The Angel of Great Counsel II

On January 1, 2010, I posted on this subject. Now I find that Fr. Hunwicke has posted here, on a related subject, and quotes one of the Tractarian fathers as saying,

To the Temple sacrifice is added the perpetual intercession of CHRIST, as the Great Angel of the Covenant (compare the prayer Supplices te rogamus), that is, Christ, presents His petition amidst the smoke which rises from off the altar of gold.

The "mystery" Tractarian is Anglican Priest, Fr. John Mason Neale, well known for his translations of the ancient Latin hymns of the Latin liturgy into English, while retaining almost always the original Latin melody (if that's the right name for it).

Here is Neale's translation of the Sequence Coeli enarrant, written by Godescalcus in about AD 950, for the Feast of the Division of the Apostles which fell on July 15:

The Heavens declare the glory of the Son of God, the Incarnate Word, made Heavens from earth.
For this glory befitteth that LORD alone
Whose Name is the Angel of the Great Counsel.
This Counsel, the assistance of fallen man, is ancient, and profound, and true, made known to the Saints alone,
When this Angel, made Man of a woman, made an immortal out of a mortal; out of men, angels; out of earth, heaven.
This is the LORD GOD of Hosts, Whose angels sent into the earth are the Apostles.
To whom He exhibited Himself alive after His Resurrection by many arguments, announcing peace as the victor of death.
Peace be unto you, saith He; I am He; fear not; preach the word of CHRIST to every creature, before kings and princes.
As the FATHER hath sent Me, even so send I you into the world; be ye therefore prudent as serpents, be ye harmless as doves.
Hence Peter, Prince of Apostles, visited Rome; Paul, Greece, preaching grace everywhere; hence these twelve chiefs in the four quarters of the world, preached as Evangelists the Threefold and the One.
Andrew, either James, Philip, Bartholomew, Simon, Thaddeus, John, Thomas, and Matthew, twelve Judges, not divided from unity, but for unity, collected into one those that were divided through the earth:
Their sound is gone out into all lands.
And their words into the ends of the world.
How beautiful are the feet of them that proclaim good tidings, -- that preach peace;
That speak thus to them that are redeemed by the Blood of CHRIST: Sion, thy GOD shall reign;
Who made the worlds by the Word; Which Word was for us, in the end of the world, made Flesh:
This Word Which we preach, CHRIST crucified, Who liveth and reigneth, GOD in heaven.
These are the Heavens in which, O CHRIST, Thou inhabitest; in whose words Thou thunderest; in whose deeds Thou lightenest; in whose grace Thou sendest Thy dew:
To these Thou hast said: Drop down, O ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One; let the earth be opened and bud.
Raise up a Righteous Branch, Thou Who causest our earth to bring forth, sowing it with the seed of Apostolic words: through whose words grant, O LORD, that we, holding the Word of the FATHER, may bring forth fruit to Thee, O LORD, in patience.
These are the Heavens which Thou, Angel of the great Counsel, inhabitest, Whom Thou callest not servants, but friends; to whom Thou tellest all things that Thou hast heard from the FATHER.
By whose Division mayest Thou preserve Thy flock, collected and undivided, and in the bond of peace; that in Thee we may be one, as with the FATHER Thou art One.
Have mercy on us, Thou that dwellest in the heavens.

The Angel of Great Council

For a number of years, I have been turning over in my mind a prayer from the Roman Canon, and a peculiar phrase there. The prayer occurs after the Consecration, and reads as follows, in Latin,

Supplices te rogamus, omnipotens Deus: jube haec perferri per manus sancti Angeli tui in sublime altare tuum, in conspectu divinae maiestatis tuae: ut quotquot, ex hac altaris participatione sacrosanctum Filli tui Corpus et Sanguinem sumpserimus, omni benedictione caelesti et gratia repleamur. Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

And in English, using the same capitalization as in Latin,

Humbly we implore thee, almighty God, bid these offerings to be carried by the hands of thy holy Angel to thy altar on high, in the sight of thy divine majesty, that all we who are partakers at the altar of the precious Body and Blood of thy Son, may be filled with all heavenly grace and blessing. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Aside from the first word of the paragraph, and the traditional conclusion, the words capitalized here are the following: God, Angel, Body, Blood, Son.

Why do I find that meaningful? Well, for one thing, earlier versions of this same prayer from the Canon of the Mass do not use "Angeli", but "angelorum". At the early times when these sources were copied punctualization (including capitalization) may not have been very significant, so "Angel" in the upper case must be a relatively late touch-up; but the change from "angels" to "Angel", which might otherwise appear to be a minor editorial change makes me think that this was to indicate that the Angel in question was the person of Jesus Christ himself, at this point in the Mass, present on the altar under the appearances of bread and wine.

I say this without being certain about it, because if that is the purpose of this phrase, i.e., to bid the Father to accept "our offering" at the hands of His Beloved Son, who was sent to us for our salvation, it must be a reference to some phrase from Scripture, and the word "angel" must be taken in its sense of "messenger", rather than referring to Christ himself as if he were of Angelic nature, which is an ancient heresy.

It is such an old heresy, in fact, that St. Paul (?) explicitly makes the case that Christ is "higher" than the angels in the first couple of chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews! St. Paul asks: "For to which of the angels has he said at any time: Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee? (Heb 1, 5; quoting Psalm 2).

Happily, however, I have been able to find the passage that was clanging about in the back of my mind. Today, January 1, the Octave of Christ's Nativity, I attended the Extraordinary Form of the Mass at my parish, and the Introit of today's Mass is from the Prophet Isaiah (Is 9, 6):

Puer natus est nobis, et filius datus est nobis: cuius imperium super humerum eius: et vocabitur nomen eius, magni consilii Angelus.

A child is born to us, and a Son is given to us, whose rule is upon his shoulders: and his name shall be called the Angel of great counsel.

The Latin and English here, i.e., in the Liturgy of the Mass, follow the words of the Septuagint Greek, μεγάλης βουλῆς ἄγγελος. It seems like a very good expression of the sacramental mystery of the Sacrifice of the Mass, for which Christ's Incarnation, which we celebrate today on its Octave, is a precondition.