Hunolt Sermons/Volume 12/Sermon 38
THIRTY-EIGHTH SERMON
ON THE HOLY ANGELS.
Subject.
1. The holy angels are most perfectly united with the will of God. 2. We, too, should endeavor to be in full conformity with the divine will. Preached on the feast of the guardian angels and of St. Michael.
Text.
" Their angels in heaven always see the face of My Father who is in heaven." (Matt. 18:10)
Introduction.
"Their angels in heaven always see the face of My Father who is in heaven." These words signify something more than the glory of the holy angels, by which they behold God for eternity. When we say of a servant that he always keeps his eyes fixed on his master, we mean that he is always ready and willing to do arid omit whatever he knows to be pleasing to his master. And this is what we must understand of the holy angels when we say that they always see the face of the Father in heaven. Yes, my dear brethren, there we have a perfect model of the conformity and likeness of our will to the will of God; as I now mean to show in this sermon, which shall be partly a panegyric and partly a moral discourse.
Plan of Discourse.
The holy angels are always most perfectly united with the will of God. This I shall show in the first part. Let us, too, endeavor to be in conformity with the divine will on earth, just as the an gels are in heaven. Such shall he the exhortation in the second part. The first part to the praise and honor of the holy angels; the second by way of a lesson to us, that we may imitate their example.
Help us hereto, holy angels, and thou, Mary, Queen of angels!
As I have often told you already, the likeness of our will to the divine will consists partly in doing or avoiding what God wills, when God wills, how God wills, and because God wills us to do or avoid it, and partly in being quite satisfied and content with whatever arrangement God has made with regard to us and to all creatures, in great things or small, in high things or lowly, in agreeable or disagreeable things. My dear brethren, we find a perfect example of this twofold conformity in the holy angels in heaven. With regard to the first, the Prophet David, wishing to give the angels a name descriptive of their office, calls them servants and attendants of God, who have nothing else to do but to fulfil His holy will. For he sings to them: " Bless the Lord, all ye His angels; you that are mighty in strength, and execute His word, hearkening to the voice of His orders. Bless the Lord, all ye His hosts; you ministers of His that do His will."
And how quickly, readily, joyfully, and perfectly they do that holy will! St. John in the Apocalypse says of the cherubim, who appeared to him under the guise of mysterious living things, that they were "full of eyes before and behind;" and they had "each of them six wings; and round about and within they are full of eyes;" namely, that they might always see and attend to every sign of their Creator in order to be ready to obey it at once. They were equipped with wings, and indeed angels are always painted thus, to show the readiness and speed with which they carry out the divine command. St. Thomas of Aquin speaks of two kinds of angels: the one he calls assistentes, or attendants, the other ministrantes, or servants; after the manner of a royal court, in which there are some ministers who never leave the royal presence, and others who have to go here and there to fulfil the king's behests. The former stand before the great God, waiting for His commands with all possible reverence and awe; the others fly to execute the orders given them by God. shown from Thus, as we read in Holy Writ, an angel goes to stand sentinel at the entrance of paradise to guard it, until he should be recalled by the Almighty from his post. " He placed before the paradise of pleasure cherubim and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." Another angel goes to the desert to bring back Agar to her master Abraham. A third flies to prevent Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac. Two angels hasten to save Lot from the danger of destruction in the city of Sodom. Many others help the Israelites to find their way through the desert to the promised land. An angel receives the command to encourage Gideon against the Madianites; an other to free king Ezechias from the hostile power of the Assyrians; another to protect the purity of Judith in the camp of Holofernes; another to defend Daniel in the lions den from the fury of those savage animals; another to save the lives of the three youths in the fiery furnace; another to accompany the younger Tobias on his journey; another to free St. Peter from prison; others to carry the body of the virgin and martyr Catharine to the top of Mount Sinai; and so on. All of them went oil at once at the first sign made by God to fulfil the order given; and their chief joy and glory consists in being able to do what they under stand their Creator wishes of them.
And not only are they thus eager to fulfil the commands given them immediately by God, but they also show the same readiness and willingness in executing what other angels tell them, or what they otherwise know to be pleasing to God. For according to the teaching of theologians, all the angels in heaven are not equal in dignity and excellence; one choir is subordinate to the other. Not all receive commands immediately from God, for the inferior is ruled by the superior; just as in a royal court the will of the king is made known by one courtier to another, and by the latter to a third, and so on. Nevertheless an angel executes the command received from another angel with an obedience just as ready and humble as if the command came direct from the Creator Himself, without the least feeling of envy or jealousy at the superior excellence of the other; for every one is quite content with the place and post assigned to him, and they have greater joy in doing the will of God, however and whenever it is made known to them, than they have in their own dignity and glory. " Bless the Lord, all ye His hosts; you ministers of His that do His will." Thus is the Lord blessed by His servants, who do and omit nothing except what, when, how, and because God wishes them to do or omit it.
With regard to the second part of conformity with the will of God, even the chief princes of the angels are so resigned to the divine will, and so content with all that God arranges for them, that if they could perceive but the least sign of His wishing them to become gardeners here on earth and pluck up weeds, or to till the fields like a peasant, with great labor and trouble (in former times an angel really performed this office for the holy peasant St. Isidor, and guided the oxen in the plough for him while he heard Mass), or to undertake any other task, no matter how lowly, they would esteem it as the greatest honor, and make for themselves a heaven of happiness out of it, as long as only the good will and pleasure of God is fully accomplished in and by them.
If you wish to test the truth of this, then think of the holy guardian angels, and of the office to which they allow themselves to be appointed. my God! I am often struck with wonderment to think that such excellent beings as even the lowest of the angels are, that such great, beautiful, and mighty princes of heaven, many of whom in the beginning were, before they reached the place of their eternal happiness, ashamed to attend on God when He should become man, and were therefore cast out of heaven into hell as rebels my God, I think, how is it possible for these blessed courtiers of the Almighty to deign to defend and guard such mean creatures as we are! But what do I say! exclaims St. Bernard; to defend and guard? Rather to wait upon and attend us poor mortals. They are not ashamed in their own exalted persons to take that lowly office on themselves for years and years, from the first moment of life to the moment of death, and to stand day and night, in all places, at all times, by the side of a poor mortal, even of the meanest of men, of a poor beggar or swine-herd!
And what is still more astonishing, they perform this service even for the most wicked, even for infidels, heathens, Jews, Turks, and idolaters, whose mouths are filled with blasphemies against the true God. That service they perform even for wizards and witches who adore the devil! And although the angels experience the greatest disgust at those who are in mortal sin, and enemies of God, yet with the utmost patience they stand at their side day and night, to protect and guard them as children entrusted to their care; they wait on them, so to speak, as servants wait on their masters in all their affairs; and the same service shall be rendered by an angel even to anti-Christ, who shall be as an incarnate demon in his rebellion against God. All this they do simply because such is the will of God; and he who is deputed to guard a poor beggar or lowly peasant boy is as well content with his office as if he had the care of the greatest monarch of earth. He who has to protect the wizard or sorcerer is just as satisfied as if he had to attend on the greatest saint and servant of God; simply because such is the will of God, who has so ordained and given to each one his peculiar office.
Nay, the holy angels are so united with the divine will that if They are they were free to do anything contrary to it they would prefer to annihilated. be cast away forever among the demons than to commit the least if such venial sin by which they might displease God. And if it were pleasing to God to annihilate them, or, without any fault on their side, to hurl them into hell forever, provided they might continue to love Him there, they would all without exception be ready for their fate, that they might thus accomplish and fulfil the will of God. From this it follows that they desire nothing so much in us, their charges, as a conformity of our will with the divine will, and there is nothing they labor so hard to bring about with their inspirations and suggestions as the practice of this virtue in us, which is the compendium of all virtue.
My dear brethren, we must acknowledge that we owe a debt of the greatest gratitude, honor, and love to our holy guardian angels for the unceasing and countless benefits we have received and hope to receive from them every moment of our lives; and he would indeed be more stupid than a dumb beast, more thankless than a dog, who would refuse to acknowledge this obligation. Now they who do acknowledge it often ask themselves, with the younger Tobias, who had received so many favors from his faithful companion, the angel Raphael, on his journey, "What wages shall we give him? or what can be worthy of his benefits?" See this, Christians. Do you wish to know how we can and ought to reward our holy angels for their services to us? No more grateful offering can we make them than to follow their example by being fully united with the will of God, by always endeavoring to do and omit what, when, how, and because God wills us to do or omit; and at the same time to be always ready in all circumstances to submit to the divine ordinances and arrangements, and to say candidly: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven: as the angels, Lord! do Thy will in heaven, so may men also do it on earth. Let this be our resolution, our promise, and let us fulfil it by way of honoring and thanking our holy guardian angels: as I shall further explain in the
Second Part.
Yes, one might say, the angels can do all this easily enough; it is not a difficult matter for them to be perfectly united with the will of God. Oh, what a difference and great inequality there is between those happy spirits in heaven, in the abode of joys and delights, and us poor mortals who have still to live in this vale of tears and sorrows! To the angels in heaven everything happens according to their will and pleasure, and there is nothing that can cause them grief; but to us, on the other hand, who are still far from our fatherland, everything goes contrary; wherever we turn we find trials and annoyances; seldom do we meet with any one who has all he wishes; countless are the things that displease us daily. In heaven it is a pleasant and an easy thing to be satisfied with the will of God, and be always content with it, for there is no contradiction there, nor can there be any; while here on earth one trial comes after another, one cross after another, one difficulty after another. Therefore, just as the satiated who have eaten and drunk enough dance and sing differently from the hungry and thirsty, so we cannot say and pray as the angels do: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Take us up to them, God, and we will do as they do, and with all our hearts we will be satisfied with Thy arrangements; but to do that now is a difficult and troublesome thing! All this is quite true, my dear brethren; we do indeed find a greater difficulty in fulfilling and accomplishing the will of God than the angers; but why? Because we do not yet wish from our hearts all that God wishes, but would rather have things according to our own will. If we only had this one virtue of conformity and union with the will of God, then would almost every difficulty be removed; for even crosses and trials would be pleasing to us, be cause they are pleasing to God, and because, as long as we are sojourning on this earth, God has ordained them for us.
In one way, although it is much more difficult for us in many things to be as satisfied with the divine will as the angels are, yet we may still say that we are better off than they. How is that? Because the angels, with all their most perfect conformity, cannot merit anything to add to their glory in heaven; but we who are still on the way thither can and must daily merit a happiness like theirs by resigning our will to the will of God. If it were not possible for us on earth to attain to this virtue like the angels, God would not have required it of us, and to no purpose should Our Lord have told us to pray: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; that is, may Thy holy will, God. be done by us as the angels do it in heaven! May Thy will be done by us and by all our actions to Thy honor and glory, just as the angels in heaven do many things for Thy honor and glory! May Thy will be done in us, body and soul, according to Thy pleasure, however and whenever Thou pleasest, just as the angels allow themselves in all things to be guided and directed by that will! Now, since it seems often hard and almost impossible to our weak nature and our sensuality to do this, therefore Christ has exhorted us to pray daily to our heavenly Father for grace to make it easy, at least to our reasoning will; and, as St. Cyprian justly says, we should pray: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; not that God may do what He wishes to do, or ordain for us what He wishes to ordain, for that He will do without asking us, whether we like it or not, but we should pray that we may do what God wills, that we may be always satisfied with what the will of God ordains for us.
The holy martyrs and primitive Christians were weak mortals as we are; they were as sensitive to the trials and difficulties of life as we are; they found temptations as hard to overcome as we find them; and yet with God's help they attained a high degree of conformity with the divine will; their only cry in all attacks of adversity was: Lord, Thy will be done! I will select only one example from all. In the days of the Emperor Diocletian, Epictetus, a priest, and Astion, his companion, were thrown into prison by the tyrant. Dear Astion, said Epictetus, let us be of good heart; it is the will of God! If the judge causes us to be brought before him to-morrow, and asks us our names, who are our parents, and where we come from, our only answer must be: We are Christians. And if it is the will of God for us to be tortured and mangled, our only words during our sufferings must be: May the will of God be always done in us! And when they were brought before the judge the next day, their only words were: We are Christians; may the will of God be done in us! whereat the judge was so incensed that he caused them to be cruelly beaten but the martyrs only raised their eyes to heaven, saying: Jesus Christ, Thy will be done in us! The judge, inflamed with anger, caused them to be stretched on the rack and torn with hooks; but all he could get them to say was: Tyrant, know that we are Christians; we are Christians; may the will of God be done in us! Then their flesh was burned with torches, their wounds rubbed with vinegar and salt, and after many other tortures they were condemned to die by the sword; but in all their sufferings the only words, almost, they were heard to utter were: We are Christians; may the will of God be done in us! Saying these words they gave up the ghost. Vigilantius, a heathen, who witnessed their martyrdom, thought there must be some special virtue hidden in those words, to banish all sense of pain, so that their tortures caused them no suffering; therefore in all adverse circumstances he repeated those words: We are Christians; may the will of God be done in us! And for three whole days did that blind heathen keep on repeating them; when, wonderful to relate, the mercy of God could no longer withhold from him a special grace. Vigilantius was suddenly enlightened; he was converted to the Christian faith, and ran into the public street, crying out before all the people: I am a Christian; do you hear me, tyrant? May the will of God be done in me! He then caused his whole household to be baptized with himself, and was thrown into prison with the martyrs.
My dear brethren, we, too, are Christians, are we not? Let us, then, in all occurrences think and say, and show by our actions that we mean it: May the will of God be done in us! We are fellow-servants and brethren of the angels, as the angel in the Apocalypse said to St. John, who was about to adore him: " See thou do it not; I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren." Let us, too, think and say in all circumstances: May the will of God be done by us and in us on earth as it is done by and in the angels in heaven! And no matter how hard and difficult and bitter it may appear to me, nevertheless may the will of God be done in me! This cross weighs heavily on me; this insult seems intolerable; this sickness and pain are grievously tormenting; secret poverty and want oppress me; this death causes me bitter sorrow; yet I am a Christian, a fellow-servant of the angels; may the will of God be done in me, too! And may the will of God be done by me, also, in all my thoughts, words, and actions, with an upright, pure intention, as it is done by the angels in heaven; with a fervent love of God, as it is done by the angels in heaven; with as much readiness and cheerfulness as it is done by the angels in heaven; so that I may always be able to say what that courtier said to his sovereign, when the latter told him he must accompany him on his journey to-morrow; no, your majesty, answered the courtier, it is not a case of must with me, for I shall do it with the utmost willingness, because it is pleasing to my master. May the will of God be done in and by me with as much perfection as it is done by the angels in heaven, that is, without my making the least exception, and with as much perseverance as it is done by the angels in heaven, that is, without my ever being wearied by the length of time, or by the greatness of the difficulties that may present themselves; may the will of God be done for ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred years, for all eternity!
That, my dear brethren, is the real way to say the Our Father. By this we These are the wings by which we may soar to the highest knowledge of the divine will; this is the best way of always keeping in the presence of God, as that great servant of God, Father Gregory Lopez of our Society, was taught by God Himself; who said to him that he should often repeat in thought the words: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; amen. These words he impressed deeply on his heart, and constantly repeated for three years in succession; so that at last he could not forget them, and, as it were, with every breath he drew he used to say: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; amen. He himself acknowledges that if he was ever careless or slothful in saying these words he was usually assailed by violent temptations of the devil; so that these sweet words served him as a teacher and defender against the enemies of his soul; therefore he tried to persuade of their value all with whom he came into contact.
Heavenly spirits, and you, especially, holy guardian angels, to Resolution whom, after God, we must acknowledge that we of ten owe our lives, our bodies and souls, since we cannot show our esteem and love for you better than by imitating as diligently as possible that virtue of conformity to the will of God which is so remarkable in you, we are determined in future to be most fervent in practicing that virtue; and do you pray for us to God in heaven, that He may draw our rebellious wills to His, so that, like you, we may always be and remain united with the divine will in all things; that we may give to God whatever we know to be pleasing to Him; that we may avoid and readily cast from us all that we know to be displeasing to Him, and that in every circumstance we may be content and satisfied with the arrangements of His Providence. For my part I beg this of thee, my holy guardian angel! Touch my heart unceasingly with thy inspirations; give me no rest until I do the will of God in all things, and thus imitate thee constantly! May the will of God be done in and by me for all eternity! Amen.
See several sermons on the holy angels in the first, fourth, and volumes.