Transcript:
Michael: I’m going to speak very briefly. The main event tonight, of course, is you know who, but I want to share with you that things may seem very dark and depressing right now. You see what has happened, you find that many of you left COVID, you wanted to go somewhere where the churches were still open. You found the Traditional Latin Mass, you found peace and hope, and all of a sudden, it looks like it might get shut down, and indeed, it might. What can I tell you, what can I say to you? That has been on my mind for a long time. What can I give you? You have been so generous, coming here, being with us, and inspiring us by your very presence. What can I give you? I think what I can give you in return is the sense that, as bad as things are right now, this is not the worst moment.
I remember very, very clearly. Hear me out, this sounds a bit dark, but it is not, because I remember dark. Let me tell you, I remember dark. It really was incredible to be right after the council. I was born in 1985, so I remember, or maybe a few years before 1985, I do not remember. The early 70s were crazy; they were really, really insane. Everything was so new, as I say, and there were just a handful of people. I do not know how to tell the story of traditional Catholicism without mentioning the one bishop, because the one bishop that we had at that point made all the difference. Oh, imagine right now, imagine what it would be like if every bishop in the world were going along with the madness right now, every single one, except for one.
Now, that is what I remember as a child. I remember hearing the name. We could not even pronounce it. We used to call him Monsignor LeFevre, LeFevre, LeFevre. We did not even know how to pronounce his name at that point, but he became a religious icon, a hero to us as children, this French Archbishop who had said no. Of course, I am talking about Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. He was the one; he made the difference. Now, here is the thing: he was another very humble man. He would not need me to sit here and sing his praises, and that is not the point of what I am going to say. He was the one who showed us, and of course, I received the Sacrament of Confirmation from him. It is interesting because I was confirmed by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in a little wooden frame church out in a cornfield. The great Archbishop Lefebvre, in Minnesota, of all places, because he was cast out everywhere else. He was not allowed to go anywhere else, so he came to St. Paul, and he confirmed about, I do not know, 100 of us. I was only 10 years old, in this humble little church, literally underground, catacomb-style confirmations that we had. I think it is very important for all of us to remember how close we came to that, to the light of the faith being, at least humanly speaking, snuffed out. That was a much, much worse time. We did not have a Fraternity of St. Peter at that point. In those early years, he did not even have a Society of St. Pius X. There was no Institute of Christ the King, there was nothing, nothing. We literally moved into our basements to have mass.
The purpose of this, let me just check my time, I do not want to cut into His Excellency’s remarks, which are going to be so welcome tonight. The purpose of this is, I want to share with you something from scripture that my father used to say over and over again, and it has become a favorite of mine. I would not doubt for a bit if it is a favorite of yours, when our Lord says, “I will be with you always, even until the end of the world.” What does that mean? How is that going to happen? We cannot start our own church, we cannot make our own bishops, we cannot make ourselves the Pope. We cannot do that; that is not what we are here for. So, apparently, the way it is going to work for a while is that he is going to provide us with representatives in our midst that seem to come from nowhere, almost miraculously, who will show us that God is still with us. If there is a consolation from those early years that I will never forget, it was the consolation of a prince of the church who had a message from God.
I will be with you always. You see, even a child could appreciate that it is not just the people, it is not just the lay people, it is the Church. Our Lord established a hierarchical Church on the rock of St. Peter for a reason. Everything we do has to be to support that church, to look to the horizon for the hierarchical solution, where we are not a democracy. We cannot just vote for change. God is going to be with his Church forever, and, as traditional Catholics, when he raises up a shepherd, there is no body on Earth that should be more filled with joy and hope to step in line behind that Shepherd than traditional Catholics.
We are the ones who celebrate the hierarchy. We are the ones who must be most loyal to the hierarchy. We will suffer, humanly speaking, if the hierarchy disappears, and as I said earlier today, the hierarchy will have no greater defenders on Earth than us traditional Catholics, if they do the right thing.
That’s the way it was when I was a child. My friend, John Rao, is here, and he remembers it. We all lived through this. It was an unbelievable, lonely time. I want to share with you the reality that you are in better times now than we were. For the first time in my life, we have a serious army of the children of light, the army of Christ the King, forming all around the world. We are absolutely not alone. We are not alone. Thank God for that tonight, before you sleep, that we have each other, that we have a substantial, organized movement. And once again, we have a movement at the head of which stand princes, several princes of the Church, to lead us out of this darkness and to prove to us once again that God, Jesus Christ, our Lord, Christ the King, will be with us always.
On that note, I want to introduce our next speaker. I do not know if it’s the same for you, but the first time I remember anything about Bishop Athanasius Schneider was a video I suddenly saw one day out of nowhere, in which the soft-spoken, German-accented bishop was defending our Lord being administered on the tongue rather than in the hand. Do people remember that video? That was the introduction, and I am not trying to flatter him. Anyone who has spoken to His Excellency knows he does not want me to flatter him. That is not the point. What I am talking about is his office as a prince of the Church, as a defender of our Lord, as a proclaimer of the kingship of Christ, and as a messenger from God, as a messenger from Christ the King, whom we all seek to serve, to proclaim his kingship.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider comes again with that message from Jesus Christ, “I will be with you always, even until the end of the world.” I would ask you now, in appreciation and gratitude to God for the messenger he has sent us tonight, to let us know that in the end, Christ wins, that if we stay with God, we win too, and that God, Jesus Christ, will be with us always, even until the end of the world – Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Dear Mr. Matt, thank you very much for your kind words and the invitation to participate again in the Catholic Identity Conference this year. You have the beautiful name Michael, so you have a special devotion to the holy angels. Today is the day of the guardian angels, and therefore, I will speak about the holy angels. Our time is the hour of the holy angels.
The Church’s journey leads from the earthly to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the city of the angels and of the saints. The Kingdom of God is constituted by things visible and invisible, as we proclaim in the symbol of faith. The invisible world, which God created before the visible world, consists of the holy angels who remained faithful to God during their trial at the beginning of creation.
The angels are a very expressive work of God’s creativity. How much God honors His angels by giving them the unique honor of being the first to appear at the moment of God’s incarnation. Because before the Blessed Virgin Mary spoke her Fiat, the angel was sent to her with the message of the Incarnation. God entrusted the angel with the accomplishment of the plan of the Incarnation. God did not speak to Mary directly. We should reflect on the role God has given the angels regarding us. We should have a great sense of awe and gratitude for them. We pray the angel’s greeting over and over again every day, “Hail Mary, full of grace.” This is the angelic salutation.
The angels, by their very existence, present a very powerful appeal to the church to turn towards eternity, towards the invisible world that awaits us. Here on earth, through a life of grace and the sacraments, and in the first place, through the Holy Eucharist, we already anticipate eternal life in the New Jerusalem. There will be one community composed of man and angels, one family of God made up of all those who belong to Christ and to His mystical body. As St. Thomas Aquinas says, “It is manifest that both man and angels are ordained to one end, which is the glory of the Divine fruition. Hence, the mystical body of the church consists not only of man, but also of angels.” So we ought to begin now to practice this reality here on Earth, by consciously praying, working, and fighting for Christ, together with our heavenly brothers and companions, the holy angels. The Holy Angels are our companions and our examples in adoring the Lord, in giving him honor, and in adoring the Eucharist. They are our best companions on our path to heaven.
They will be our companions for all eternity in loving and worshiping God, as the Book of Revelation shows us. After the Second Vatican Council, there was a diminished veneration of the holy angels, a kind of obliviousness to the supernatural and invisible world of the angels rolled across the ecclesiastical landscape. Over the past 50 years, the Church has tended toward naturalism, toward what is natural, what is secular, and away from the supernatural.
Devotion to the holy angels is therefore a very powerful means of turning again toward the supernatural, of leaving behind this naturalistic tendency for the sake of the life of grace, and of becoming aware that God has given every person a personal brother, a personal guardian angel. God is so lavish with His gifts that He chose an angel from all eternity to be the one and only guardian angel for a specific person, even if this person lives for only one instant here on Earth. The human person has a guardian angel who protects him in the mother’s womb and prays for him. The guardian angel enters into a special relationship with the human soul through baptism, because in Christ, angels and people are more closely united, as St. Paul says.
Let us remember and keep firmly in mind that my guardian angel was given only for me, and he is a very powerful spiritual being who is always in the presence of God, and who remained faithful to God during the trial of the angels while some of his brother angels apostatized with Lucifer.
Saint Padre Pio wrote, “How consoling is the thought that a spirit is so close to me, to us, which never leaves us for a moment, from the cradle to the grave, not even when we dare to sin. And this celestial spirit guides us, protects us as a friend, as a brother. But it is very consoling to know that this angel prays incessantly for us, offers God all the good deeds and works we do, our thoughts, our desires, provided they are pure. Always have him in front of your mind’s eye. Often remember the presence of this angel. Thank him, pray to him. Always keep him in good company. Open up and confide your pains to him. Be continually afraid of offending the purity of his gaze. Know this and fix it well in your mind, he is so delicate, so sensitive. Turn to him in the hours of supreme anguish, and you will experience his beneficial effects. Never say you are alone in fighting the fight with our enemies. Never say you don’t have a soul to which you can open up and trust. It would be a grave wrong, an error that would be done to this Heavenly Messenger and your brother.” These are the words of Padre Pio.
Saint Padre Pio reports in one of his letters the following words of his guardian angel, words that show that the special relationship between a guardian angel and his protégé will continue after this life for all eternity. These are the words which Father Padre Pio reports from his guardian angel to him, “This affection of mine for you will not go out even with your earthly life.”
So the service of this angel in our time, we have, in a special manner, to make people more aware of the existence and presence of the guardian angels and of the other angels as our brothers, our co-worshipers, our co-fighters, in adoring God, in fighting for Christ, in the spiritual battle, which is increasing in our day. God gives particular charisms needed for each age. In the present age, when demonic and satanic powers have so increased, we are in a spiritual battle of a magnitude rarely seen before in history. I think, without precedence, as Mr. Matt mentioned, God said.
We ask for the assistance of the holy angels to combat the evil spirits. When we venerate our guardian angel or the other angels, we are asking them to bring us the light of God so that we may better understand the mystery of faith, that we may better adore Christ, and that we may better fight in the spiritual life.
Many of the saints sent their guardian angel to another person when it was difficult for them to speak to that person. Why could it not be so? The angels are living persons. When I say to someone, “Please go to my friend and convey to him my greetings,” why can I not say this to my guardian angel?
Another great means of fostering union with our brothers, the guardian angels, is the consecration to the holy angels. There are consecrations to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and even to St. Joseph. Why not a consecration to the holy guardian angels? This is very logical. It is a very good tool for fostering one’s spiritual union with one’s angel, the consecration. When I love my guardian angel and am consecrated to him, I will be more conscious of his presence, and in his presence, I will not dare to offend God. It is a help for me to meditate on this and to ask him, saying, “O my guardian angel, when I am in danger of offending the Lord, please give me a very strong reminder.” Sometimes the saints did this, and then the guardian angel reminded them by hitting them over the head when they wanted to do something wrong.
St. Padre Pio said, “God is in us when we are in the state of grace. He is outside of us when we are in sin; God leaves us then, but the angel never abandons us. He is the most sincere and most trusted friend, even when we are wrong, to counter him with our bad behavior.” Padre Pio continues, saying, “Do not forget this invisible companion always present to listen to you, always ready to console you. Oh, delightful intimacy, oh blessed company! If all people knew how to understand and appreciate this great gift of God, for God, in the excess of his love for man, assigned this celestial spirit to every one of us.”
There is a most beloved prayer to the holy angels. This is the Sanctus of the Holy Mass: “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus.” This prayer was heard by Isaiah, the prophet, from the mouth of the seraphim. It is the prayer of the angels. So often, when we are traveling, we can pray the Sanctus with my guardian angel, with the other angels of the travelers, since the prayer says, “heaven and earth is full of thy glory.” When we enter a church, we can first pray the Sanctus with our guardian angel and with the angels who surround the tabernacle. They are angels, since before each tabernacle, there are holy angels.
The holy angels constitute the royal court of the Eucharistic King in the tabernacle. This is our consolation, that before every tabernacle there is a celestial court for the Eucharistic King.
Devotion to the holy angels should not be a devotion consisting only of beautiful prayers. We have to be aware that we are one family of God. We are the children of the Holy Church, and the holy angels are also members of the Church, of the Church Triumphant. Christ united men and angels. We must therefore renew our awareness that the holy angels are members of the Church, and they are our brothers. In some way, they are our true elder brothers. They were created before us and, before us, they passed through the trial and remained faithful to Christ. After the trial in the beginning, the angels received a new, indelible imprint in their spirit, which is their deep desire to be servants of Christ. Therefore, the angels want to serve us in the Church, especially our guardian angels.
God entrusted the entire creation and every detail of creation to the protection and care of the holy angels. It is a traditional Christian belief in the Eastern and Western Church that each country has a protecting guardian angel. So there is a guardian angel of the United States. It is written in the Scripture, in the Old Testament, that St. Michael is the guardian angel of the people of God, of Israel, in the book of Daniel 10:21. Some of the Church Fathers even said that not only every nation, but even every town, has its own protecting angel. A feast of the guardian angel of some countries, with a Mass formula, a feast day, and a Divine Office formula, could be found in old missals. For example, the guardian angel of Brazil is still a feast day today, as is the feast of the guardian angel of Portugal, on June 10.
Clement of Alexandria, a Church Father of the second and third centuries, states that “whole regiments of angels are distributed over nations and cities.” This was written in the second century. France, for instance, has consecrated itself over the centuries to St. Michael as its patron. This consecration goes back to King Salman in the early years of the ninth century. In the revelations of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, it is said that every parish and diocese, each city and country, has its own particular and powerful guardian angel. The entire creation is protected by the angels. Therefore, one might hold as a pious opinion that every state of life has a protecting angel or an intercessor. In other words, there is a special angel that prays before God, let’s say, for priests or for families or for workers, and so on.
Through several popes, the Church has proclaimed and assigned patron saints to various professions and nations. Why then could there not be a special angelic patron for each state of life or for a profession? This is only a pious opinion, but it could encourage people of a specific state of life or profession to cooperate more consciously with the holy angels. The angels are very modest. They do not impose themselves on us. They are eager to come and help us, but we have to ask them. The more we ask them, the more they help us. By growing in our awareness of their action in our lives, we come to see in a new light the striking events of our life that very likely happened through the action of the holy angels. This is their work, but one can find examples of their assistance in the little events of daily life, even in simple daily things. At times, my guardian angel has awakened me at the exact minute I had to wake up when the alarm clock was not working. These are little signs, but we can believe that it is the work of the guardian angel. We should ask the Holy Angels often to accompany us in our prayers.
As requested, I have corrected the grammar and punctuation, removed filler words, and replaced hyphens with commas. The content and original meaning have been preserved.
Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich reported that the Holy Angels compensate for the defects committed by priests during the celebration of the Holy Mass. I quote her, “Every word that the priests pronounce sluggishly and distractedly at Holy Mass, the angels indescribably quickly bring to God, compensating thereby for God’s honor for all defects during the Mass.” These are the words of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich.
Especially, we should ask our guardian angel to bring us the necessary illumination to understand the Catholic faith in the right manner. The guardian angel helps us to penetrate more deeply the truth and beauty of the Catholic faith. Our guardian angel desires to bring us the light of God and help us to remain faithful to Christ. The more we venerate the holy angels, the more one acquires a sort of instinct for what is Catholic, for what is true. We have to be more conscientious in invoking the holy angels so that they might strengthen us in faithfulness to Christ, and especially in a deep sense and instinct for the holiness of God.
As we mentioned, the beloved prayer of the holy angels is the Sanctus. The essence of every angel says, “God is holy, and God alone is holy, and God is great.” We have to magnify Him, as Our Lady did in her Magnificat, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” The Holy Angels burn to magnify God and to glorify Him. We need to ask them to give us a little of their burning fire, this holy zeal for the glory of God, and then we will be sanctified and saved. Our most efficacious sanctification here on Earth consists in glorifying God. He does not need our praise, as the Church says in the liturgy, but we need to glorify God. The more we glorify God and put him at the center, especially Christ in the Eucharist, the more we sanctify ourselves. The more we open our hearts to the light of God, to the true mercy of God, to receive His graces.
In family life, we have to cultivate devotion to the holy angels. When a family gathers for daily prayer, whether it is the rosary or another prayer, perhaps a first step would be for the parents and children to remember that they are not alone, that each of their angels is present in the room. This is very beautiful and practical. Parents need to tell children that they have a guardian angel whom they can invoke. Children are very open and sensitive to this. Children can ask their guardian angel to adore the Lord on their behalf while they are sleeping. We adults can also do the same as the children. Children love the guardian angels. When the family prays, it would be good to say, “We are gathered here with our guardian angels. We are all one family.” If both parents are present and five or six, or seven children, they can say, “There are actually 14, 16, or 18 of us here.” It would be good for families to learn the prayer to St. Michael, the Archangel, or a family could even entrust and consecrate themselves, the family, to the holy angels. Why not?
Perhaps one day a Pope could entrust the entire militant Church to the protection of the holy angels and to St. Michael specifically. It would be very helpful, since we are in a time of a spiritual battle that has rarely been seen in the Church, a battle between truth and heresy, between naturalism and the supernatural perspective, a battle ultimately between the holy angels and the evil spirits of deceit, of pride, of hatred against Christ, the Incarnate God. Indeed, in our day, a situation of battle is underway in which there is no clear vision of the truth that was always handed on by the Church. Inside the Church, we need the presence of the holy angels to bring us the true vision of God, which the Church has always had.
Today, there is a tremendous and widespread doctrinal, moral, and liturgical confusion, and even good people begin to have doubts about fundamental, evident truths that have been taught by the Church for 2,000 years. The good ones have begun to doubt through seductive theories about even fundamental truths, such as contraception, divorce, living in adultery, cooperation in abortion, and cooperation with the fatal industry. You know what I mean. There are doubts. They arrange confusion and ambiguity. In some way, these words have a magical and demagogical effect, beautiful theories to excuse you, to excuse you from protesting against evil, to excuse you from protesting against the fatal industry, deceptive, impressive formulations, remote material, cooperation, and seductive, beautiful names.
We need the light of the holy angels who clearly see the truth. Only the clarity of the truth will bring us peace in our lives and will allow us to experience true mercy. The Church and all true Catholics are being attacked today. From organized anti-Christian world powers, they have the same aim: to destroy Christianity and eliminate Christ. Here also, with the visible, exterior enemies of Christ, we need the assistance of the holy angels.
In this situation, it would be meaningful and fitting, as I already said, for the Pope to consecrate the Church to St. Joseph and to St. Michael and the angels. It would be very meaningful indeed. We have the examples of Pope Leo XIII, who entrusted and consecrated the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1899, and then Pope Pius XII, who entrusted the Church and the entire world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942, a consecration which was repeated by other popes, and also by John Paul II in 1984.
In one of his last speeches before his death, Pope Pius XII left us the following luminous exhortation, which he gave to American pilgrims from the United States on the 3rd of October, 1958. I quote these words to the American pilgrims, “Revive your sense of the invisible world, which is all around us, because we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. And have a certain familiarity with the angels, who are forever solicitous for your salvation and your sanctification. If God wishes, you will spend a happy eternity with the angels. Get to know them from now on.” These are the words of Pius XII to the American pilgrims.
Saint Padre Pio once said this phrase about our time, “This is the hour of the angels.” These are the words of Padre Pio. Especially in this time of an extraordinary crisis of faith within the life of the Church, I think that we greatly need a new awareness of the holy angels in the Church and of their work in the Kingdom of God. We need to invoke them and engage them in order to glorify God in Christ and to spread the reign of Christ over creation and in society. We also need to have the spiritual weapons to fight against the fallen angels. We cannot do this effectively without the presence of the holy angels, and especially of St. Michael the Archangel.
The teaching of the Apostles, a Catholic and Apostolic Faith, contains these important truths, which St. Paul says in the Letter to the Ephesians, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the evil powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the high places.” So says St. Paul. The Church on Earth is therefore appropriately called Ecclesia Militans, the fighting Church, the militant Church.
The awareness of being members of this militant Church had been strongly expressed by the first Christian generations and so forth throughout the whole history of the Church. The most ancient liturgical texts of the liturgy of baptism contain very expressive exorcisms and prayers, as well as various formulas of benedictions, to maintain the awareness of the spiritual battle against the continuous influences and attacks of the evil spirits. The Church, already in the first centuries, established the minor order of exorcists, one of the minor orders of the clergy. Such a liturgical practice and prayer reflected the apostolic teaching, which I quote from St. Paul and then St. Peter.
St. Paul says in the second letter to the Corinthians, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” And St. Peter says, “Be sober and watch because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist you strong in faith.”
Throughout the history of humankind and of the Church, one could observe a different intensity of the influences and attacks of the evil spirits. The principal manifestations of these influences and attacks are the spreading of lies and homicides, because these are exactly the two most proper characteristics of the personality and the actions of the devil. Our Lord said in the Gospel of John, “The devil was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth, because truth is not in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” This is from John 8:44.
At the threshold of the 20th century, a century of unheard of militant atheism and monstrous anti-human political regimes, Pope Leo XIII gave the Church the famous prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, which he ordered to be recited worldwide by each priest and the faithful after an unchanged Mass. The same Pope gave a very powerful prayer, even a general exorcism against the infestations of Satan and the evil spirits for priests to pray. This exorcism could be recited by the priests with the permission of their ordinary, and Pope Leo XIII himself recited this exorcism several times during the day.
The Church on Earth, as we said, is a militant Church, and every true Catholic has to be a soldier of Christ. The Church is the Church of Christ, the invincible King of Kings, and the true victory over the world, as St. John says, is faith. Which faith? The Catholic faith. And St. Michael and the holy angels are our brothers and fellows in the worship, in the fight, and in the victory of the Lord of the heavenly army. The holy angels are essentially liturgical spirits. All their being and life proclaims this truth about God, “Heaven and earth are full of his glory.” The more a liturgical form expresses awe, reverence, hierarchical order, Christocentrism, mystery, and silence, as is the case in the traditional form of the Latin Mass, the more that form of liturgy has an angelic character.
The traditional Roman liturgy, since it reflects and realizes in a surer manner the liturgical spirit of Christ Himself, is nowadays conquering slowly, but steadily, new generations of Catholics. This process cannot be reversed, because the traditional liturgy is the clearest voice of the Bride of Christ and of the holy angels, a voice that was heard and experienced by our forefathers for over 1,000 years. The traditional Roman liturgy is a treasure that belongs to all saints and to the Church of all time, a sacred treasure of which no fallible administrative ordinances of Church authorities, even of the Pope, can rob us. Even if dead ordinances which tried to rob us of this treasure came from the highest levels of the Church, such as it was done through the recent Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes, even these Motu Propria cannot rob us of the perennial treasure of the Traditional Latin Mass. The traditional form of the Mass remains, therefore, always young and up to date.
Why? Because it constitutes one of the most exact and solemn expressions of the faith and of the prayer of the Church, not only of centuries, but of more than a millennium. To the traditional Roman liturgy, one may apply an affirmation of St. Irenaeus, a Church Father of the second century, who was a disciple of Polycarp and then of St. John the Apostle. This St. Irenaeus said in his Adversus Haereses, I paraphrase this, “The liturgy which, having been received from Christ from the Church, we do preserve, and which always by the Spirit of God, is renewing our youth, as if it were some precious deposit in an excellent vessel, and causes the vessel itself, containing it, to continuously renew the youth of the Church.” The traditional Roman liturgy, in the objective aspect of its content and of its ritual, is the most apt manner to renew souls spiritually, and thereby the Church herself.
The same truth is expressed by the first words spoken in the traditional Roman Rite in the introibo ad altare Dei, “a Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam,” which means, “I shall go into the altar of God, who gives joy to my youth.” In this way, we begin a ritual permeated in the traditional Mass with beauty, powerfully summoning us to holiness, the true usefulness to the heavenly liturgy of the holy angels.
The liturgy, said Pope Benedict XVI, celebrated on Earth, has an indissoluble relationship with the Heavenly Jerusalem. It is there that the true and eternal sacrifice of praise, whose earthly celebration is only an image, is offered to God and to the Lamb. Those who take part in the Holy Mass stand almost on the threshold of the heavenly sphere from which they contemplate the worship of the angels and saints. Wherever the earthly Church intones her Eucharistic praise, she is united with the festive heavenly assembly in which, in the saints, a part of her has already arrived and gives hope to all on this Earth who are still journeying on toward eternal fulfillment.
Pope Benedict XVI and St. Francis of Sales said, “Seek to be familiar with the angels. Learn to realize that they are continually present, although invisible. Especially love and revere the guardian angel of the diocese in which you live, the guardian angel of those of your friends who surround you, and your own guardian angel. Commune with them frequently, join in their songs of praise, and seek their protection and help in all you do, spiritual and temporal.”
Let us be confident and invoke the powerful help of the angels that they may come and set free the See of the successor of St. Peter in Rome, the Apostolic See. Let us invoke the holy angels to set free the Holy See from the chains in which she was put, already for decades, by high-ranking churchmen who were consciously or unconsciously acting as emissaries of the anti-Christian powers of our time. As in the beginning of the Church, when St. Peter, the first Pope, was put into chains by the anti-Christian powers of those times, and through the fervent prayers of the entire small Church in Jerusalem, he was miraculously and powerfully set free by the angel. So we believe and trust that by the fervent prayers and sacrifices of the many small ones in the Church, the Popes of our day, the Holy See, our beloved Mother and Teacher, may be set free from the chains of doctrinal and liturgical anarchy and worldliness.
My dear brothers and sisters, I would conclude with the words of St. John Chrysostom, a great Father and Doctor of the Church who himself passed so many trials and troubles and was persecuted. His words are, “If the very air is filled with angels, how much more is the Church filled with holy angels? The Christian has nothing to fear from the devil, because the angel of the Lord shall encamp round about those that fear Him, and He shall deliver them.” Thank you for your attention.
Michael: Thank you so much, Your Excellency. I do not know, what do you say to something like that? This is the voice of Mother Church, friends. This is how we know we are not crazy. This is how we know we get to proceed with this battle, because we had a prince of the Church just authorize us to continue to fight, and I just could not help but think as he was speaking, “This is the voice of Mother Church.” Those of us who are a little older or who grew up in traditional Catholic families, our mothers spoke the same way. We did not do anything as children that did not involve some sort of invocation of the angels. She used the guardian angels to make sure we behaved ourselves. I mean, the angels were omnipresent, and we were reminded every single night when we would kneel down and when we prayed the rosary. In those days, we still did it. In my family, we light the candles, turn off the lights, and my mother and father kneel down to pray the rosary. I would highly encourage you to do this, especially if you have sons. Let your sons see you as fathers, especially, kneeling in front of Our Lady and praying these prayers and invoking something like the angels. And I bet you if I started one prayer, we could finish it. Let us do it. Do you remember this one, “Angel of God?” “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light, to guard, to rule, and to guide. Amen.” Your mothers taught you that, like my mother taught me that, because Holy Mother Church taught us all that. And just now, in my opinion, a true Catholic academic, an extremely intelligent man, an intellectual, reminded us, almost like a child, to become childlike, to remember that the greatest saints and the greatest minds, from St. Thomas Aquinas to Padre Pio, were talking about the angels and talking about them in a way that was extremely important, because if we were up against angels who are fallen, we are going to lose to fallen angels unless we enlist the angels, as His Excellency just pointed out.
So what does it mean? We need to lose the sophistication of the last 50 years, which has turned the angels into something tantamount to or equivalent to the Tooth Fairy or to Santa Claus. This is what they have done to us. And we were just reminded by His Excellency how absurd that is, and how if we do not go back and reclaim the great weapons that Heaven has given us, the angelic help that God Himself has given to us, we are going to lose this battle. And that is the reason that I asked His Excellency, because there is a chapter in his book, Christus Vincit, he has a whole chapter on this, and here’s a little secret. Those of you who may not have read his biography do not know about these little facts about him. He was in the Soviet Union. He grew up under an atheist communist regime. He grew up under something like what we may be heading into right now. He received his first Holy Communion in secret; it was illegal. And yet now he comes to us tonight and reminds us of the things that are going to save and sustain us in the darkest times, faith in the angels, faith in Our Lady, faith in God, in the Mass. And I just want to once again embarrass him and thank him for bringing that message to us.
Thank you, Your Excellency. He has offered to give us his blessing as well. So before the blessing, let us sing “Christus Vincit.”
Christus Vincit, Christus regnat, Christus, Christus imperat. Christus Vincit, Christus regnat, Christus, Christus imperat. Christus Vincit, Christus regnat, Christus, Christus imperat.
Dominus vobiscum, et cum spiritu tuo. Sit nomen Domini benedictum, ex hoc nunc et usque in saeculum. Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini, qui fecit caelum et terram. Et benedictio Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, descendat super vos et maneat semper. Amen.
Praised be Jesus Christ. Now and Forever!