| IV. Choir | 22 July |
|---|---|
| Angel with the bowl of fiery wrath | Mary Magdalene |
Lord, my God, great and mighty are your judgements, and blessed are you for ever and ever!
“It is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God!” This applies to all those who worship the beast—as it says in the Secret Revelation—or bear his mark on their foreheads. The beast is the infernal adversary in his hundreds of disguises and variations. He always slips into a different guise—that of the great victor, the liberator of the people, the solver of all the world’s problems, the king of money and the ruler of industry, the sensational healer, the new saviour, the conquering orator or the great tyrant. He has a hundred guises, and we cannot deny that we have met him and that we know his character in all its possible variations.
God watches, silently and with truly divine patience. Everything is built into creation; the Father of the House also allows the tares to grow until the harvest, but then the wheat is separated from the chaff.
In the great events of the world, this is the time of judgement, the end times. Before the Judge will come on the clouds, he will once again send out mighty angels, the Sealed Dominions and the Seven Trumpet Angels, to shake up the world one last time and remind it of God’s omnipotence and sovereignty. These Sealed Dominions include the four angels who stand at the four ends of the world, at the Euphrates, the river of life (Acts 9:14), the angels of judgement (Acts 14:6) and the harvest angels (Acts 14:14), as well as the angels with the bowls of wrath (Acts 15:1-29).
One of the great angels of wrath stands before God’s Throne today. Should the judgement begin? Judgement always begins: Saint Magdalene, whose feast we celebrate, knew this very well. She handed herself over to God’s justice in good time, even during life. For whoever voluntarily surrenders himself to God’s judgement so that it may seize him whilst he is alive and as a penitent, surrenders himself to God’s love and mercy. The terrible judgements which these angels of wrath pour out on the earth will then no longer affect him; he will encounter this great angel as an angel of love. In this way, the word of judgement, justice and love will become reality.
Saint Zarachiel
is the one who stands before the Face of God today, the fourth of the seven angels of wrath (Acts 16:8). Saint Magdalene had already seen him whilst still reeling from the heat of her senses and the fire of love. She threw herself at the Feet of the Lord and took the judgement of herself seriously. She wet the ground around the Cross on Golgotha with her tears of repentance and she wept for years. Who still does that today? With the clear eyes of knowledge, she saw Saint Zarachiel, recognising that these embers which he pours out over the earth are the punishment for the sensual, hateful and vengeful embers of men. At the same time, however, she understood that tears of repentance extinguish all those embers and open the Heart of the Lord as the surest refuge.
Prayer: O Lord, dearest Lord, let our tears of repentance be the key to Your Heart before we can no longer find our way in the fire of judgement and it is too late! Amen.