Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES The Angels and their Mission. By JEAN DANIELOU, S. J. Translated by DAVID HEIMANN. Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1957. Pp. 114. $~.75. In order effectively to bring salvation to men the Church meets the problems of each age by insisting on particular and pertinent doctrines of revelation. In the last century, when her authority was challenged, she defined the infallibility of the Supreme Pontiff; when workers were oppressed by employers, she forcefully restated the dignity of man and his right to a decent living. Sometimes she has emphasized aspects of particular doctrine. She did this with the doctrine of the angels. In the Middle Ages, which were much given to speculation, learned treatises on the nature and function of angels were needed. The Christians of the first centuries lived under different conditions and faced different problems. They had inherited the teaching of the Old Testament on the angels and they were aware that special aspects of this teaching would be understandable and attractive to neoplatonic philosophers and to believers in current Asian religions, be they Mithraic or Manichean. In this situation the Fathers and the early ecclesiastical writers, in treating of the angels, concentrated on their mission, that is, the manner in which they were sent to men. They brought out the particular guardianship of the angels over the Chosen People in the giving of the Law and in the preparation for the coming of the Messias. They showed that the nations, too, though corrupt for the most part, were not without angelic assistance in their striving for a knowledge of God. They explained the familiar role of the angels at the Nativity and represented them as rejoicing at the Incarnation which would aid them in working for men. They portrayed the less familiar but not less interesting activity of the angels as they escorted Christ to heaven where the receiving angels, until informed, do not recognize the Word Incarnate. After Christ's Ascension, the Fathers see the angels watching over in a special way the Church and the Sacraments through which He continues to live among men. In the conflict between the powers of light and the powers of darkness they maintained that each man has a special evil angel enticing him to sin; they believed, too, that a good angel was appointed to help each man to act virtuously and attain union with God. And this assistance does not end with death but is present even at the resurrection and_the Second Coming. All this early Christian teaching on the angels is set forth in a scholarly 111 112 BRIEF NOTICES manner in Father Danielou's short work. He uses Apocrypha to some extent, but draws mainly upon the Fathers, especially Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom. His selections are always readable and at times curiously inte~esting, for example: the sin of the angels consisted in their refusal to acknowledge the image of God in Adam; Christ after His Ascension called the friendly powers together in heaven to share familiarly with them His joy. As is to be expected from a professor of the history of primitive Christianity, the author writes from the historical rather than from the doctrinal point of view. He is more concerned with accurate reference than with theological argument. The work is well documented. References are frequently made to the sources from which the material has been derived. Of special value is the Index of Citations at the end of the volume. It makes readily available quotations from Holy Scripture and the writings of the Fathers. This monograph should be found among any collection of works on angelology. Dominican House of Philosophy, Dover, Mass. c._ I. LITZINGER, o. P. Prayer in Practice. By RoMANO GuARDINI. Trans. by Prince LEOPOLD OF LoEWENSTEIN-WERTHEIM. New York: Pantheon Books Inc., 1957. Pp. 228. $3.50. Prayer in Practice says nothing new but the Author draws aside the curtain of the obvious, so often missed, and the reader, at whatever stage of spiritual advancement even only potential, sees himself in his daily life. The difficulties of life, and therefore of prayer which is part of life, find their fundamental and obvious solution in...