On the first Holy Thursday, Our Lord went into the garden to pray, signaling the beginning of His divine Passion. He said, “Father, if it be Thy will, take this cup from Me: nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done.” Then an angel appeared to Him coming down from heaven to give Him strength. Just as the angel from heaven strengthened and nourished Our Lord, the Eternal High Priest, we gather in the presence of the Holy Eucharist to strengthen and spiritually nourish our priests, through the intercession of the Holy Angels.
Jesus intended that through priests, this all-important duty of the priestly office should live on in the Church in a visible way. For this reason, the care for the sacramental priesthood of the Church is an essential characteristic of the Work of the Holy Angels.
The Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ lies at the center of our Christian faith. The Passover of Jesus accomplished through His suffering, death and resurrection also lies at the center of the spirituality of the Work of the Holy Angels. Associate members of the Opus Angelorum are encouraged to observe a weekly memorial of our Lord’s Passion in union with the holy angels of God. Beginning each Thursday evening and continuing until Friday afternoon members are asked to maintain a certain degree of recollection and reflection on the Lord’s Passio. Active members of the Confraternity should spend an hour on Thursday evenings and another hour on Friday afternoon (according to
the possibilities of one’s state in life), dedicating themselves to prayer and adoration in union with Jesus Christ as He passed through the Agony in the Garden on the first Holy Thursday, and died on the Cross on the first Good Friday.
Just as the angel came to strengthen Christ in the Garden of Gethsemani, so also do we invoke the holy angels to strengthen us in the carrying of our own crosses. While by the observance of the Passio Domini, we are concerned first and foremost with accompanying Our Lord in His sufferings, it is also a prayer of intercession for others, especially for priests. As we accompany Him in His Passion, we offer the drops of Jesus’s Precious Blood which He shed for love of us and for the salvation of the world. We offer His Blood in particular for priests and religious, that they be faithful in the fulfillment of their vocations. We also intercede for those priests who have abandoned their vocation, that they may be reconciled to Christ and His Church.
We listen for Our Lord to speak to our hearts and we implore the Heavenly Father to allow one drop of the Precious Blood of Jesus, shed in the Garden of Gethsemani, to fall on those for whom we pray. In Our Lord’s deepest despair, He found the Apostles asleep and asked them, “Could you have not stayed awake but for one hour?” As Pope John Paul II once wrote, we want to make up for that lost hour with our loving Adoration.
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