1. Angels Holy, Angels of Light | 2. Rolling Away the Stone |. 3. Appearance of the Angel | 4. The Angel of Sleep and the Angel of Death | 5. To the Realms of Endless Day | 6. Soothing Troubled Hearts | 7. Serving the Savior | 8. The Legend of St Catherine | 9. Angels Sexless | 10. Gathering the Elect | 11. The Knowledge of Angels | 12. Perpetual Youth | 13. The Apparition of the Angel | 14. Thy Prayer is Heard | 15. The Joyous Message | 16. The Sign of Angelic Ministry | 17. Gabriel, the Messenger of God | 18. They Serve on Earth and Sing in Heaven | 19. Embassador Extraordinary | 20. Gabriel's Symbol, the Lily | 21. The Visit to Mary | 22. A Comforting Assurance | 23. Sweetest Name in Seraph Song | 24. Guardian of Celestial Treasury | 25. Angels Pictured by Artists | 26. Angels in Sculpture | 27. The Archangel Gabriel | 28. The Mystic Rose | 29. The Prince of Peace | 30. Good Tidings of Geat Joy | 31. Gloria in Excelsis
GABRIEL'S SYMBOL—THE LILY.
July 20.
And the angel came in unto her, and said: Hail! thou that art highly favored, the
lord is with thee: Blessed art thou among women.—Luke 1:28.
OF CHILD angels there is an almost inexhaustible lore.
Donatello's winged babes fill many a spandrel most captivatingly.
They beam above a ''Nativity.'' They weep piteously at a "
Deposition in the Tomb. '' They clasp hands and sing in
Tuscan marble groups. Lucca della Kobbia ranged them in
lovely friezes of enameled terra-cotta. In the greatest of all
sacred pictures, Raphael's incomparable "san sisto" Madonna,
it often escapes notice that the whole space behind the figures is
filled with innumerable cherub faces, giving a sense of multitudinous
adoration. But no one forgets the two lovely children
that look out from the threshold of that faultless composition.
They stand for the awakening of the infant mind to spiritual
truths, and may be called Meditation and Contemplation. It is
infancy consecrated by immortal art. In pictures that represent
the flight into Egypt the hovering cherubs are supposed to be the
spirits of the Innocents slain by Herod in Bethlehem. The subject
of child angels leads to that of guardian angels. Recalling
Browning's poem "The Guardian Angel of Fano," we pass from
the images of the painter to those of the poet. It has been said
that when Dante is great, nobody surpasses him. Surely in
portraiture of angels no one equals him. There is a vivid suddenness,
an awful radiance when they appear in the "Divina
Commedia," unique in all poetry.
Passing from Dante to Tasso is to pass from gold to silver,
from sunlight to moonlight. Tasso seems too labored, too
honeyed, too conscious of artistic effect; yet his Gabriel in the
first canto of the "Gerusalemme Liberata," v. 104, is very fine:
"A youth he seemed in manhood's ripening years,
On the smooth cheek where first the down appears.
Refulgent rays his beauteous locks enfold,
White are his nimble wing's, and edged with gold.
With these through winds and clouds he cuts his way,
Flies o'er the land and skims along the sea."
—From Essay entitled "Angels in Art and Poetry."
Archangels leave their high abode
To learn new mysteries here, and tell
The love of our descending God—
The glories of Immanuel. —Anonymous.
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