Bishop Erik Varden Reflects on God’s Angels During Vatican Lenten Retreat
During the annual Lenten Spiritual Exercises at the Vatican, Bishop Erik Varden offered a meditation on the theme of God’s angels, inviting Pope Leo XIV, cardinals, and senior officials of the Roman Curia to rediscover the depth and seriousness of angelic presence in Christian life.
Preaching to those gathered for the retreat, the Bishop of Trondheim reflected on the Gospel account of Christ’s forty days in the desert. He recalled how Satan cited Psalm 90 when tempting Jesus, urging Him to throw Himself from the pinnacle of the temple with the assurance that angels would bear Him up. Bishop Varden noted that this episode reveals a crucial distinction. God may call a person to leap in trust, but never as an act of reckless self assertion. The divine invitation is not to throw oneself down, but to entrust oneself into the arms of the Father.
Angels, he explained, are not instruments for human caprice. They do not exist to affirm impulsive desires or dramatic gestures. Drawing on an ancient prayer to the guardian angel, Bishop Varden highlighted the verbs enlighten, keep, govern, and guide. These words suggest responsibility, discipline, and protection. An angel guards holiness and directs the human person toward truth.
The Bishop also recalled how the monastic tradition has long described religious life as angelic. This description refers not only to a life dedicated to praise, but also to the call to be aflame with God’s love and to carry that love into the world. In the liturgy, he said, the praise of Christ rises from earth to heaven through a chain of mediation in which angels play an essential role.
Citing the teaching of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Bishop Varden reflected on angels as mediators of divine providence. While God can act directly in human hearts, He often chooses to work through His creatures. Christians are therefore invited to imitate the angels by descending in mercy toward their neighbor and then lifting their desires toward eternal truth. Human longing, even in its embodied form, is ultimately directed toward fulfillment in God and must be guided accordingly.
The meditation also turned to the final act of angelic charity at the hour of death. Angels, Bishop Varden said, will accompany the faithful beyond the veil of this world into eternity. In that moment, illusion and rhetoric fall away, and only truth remains, illumined by mercy.
He further reflected on the thought of Saint John Henry Newman, who contemplated the priestly vocation and the teacher’s mission as sharing something of the angelic character. In an age shaped by digital technologies, Bishop Varden suggested that authentic human encounters remain irreplaceable. An angelic presence is always personal, marked by wisdom and trust, and cannot be reduced to virtual exchange.
Through this reflection, the retreat participants were encouraged to rediscover angels not as distant symbols, but as active signs of God’s guidance and mercy within the life of the Church.
