August 10.

The angels weave what God creates, according to their functions. His
archangels are the weavers of time, and all the others of material
nature, uninformed by a soul. This is a branch of the heavenly song.
To weave God's image is the function of the saints and of all those on
earth. It is the wonder of incarnate Music that saved the world,
Absolute Silence born into Sound, and dying with all Sound into
Silence. The archangels are God's messengers of life and death, for
they control the days. But they are sent from Him to His Image, and
our weaving is made out of their materials as we adapt them to our
song. All outer powers and forces are brought us by the angels, and
among the dearest to God's heart are his flame-winged Possibilities
that hover on the borderline between today and tomorrow, Time and
Eternity. They alone may not enter time unless we beckon them. The
starry heaven is the heaven of the body; the crystal sphere, of the
intellect; and the empyrean, of the pure soul. We may live in the
starry heaven in this life, if God gives us the grace. But it is then
a heaven of desire. But the weaving of the angels is the whole
philosophy of nature. Their music explains its sympathies and sorrows,
its deaths and resurrections, and above all its solemn silences of
night and noon. And the song of their weaving becomes nature's love of
wisdom, that is to say, adoration of the Word. The saints are the only
complete philosophers. The object of asceticism is generally
misunderstood, particularly in one phase of its endeavors,--to forget
the body. The truth of the matter is that the flesh and blood in their
highest song toward which we should strive are so occupied with
praising God that they completely lack self-consciousness, and do not
distract the intellect or the will. God is with them in naked purity.
It is His simplest and dearest starry music. He demands that our life