Our Angelic Defenders
I’ve sometimes said that I’m the youngest person you will meet who has strong memories of something that the tidal wave of social, educational, and ecclesiological change in the 1960s was going to leave in sticks and rubble. In part, that’s because I taught myself to read when I was three, so I could, for example, puzzle out the Latin on the left page of the handsome missal that my mother always took to daily Mass. I was too small to see the priest, so I thought his voice was coming from high up on the wall by the ceiling, not that I paid any mind to him. The book was more interesting.
Yet now I see that many things were already lost before I arrived. I suppose my fellow Christians in other communions can name some: congregations that sang in four-part harmony, without a choirmaster; weekly evening lectures on the Christian life—who can name them all?
The book I am holding can give us a few: Paroissien Romain [Roman Parishioner], printed in Belgium in 1956. It contains prayers, readings, and chants for the Mass and the Divine Office for every Sunday through the year and all feast days. Its inside cover is marked “Paroisse Notre Dame de l’Assomption, Arichat, 1958.” That’s the main church on the island in Nova Scotia where we live in the summer.
I took my copy from a stash in a closet, long forgotten.
The preface contains twenty small-print pages describing how to pronounce Latin and how to execute Gregorian chant. It’s clear that the publishers wanted people to understand and to communicate the verses they were singing, by making sure that words and phrases preserved their integrity across a tapestry of notes. But precise technical discussions of rhythmic stress and rhythmic synthesis are not as important as what would be sung, almost all of which has been discarded.
Prayers for Michaelmas
Here I turn to one of the great feasts of old, now neglected: what the English called Michaelmas, September 29. It’s a feast in honor not only of Saint Michael the Archangel, but of all of those mysterious intellectual beings whom God has assigned to man’s protection. I think it would be altogether good for Christians to keep in mind that angels—spiritual beings whose precise nature has not been revealed to us—do exist, both those that are ministers of God and those that fell with Satan. The blessed angels are our superiors, but they and we are still fellow servants of the Most High. It is impossible to consider the glory of the angels apart from their obedience and their humility, and that is what we learn from the old chants and readings presented in Paroissien Romain.
The chant of the Introit, simple and direct in melody, binds men and angels together in praise of God:
Benedicite Dominum omnes Angeli ejus: potentes virtute, qui facitis verbum ejus, ad audiendam vocem sermonum ejus. Alleluia, alleluia. Benedic anima mea Domino, et omnia quae intra me sunt, nomini sancto ejus.
Bless the Lord, all ye his Angels, mighty in power, who perform his word when ye hear the voice of his speech. Alleluia, Alleluia. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
The subsequent prayer, the collect for the day, develops this relationship: “O God, who by a wondrous order hast disposed the service of men and angels, graciously vouchsafe that our life, which is continually assisted by those who minister before thee in heaven, may be defended by them also upon earth.” Even if man is the only intellectual creature in the physical universe, we are not alone. The cloud of witnesses about us includes these, our elder brothers.
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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more on Imagination from the online archives
19.10—December 2006
Training Up a Child Requires a Well-Formed Imagination by David Mills
11.5—September/October 1998
Speaking the Truths Only the Imagination May Grasp
An Essay on Myth & 'Real Life' by Stratford Caldecott
18.4—May 2005
The Idylls, Idols & Devils That Corrupt the Moral Imagination by Vigen Guroian
more from the online archives
22.6—July/August 2009
on a Noble Defense Doomed by Darwinian Materialism by John G. West
32.6—November/December 2019
The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis by Alan Jacobs by Jesse Russell
30.5—Sept/Oct 2017
The Critical History Before, During & After Martin Luther by James Hitchcock
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