The
creatures most like God, the angels, show forth best the goodness, the
majesty,
the glory of God; these are His most perfect images, and so the
ones
to be multiplied with divine extravagance. Heaven and earth are
indeed
full of His glory. Because the angels are bodiless creatures, pure
spirits,
it is too often concluded that they are supernatural beings; they are
not,
God is the only supernatural being. The angels are natural beings, they
belong
in, and, indeed, dominate our world. They are creatures as natural
as
oaks, or sunsets, or birds, or men. To call them supernatural because
they
are not like ourselves is a part of that provincial pride by which a man
puts
human nature at the peak of the universe, primarily because he
himself
is a man.
Do
they exist?
To pretend
that they do not exist because we do not see them is like
pretending
that we never sleep because we have never caught ourselves
asleep.
There would be much more sense in the angels exiling us from the
world
of nature on the basis of a majority vote. We have no monopoly on
nature,
not even on free will and intellectual knowledge in nature; we have
big
brothers far outstripping our puny powers, yet nonetheless brothers, a
part
and parcel of the created world that is so truly ours.
Our
place in the universe
Seeing
ourselves from the plant or animal level, we can with reason marvel
at
the nobility of men; if the animals were capable of such things, they
would
see us as godlike creatures. Looking up at the angels from our level,
we
promptly shrink to our proper proportions: of all the created world, we
have
the least, the most earthbound, the feeblest of all created intelligence
and
love. Lest that be too humiliating, we can reflect that somewhat the
same
is true of the angels: seen from our level, they are creatures so
wondrous
as to make men doubt their very existence; but seem from the
very
heights of God they are so inadequate an image of His splendor as to
be
insignificant in comparison with the Infinite.
The
number of angels
It was
no trick to fill the heavens with a heavenly host on the first
Christmas
night. The stars that sparkle on the body of night are a mere
handful
of jewels compared to the numbers of the angels. The prophet
Daniel
only gives a hint of their number when he says: "Thousands of
thousands
ministered to Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand
stood
before Him." Dionysius humbly confesses: "There are many blessed
armies
of the heavenly intelligences, surpassing the weak and limited
reckoning
of our material numbers." All the men in the world at any time
are
a handful, a scattered gathering easily lost sight of in the myriad of
pure
spirits who most perfectly image the Creator of both men and angels.
Varieties
of angels
Variety
is dear to us, as it should be for it is dear to God. We appreciate
changing
seasons, the differences of trees, flowers, animals; and we are
particularly
grateful that all men and women do not look exactly alike. We
like
change and differences, not because we are fickle, or just for the sake
of
change, but because no one moment, no one climate, no one expression
of
beauty or goodness exhausts the possibilities of reflection of the divine
perfection.
There are so many pleasing combinations of human creatures,
so
many pleasing patterns of human virtue, so many pleasing colors,
sights,
sounds; such inexhaustible aspects of truth, so many alluring
insights
into goodness. The variety of the world is at one and the same
time
a declaration of the imperfection of created things, each one giving us
only
so much, and of the extravagant generosity of God.
No
races
As in
numbers, so in variety, the angelic world is a splendor that dims the
variety
of the physical world into a plainness approaching homely
monotony.
There are no angelic families or races; each individual angel
stands
apart from all others more distinctly different than an elephant from
a fly.
The pleasant individual differences we notice from man to man and
woman
to woman are as far from the differences between the angels as a
ripple
on a pond is from the towering power and smashing violence of a
stormy
sea. At each encounter in the heavenly courts, the angels see
differences
greater than those which distinguish a rose from a woman.
Multiply
this by the countless numbers of the angels; the heavenly choirs
are
a luminous image of divinity's perfections stupendous in its beauty,
staggering
in its wide variety. Yet all of this is no more than a foggy outline
of
the beauty of God.
Bodiless
spirits
Once
created, the angels live forever, depending as we do on the steady
support
of the hand of God but on nothing else. All the things that pertain
to
us because we have bodies have no place in the angelic world: growth,
nourishment,
sickness, pain, the decline of old age, and ultimately death.
They
are so much more like God than we are that their whole being reflects
something
of the divine eternity, immortality, independence. Angels are
neither
old or young, sick or healthy, men or women, infants or ancients,
tall
or short, fat or thin; they are the bright flames of life, unflickering,
unfading,
indestructible, flames that are fed by nothing but God.
The
princely dignity of Gabriel standing before Our Lady, the easy
competence
of Raphael protecting the young Tobias, the majesty of
Michael
with his flaming sword guarding the gates of a lost paradise gives
us
some little vision of the nobility of the angels. We are in danger of
blinding
ourselves to that vision if we forget that these were angels stooping
to
our limitations, bowing to our penchant for thinking in pictures;
thoughtful
angels who delight us as a mother delights her infant by
imitating
its gurgling and chuckling. This is not a mother's normal speech;
nor
is this the angel's normal appearance.
Angels
were not made to give life to bodies as were our human souls. The
bodies
in which they have appeared from time to time among us were the
appearances
of bodies taken on for our comfort; not real but apparent that
we
might the more easily accept the angel, his message, his
companionship.
None of the things that are proper to living bodies could
be
accomplished by these apparent bodies of the angels: they could not
digest
a meal, beget children, beome tired, or wake refreshed from sleep.
For
us to lose our body is the tragic thing called death; the body belongs
to
our integrity, without it we are not men and women but disembodied
souls,
we are only half ourselves. It is hard for us not to feel a little sorry
for
the angels' lack of bodies, forgetting that if the impossible thing
happened
and an angel had a real body, it would not be benefited but
debased
by the fact. Its completely spiritual nature in its independence and
power
has not need of a body. It can get far more done than any strong
man,
indeed than any material force.It is free from the barriers that the
physical
invariably imposes on our knowledge and our love: free from the
sluggishness,
fatigue and distraction that makes our lifetime harvest of
truth
so skimpy; free from the frustration inherent in all our loving gestures
of
union, of all the feeble faith that supports our love, of all the
helplessness
that is our love's bitterest fruit.
The
flight of angels
Not
even a child is puzzled about how an angel get its clothes over such
huge
wings; for it is clear to everyone that the wings we give to angels are
a
symbol
and nothing more. The swift flight of a bird contrasted with the
trudging
step of a man is a fitting symbol of smooth, untramemeled, rapid
movement,
and so a centuries-old expression of the celerity of angelis
passage.
In our own times we might appeal to the soundless swoop of a
diving
jet plane to help our stumbling minds to follow the flight of an angel;
we
would come closer to reality by following with the flick of the eye the
almost
instantaneous thrust of lightning. We have the most accurate
measurement
of that angelic progress in the time it takes our own minds to
jump
from city to city, across oceans, over five, ten or fifty years; for it
is
thus
that an angel moves.
The
location of angels
In our
thinking about the angels, we must draw much more on our
knowledge
of God than on our knowledge of men, for the angels are finite
pure
spirits modelled on the infinite Pure Spirit. We do not locate God by
surrounding
Him, He is not contained within the easily discerned outlines
of
a body, a town, a country; He is where He works, and so is everywhere,
for
nothing can continue to be unless it is supported by His omnipotence.
Nor
can we locate an angel by surrounding it; it, too, is a pure spirit. To
ask
where an angel is means to ask where it is working; only thus is an
angel
in place. Obviously no place can be too small for an angel, no place
too
big, no place too distant; for with the angels, it is not a question of
squeezing
a body into uncomfortable quarters, of spreading its arms wide
to
cover more territory, or of easing it out of town quietly. No angel is
everywhere,
for no angel is God, , no angel is omnipotent; but neither is an
angel
human, to be circumscribed by the length of its arms or the horizon
of
eyes. It is pure spirit, to be limited in place only by the degree of the
power
and perfection proper to the nature given it by God.
Thinking
about angels
There
is a fascination for us in thinking of the angels, a fact that springs
from
the fact that a healthy mind welcomes nourishing truth as
enthusiastically
as a healthy stomach welcomes a hearty meal; with the
difference
that there is no such thing as a stuffed mind. The more of truth
we
learn the hungrier we get, though the happier and more satisfied we
are.
Those angelic big brothers of ours have much for our learning: much
of
God, whose closest image they are; and much of ourselves, to deflate
our
pride and stimulate our humility as we learn from them how dim a
light
marks out our path and how wavering a heart supports our love. But
to
learn any of the lessons there to be learned, we must remember that the
angels
are not God, neither are they men.
The
thinking of angels
God
knows Himself perfectly, and knowing Himself knows all else. We never
do
know ourselves directly, we learn of ourselves, like any outsider, from
the
things we do; and our conclusions usually contain a good margin of
flattering
error. The angels, like God, do know themselves directly; like us
they
know nothing else from knowing themselves for, like us, they are not
the
source of creatures but part of the family of creation. Divinity is the
Creditor
of the angels as of us; from the infinite intellect which God is, they
too
borrow a limited intelligence and hold it on the terms of God. Though
the
amount of their loan is so very much greater, it is as true of angels as
of
us that they have limited intellects, they are not intelligence itself.
We
walk
through our days with the impact of the world beating on our senses
like
a pelting rain. From this downpour, properly filtered, we quench our
mind's
thirst thoughit is dangerous business; for the same flood furnishes
us
with all the risks of deception from the wandering phantasms that take
over
so completely in the dreamers or the insane. God and the angels live
their
eternal lives in perpetually sunny weather, with never a drop of this
rain
falling into their world. As Gregory has it: "Man senses with the brutes,
and
understands with the angels."
We are
vagrant prospectors searching the world for effortless strikes that
will
give nuggets of truth, but actually subsisting on the flakes and dust
that
make up our usual find. We spend our lives in laborious attempts ata
a piecemeal
assembly of the pattern of truth from the shattered fragments
that
fill the world around us. Men search the earth for their knowledge, for
we
are close to the earth; for the source of the angels' knowledge we must
look
not to earth but to God, for the angels are close to God. As creatures
less
than the angels sprang from the mind of God into the physical world,
from
that same divine source, they sprang into the knowledge of the angels.
The
angels' knowledge, then, is all that ours is not: accurate, complete,
absolutely
firsthand, coming to them directly fron First Truth itself. All
this,
not by way of a special gift but by natural right; by the very fact of
their
purely spiritual nature, their proper way of knowing is by ideas
infused
into their minds by God. As the years roll by, we may become
learned,
or even wise; but our knowledge and wisdom are the products of
the
years and our labors with many a weed harvested along with teh good
grain
of truth. The angel has all his knowledge in the first instant of his life;
when
ever, through all his ageless career, an angel uses any one of those
infused
ideas there is no laborious thinking involves. The thought of an
angel,
swifter than light, deeper than a sword thrust to the heart, an
intuitive
plunging to the very depths of truth, leaves no room for doubts, for
error,
for indecision.
We,
who achieve our wisdom so painfully, are decidedly interested parties
in
any discussion of the mind of the angels. They are our only intellectual
relatives
in the whole of creation, relatives who have millions to match our
intellectual
pennies, and there is no possible threat to their great wealth.
Moreover,
we do not stand afar off in poverty's frustration at the walls of
snobbery
or the great distances of social strata; these intellectual brothers
of
ours slip in and out of our days with an ease and intimacy unknown to
the
most loved members of our immediate family. We should know more
about
them; and almost instinctively, we want to know more about them
not
only because they can do so much for or against us but also because
they
are all so very close to us and to our living.
Guardian
angels and demons
Some
of them are friendly with that staunch friendship that endures, even
heightens,
throughout our weaknesses, our failures, our pettiness, our
positive
malice; so friendly as to be on guard for us twenty-four hours in
the
day. It is good to know the power of such friends, good for our courage,
for
our hopes, for our lonliness, for our self-respect. Other angels are
relentlessly
hostile, fired with a hate we did nothing to generate and which
we
cannot dissipate by apology or by appeasement. They will stop at
nothing
less than our total destruction, and even that will not satisfy but
rather
intensify their hate. In sheer self-defense, we cannot disregard the
information
possessed by such an enemy.
What
do they know of us?
We may
be only mildly interested in the fact that an angel knows itself
immediately
and perfectly, that, seeing itself as the divine image, it knows
God,
and that it has complete and intimate knowledge of other angels;
though
by this we miss all the implications for our own humility, the
substantiation
of our dreams, and the inherent frustration of our love's
desire
to know all. But we must come up sharply alert at the angels'
knowledge
of this physical world of ours. In that regard they approach
closest
of all creation to that instant, omniscient comprehension of God.
They
know the details of the physical world, not through the often murky
filter
of sense and imagination but directly, without possibility of
incompleteness
or distorion. They know the world, all of it, not in the
blurred
fashion of a dilettante's surface expertness, nor in the vague
general
way of a mind that is just too tired to keep its hold on details, but
sharply,
concretely with firm mastery.
Angels
and world government
This
is the divine unalterable law. that inferior things are led to God by the
superior
ones. These profound words of Dionysius give the basis of every
creature's
nobility and humility, stating with uncompromising exactness
the
place on the stage and the words to be spoken by every creature
playing
a part in the government of the universe.
