YOU SHALL SEE...THE ANGELS OF GOD ASCENDING AND DESCENDING ON THE SON OF MAN. Jesus clearly was referring to the vision of the Patriarch, Jacob, at Bethel, who saw in a numinous dream the Lord himself, standing at the head a ladder on which angels of God were ascending and descending (Genesis 28: 10-17). The message God revealed to him then was a promise of blessing, to the effect that his descendants would be as numerous as the sands of the sea. Jacob later on was given the new name, Israel, as he wrestled with the angel in a divine encounter in which he proved steadfast, thus becoming as it were the embodiment of his people. Jesus, in taking up this image of the ladder and the angels, gives a new interpretation to this revelation, one that gives it a fresh and enduring significance. and reveals that he is the surpassing realizing of the promises God gives his people. Our Lord himself is the one on whom the angels will henceforth descend from the Father and ascend again. He is the ladder that unites heaven and earth, through whom the blessing comes upon the new Israel. Though the Lord does not explicitly state it here, he will prove the inheritor of Jacob's blessing. It is by accepting the life and love that his reconciling mission bestows as a gift from the Father that men and women will become his members, and with him form the true Israel of God.

We know from other words of our Lord, to be sure, that his communications with the Father were not only those mediated by divinely sent messengers, given the name angels ( ) by the Greeks. His communion with the Father was direct, immediate and total. "To have seen me is to have seen the Father... Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?" Yet at times he received the ministrations of these heavenly messengers. Matthew (4: 11) relates that after the temptations in the desert, " the devil left him and angels looked after him." Our Lord became familiar with the angels and knew he could call upon the Father to provide him with their aid at will, as he told Peter in the garden at the time of his arrest (Matthew 26: 53). We too have a direct relation with God by virtue of the Holy Spirit who is given us, and yet God chooses often to deal with us through others. At times through angels, probably much more frequently than we perceive, for their action is invisible and subtle except in rare instances, when we sense their protection at times of danger or their inspirations that assist us at prayer or in some act of charity. More frequently, to be sure, the Lord treats with us through other men or women, who perform the same function as do the angels.

St. Augustine, who holds that we will be "equal to the angels in the kingdom of Christ and of God"(Tractatus in Johannis Evangelio CXVII.2 ed. Teofilo Prieto (Madrid 1955), interprets the angels spoken of by Jesus in this passage as signifying preachers of the word of God. He comments in these terms:

What did he see then on the ladder? Angels who were ascending and descending. The Church is like that, brothers: The angels of God are good preachers, preaching Christ, that is, they ascend and descend on the son of man... They ascend by imitation (of Christ) and descend by preaching (op. cit. VII.23, 247).

YOU SHALL SEE...THE ANGELS OF GOD ASCENDING AND DESCENDING ON THE SON OF MAN. But there are many other ways in which we can act after the manner of the angels in assisting others on their way to Christ, sharing such knowledge of his as we possess, studying the faith so as to be better equipped to pass it on, and especially by witness to the Lord by lives of holiness. May the Eucharist we offer here obtain for each of us the grace to share with others the life and love that Christ brings to us from the Father, and thus be worthy to join the angels in Singing God's praises for all eternity.

Abbot John Eudes Bamberger

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