Transcript:
Our time is the hour of the holy angels. 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 are the holy angels who remained faithful to God during their trial at the beginning of the creation. The angels are a very expressive work of God’s creativity. As St. Thomas Aquinas says, “Each angel is a different species.” The entire angelic world was created in one instant at the beginning of creation. Then there came the trial. The angels had to accept God freely with profound humility.
The sin of the first among the angels, who in the tradition is called Lucifer, consisted in his will to be like God, but without God. As Saint Thomas Aquinas explained, “The devil desired resemblance with God by desiring as his last end of Beatitude something which he could attain by virtue of his own nature. Turning his appetite away from Supernatural Beatitude, which is attained only by God’s grace, or if he desired as his last end that likeness of God which is bestowed by grace, he sought to have it by the power of his own nature and not from divine assistance, according to God’s ordering.”
With this act of pride, Lucifer influenced and drew with him a part of the angelic world. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the greater part of the angelic world remained faithful to God. We quote from Thomas Aquinas, “More angels stood firm than sinned, because sin is contrary to the natural inclination, while that which is against the natural order happens with less frequency, for nature procures its effects either always or more often than not.” An image of this may be given to us in the Apocalypse, the Book of Apocalypse, when we read that the tale of the Dragon swept away a third of the stars. In some traditions and also in the Holy Scripture, in the same Book of Revelation 12, the word stars is also an indication of the angels. So one can suppose that probably one-third of the angelic world apostatized.
How much God honors His angels by doing 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. What awe and gratitude should we have for them because we pray the angels’ greeting over and over again every day, “Hail Mary, full of grace.”
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 the life in grace and in the sacraments, and in the first place, through the Holy Eucharist. We already anticipate eternal life in the New Jerusalem. There, there will be one community composed of men 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 and live this reality here on Earth by consciously praying, working, and fighting for God, 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 adoring 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 in across the ecclesial landscape. Over the past 50 years, the church has tended toward naturalism, toward what is natural, to secularism, 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 man a personal brother, his guardian angel. Each of the baptized has a unique guardian angel who has never served as guardian to anyone else. God is so lavish with his gifts that he chose an angel from all eternity to be only once the guardian angel for a specific person, even if this person lives for only one instant here on earth, and he will not be the guardian angel of another. Every child who is conceived has a guardian angel already at conception. God creates the soul, and this human person has a guardian angel who protects him in the mother’s womb and prays for him. However, the guardian angel enters into a special relationship with a human soul through baptism, because in Christ, angels and men are all more closely united, as St. Paul says.
Let us remember and keep firmly in mind, 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, when some of his brother angels apostatized with Lucifer. Saint Padre Pio wrote, “How consoling is the thought that a spirit is so close 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 that would be done through these heavenly messengers.”
So Padre Pio, Saint Padre Pio reports in one of his letters the following words of his guardian angel, in which one can see that the special relationship between a guardian angel and his human protege will continue after this life for all eternity. The angel of Father Peter said, “This affection of mine for you will not go out even with your life.” 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, as our co-worshippers, our co-fighters, in adoring God, in fighting for Christ, in this spiritual battle which is increasing in our days. 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, and God sends us 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? This is theological and spiritually sound.
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, to St. Joseph, why not to the holy guardian angels? This is very logical, so it is a very good tool, an aid, and a help for fostering one’s spiritual union with one’s guardian angel. When I love my guardian angel and I am consecrated to him, I will be more conscious of his presence. 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, “Oh, 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.
Saint Padre Pio said, “God is in us when we are in His grace and outside of us when we are in sin, but the angel never abandons us. He is the most sincere and most trusted friend, even when we are wrong to encounter him with our bad behavior.” And then Padre Pio said also, “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 men knew how to understand and appreciate this great gift for God, in the excess of his love for men, assigned a celestial spirit to us.”
So Padre Pio, the angels also protect us in our physical needs and in our travels and from accidents and so on, but especially they protect us from the accidents of the soul. We have to renew the daily prayer to our guardian angel, which we know from childhood. However, there is a most beloved prayer to the Holy Angels, the Sanctus of the Holy Mass. “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus.” This prayer was heard by the prophet Isaiah from the mouth of the seraphim. It is the prayer of the angels par excellence. So often, when we are traveling during the day, we can pray as well the Sanctus, since it 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 that surround the tabernacle, since before each tabernacle, there are holy angels who constitute the royal court of their Eucharistic King in the tabernacle.
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 church, and the holy angels are also members of the Church, of the church triumphant. Christ united man and angels, Heaven and Earth, through his cross, through his blood, as Saint Paul writes. We must therefore renew our awareness that the holy angels are members of the Church, and they are our brothers and our helpers. 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, the faithful angels, received this new indelible imprint in their spirit, meaning their deep desire to be servants like Christ. Therefore, they 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. As Catholic tradition has always said, it is a traditional Christian belief in East and West that each country has a protecting angel. It is written in the Scriptures in the Old Testament, that St. Michael the archangel is the angel of the people of God of Israel, in the prophet of Daniel 10:21, and 12:1. Some of the Church Fathers even said that not only every nation, but every town, has its own protecting angel, a feast of the guardian angel of some countries, with a mass formulary, a feast day, and a divine office formulary could be found in old missals.
Clement of Alexandria, from the end of the second century, states that, “whole regiments of angels are distributed over nations and over cities.” France, for instance, has consecrated itself over the centuries to St. Michael, the archangel, as its patron. This consecration goes back to King Charlemagne 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 county, 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, that there is a special angel that prays before God, let us say, for the priests, for families, for workers, and so on.
Through several popes, the church has proclaimed and assigned patron saints to various professions. Why then could there not be a special angelic patron for each state of life or for each profession? This is only a pious opinion, but it could encourage people of specific states of life or professions 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 to 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 lives that 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 that 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. Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich reported that the Holy Angels compensate for the defects committed by priests during the celebration of the Holy Mass. “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 all defects.” 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 of what is Catholic, of what is true. We have to be more conscious in invoking the holy angels that they might strengthen us in the faithfulness to Christ, and especially in the 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 the 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 is to glorify God. God does not need our praise, as the Church says in our liturgy, but we need to praise God for the sake of our salvation. 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, praying with them. 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. Children love the guardian angels. When the family prays, it would be good to say, for example, “We are gathered here with our guardian angels and we are all one family.” If both parents are present and five, six, or seven children are there, they can say they are actually 14, 16, or 18. Here, it would be good for families to learn the prayer to St. Michael, the archangel, or a family could entrust and consecrate itself to the holy angels. Perhaps one day, a pope could entrust the entire church, militant, to the protection of the holy angels and to St. Michael specifically.
It would be very helpful, since we are in a time of spiritual battle that has rarely been seen in the church, a battle between truth and heresy, between naturalism and the supernatural view, a battle ultimately between the holy angels and the evil spirits of the seed of pride and 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, unchangingly 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, for example, about fundamental, evident truths that have been taught by the church for 2000 years. The good ones have begun to doubt through seductive theories and words, even the fundamental truths of moral life, such as contraception, divorce, living in adultery, and so on. In some way, these words have a magical and demagogical effect. They often conceal the truth with seemingly beautiful and suggestive, impressive formulations like “primacy of mercy, surprises of the Holy Spirit, paradigm shift, individual conscience, pastoral accompaniment, process of discernment.” These all may conceal an inward perversion of the divine truth which the Church has always taught on moral issues. We need the light of the Holy.
who clearly see the truth. Only the clarity of the truth will bring us peace in our lives and allow us to experience true mercy. The church and all the true Catholics are being attacked by organized anti-Christian world powers, and they have the same aim: to destroy Christianity, to eliminate Christ. Here, also with the visible exterior enemies of Christ, we need the assistance of the holy angels, who are the angels of Christ. And so in this situation, it would be meaningful and fitting for a pope to consecrate the church to Saint Joseph and to Saint Michael and all the angels. It would be very meaningful and very efficacious, and a spiritual help in our time.
We have the examples of Pope Leo the 13th, who entrusted the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1899, and then Pope Pius the 12th, who consecrated the church and the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942, a consecration which was repeated by other popes, for example, by Pope John Paul the Second, for the first time in 1984. In one of his last speeches before his death, it was the speech and address to the American pilgrims on October the third in 1958, Pope Pius the 12th left us the following luminous exhortation, we quote, “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 our salvation and our sanctification. If God wishes, you will spend a happy eternity with the angels. Get to know them here, from now on,” so the words of Pius the 12th to American pilgrims.
Saint Padre Pio once said about our time these words, “This is the hour of the angels, especially in this time of an extraordinary crisis of the 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 the work of their work in the kingdom of God. We need to invoke them, to engage them, in order to glorify God in Christ and to spread the reign of Christ over creation and society. Christ is the king and also has the spiritual weapons to fight against the fallen angels. We cannot do this effectively without the presence of the holy angels, especially of St. Michael, the Archangel.
The teaching of the apostles of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith contains, as well, these important truths of the Holy Scripture, as it is written in the Epistle to the Ephesians, we quote, “Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the high places.” So the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians 6:11-12. The Church on earth is therefore appropriately called the militant Church. The awareness of being members of the 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 exorcism 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 order of exorcists as one of the minor orders of the clergy. Such a liturgical practice and prayer reflected the apostolic teaching, as is written in the second letter to the Corinthians, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh and blood, but we have the divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy them, the very lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive, to obey Christ.” So St. Paul in the second letter to the Corinthians, 10:4-5, and especially the admonition of St. Peter from the first letter of St. Peter, “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.”
During 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, homicides because these are exactly the two most proper characteristics of the personality and of the actions of the devil. The devil says our Lord 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.” Gospel of John 8:44.
At the threshold of the 20th century, a century of unheard, militant atheism and anti-human, monstrous political regimes, Pope Leo the 13th gave to the church the famous prayer to St. Michael the archangel, which he ordered to be recited worldwide by each priest and faithful after an unchanted mass. The same pope gave a very powerful prayer of a general exorcism against the infestations of Satan and the evil spirits. This exorcism against the infestations of Satan and the evil spirit could be recited by priests with the permission of their ordinary. Pope Leo the 13th himself recited this exorcism several times during the day. The Church on earth is the militant church, and every true Christian has to be a soldier of Christ, Miles Christi. The church is the church of Christ, the invincible King of kings. And the true victory over the world is the Catholic faith, and St. Michael and the holy angels are our brothers and fellows in the worship, in the adoration of God, in the fight, and in the victory of the Lord of the heavenly army, and the Lord of heaven and earth. And heaven and earth are full of his glory.
We conclude with a prayer of Padre Pio, “Oh holy guardian angel, take care of my soul and my body, enlighten my mind to know the Lord better and to love him with all my heart. Assist me in my prayers, so that I do not give in to distractions, but give them the greatest attention to give to the prayer, the greatest attention. Help me with your advice. So that I see the good and do it generously, defend me from the snares of the infernal enemy, and support me in the temptations, so that I can always win, make up for my coldness in the prayer, in the adoration of the Lord, do not cease to wait in my custody until you have taken me to heaven, where we will praise the good Lord together for all eternity. Amen.
Dominus, vobiscum, et cum, spiritu tuo, et benedictio de omnipotenti Patris et Filii et Spiritu Sancti descendit super vos et mane at Semper Amen in.