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Ember
PT

The Angels

  1. The angels are our shepherds, because they carry not only our message to God, but also those of God to our souls, feeding them with sweet inspirations and divine communications : as good shepherds they protect us, and defend us from the wolves, which are the evil spirits.

  2. Through the secret inspirations which the angels convey to the soul, they effect a deeper knowledge of God, and make it love Him the more, till they leave it wounded with love.

  3. The divine wisdom which in heaven illumines the angels, and cleanses them of their ignorances, is the same which illumines men upon earth, and cleanses them of their errors and imperfections ; it flows from God through the first orders of the hierarchies down to the lowest, and thence to men.

  4. The light of God, which illumines an angel, enlightening and setting him on fire with love, as pure spirit disposed for that inflowing, illumines man ordinarily in darkness, pain, and distress, because of his impurity and weakness : so is the sun to a weak eye ; the light it gives is painful.

  5. When man has become spiritualised and refined in the fire of divine love which purifies him, he is then within the union and inflowing of the loving illumination with the sweetness with which an angel receives them. There are souls who in this life receive a more perfect illumination than the angels.

  6. When God gives great graces to a soul through the hands of an angel, He ordinarily allows the devil to know it, that he may assail that soul with all his might, according to the measure of justice, in order that the victory may be the more prized, and the soul, faithful in temptation, may be the more abundantly rewarded.

  7. Remember that your guardian angel does not always move the will to act, though he always enlightens the reason ; therefore do not promise yourself sensible sweetness always in your works, because reason and understanding are sufficient.

  8. When the desires of man are occupied with anything that is not God, they embarrass the soul and shut the door against the light by which the angel moves it to virtue.

  9. Consider what utter vanity it is to rejoice in anything but in the service of God, how dangerous and how fatal ; how ruinous it proved to the angels who rejoiced and had complacency in their own beauty and their natural endowments ; for this they fell deformed into the abyss.

Chapter 12 of 30