| Choir VII | 30 September |
|---|---|
| Angel of the legal structure of the Holy Church | St Jerome |
He stands here majestically, like a Gothic cathedral gleaming with silver in the dazzling sunlight. He stands in the light of all God’s graces; he shapes grace into tasks, and those tasks into the firm structure of the Holy Church. And he stands upon the Rock of Peter, where God has placed him as guardian of His House on earth, His Tabernacle. He is the fifth of the twelve Angels of the Holy Church:
Saint Machaanajim.
The Lord has built for His Bride a true ladder to heaven made of angels, beginning with the legions of angels of the IXth Choir and rising through all the choirs up to the Angel of the Church, who kneels at the right hand of Mary, Mother of the Church, who bears the Crown of Thorns of his Lord and so closes the symbolic ring once more, right down to the earth.
Above the legions of angels who serve the Holy Church on earth stand the seven Archangels. They embody the fundamental virtues of the Holy Church: reverence and obedience, faith and hope, love and the spirit of atonement, and self-surrender to God. Above these Archangels (before the fall of Lucifer there were twelve) stands the Choir of Virtues: the Virtues of faith, hope, and love and the Virtues of the Church.
This Choir of Virtues, which like a vast transformer station receives all the rays of grace from the six upper choirs and passes them on, bundled together, to the seven Archangels, is one of the hardest of the choirs to understand, for it is different from the others:
Outwardly it forms two great groups which, like a symbolic spiritual mirror of man and woman on earth, are two and yet one—the one group belonging inseparably to the other, and yet quite different from it. The one group is like the action of the Creator towards creation; these are the silently breathing, healing and expanding Virtues of Faith, Hope and Love. The other group is like the Church’s very Being as the representative of all mankind before the Creator; these are the twelve Virtues of the Church.
Saint Machaanajim is also such a being. He bears the structure of the Holy Church as something that is, unchangeable and indestructible: “…una sancta catholica et apostolica ecclesia.” Built upon the words of the Lord as upon a rock besieged by Hell, and with twelve simple fishermen as its foundation, the edifice of the Holy Church grows upwards and will go on growing until the Last Day, through the darkness of the clouds to the Throne of the Most High.
This edifice is the great ladder to Heaven, raised for His own by the Lord Himself, with firmly set rungs and supports, on which the angels descend and upon which men ascend with their angels. “Steep is the way,” says the Lord (cf. Matt. 7:14). Ladders usually stand fairly upright! But Saint Machaanajim supports and bears this ladder with his thousands of angels. On whom could we lean more securely than on the Bride of the Lord, upheld and guided by angels?
Prayer: O Angel, Saint Machaanajim, who securely builds up the Holy Church and upholds it with strong arms, let us too be sheltered by this edifice and be children therein. Amen.