In an economy of love

The sentence from Genesis about Jacob coming to a certain place and stopping for the night because the sun had set gives an idea of how vulnerable we creatures really are, apart from the protective technology we’ve managed to think up. So thanks be to God for the ministry of angels, for without their continual and close companioning who knows where we would be?

As comforting as this is to remember, though, it is not actually the most important work the angels do. The existence of this great company is ordered first and foremost not to the service of human need, but to the worship of God.

The feast of St Michael and all the angels recovers to us the understanding that our first, most necessary vocation is becoming fully responsive, integral creatures of an economy of love whose purpose is to bless.

Having their faces turned toward God, the angels teach us to direct this endless capacity for adoration to its only proper end, that is, in God. It is not so much that we are being saved in order that we may bless, but it is by exercising our capacity for blessing that we are, in Christ, going to find ourselves saved.