The Glories of the Holy Angels
Venerable Henri Boudon, Archdeacon of Evreux
MOTIVE FOURTH
All Men are assisted by the Angels
It is unnecessary to seek any other motive to love God than love itself—as our Lord revealed to Mother Magdalen of St. Joseph, a Carmelite religious. But why does God love men so much? Let it be published among the nations, says St. Bernard, and let them confess that the Lord has determined to treat them magnificently. O my God ! what is man, that you condescend to give him your only Son, to send him your Holy Spirit, and depute your Angels to guard and defend him ! ‘ Behold then an Angel, who is as a great king, endowed with all imaginable glory and perfection, in the service of man—a being compounded of misery and imperfection—a worm of the earth—dust and ashes ! But that man, when in the state of sin, should still be protected by the Angels, is far more wonderful. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves: the greatest saints have fallen, through weakness or inadvertence, into venial faults— and would to God that there were no greater committed Hell itself being less terrible than a single offence against the Divine Majesty; but, alas ! men in general have little horror of mortal sin, and easily fall into it.
The Angels, though struck with amazement at these diabolical excesses, are nevertheless not deterred from assisting these unhappy beings. O soul! who readest these truths, is it not wonderful that the blessed Spirits should lend their aid to those who offend God, considering the knowledge they possess of his unspeakable greatness ? Is it not amazing that they are content to remain with those who every day trample on the blood of their God, “and make void the sufferings by which they have been redeemed.’
Let us go further : Heretics and Infidels have Angels who guard them, though their sin be so incomprehensible, that we can never in this world attain anything like a notion of it. The Turks, the professed enemies of the Christian name, have their Angels—nay, Antichrist himself will have an Angel Guardian, says St. Thomas, who will hinder him from committing several evils. The Angels serve all these people as their masters, though they know them to be slaves of the devil and victims of hell. Where is the gardener who would water a tree, if he knew it would never produce fruit! Where is the friend who would continue to demonstrate his friendship, after repeated insults and affronts ? Yet all the injuries, revolts, contempt and ingratitude of men diminish not in the least degree the charity of these blessed Spirits. They go to seek them in the forests of Canada, in the remotest deserts, in the most gloomy caverns, at the extremities of the earth.
You would say that they are beside themselves with love for men, who have nothing of man but the shape and appearance, their lives being wholly earthly and sensual. These celestial beauties give their affections to deformity itself, and yet meet with no other return than ingratitude and contempt. How shocking—how deplorable!
