Synopsis: The scriptural revelation of the angels. The lessons drawn from this revelation. The tradition of the Church in reference to the angels--its origin. The development of the doctrine. The various feasts and their lessons. The moral and doctrinal teachings of the liturgy of the Mass of the angels. The mission of the angels. How they assist us. The practical value of the veneration paid to the angels.

The Holy Scriptures are not merely a revelation concerning God and man. They are as truly a revelation concerning the angels. The main facts of their history are revealed to us--the original contest between the good and the evil angels--the difference as to the present condition of the heavenly hosts who "keep their first estate," and of the others who fell--the consequent future destiny of satan and his followers and, on the other hand, of the faithful who, now glorious in bliss, will hereafter be raised to a yet higher state through the glory of the Incarnate Son. The appearances of angels extend through the Scriptures. They people the scenes of the sacred history. They are not more clearly seen around the gates of Paradise at the beginning of man's history, than they are represented as about to be present at the close, on the day of the final resurrection and universal judgment. They are as fully concerned with the events of the Apocalypse of St. John as they are with the events of the Book of Genesis. The Scripture history of mankind opens with the angels already on the stage of this lower world, actively engaged. It is revealed that they will be as actively engaged when it has run its predestined course.

Under the old law, the action of angels, as revealed to us, was on a large scale, affecting the concerns of nations and kingdoms, and of families connected with the patriarchal line through which the Messias was to come. Under the new law, as contrasted with the old, we find our blessed Lord speaking of all His members, all His little ones, and saying, "That their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt, xviii, 10). And the Epistle to the Hebrews unfolds yet further this great revelation when it speaks of the angels as "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them, who shall receive the inheritance of salvation" (Heb. i, 14). It is this same universality of individual privilege that the apostle asserts in our text.

On these pregnant passages the Church has grounded her traditionary faith. And these momentous words of the Master and His apostle have led her to work the worship of angels into the foundation of her liturgy. The heiress of all true traditions, she has ennobled and consecrated this worship from her origin.

While the existence of these higher and purely spiritual beings formed part of the religious belief of the Jews, no worship was paid directly by the synagogue. Nor was there an official cult or regular part of the liturgy set aside for the angels in the first centuries of Christianity. It would seem that, as a tendency to the false worship of angels developed itself even in the apostolic age, possibly on this account, a reserve was kept as to the greatness of the obligations to these blessed guardians, lest in the instruments and agents of the divine care the constant sense of the Supreme Author of life should be lost.

But the true veneration of these eternal spirits, whose daily care, watchful protection, ceaseless countless ministeries of love and power are around every child of God's eternal adoption, existed in St. Paul's day and grew out of the precious words of Jesus and His apostles. When we think of what these words revealed, the intense interest and care in the charge of souls in whom God dwells--the individuality of it, the like care extended to each, its unceasingness from the font to the grave, through the grave to heaven, is it wonderful that the fathers of the East and the West should urge the people to invoke the protection of the hosts of the good angels, whom God appointed to their several posts, to occupy themselves about the elements, and the heavens, and the world? Is it surprising that long before a special place in the liturgy was given them, that temples and festivals should be dedicated to the honor of those spirits who, like the angels in the dream of sleeping Israel, were ascending and descending with the prayers of the faithful? Their worship was originally incorporated with all the public prayers and, consequently, with all the festivals in the early Church. With them, as with the blessed Trinity, the Eucharist and all the saints, there was a general festival in their honor before the development of the liturgy assigned special solemnities.

But when men were no longer tempted to give divine honor to creatures, when the true idea of the worship due to God had been well grounded, then the fulness of gratitude was shown toward those heavenly spirits who strengthen the Church in her trials as they strengthened her Master in His agony, who minister unto her children as they "came and ministered unto Him." Back in the fifth century that feeling of reverence and gratitude finds its expression in the numerous churches dedicated to the angels, and in the feasts which honored them; that sense of dependence and of needed aid invoked the archangels Michael and Gabriel immediately after the persons of the Trinity.

In the present form of the liturgy, the Church permits the use of the names of only the three archangels who are mentioned in Holy Scripture. St. Michael was the first of the angels to enjoy special veneration. He who hurled the rebel angels into the abyss by the irresistible power of the name of God. The prince of the heavenly hosts has two festivals, one on May 8, dating back to the fifth century, in honor of his apparition on Monte Gargano, and the second on the 29th of September, in honor of the dedication of the Church of St. Michael in Rome. St. Raphael, the kind and gentle messenger from heaven to Tobias is commemorated on the 24th of October, and on March 18th St. Gabriel, who was entrusted by the Almighty with the commission to announce to Mary her election as the Mother of God, and the advent of the long-looked for Messias.

These glorious missions and these wonderful achievements of the three archangels are set forth in the Mass and the office for each of them. Their history, blazoned in the pages of our liturgy, yields to the hymn of petition: "May Michael, the angel of peace, come from heaven into this our temple, and, bringing us sweet peace, drive dismal war back to hell. May Gabriel, the angel of strength, come and rout our old enemies; may he often visit the heaven-loved temples which the triumphant Jesus has placed throughout the world. May Raphael, heavenly physician, descend and visit us, that he may heal all that are infirm, and direct our steps that falter, in the path of life." They are separate festivals, but the animating spirit of them all finds expression in the using of the same Introit, the same Communion, and the same Offertory. "Bless the Lord all ye His angels." "All ye angels of the Lord bless the Lord." So the Introit and the Communion at once unite us in the bonds of charity and brotherhood with those heavenly beings, bring us into their company at the feet of God's throne, there to join with them in the worship of God.

The Offertory conveys a lesson all its own, "an angel stood near the altar of the temple having a golden censer in his hand, and there was given him much incense, and the smoke of the perfumes ascended before God." Here is the summing of our instrumentality. Of all the various ways in which man employs himself here, look into that censer and mark which of them it is that reaches heaven. When the clamors of prayerless zeal, which have dazzled and astounded men, have spent their force, mark what is left in the censer, only that which partakes of the nature of prayer. This is all that lives to reach the skies, all that heaven receives from earth, all that is ever permitted to ascend before God. To these days in honor of the archangels the most beautiful and touching of all the feasts has been added. Springing up in the sixteenth century the Feast of the Guardian Angels rapidly spread throughout the Church until now it is observed universally on the second day of October, with the same Introit, Offertory and Communion that is used in the other Masses.

This day, too, has commemoration of the special duties of our guardians. In the Collect, we pray God that we may be continually defended by their protection, and may rejoice eternally in their society. The Gradual speaks of their office: "God hath given His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. In their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." It is theirs to guard the steps of the faithful from harm, to keep them from the assaults of evil men or evil angels, who are as bent on seducing and misleading as the good angels in guarding; to whisper good thoughts to their hearts, as satan and his instruments whisper evil; for such power have the superior created beings in their silent mysterious converse with us; though God's holy spirit alone can directly influence the will by His quickening power, and enable to close with the good and reject the evil.

This feast brings us into the company of many thousands of angels, for one member cannot be honored without the honor being communicated to all other members of the same body. "If one member rejoices," says St. Paul, "all the others rejoice with it" (I. Cor. xii, 26). The desire of the Church is that we honor the angels in a spirit of unity and universality considering them all one body, the Body of Jesus Christ and this spirit is engendered also in the other parts of the liturgy.

In the Book of Ecclesiastes, the royal preacher directs to "keep our foot" when approaching the house of God, to avoid all unseemly conduct, and offering "the victims of fools"; and among the reasons for caution he mentions the presence of "the Angel" who witnesses the rash vow and the unguarded word, and who will not readily accept the excuse of "error" or pardon the wanton irreverence (Ecc. lv, 17; v, 1-6). And in accord with this we find St. Paul laying down directions for the decent order of Christian worship "because of the angels" (I. Cor. xi, 2-10) who were present and who observed the habit and demeanor of the men and women gathered for sacred purposes there. And when we at the altar offer up the One Great Sacrifice by which all things in heaven and earth are reconciled, the "lifting up of our hearts," which, in the language of the Church from the beginning, is there proclaimed, is but a preparation for the solemn Eucharistic Act, where immediately afterward we join "angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim and all the court of heaven," in lauding and magnifying that thrice Holy Name--the Lord God of hosts.

And that presence of high and blessed spirits, which we then are specially called to realize when the all-gracious but awful mysteries of redemption are before us, belongs to every part of Christian worship, of which that is the principal and crowning act. The etherial glorious beings, there marking us, are those who rest neither day nor night in God's service, yet fold their wings and hide their faces in dreadful reverence when approaching the majesty of the Lord God of Hosts, when proclaiming His Holy Name, and taking the words of His awful praise into their clean and sinless lips. And when at High Mass the incense is blessed, we beg St. Michael to intercede in our behalf, that as "this incense ascends to the Lord as an odor of sweetness so may His mercy descend upon us; that no unguarded word may escape our lips, that our heart may never incline to evil." When we kneel to confess our sins before the Holy Sacrifice is offered, in the Confessional before Communion, and on so many ocasions in the administration of the Sacraments, is not the archangel in the court of those we summon to receive our acknowledgment of guilt? Is he not among those powerful ones whom we ask to pray to the Lord God for us? When Mass has ended the last prayer before leaving the church is that this same great archangel Michael may defend us in battle and be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

And, again, in the litany of the saints "that long, deep sigh of the Church on earth toward her sister, the Church in heaven," we plead for the good offices of those same burning spirits who surround God's throne, as we plead for the intercession of the saints. At Compline, the evening prayer of the Church "when the daylight dies away," what a beautiful petition is sent up to God. "Visit, we beseech Thee, O Lord, this habitation, and drive from it all snares of the enemy; let Thine holy angels dwell herein, to keep us in peace, and may Thy blessing be always upon us." There is no service of worship in the Church for the use of which the liturgy does not prescribe the "Our Father." Does it not summon us into the company of so many thousands of angels? "Thy will be done as it is in heaven." And done by whom in heaven? By no other than the holy angels; for these alone bear the character of God's servants and executors of His will in those celestial mansions. The picture of their unwearied obedience, the willing devotion of their minds to God, is what we need to quicken ours, to bring our dispositions and lives to that healthy communion with the spiritual creation, that God's wishes may be accomplished in us and by us.

Such is the prayer the Church ever offers in her liturgy and with which she maintains the warfare against the world of carnal sense and irreligion. When sickness is heavy upon us and the priest comes to administer the last Sacraments, what prayer does the liturgy put upon his lips but that "Our holy Father almighty and everlasting God may vouchsafe to send His holy angel to guard, cherish, protect, visit and defend all that dwell in this house?"

If they are active in our behalf during the days of our warfare, the prayers of the Church show them no less energetic in our behalf when our wearied eyes have closed upon a weary world. Read the Offertory in the Mass for the dead: "O Lord Jesus deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the pains of hell ... let the standard-bearer, St. Michael, bring them into the holy light." And as the last office of the holy angels toward the faithful, we read in Christ's own parable, that, when they leave this world in His faith and fear, they are "carried by the angels in Abraham's bosom," so the prayer of the Church: "may the angels lead thee into paradise. May the choir of angels receive thee." "May God assign His holy angel to keep thy grave." "May He give you a place among the angel choirs." That such "as are heirs of salvation" may be borne by these pure and blessed spirits to rejoin their faithful predecessors in the realms of rest, to await in assured bliss with the patriarchs and the apostles with "the spirits of the just made perfect," the fuller felicity that will be theirs when the elect of God shall be finally gathered together by Christ at His coming and their portion fixed at the judgment, in the beatific vision of God.

When, therefore, we consider the angelic host in the regularity, as well as the rapidity, of their angelic movement, like the living wheels of Ezechial's vision, ever accomplishing the purpose of Him who sways and directs all; when we survey them in their several orders and hierarchies--the swift cherubim, the flaming seraphim, the "thrones, principalities and powers and dominions" as their several ranks are described in Holy Writ; when we read of them in the Prophet Daniel as set over the kingdom of men, or marshaled under their archangels, as Michael, the Prince, or Gabriel, the Power of God, or see them hanging with concentrated gaze upon the Babe as He lies in His manger, our minds, which might be dazzled by the contemplation, are chastened and corrected by the thoughts suggested in the liturgy, that they are with us servants of the Most High; and that we are brought by the economy of redemption, as the apostle declares, into a strict and proper fellowship with them, and so we can rejoice in their "joy over one sinner that repenteth; in "their care of the little ones" of Christ and in their last office of love to the departing souls of the elect, carried "by the angels" into Paradise.

Our mission in the world is, together with the holy angels, and through their aid, to uphold the cause of God against the evil powers which oppose Him, to be jealous of His honor, to be zealous of His commands. In our blessed Lord, our true representative, in the wilderness of temptation, ministered to by angels, and assaulted by Satan, we see the renewed man, we see our present lot. Surrounded on all sides by what tempts the eye, deceives the heart, captivates the senses, bewilders the understanding, shakes the faith, the loyalty, the steadfastness of our frail nature, we are subjected to our course of trial. But the angels are at our side, the liturgical prayers put upon our lips the call for aid from St. Michael, the standard-bearer, to lead us; St. Gabriel, the Power of God, to give us strength; St. Raphael, the Cure of God, to heal the wounds received in battle, and those blessed spirits of all orders to be at our side, above, around us those "twelve legions of angels" to uphold, to fortify, to preserve us. Surely we may contemplate with gladness the wisdom of Mother Church who so constantly keeps before us the thought that we are in the "company of many thousands of angels"--ministers of grace, who long to have us as their companions in the presence of God.

Thus girt about with angels, we are set to keep the charge of God. They are with us by our altars in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass; they are with us as we kneel in prayer; they are with us in the dangers of our way to keep us; they are by our beds to watch near us as we sleep. They are waiting to carry our souls into the presence of God. While we bear in our heart the consciousness of that presence in which "we live and move and have our being, and of the heavenly hosts around us, shall we not be strong to resist temptation? and should we fall, we can turn for consolation and help to the fellowship of those angels who are all the while rejoicing over the "one sinner that repenteth," and with whom all thought is absolved in the one deep love and thanksgiving, which is being breathed into them out of the Heart of Jesus.