The Universal Call to Adoration

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask you for pardon of my sins and grace to make this time of prayer, fruitful. My Mother Immaculate, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In this period of prayer, of mental prayer, of meditation, we seek to enter into the presence of Our Lord, which in a sense is very easy because in him we live and move and have our being. “You, Lord, are closer to us than we are to ourselves,” as St. Augustine said. In this sense, prayer is always deeply personal, nontransferable, inalienable, between you, Lord, and me.

In this prayer, Lord Jesus, I seek to listen to you. I want my soul to be attentive, open, loving. And, in this prayer, I also want to speak with you, face to face, heart to heart. So, prayer is always personal and, at the same time, it's social. We pray always as individuals, but as members of this family, with such deep bonds, which is the Church of God, God's family. And St. Josemaria said, “We all need a lot of company, company from Heaven, and company from earth.”

And in the opening prayer of our meditation, we invoked the help of Our Lady, St. Joseph, and our Guardian Angel. And, in fact, whenever we pray, we are to use the phrase of the Letter to the Hebrews, “We are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.” We are praying within the warmth, the company, the presence of a family, in communion with the Holy Church. What a beautiful thing to consider: our prayer is personal, but it is also always family prayer. And among the children of God, we find the Holy Angels and Archangels, beloved by God, creatures of God, beautiful in their being, in their creation. And, as we consider the Archangels, at least the three whom we know as named as such from scripture, Michael, and Raphael, and Gabriel, we can remember that as Benedict XVI pointed out in a homily as Pope in 2007. He says, “All three names of the Archangels end with the word el, el; which means God.” This is true. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, they all end with the word el, which means God. And then Holy Father Benedict said, “God is inscribed in their names, in their nature. Their true nature is existing in his sight, and for him.” And this actually is essential to the nature of all the angels of whatever rank. We could say the first function of the angels is to give glory to God—to be with God, to be from God, to live from God. They are adorers of the Lord.

So, on this Feast of The Holy Archangels, perhaps we can think firstly of this, which is their first characteristic as creatures of God. They are adorers of God. They stand in the sight of God and their whole being is oriented towards God. And Lord, how much this helps me, how much this helps us, in our prayer. Because we too, are called, all of us, as St. Josemaria might put it, “to be souls of prayer, to be contemplatives in the middle of the world, to be people who seek Christ, find Christ, deal with Christ, fall in love with Christ, and bring Christ everywhere.” In that sense we share this aspect of the nature of the Angels and of the Archangels. In that sense, we might say God is in the name of each one of us, is in the nature of each one of us, because we're all oriented fundamentally towards God.

So, maybe in our prayer, we could ask the Holy Archangels to intercede for us, to help us to be sowers of peace and joy in the world. To help us to be people who, again to paraphrase St. Josemaria, who open up the divine paths of the Earth, all around them. People who are adorers of the Lord in the ordinary and through the ordinary. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, help me to adore you!

Romano Guardini has a beautiful essay on adoration. And in it, he makes the point that “insofar as the human person adores God, he or she achieves his own inner equilibrium, his own inner perfection. Insofar as we worship God with our being with our lives, insofar as we adore God, like the Archangels we achieve our fullest human and spiritual potential.” How wonderful this is because it means that to worship God, to adore God, in no way demeans the human person, but rather raises us up, embellishes all that we have, enhances all that we are.

Guardini writes, “The person who worships God will never risk losing his balance entirely. Whoever adores God in his heart and mind. And, also, when the moment arises, in actual practice, is being truly protected. He may make many mistakes, he may be deeply bewildered and shaken. But in the last analysis, the order and direction of his life are secure.” It's an interesting point, insofar as, you and I, become truly adorers of the Lord, we become truly ourselves.

Again, Guardini says, “We do well to see this clearly and to act, really act, accordingly. Whenever we adore God, something happens within and about us, things fall into true perspective, vision sharpens, much that troubles us rights itself. We distinguish better between the essential and the non-essential, the end and the means, the destination and the way. We discriminate more clearly between good and evil. The deceptions which affect daily life, the falsification of standards are, to some extent, at least rectified.” How wonderful it is that the call to holiness, the call to contemplation, the universal call to adoration is in fact the source of our happiness, the source of our joy, the source of our true human flourishing and maturing. We can learn this on the Feast of The Holy Archangels, who are adorers of God.

Guardini says, “God desires our adoration, and we need it for our soul’s health.” So, the Holy Archangels—Gabriel, Michael, Raphael—adore the Lord, and that is their primary function, that’s their primary raison d'etre (reason for being, purpose). But precisely because they're close to God, precisely because they're so intimate with God, they're able to help us. And indeed, they help us a lot.

Gabriel, whom we know especially from the, the event of Mary's vocation, the Annunciation, he's the one who can inspire us, like Mary, to open up our souls to God, to open up our lives to God, to say, with Mary, now in our prayer, just tell you, Lord, “Be it done to me according to your word.” Like Mary, the prompting of Gabriel, I would like to let you live and work in and through me, and I know that I will lose nothing, but gain everything by that.

Raphael, the Archangel associated with healing. We need healing. All of us. And in the intimacy of our prayer, each one of us can hand over to the Lord our wounds, our weaknesses, our fears, our anxieties, our shames, we might say our regrets, knowing that through the intercession of the Archangel, St. Raphael, all can be made well. Our sight can be restored when we're blind. Harmony can be restored among people, as happened in the case of the intervention of St. Raphael in Scripture.

And then, St. Michael, who defends God's honor against the dragon. And who defends God's people, the people of God, the Church. We appeal to you, Michael, for the unity, and growth, and holiness of the Church.

When we think of St. Josemaria and the Archangels, we know that the founder of Opus Dei was inspired by God to proclaim the universal call to holiness, we could say, the universal call to adoration, to give all the glory to God, especially through ordinary, secular, daily, and sometimes just mundane, repetitive reality. That, that ordinary prose of every day, can, through the grace of God, and through a spirit of adoration on our part, become a heroic verse as it were. Every aspect of our lives can be adoration and love. And perhaps, therefore, it's not surprising that St. Josemaria entrusted the apostolates of Opus Dei, in a special way, to the care, to the intercession of the Archangels, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. Specifically, this occurred on Thursday, the sixth of October 1932. We noticed that’s 70 years to the day exactly prior to his canonization.

Well, on that day in 1932, St. Josemaria was doing a retreat in the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites in Segovia, in the very chapel were St. John of the Cross, to whom he had a particular devotion, was buried. And while he was doing his prayer there, he was moved, or inspired, to entrust different aspects of the apostolate of Opus Dei to the Holy Archangels.

Under the patronage of St. Raphael, would be the work of Christian formation of young people. What's known as the work of St. Raphael is that broad apostolate carried out by the Prelature of Opus Dei, all over the place, trying to bring Christ to young people, help young people to seek holiness in and through their daily life.

And then to St. Michael, the Archangel, he was moved to entrust the work of and with those members of the Work who received vocation to celibacy and were to sanctify their work and be available for the apostolate in different ways. In this case, we're speaking about the Numeraries and Associates. He placed them in the care of St. Michael, under the patronage of St. Michael, for their formation, for their holiness.

And then the married people who take part in the apostolate of the Work—be they supernumeraries, or cooperators, or others, who take part in any way in the apostolate of the Work—they are entrusted to the work and to the care of St. Gabriel.

It's not surprising seeing that St. Josemaria was, I suppose was, is outstanding, in preaching the call to contemplation to adoration, in and through the ordinary things: that ordinary work would become adoration, that marriage would become adoration, that family life would be adoration, recreation and sport, agriculture, technology, culture, health, sickness, exercise, scientific research, whatever—all this would be adoration. It's not surprising that he would have that devotion to the Archangels, who stand before the throne of God, who kneel before the throne of God in adoration.

Finally, in our prayer, we consider how for all of us in the Church, the Archangels are our great allies. Because it is true, life is a battle. Life is a struggle. That's what the book of Job tells us: man's life on earth is a struggle, man's life on earth is, is warfare. There is, undoubtedly, we experienced it all the time, a battle going on, between good and evil. Satan, the devil, exists. A reality that Pope Francis often reminds us of. Satan is not simply an image of evil or some kind of symbol; he's a fallen angel, and very clever and insidious. That's why we have the help of the good angels and of the Archangels. We're not alone. We're not alone in our battle. That can give us great peace because it's true. We live in a state of spiritual warfare. But that doesn't mean we live in a state of anxiety, or that we lose our serenity, even if we do suffer at times, or if we're disappointed, or under pressure. We do have the Angels and the Archangels always on our side. They're like our older siblings in that sense.

And we can think, of course, of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the first part of the Eucharistic Prayer, which is called the Preface, and that's the veritable part of the Eucharistic prayer, and the Preface is always a prayer of thanksgiving. It culminates in, you might say, an outburst of joy in the Sanctus, the Holy, Holy. And when we say the Sanctus, or singing it, I suppose, if possible, it's always appropriate to sing it, it's not always possible to do that, but let's say, spiritually, you could say, we always sing the Holy, Holy, in our hearts. The Church sings that song because it's a song of joy and of victory. Well, we always sing the Holy, Holy, in the company of all our heavenly friends, all the Angels and the Saints, and the Archangels, and the Cherubim, and the Seraphim. We are not alone. We are always surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. We are all called by this vocation of adoration to orient ourselves to the Lord, which in no way diminishes us.

We could say that the trick of the devil, or the deceit of the devil, is somehow to try to convince us that by giving ourselves completely to God, we stand to lose—that we lose out. Whereas those who truly adore the Lord, like the Blessed Virgin Mary, like St. Joseph, like the Archangels, like so many ordinary men and women down through history who adore the Lord through their ordinary lives; they all teach us that adoration is our vocation, not just in the spiritual sense, but in the human sense. It's the way to true life.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations you have communicated to me in this time of prayer. I ask you for help to put them into effect. My Mother Immaculate, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.