INASMUCH as God continually sends us inspirations by means of His Angels, we may fitly send back our aspirations through the same channel. The souls of the holy dead, resting in Paradise, who are, as our Lord Himself has told us, the Angels in Heaven, are also united to us in their prayers. We should gladly join our hearts with these heavenly blessed ones for even as the newly fledged nightingale learns to sing with the elder birds, so by our sacred communion with the Saints, we shall learn better to pray and sing the praises of the Lord. David has continually united his prayers with those of all the Saints and Angels. Honor, revere, and respect the Blessed Virgin Mary with a very special love; she is the Mother of our Sovereign Lord, and so we are her children.

 

Let us think of her with all the love and confidence of affectionate children; let us desire her love, and strive with true filial hearts to imitate her graces. Seek to be familiar with the Angels; learn to realize that they are continually present, although invisible. Especially love and revere the Guardian Angel of the Diocese in which you live, they are the friends who surround you, Communicate with them frequently, join in their songs of praise, and seek their protection and help in all you do, spiritual or temporal. That pious man Peter Faber, the first companion of Saint Ignatius, and the first priest, first preacher and first theological teacher of the Company of the Jesuits, who was a native of the Diocese, once passing through this country on his way from Germany, (where he had been laboring for God Glory,) told how great comfort he had found as he went among places infested with heresy in union with the guardian Angels thereof, whose help had often preserved him from danger, and softened hearts to receive the faith. He spoke with such earnestness, that a lady who, when quite young, heard him, was so impressed, that she repeated his words to me only four years ago, sixty years after their utterance, with the utmost feeling. I had the happiness, only last year of consecrating an altar in the place where it pleased God to give that blessed man birth, the little village of Villaret, amid the wildest of our mountains. You will do well to choose out for yourself some individual Saint, whose life especially to study and imitate, and whose prayers may be more particularly offered on your behalf. The Saint bearing your own baptismal name would seem to be naturally assigned to you.