13 MAY - MONDAY IN THE OCTAVE OF THE ASCENSION

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The Kingship over men is not the only diadem given to our Emmanuel at His Ascension. The Apostle expressly tells us that He is, moreover, the Head of all Principality and Power (Colossians ii. 10). Noble indeed is man, but nobler far are the glorious Choirs of the Angelic Hierarchy. We have already seen that in the great trial by which God tested the love of His Angels, many rebelled and were cast into Hell. The rest, who were faithful, entered at once into the possession of their sovereign good and began, round the throne of God, their ceaseless hymns of adoration, love and thanksgiving. But a portion of their happiness was reserved till the fulfilment of one of God’s decrees. Laden as they are with the most magnificent gifts, they await another. It is to be the completion of their joy and glory. God revealed to them, at the first instant of their coming into existence, that He intended to create other beings, of a nature inferior to their own, and that of these beings, who were to be composed of body and soul, there should be one whom the Eternal Word would unite to Himself in unity of Person. It was also revealed to them that this human nature (for whose glory and for God’s, all things were made), was to be the FIRST-BORN “of every creature” (Colossians i. 15); that all Angels and men would have to bend their knee before Him; that after suffering countless humiliations on Earth, He would be exalted in Heaven; and, finally, that the time would be when the whole hierarchy of heaven, the Principalities and Powers, yes, even the Cherubim and Seraphim, would have Him placed over them as their King.

The Angels, then, as well as men, looked forward to the coming of Jesus. The Angels awaited Him as He that was to confer on them their final perfection, give them unity under Himself as their head, and bring them into closer union with God by the union of the Divine and created natures in His own Person. As to us men, we awaited Him as our Redeemer and our Mediator: as our Redeemer, because sin had closed Heaven against us and we needed one that would restore us to our inheritance; as our Mediator because it was the eternal decree of God to communicate His own glory to the human race, and this was to be by union with Himself. While, therefore, the just ones on earth who lived before the Incarnation were pleasing to God by their faith in this future Redeemer and Mediator, the Angels in heaven were offering to the Divine Majesty the homage of their proffered service of this Man-God, their future King, who, in virtue of the eternal decree, was ever present to “the Ancient of Days” (Daniel vii. 9).

At length, “the fullness of time came” (Galatians iv. 4), and God, as the Apostle expresses it, “brought into the world His first-begotten” (Hebrews i. 6), the prototype of creation. The first to adore the New-born King were not men, but the Angels, as the same Apostle assures us. The Royal Prophet had foretold that it would be so (Psalms xcvi. 7). And was it not just? These blessed Spirits had preceded us in their longings, not indeed of a Redeemer — for they had never sinned — but of a Mediator, who was to be the link of their closer union with infinite Beauty — the object of their eternal delight — in a word, the realization of the want there seemed to be even in Heaven, that is, of Jesus’ taking and filling up the place destined for Him.

Then was accomplished that act of adoration of the Man-God, which was demanded of the Angels at the first moment of their creation and which, according to its being complied with or refused, decided the eternal lot of those noble creatures. With what love did not the faithful Angels adore this Jesus, the Word made Flesh, when they beheld Him in His Mother’s arms at Bethlehem? With what transport of joy did they not announce to the shepherds, and to us through them, the Glad Tidings of the Birth of our common King. As long as He lived on this Earth and submitted to every humiliation and suffering in order to redeem us from sin and make us worthy to become His Members, the Blessed Spirits ceased not to contemplate and adore Him. The Ascension came and, from that day forward, it is on the throne prepared at the Father’s right hand that they behold and adore their Lord and King. At the solemn moment of Jesus’ Ascension, a strange joy was felt in each choir of the heavenly hierarchy, from the burning Seraphim to the Angels who are nearest to our own human nature. The actual possession of a good, whose very expectation had filled them with delight, produced an additional happiness in those already infinitely happy Spirits. They fixed their enraptured gaze on Jesus’ beauty, and were lost in astonishment at seeing how Flesh could so reflect the plenitude of grace that dwelt in that Human Nature as to outshine their own brightness. And now, by looking on this nature (which, though inferior to their own, is divinised by its union with the Eternal Word), they see into further depths of the uncreated Sea of Light. Their love is more burning, their zeal is more impetuous, their hymns are more angelic. For, as the Church says of them, the Angels and Archangels, the Powers and Dominations, the Cherubim and Seraphim, praise the majesty of the Father through His Son, Jesus Christ: per quem majestatem tuam laudant Angeli.

Add to this the joy these heavenly Spirits must have experienced at seeing the immense multitude that accompanied Jesus from Earth to Heaven. According to their respective merits, they were divided among the various choirs, and placed on thrones left vacant by the fallen angels. Their bodies are not yet united to their souls but, is not their flesh already glorified in that of Jesus? When the time fixed for the general Resurrection comes, the trumpet of the great Archangel will be heard (1 Thessalonians iv. 15), and then these happy souls will again put on their ancient vesture, the mortal made immortal. Then will the holy Angels, with fraternal enthusiasm, recognise in Adam’s features a likeness of Jesus, and in those of Eve a likeness of Mary, and the resemblance will even be greater than it was when our First Parents were innocent and happy in the Garden of Eden.

Come quickly, glorious day on which the bright mystery of the Ascension is to receive its final completion, and the two choirs of Angels and men are to be made one in love and praise under the one head, Christ Jesus!