reality, the heavenly order of right worship, the heavenly order of the assembled servants of God, the choirs of angels. That note then the implication that there's an element of what it is to be the pilgrim people of the Lord here on this earth which yearns to be put into that good order which would correspond to the heavenly choirs. The diverse members of the body of Christ each being something like a different note, a different instrument and an ongoing hymn of praise lifted up to the Lord. That these voices are ordered and put together so that they don't sing dishharmoniously but actually can sing with a harmony that provides a beauty and a strength that goes beyond the sum of the individual voices. When we speak of the angels as choirs we are speaking of them as being ordered. We are speaking of them as having a variety of voices all harmonizing in a unified song of praise and note that we speak of more than one choir and imagine that. Here on earth if we had nine choirs singing at Mass it would be a mess. It would be a mess and the worst part of it would be the cantors who would all be competing with each other. You know you get those diva primadata voices and they'd all just be going let's top this. And yet here we have nine choirs that sing at the same time and there is no disharmony. Nine choirs that lift their voices in praise and it is not just the voices are unified within the choir but across the choirs. Imagine that, imagine that, each one distinct, each one with its own notes, its own tonality, its own instruments and yet brought together it is harmonious and majestic and beautiful. But know what this says about the way the Lord orders his people, the way the Lord orders the cosmos. It is not simply a rigid uniformity of oneness in one thing but rather it's much more complex than that because the Lord takes seriously the great variety of the things that he has made and he has made all of these things in their diverse array and their great variety to function together in one harmony without their losing that uniqueness which he has originally given them. And so we don't have one choir of angels. We have nine because the angels are not the same. There is a variety among them, a variety of statuses, a variety of capacities, a variety of responsibilities and yet and yet within that variety there is always unity, a unity that propagates down, a beauty that propagates down from the ninth and highest choir, the seraphine, those fiery beings, a flame with pure love of God and out of that pure love of God spills down the order of that fire through the carabin who stand before the throne of God with their many eyes gazing upon him that they might know him fully and perfectly. Perfect love flowing downward through perfect knowledge and knowledge and love flowing downward through all of the lower choirs and reaching them, animating them, strengthening them, sustaining them until that touch of love and knowledge reaches us. And in no small measure that is what happens in the liturgy. And so we sing the hymn of the seraphine, holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts and it is a reminder that that ardent love out of which they sing and out of which they worship filters down, pours down, propagates down, even into our worship space, even into our hearts that as we gather, as we sing, as we worship, something of that perfect love, something of that perfect knowledge of God might touch us, might enrich us, and might change us. That's an intrinsic element of devotion to the angels, devotion, the church's devotion to the angels begins right there, it begins with the mass, it begins with the recognition that we participate in something bigger than ourselves and that these exalted beings who are given to watch over us and to keep us safe, to lead us and to guard us and to guide us are precisely those with whom we unite. And again, it's not that they unite themselves to our worship, we unite ourselves to theirs. Note how marvelous that is, that we who are right now less than the angels are given that privilege of uniting ourselves with them, that the joy they have in heaven, we might have a touch of it here as we worship, and why? Because the curious thing is their glorious joy which they have right now is at the service of that greater joy which is promised to us. Because Christ never took the form of an angel, but Christ did become man. So now then, as we wool things toward a conclusion, Christ did not become an angel, but the word of God did become man. And so there is something about serving man and watching man and caring for man and guiding man, which is intrinsically connected to the way the angels love and serve and know God. In fact, they appreciate our humanity more than we do, because they look at us and they know that one who has taken our humanity on to himself. And looking at each and any one of us, they see that echo, they see that constant reminder that the word of God loved man so much. He took our humanity onto himself to save us. Small wonder then that man who was overcome by a fallen angel in the Garden of Eden is saved by that one who overcomes that same fallen angel, first in the desert and then on Calvary. And as this happens, what do we see as this one who with a human face gazes with divine love upward toward heaven? Small wonder it is the angels that look upon that infant human face, seeing the glory of the incarnate word, sing their song with a joy so great it spills out of heaven and rains down on earth. Imagine that the wonder of the birth of the Lord is so great the angels leave heaven and fill the skies of earth, singing in wonderment and joy at what it is they are gazing upon, at who it is they are gazing upon. Small wonder then we see and we hear that when our Lord resists that fallen angel in the desert and the period of temptation is over, what do we hear but the angels came and ministered to him. When Adam is driven out of paradise by an angel, the new Adam stands in a desert overcoming temptation and is ministered to and cared for by angels. On the night before he dies, in the Garden, it is an angel that comes to the Lord first to show him the cup that he must drink and then another angel comes to give him that strength that he needs to move forward. And so note again as the new Adam in a garden declares that he will be faithful even at the cost of his own pain and the cost of his own life, the angels are there. Well you should not be surprised then that when the Lord rises the angels are there. Note how they attend, how they attend to his humanity and all of these crucial stages of his life and this too is a sign of the continual care the angels do have for us and the continual interest that they do take in us. Because our lives, less dramatically, less mightily, move through those same stages. We live in a desert where we are tempted. We rise from the baptismal font, we look up heavenward and there is the life of Christ within us, the touch of the divine. We suffer, we struggle and we look for that day when life will be given us in a way that will never be taken from us again. And the angels that we celebrate over these days are those who don't simply contemplate these realities and serve these realities in Christ as if somehow that can be done without involving us, rather. Just as we hear in the Eucharistic Prayer, the Lord does it this way so that he might see and love in us what he sees and loves in his son. That would hold for the angels as well. As they gaze upon the people of God, they long to see and love in us. Right now, even if it is merely in promise, what they already see in love in Christ. And then that guidance that they give us is at the service, at the service of that face of Christ shining outward and shining forth from us because they long to see it. And so when we speak about devotion to the angels, it really is important to recognize it. The transformation of our lives, the transformation of our character, the quality of our worship, and the quality of our faithfulness and the clarity of our discipleship. These are the things that are most important. And when we speak with them as our guardians, it is a guardianship that expresses itself in these things and at the service of these things. Amen. In the name of the Lord be with you. May Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Thank you all for coming out today. Thank you. [applause] [applause]