In his Canticle of the Sun, Saint Francis of Assisi has this to say about fire:

Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Focu,

per lo quale ennallumini la nocte:

ed ello è bello et iucundo et robustoso et forte.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,

through whom you light the night and he is beautiful

and playful and robust and strong.

Fire can certainly be beautiful. Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) thought we were fools to move one of the most beautiful sights in the world—a living fire—from the fireplace to a furnace in the basement. And fire is also playful: after all, it dances. Finally, fire is robust and strong, especially with the right fuel like a nice, dry, crackling log.

After wishing that Brother Wind and the air praise God, Saint Francis turns to Sister Water:

Laudato si, mi Signore, per sor’Acqua,

la quale è multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,

which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

In the Canticle of the Sun, Saint Francis moves from the sun, moon, and stars to Brother Wind, the air, and the weather:

Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Uento

et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo,

per lo quale, a le Tue creature dài sustentamento.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,

and through the air, cloudy and serene,

and every kind of weather through whom you give sustenance to Your creatures.

And He said to them: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” (John 20, 22-23).

Lost in Translation #152

After Brother Sun, St. Francis turns to other lights in the sky:

Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora Luna e le stelle:

in celu l’ài formate clarite et pretiose et belle.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,

in heaven you formed them bright and precious and beautiful.

He also calls the moon and stars bright, precious, and beautiful. We have translated the word clarite, from which we derive the English word “clear,” as “bright,” because that is its meaning, but the word can also suggest a kind of perfection, like a diamond’s clarity. Francis, in other words, is describing the moon and stars as jewels in the sky. One wonders if the Saint is contrasting his worldview before his conversion, when he delighted in the finer things of life (like clothes and maybe jewels), to his current view of the world, now seen through the eyes of God. Saint Francis does not mention the night by name, but it is obviously implied by the nocturnal celestial objects that he wants to praise God. The night can have negative metaphorical meaning. As the deprivation of light, it can symbolize a deprivation of goodness, understanding, or grace. That is why St. John of the Cross called his period of spiritual dryness the “dark night of the soul.”

After devoting two stanzas in his Canticle of the Sun to God and man (which we have traced in our series of article  here and here), Francis devotes the rest of his composition to God and material creation. He moves more or less altitudinally, from the highest thing in the physical universe on down. For him, that means starting with the sun:

Laudato sie, mi Signore cum tucte le Tue creature,

spetialmente messor lo frate Sole,

lo qual è iorno, et allumini noi per lui.

Et ellu è bellu e radiante cum grande splendore:

de Te, Altissimo, porta significatione.

Be praised, my Lord, through all Your creatures,

especially Sir Brother Sun,

who is the day, and who enlightens us through him.

And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor!

He brings meaning about You, O Most High.

O Splendor of the Father’s glory,

Bringing forth light from light,

Light of light and Font of light,

Illuminating the days of days.

And true Sun, flow on,

Glittering with everlasting brilliance;

And the radiance of the Holy Spirit,

Pour fourth onto our senses.

The first two stanzas of St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun (which we began examining last week) are:

Altissimu, omnipotente bon Signore, Tue so le laude, la gloria e l’honore et onne benedictione.

Ad Te solo, Altissimo, se konfano, et nullu homo ène dignu te mentouare.

Which I and others translate as:

Most High, Almighty, good Lord, Yours are praise, glory, honor, and every blessing.

To You alone, Most High, do they belong, and no man is worthy of mentioning You.

Saint Francis begins his song about creation with praise of the Creator, for creation owes all its goodness to its Creator. Two themes emerge: the transcendence of God and the lowliness of man.

The key thing to understand about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is that He is not the highest point in the pyramid of existence: He is above the pyramid altogether. As C.S. Lewis writes: “If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe – no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house.” [1] Just as an architect utterly transcends the house that he makes and is made of an entirely different stuff than a house, so too does God utterly transcend His creation and has an Essence entirely different from that of His creation.

C.S. Lewis and his house

That said, divine transcendence does not mean divine distance. As St. Augustine notes, God is closer to us than we are to ourselves: He is secretissimus et praesentissimus, most hidden and most present. [2] Unlike the architect who can walk away from and forget about the house that he built, God remains utterly present to His creation at all time; if He forgot about it for one moment, it would cease to exist. And creation abounds with God’s fingerprints, eloquently pointing back to its Creator. Again Augustine comes to mind. “Tell me of my God, since you are not He,” the Bishop of Hippo dramatically says to all creatures. “Tell me something of Him.” And they cried out in a great voice: “He made us!” Augustine adds that “their answer was their beauty.” [3]

From the book Gus Finds God

In his Canticle, Saint Francis indicates God’s transcendence with the words “Most High” (which he uses twice) and “Almighty” and by ascribing to God all praise, glory, honor, and blessing. This glorious, Supreme God is then contrasted with measly man, who is not even worthy of mentioning God. (Francis may have in mind the Jewish convention of never uttering the holy name of God, YHWH, a name too lofty to pass over sinful human lips.) It is a curious paradox: man can know that he has a Creator, but his own creatureliness and sinfulness make him unworthy to talk about Him.

And yet that is precisely what Francis does in this canticle. Unworthy though he is, he knows that he has been redeemed and given the gift of Faith which enables him to know, love, and serve his Creator. And he does so because giving God all praise and admitting one’s own lowliness is paradoxically liberating and exhilarating. Francis’ posture in the Canticle once more calls to mind Augustine, who begins his Confessions with:

Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and of Thy wisdom there is no number. And man desires to praise Thee. He is but a tiny part of all that Thou hast created. He bears about him his mortality, the evidence of his sinfulness, and the evidence that Thou dost resist the proud: yet this tiny part of all that Thou hast created desires to praise Thee. Thou dost so excite him that to praise Thee is his joy. For Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee. [4]

This article appeared as “Holy Creation” in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:3, international edition (March 2025), p. 21. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.

Notes

[1] Mere Christianity.

[2] Confessions 1.

[3] Confessions 10.6.9.

[4] Confessions 1.1.1

The year of Our Lord 2025 marks the 800th anniversary of Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures (also known as the Canticle of Brother Sun), and to honor this momentous occasion we will devote the next several issues to it.

The Sacrifice of Abraham, 1631/35, by the Flemish painter Cornelis de Vos (1585-1651)

The current effort to return to liturgical tradition takes, and must take, several forms. There are fraternities of priests who actively run parishes and shepherd souls, and there are contemplative nuns who pray without ceasing from behind cloister walls. There are polemicists on the front lines engaged in apologetics, like the late Michael Davies, and there are artists in music, painting, stained glass, and architecture trying to make churches once again centers of beauty.

Upon these [the consecrated Host and Chalice] deign to look with a favorable and serene countenance, and to accept them, as Thou wert graciously pleased to accept the gifts of Thy just servant Abel, and the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham, and that which Thy high priest Melchizedek offered to Thee, a holy Sacrifice, an unspotted Victim.

Melchizedek is not an Israelite either, but even as a pagan he somehow worships the true “God Most High, the Creator of heaven and earth” (Gen. 14, 19). Moreover, he is designated as both a king and a priest, and his offering of bread and wine clearly foreshadows the Eucharist. Hence, even though unbloody offerings in the Old Testament (such as grains and vegetables) are not called sacrifices or victims, the Supra quae propitio elaborately refers to Melchizedek’s offering as “that which he offered to You… a holy sacrifice, an unspotted victim.”

Together, the sacrifices of Abel and Melchizedek point to the Eucharist:

Abraham and Melchizedek, anonymous Italo-flemish, late 16th century

Israel’s liturgy and the aspirations of all human reverence towards the divine are thus taken up and fulfilled in the Eucharistic sacrifice. The sacrificial matter of Abel (the lamb) and of Melchizedek (bread and wine) lend themselves to this interpretation, since the Eucharistic sacrifice of bread and wine makes present the sacrificed Lamb (see Rev. 5, 6) (26).

But the real mystery is the sacrifice of Abraham. Böhler first establishes that the sacrifice of Isaac was designed by God to be a test not of Abraham’s obedience, but of his faith. Specifically, Abraham had to have faith that God would fulfill His promise to make Abraham’s descendants a great nation through Isaac even though Isaac was to be killed before he could sire any offspring. This meant only one thing: Abraham had to believe in the resurrection of the dead, in this case, the resurrection of his ostensibly-soon-to-be dead son Isaac. That is why Abraham remains our Patriarch, even if we do not share his bloodline; he is a towering figure of great faith in the key doctrine of Christianity.

And his sacrifice? It was not Isaac, who was spared. And for Böhler, it was not really the ram that Abraham substituted for Isaac. Böhler notes that rams had only one meaning in the Levitical sacrifices: “they were the classic sacrificial animal of cult inauguration” (34), such as initiating priestly ordination. The cult inauguration here on Mount Moriah is an anticipation of the cult that David and Solomon would inaugurate centuries later in the same location (later renamed Mount Zion) and the new cultus that Our Lord would inaugurate again in the same location in the Upper Room on Holy Thursday. Rather, for Böhler, “The sacrifice of Abraham was a sacrifice of himself by himself. He surrendered himself will all his hopes, his love, his faith, into the dark night of God’s will. It was a self-offering” (32). It is indeed fitting that this knight of Faith be remembered in the Canon.

After the Memento and Ipsis, Domine, the priest prays:

Nobis quoque peccatóribus fámulis tuis, de multitúdine miseratiónum tuárum sperántibus, partem áliquam et societátem donáre dignéris, cum tuis sanctis Apóstolis et Martýribus: cum Joanne, Stéphano, Matthía, Bárnaba, Ignatio, Alexandro, Marcellíno, Petro, Felicitáte, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucia, Agnéte, Caecilia, Anastasia, et ómnibus Sanctis tuis: intra quorum nos consortium, non aestimátor mériti, sed veniae, quaesumus, largítor admitte. Per Christum Dóminum nostrum.

To us sinners as well, Thy servants hoping in the multitude of Thy mercies, deign to grant some part and fellowship with Thy holy Apostles and Martyrs: with John, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and with all Thy Saints, into whose company, we beseech, admit us, not as an Assessor of merit but as a generous Bestower of pardon. Through Christ our Lord.

There are other differences as well. In the Communicantes, the priest describes “all here present” (omnes circumstantes) as communicating with (communicantes) the Saints before asking that their merits and prayers bring the help of God’s protection. In the Nobis quoque peccatoribus, the priest asks for communion with the Saints: first he asks for “some part and fellowship” with them, and then for their “company.” Some translations render communicantes in the first prayer as “in union with,” but if we are already in union with the Saints, why do we ask for fellowship with them here? (Unless, perhaps, it is another example of the liturgical stammer). I suspect, however, that the first prayer merely states that we are in touch with the Saints through our prayers, and that the second asks that we may enjoy their company for all eternity. But a note of humility and unworthiness pervades the petition. As Fr. Pius Parsch notes, in asking for “some part” of their company, the prayer essentially asks for “some obscure place in the realm of glory.” [7] The scene is redolent of the Publican who strikes his breast saying, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” (Luke 18, 9-14)

As for the order of the Saints, the male martyrs are organized according to rank while the women are organized according to vocation and region. For the men, the Apostles Stephen, Matthias, and Barnabas are followed by Ignatius the bishop, Alexander (who was a bishop or priest), Marcellinus the priest, and Peter the exorcist. 

For the women, there are two possibilities for Felicity and Perpetua. The first is that they are the famous Carthaginian martyrs Perpetua and Felicity, the former a well-educated noblewoman and mother of an infant son, the latter her slave who was pregnant when they were both fed to the beasts in A.D. 203. The only problem with this option is that it is more common to list the nobleman before the slave, whereas in the Nobis quoque peccatoribus Felicity comes first. The second possibility is that Felicity is a Roman matron and possible mother of the Seven Holy Brothers (July 10) who was martyred in A.D. 165 and who is here followed in the list by the Carthaginian martyr Perpetua. [8]

The next five are virgin martyrs (the same number as the five wise virgins in the Parable, Matthew 25, 1-13). Agatha and Lucy are from Sicily, Agnes and Cecilia are from Rome, and Anastasia of Sirmium, who has a station church in Rome once used for the Christmas dawn Mass and on Pentecost Tuesday, is from modern-day Serbia. The Roman Rite, as we have seen before, is steeped in the history of the Eternal City, but it is not insular, and so it honors Saints outside its borders.

In preconciliar hand Missals, as in the 2011 ICEL translation, the clause non aestimator meriti, sed veniae, quaesumus, largitor is usually translated with verbs, e.g., “not weighing our merits but granting us your pardon.” The Latin, however, uses two nouns, aestimator and largitor (a liberal giver). The difference is between doing and being. In this prayer, the priest goes further than petitioning God to do or not do something; he asks Him not to be the kind of Person who measures our value (which we know is wanting) and instead to be the kind of Person who is generous to a fault. And we already know that God is a Liberal Giver of Pardon because elsewhere we address Him with that title [9] along with “Liberal Giver of all goods” (omnium largitor bonorum) [10] and “Liberal Giver of indulgences” (largitor indulgentiae) [11]

Notes

[1] As Fr. Josef Jungmann explains, it was common for the clergy to designate themselves as sinners. They even signed their signatures in this manner. See The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, vol. 2 (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1951), pp. 249-50.

[2] See Jungmann, vol. 1, p. 72.

[3] See William Durandus, Rationale Divinorum Officionorum IV.35.11, IV.46.1, resp.

[4] See Rev. Neil J. Roy, “The Roman Canon: deëis in euchological form,” in Benedict XVI and the Sacred Liturgy, eds. Neil J. Roy and Janet E. Rutherford (Four Courts Press, 2008), pp. 181-199.

[5] Pius Parsch, The Liturgy of the Mass, trans. Frederic C. Eckhoff (St. Louis, Missouri: Herder, 1940), p. 187.

[6] See Roy. pp. 191-92.

[7] See Parsch, pp. 249-50.

[8] See Roy.

[9] The Collect Deus, veniae largitor et humanae salutis amator for All Souls’ Day, Office of Prime, and in the Office for the Dead.

[10] See the Collects for St. Bibiana (December 2) and St. Rose of Lima (August 30).

[11] The Lauds hymn Rex gloriose Martyrum for Several Martyrs.

From a Roman Missal printed in Venice in 1520.

After the Supplices te rogamus, the priest prays:

Memento etiam, Dómine, famulórum famularumque tuárum N. et N. qui nos praecessérunt cum signo fídei, et dormiunt in somno pacis.

Ipsis, Dómine, et ómnibus in Christo quiescéntibus, locum refrigerii, lucis et pacis, ut indúlgeas, deprecámur. Per eundem Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen.

Remember also, O Lord, Thy servants and handmaids N. et N., who are gone before us with the sign of Faith and rest in the sleep of peace.

We beg that You indulge these, O Lord, and all who rest in Christ, with a place of refreshment, light, and peace. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

The metaphors must be changed to keep the true sense, as in locum refrigerii in northern regions. (23b)

According to Comme le Prevoit, he should not be enjoying that.

It is true that refrigerium denotes coolness. In the devilishly godly humor of (Eastern Orthodox believer) Jason Peters, locum refrigerii is code for the kitchen – “whence all sickness, sorrow, and sighing have fled” – in part because it is where “Mr. Freezer” gets to meet “Mr. Martini glass.” [3] Peters even makes full use of the Ipsis, Domine, albeit in a way its pious author(s) never intended:

You ignore [Walker Percy’s essay] on bourbon at your own peril. One thing you’ll miss out on is Uncle Will’s mint julep recipe, to say nothing of Percy on the topic of college girls and nurses, where he’s without rival among the writers of the century he graced and helped make bearable. Ipsis, Domine, et Walker Percy et omnibus in Christo quiescentibus, locum refrigerii, lucis, pacis et bourbon, ut indulgeas, deprecamur. Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen. [4]

But as this citation illustrates, locum refrigerii can also mean a place of refreshment and consolation, and indeed it has had this usage in ecclesiastical Latin since the days of Tertullian. In his Apologeticus, Tertullian even uses the word in the same way as the Ipsis, Dominine, that is, as a description of the Beatific Vision. Christian beliefs about the afterlife, he writes,

make all who believe them better men and women, under the fear of eternal punishment and the hope of eternal refreshment [refrigerium].[5]

The Vulgate translation of the Bible also employs the broader definition of refrigerium:

Thou hast set men over our heads. We have passed through fire and water, and thou hast brought us out into a refreshment [refrigerium]. (Psalm 65, 12)

For they have said, reasoning with themselves, but not right: ‘The time of our life is short and tedious, and in the end of a man there is no remedy [refrigerium], and no man hath been known to have returned from Hell.’ (Wisdom 2, 1)

To whom he said: ‘This is my rest, refresh the weary, and this is my refreshing [refrigerium].’ And they would not hear. (Isaiah 28, 12)

The Lord give mercy to the house of Onesiphorus: because he hath often refreshed [refrigeravit] me, and hath not been ashamed of my chain. (2 Timothy 1, 16)

Curiously, the Consilium that issued Comme le Prevoit seems entirely unaware of the Christian usage of the word, fixating only on its original, pagan meaning. Other Catholics, however, were aware of the word’s deeper meaning. Evelyn Waugh includes a breathtaking description of a skydive in his Sword of Honour trilogy:

Guy jumped. For a second, as the rush of air hit him, he lost consciousness. Then he came to himself, his senses purged of the noise and smell and throb of the machine. The hazy November sun enveloped him in golden light. His solitude was absolute. He experienced rapture, something as near as his earthbound soul could reach to a foretaste of paradise, locum refrigerii, lucis et pacis. The aeroplane seemed as far distant as will, at the moment of death, the spinning earth. As though he had cast the constraining bonds of flesh and muscle and nerve, he found himself floating free… He was a free spirit in an element as fresh as on the day of its creation. [6]

Several (though not all) official translations of the Mass also evince a greater awareness of the Christian meaning of refrigerium. The 2011 English translation has “a place of refreshment, light, and peace,” replacing the earlier translation inspired by Comme le Prevoit: “May these…find in your presence light, happiness, and peace.” [7] The Missal in use in Mexico is similar to the improved 2011 English edition: concédeles el lugar del consuelo, de la luz y de la paz.[8]

2. Scandal of Particularity

A second point to be considered is that Christianity, and Judaism before it, radiates outward from what theologians call the “scandal of the particular.” [9] In the Old Testament, the Lord God chose Abraham and his seed out of all other nations to be His Chosen People. In the New, the eternal Word of God chose to take flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ, the foster son of a carpenter in the “fly over” town of Nazareth at a particular historical epoch, when the Romans had conquered much of the known world.

Apostolic liturgies followed suit, reveling in the cultural context in which they first received the Gospel. In the Byzantine Rite, homage is paid to St. John Chrysostom, the patriarch of their liturgy. In the Armenian Rite, it is St. Gregory the Illuminator. In the Roman Rite, it is the new founders of Christian Rome, Saints Peter and Paul, as one sees in the Confiteor and elsewhere. Apostolic liturgies do not abstract from the particular hands that bequeathed them the universal Gospel (itself a product of particular Revelation) but add them to the narrative, thereby providing a concrete link between our current age and that of the Apostles. As Pope Benedict XVI writes in his memoirs:

It was becoming more and more clear to me that here I was encountering a reality that no one had simply thought up, a reality that no official authority or great individual had created. This mysterious fabric of texts and actions had grown from the faith of the Church over the centuries. It bore the whole weight of history within itself, and yet, at the same time, it was much more than the product of human history. [10]

The traditional Roman Rite bears the whole weight of its Roman history, which is why it contains “metaphors” of coolness coming from a hot climate, and which is why it metaphorically conceives of the North as the realm of heathenism (the Germans!) when it points the celebrant northward to proclaim the Gospel, towards the barbarians on the other side of the Alps. Such particularity is not to be disdained but honored in an incarnational religion.

3. Souls in Purgatory

A third consideration is that the Ipsis, Domine is a prayer for the poor souls in Purgatory, and a petition to grant them a place of refreshment is a suitable remedy for their condition. As Fr. Martin Jugie writes in his classic Purgatory and the Means to Avoid It, the Magisterium has never formally defined Purgatory as a realm of fire, but it is by far the most common way to imagine it. [11] Western Christian art most often depicts Purgatory as such, and so does private revelation. In every vision that Saint Faustina had of Purgatory or of a soul in it, flames were involved. Indeed, Faustina describes Purgatory in her journal as “a misty place full of fire.” And if Purgatory is a misty place full of fire, then the antidote, so to speak, is a lightsome and peaceful place of refreshment. Appropriately, when Salvian of Marseilles (d. 480) discusses the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, when the damned Dives asks for Lazarus to “dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool [his] tongue, for [he is] tormented in this flame,” (Luke 16, 24) he calls it a petition for a “drop of refreshment” (gutta refrigerii). [12]

Souls in the flames of Purgatory, 15th century Missal

4. Not a Metaphor

Finally, the Consilium authors assume that locum refrigerii is a metaphor when in fact it is an allusion to a historic location.

During the Roman persecutions of Christianity, the sacred sites where Saints were martyred or buried and the places where the faithful gathered to celebrate Mass were not one and the same. And when the persecutions ceased, this custom of maintaining separate places continued for a while. At martyrs’ shrines like Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls and Saint Agnes in Rome, there were two buildings: a smaller basilica ad corpus where the bones of the martyr were kept and a larger basilica major or coemeterium, a roofed cemetery where Christians were either interred  in the ground or in mausolea. The basilica major was occasionally used for the celebration of Mass, but its main function was to house funerary banquets. Despite the protests of some Church Fathers like Saints Ambrose and Augustine, these banquets were enormously popular among early Christians. And the name of these banquets? A refrigerium. [13] There is, then, an actual historical locum refrigerii: it is the basilica major or coemeterium. The Ipsis, Domine, then, is essentially praying that the souls of the faithful departed may rest as peacefully as their bodies do in the places where funerary banquets are held, surrounded by joy and confidence.

Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls in the fourth century.

Thus saith the Lord: ‘Stand ye on the ways, and see and ask for the old paths which is the good way, and walk ye in it, and you shall find refreshment for your souls.’ And they said: ‘We will not walk.’ (Jeremiah 6, 16)

After the Supra quæ propitio, the priest prays:

Súpplices te rogámus, omnípotens Deus, jube hæc perférri per manus sancti Angeli tui in sublíme altáre tuum, in conspéctu divínæ majestátis tuæ: ut quotquot ex hac altáris participatióne sacrosánctum Fílii tui Corpus et Sánguinem sumpsérimus, omni benedictióne cælésti et grátia repleámur. Per eúndem Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen.

Suppliant we ask Thee, almighty God: command these to be borne all the way up by the hands of Thy holy angel to Thine altar borne on high, in the sight of Thy divine Majesty, so that as many of us as shall have consumed the sacrosanct Body and Blood of Thy Son by this partaking of the altar may be filled with every heavenly blessing and grace. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

And another angel came, and stood before the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given to him much incense, that he should offer of the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar, which is before the throne of God. And the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the saints ascended up before God from the hand of the angel.

A second possibility is that the Holy Angel is Christ Himself, whom St. Paul calls the Messenger of God (angelos Theou) in Galatians 4, 14. Although it is true that every Mass is offered to the Father through the Son (and with the Holy Spirit), I am of the opinion that the Angel referenced here is a celestial spirit and not the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, for the Son of God is mentioned in the second half of the prayer as being here on the altar and not journeying away from it to Heaven. The imagery would be confusing if we were asking Christ to be in two different places at the same time, even though He is, of course, present to all places at all times. Another consideration is that in the Book of Tobias the Archangel Raphael tells the elder Tobias that he himself offered all of Tobias’ prayers and good works to the Lord (see 12, 12). If that is true of all prayer, namely, that angels play a role in communicating our prayers to God, and if the Mass is the greatest prayer that can be offered to God, it stands to reason that a Holy Angel plays a role in that offering.

Saint Jude, who shares a feast today with Saint Simon the Zealot on October 28, is also called “Thaddeus” (the Brave One) in the New Testament. Jude was one of the original twelve Apostles and probably the brother of St. James the Less. It is also speculated that he was the nephew of St. Joseph and hence the legal cousin of Our Lord, one of those blessed few who were considered the “brethren” of Jesus (Matthew 13, 55).