On this Saturday in the fourteenth week of Ordinary Time, we begin to spend some time with the prophet Isaiah. As we listen to the passage that describes how God called him to be a prophet, we are immediately introduced to his masterful way of couching his writing in literary figures of speech. He begins with a paradox, a figure of speech that makes his point by employing a powerful negative image. “In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne with the train of his garment filling the temple.” Uzziah died as a leper hidden away in a dark room of his palace. No one was admitted into his presence; no one saw him in his misery. By contrast, God’s court or throne room is filled with light by the presence of seraphim poised above God’s throne.
St. Dionysius, a convert of St. Paul, wrote about the seraphim in his treatise on celestial hierarchy. “The name seraphim clearly indicates their ceaseless and eternal revolution about Divine Principles, their heat and keenness, the exuberance of their intense, perpetual, tireless activity, and their elevative and energetic assimilation of those below, kindling them and firing them to their own heat, and wholly purifying them by a burning and all-consuming flame; and by the unhidden, unquenchable, changeless, radiant and enlightening power, dispelling and destroying the shadows of darkness.”
St. Thomas Aquinas also wrote about the seraphim and explains the fire, heat and light which emanate from them. He reminds us that flames most often move upward, thus elevating those around them to the heights of charity which creates the fire. The heat that accompanies the fire is the heat of ardor or fervor. The light that results from the fire brings clarity and definition with which they enlighten others.
The seraph figures in our own Franciscan spirituality as St. Bonaventure and the other biograhers of St. Francis tell us that it was a seraph which imparted the stigmata on the flesh of St. Francis. The wounds of the crucifixion were granted to St. Francis because he prayed that he might experience the charity that moved Jesus to sacrifice his life for us as well as the passion and suffering which accompanied his suffering.
This may all sound a little academic. However, if we come back to the scene of Isaiah’s call, we are reminded that we too have received a call from God. The charity, ardor, fervor and clarity which are symbolized in the seraphim are wonderful reminders of our own mission. We join with them each day in our Eucharist as we pray, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts! All the earth is filled with his glory!”
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator