| VI. Choir | 10 January |
|---|---|
| Prince of metal | William, Agatha |
There he stands, the smith of God!
Even a blacksmith can be a prince, and Saint Bethel is a prince. He belongs to the sixth choir of holy angels, to the middle, sealed third of those princes who, like tamed lions, have to guard the building materials of the earth, the ores and the soils, the wood and the stone, the oil, the sugar and the salt, however insignificant it may seem to us. Saint Bethel’s material administrative sphere also encompasses the whole earth: he is prince over all metal as building material and entity of creation.
His power reaches far out to distant celestial bodies. We do not even know their composition, nor suspect their mode of action. Millions of light years separate us from them. But the power of the angel holds together the here and the there. We only know the metals of this earth in part; what do we know of their rays of essence or of their force-field?
The angel holds everything under his hands, tamed for the good of humanity, but he is surrounded by legions from the opposite infernal side, who pursue mankind and snatch them away from the order of creation piece-by-piece, so as to make the face of the earth a field of ruins. The earth still contains almost immeasurable treasures of metals, but the deeper man’s decomposition burrows into this already so deeply furrowed face, the weaker become the chains which God’s wisdom has placed around all the power of the metals, so that man may remain master.
How good it is that Saint Bethel’s task in the spiritual, supernatural realm is an even greater one: to forge the will of man, to shape it so that it becomes like steel, pliable and yet invincible to the powers of darkness, so that it becomes a sword for God! That is why Saint Bethel stands before us in his task, as it were, at an anvil; that is why his forging hammer is cruelly heavy and full of force, adapted to our unrestrained, unbridled self-will. One day we shall thank him for forging us into a useful tool in the Hand of God.
Prayer: Holy Prince, Saint Bethel, how difficult man makes your task. The metal you care for, we use for murder on the grandest scale… and to forge our will we often have to leave the idol of self! Help us, Holy Prince, to a bravery of heart and a tenacity of will that may enable us to endure under thy hand and thy hammer until we ourselves are ready, in unchanging faithfulness, to defend God in us and around us with sword and shield! Amen.