Excerpt from The Holy Family Rosary:
In our search for God’s love, how else are we to understand what is best for us to desire without knowledge and symbols of wisdom past? The realization of man’s obedient love for God can be seen demonstrated in our continuation of the Old Testament use of “The veil, the ark, the bars, the propitiatory, the table, with the vessels thereof, and the loaves of proposition:”[1] and “Thou shalt prepare also dishes, and bowls, censers, and cups, wherein the libations are to be offered, of the purest gold.”[2] These are all employed in the sacrifice, distribution, reception and adoration of the Sacred Host in Holy Mass, in remembrance of the loving Sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb, just as the four metal wheels of the holy Cherubim can be identified with the chalice, the patens, the ciborium (equated as the pyx, repository or custodia, repositorium, and capsula) and the ostensorium (also called an ostensory, monstrance, lunula or lunette).
If the wheels surrounding the Cherubim are the instruments of the Sacrifice of the Mass, this would explain why, when the Cherubim ascend, “the wheels also went by them,”[3] never turning but always facing in the direction they go because they only go forward as God’s Will, which is what the Cherubim succinctly guard so very well; “placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life”[4] for “the spirit of life was in the wheels”[5] and “were lifted up with them.”[6] All in fear of the Lord, both servile and filial, the essential foundation of wisdom within Christ’s Church. These same cherubim stand watch at the altars of Holy Mother Church, forever regarded as the gateway to heaven on earth. This gateway of sustaining grace is Holy Eucharist.
Ezekiel’s vision finds great support within the meditations of the Faithful Mysteries when we see our vigil faces as “…the circles [that] were full of eyes, round about the four wheels”[7] looking in with hands folded as once of old behind altar rails in heightened expectation of eternal fruition from the Paschal Feast, reverently prepared to receive in awe Our Lord whom, as promised, would “be with us all days”[8] – The Holy Eucharist, indeed.
What a glorious vision to see these holy vessels as the metal wheels of the Holy Cherubim that many faithful eyes contemplate while containing the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Inner Wheel – the Lord of Hosts – the Divine Origin, Sacred Font and Holy Source of the “Wheelworks” of God! O Sacrum Mysterium! O sweet mystery of faith. O Happy Chance to believe!
[1] Ex. 39:34-35.
[2] Ex. 25:29.
[3] Ez. 10:16.
[4] Gen. 3:24.
[5] Ez. 1:20.
[6] Ez. 1:19.
[7] Ez. 10:12.
[8] Mt 28:20.
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