| IX. Choir | 15 June |
|---|---|
| Angel of lamentation | Saint Vitus |
The Lord’s lament is heartbreaking for those who truly love Him. You have to close your eyes. At first you cannot even see the angel who bears the Lord’s lament, this lament for His wandering sheep, for His bride in distress, for His unfaithful city.
He has fallen into the dirt of the dusty streets of Jerusalem to prove to people that He will do anything to save them, if only they will.
But do they want to? Is the Lord not waiting day and night in all the tabernacles of the world for people’s love, for their will to be saved? Who can measure the coldness and indifference, the lukewarmness and irreverence that the Lord has to endure on these thrones of His on earth?
Mankind, for whom He took and takes everything upon Himself, blocks its ears with the clammer of the world and everyday life so as not to have to hear Him. It runs after a thousand earthly things so as not to have to see Him. And even when He is visible in the form of Bread at the Altar, it pretends that He is invisible so that it does not have to recognise Him, so that it can be considered ‘free’ before the world and its own very important ego, without compulsion and without attachment.
The freedom of the children of the world is considered by men more than the unfading crown of the freedom of the children of God, because this crown, for the sake of its genuineness, makes less propaganda and fewer bribes and entices man less, because it waits and is silent, while the other freedom can be bought with thirty pieces of silver, which ring and incessantly entice, persuade and finally mock and curse.
O Lord, dearest Lord, what shall we do so that Your lamentation may become joy? Everything You say is so full of love, so full of warmest longing, heart-moving melancholy, it is more a loving call than a reproach.
Kneel, man, kneel and worship your Lord and God! Love Him, tell Him every day, every hour, that you love Him…
Now you can see the angel. He is different now from what he will be later. He is an angel of the IX choir assigned to Saint Boromim, that dark, flaming angel who now carries the sealed call of God, truly sealed in the folly of the Cross and understandable only to those who affirm the Lord and His Cross. He is also that angel who, when his seal is broken in the apocalyptic last days, will figuratively force down the justice of God and force up the obedience of mankind with mighty arms on the banks of the Euphrates of the river of life of mankind.
Saint Machanael
kneels before God today like the light figure of the inconspicuous Divine Bread and is completely veiled. He is like a never-silent song before the Throne of the Most High. And this angel of lamentation will collect and weigh the lamentation of the perishing world until it has reached the measure of the lamentation of the Lord. Then the righteousness of God, full of love, will raise its hand to take us home.
Prayer: O you near, loving angel, Saint Machanael, who, despite the love of God which you represent, are a great and bitter reproach to us, let us never forget that this Divine Love is our home, our goal and our bliss. Amen.