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85 SERMON 07 ECCE EGO MITTO Sermon on the Second Sunday of Advent1 Matthew 11.10: Behold, I send my angel before your face. Fragment EHOLD, I send my angel before your face” [Mt 11.10]. These words are taken from the last chapter of Malachi [3.1]. In these words three aspects of the gracious arrival of the Savior are described: (1) the marvelous estimation of God the Father, (2) the obliging ardor of the precursor, and (3) the marvelous kindness (benignitas) of the Savior. The first, where it says: “Behold, I send”; the second, where it says: “my angel”; the third, where it says: “before your face.” So note, regarding all these things, that, just as the Savior was sent,2 so also the precursor was sent to us by the Father through the commission of an angel, not through nature.3 For they have truly been our angels who were sent to us in the name of God, in order to prepare the ways4 that lead to the heavenly dwelling places. Gn 28.12 reads: “Jacob saw the ladder and God’s angels ascending and descending on it.” This was [as follows :] (a) In order to disclose the secrets of the decrees of the divine will, “the Law was issued by the angels at the hand of a mediator,” as it says in Gal 3.19. (b) In order to fulfill their duty “ 1. Probably given on the 9th of December 1268, at Milan. 2. Lk 1.26–38; cf. ST III 30. 3. John the Baptist: his coming was through a gracious act of God: Lk 1.10– 20, 24–25; cf. ST III 27,1 and 6. 4. Is 40.3, Mk 1.2–3. On icons and in other art John the Baptist himself is sometimes depicted with wings of an angel; he is pre-eminently the messenger (angelos) of God; cf. ST III 38,1–2. 86 THOMAS AQUINAS concerning the divine things coming down from heaven, “angels came to him and served him,” as Mt 4.11 reads.5 (c) In order to render examples and proofs of spiritual perfection, “the angels of God had gone to meet Jacob, and when he had seen them, he said: ‘These are the encampments of God’”; Gn 32, 33.12.6 5. The mission of the angels was completed as Christ began to reveal himself ; mediators were not needed anymore. What had been announced by angels and prophets and expected by the people for ages (cf. Mt 13.16–17) now became true (cf. ST I–II 98,3; II–II 172,2). 6. The words quoted are from Gn 32.1–3. ...

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