| IV. Choir | 16 January |
|---|---|
| Truth as light | Marcellus |
Truth is a light that can kill. That is why
Saint Vedad,
the third of the twelve angels of Word and Answer, from the Choir of the Lower Dominions, holds his hands as if shielding this light that breaks forth from the truthfulness of God. He has to carry the truth into the root of all things in creation. It is only by grace that he can bear it, for the truth that breaks forth from God is unbearable—even for an angel.
Twelve times God calls upon creation so that it might receive His entities as gifts through the angels, the servants of God, and that they may increase as a pound, and that the last of the twelve may bring home the fruit. He divided creation into four parts for these gifts, so that each quarter receives three gifts. The division into four quarters corresponds to creation, whilst the threefold gifts correspond to the divine.
Creation appears here in the parable of a seed that first takes root and then grows upwards; it comes to flower and then to fruit. In the root of all things, God first places the measure, which we only understand to a small extent—usually not at all.
Then he places the law into it (which we pursue with all our thirst for knowledge and all our ingenuity and ambition, not in order to marvel at and praise God in it, but in order to imitate it and acquire power over earthly forces… “You will be like God …” We have been suffering from this poison for millenia).
And on the law God lays the truth, which is inexorably revealed at the time that God determines, and which no living being in creation, neither man nor even angel can change. And every creature knows the truth according to the measure of its power of comprehension, and no one can say, “I knew nothing.”
This realisation of truth with the corresponding act of will, that is the test, that is the question of judgement: “How did you live with this knowledge?” The Father asks about the truth of the life we have lived, the Son about the truth of the word we have spoken, and the Spirit about the truth of our heart, our love.
Thus Saint Vedad walks through creation as a clear, serious, barely comprehensible figure, with the light in his hands, the sincerity of a child, the spirit of sacrifice of the priest, and the relentlessness of the angel.
Prayer: O God of Truth, Who showest Thyself behind Thy protecting Angel, let us also be true like a child, ready to sacrifice like a priest and inexorable in self-discipline like Saint Vedad, who is commissioned to put Thy Truth, O God, into the root of all things. Amen.