The Catholic church firmly teaches the existence of angels, both good and bad
ones.
The primary reason for teaching this, is that God has revealed this truth to us in the Sacred
Scriptures.
Let's be clear, there is a vast body of experience among human beings that corroborates the existence
of angels and demons.
But our belief that angels and demons are real is not based on that experience, or any
kind of inference from it.
It is based on faith in divine revelation, but God has revealed to us the reality of
angels and demons.
And by doing so, He is telling us something intelligible and wonderful--
something that shows us the grandeur of God and illuminates our experience in many ways.
So we want to understand the angels as much as possible, in order to understand the ways
of God and the ways of the spiritual life.
Thomas Aquinas is often called the angelic doctor because of his profound and extensive
teaching on the angels, both the good and the bad ones.
So what is an angel?
An angel is a being or substance who is a pure spirit.
Angels have intellect and will, and so exercise knowledge and love, but they do not have bodies
or live an embodied form of life.
Each angel is essentially a center of consciousness without a body, but we need to qualify that
and say that angels are conscious in a manner much different and far beyond human beings.
Since they do not have bodies, angels do not see taste, smell, touch, hear, imagine or
recall sensory things, and they do not have sensory passions.
For all of these activities and passions are the works of physical organs and the angels
have no physical organs.
Likewise, angels do not eat, sleep, smile, laugh, marry, make love or have children,
and they're definitely not little babies flying around with wings as often depicted in art.
Rather, each angel is a totally unique being specially created by God and endowed with
powers for knowing, loving, acting, and rejoicing in a manner far beyond our way of doing these
things.
For we human beings do all these things as bodies, as organisms in a physical
environment or biosphere.
Angels exist in an altogether a higher order of reality, which is not a physical environment
and is not conditioned by space, time, or material limitations.
Now this raises many questions and Thomas Aquinas aim to answer many of these questions
by thinking through what the Scriptures tell us about the angels, and thinking it through with solid
philosophical principles to help us understand the angelic order a little bit.
For example, the scriptures tell us that angels act in certain places around certain people.
Angels are stationed at the garden of Eden.
Angels visit the patriarch Abraham and Jacob.
Angels lead the people of Israel from Egypt through the desert to the promised land.
And angels ministered to Jesus himself after his temptations in the desert and again in
the garden of Gethsemane.
Aquinas calls all these works the angels carry out the missions of the angels.
But the missions of the angels raise questions.
If angels have no bodies, how can they be in a particular place?
Only bodies are in a place and angels have no bodies.
So how can an angel be, say, in the desert of Sinai or the garden of Gethsemane?
Aquinas answers, that a thing can be in a place in two ways.
First, by being contained in a place, like a pool ball is contained in its location on
the table, but a thing can be in a place in another way by influencing that place.
For example, by establishing rules for their house, parents continue to exercise a felt
presence or influence over their children, even when the parents are out of the house.
The children are aware of the presence of mom and dad, even in the physical absence
of mom and dad because of the influence the parents exercise.
When the scriptures say that the angels are here or there, that means the angels
are influencing the physical things or people in those places, but the angels are not contained
in any one of those places.
Do the angels still continue to exercise influence today?
Aquinas says yes.
He says, for example, that an angel can shine the light of his intellect upon a particular
human intellect and enhance that human's cognitive powers.
In this way, the angels can counsel and lead people and it is not only inspired prophets
and apostles who can enjoy the benefits of angelic illuminations.
People today can too, by praying for angelic lights.
Another example is the liturgy.
It is commonly said that angels are present at mass.
In what way are they present?
The angels influence the people at a particular mass being celebrated at a particular church,
in order to dispose the people to enter more profoundly into prayer, and to prepare the
people for a fruitful Holy communion.
Aquinas takes up other questions too.
For example, do the angels speak to one another?
Aquinas draws a distinction.
The angels not speak to each other using outer words like ours, either spoken or written.
For outer words come from our bodies, but the essence of communication does not lie
in the use of outer words.
The essence of communication consists of one person manifesting to another person
the knowledge or intentions that lie hidden within the mind.
And in this sense, the angels do engage in communication.
They manifest their knowledge and intentions to one another, and even to God, but without
using words, either oral or written.
In the world of the holy angels, all is silence, but the silence is abounding in the
communication of truth and love.
There's also the question of angelic hierarchies.
The angelic order is indeed a multitude of myriads, but it is not a random or chaotic
collection or a bland egalitarianism.
It is an order, with angels falling into various choirs and ranks.
How does Aquinas know this?
In various places, Scripture distinguishes between angels, archangels, thrones, principalities,
powers, et cetera, and Aquinas receives the sacred tradition coming through an important
theological authority named Dionysius the Areopagite.
Dionysius had much to say about the celestial hierarchy, but the critical principle is that
in this kind of hierarchy, the higher is at the service of the lower.
The highest and greatest angels were endowed with immense gifts for knowing and loving
God, but God gave them their gifts precisely so that they would share their surpassing
knowledge and love of God with the angels lower in the hierarchy, and the lower angels
in turn were meant to share it with human beings and steward us along with care,
sort of how we human beings use our higher knowledge and love to care for animals.
A lot of contemporary people find hierarchical structures to be revolting and
object to the Church as a hierarchy, but the hierarchy of the Church operates on the same
principles as the angelic hierarchy.
God gives gifts to bishops and priests so that they will serve the people and give the
people a deeper share in God.
What is objectionable in the minds of people about hierarchy, is that they think of hierarchy
as a structure based on power and control.
But what has happened in the contemporary mind is that people have confused sacred hierarchy
with the demonic order and the pattern of relationships among the demons.
Aquinas has much to say about the demons too.
Once upon a time, God created the whole multitude of angels, and God created
them all good.
But some of the angels rejected God and freely chose to rebel against him and the order he
established in the world.
These are the fallen angels or wicked angels or rebellious angels, and they're also called
demons.
Since God created each angel unique and existing in a specific place in the hierarchy, the
fallen angels retain their natural differences from each other, but they use their power
against God.
They do so together in a kind of band.
The relationships of the demons are an order based on power, violence, control, subjugation,
and domination of one another, and human beings, somewhat like the mafia, or a concentration
camp, or the Soviet gulags.
Indeed, these political realities seem to be a reflection of demonic influence
in history, and Thomas Aquinas teaches that the demons are indeed at work in the world
of human affairs.
The demons tempt people to sin and to gradually draw human beings by increments into their
rebellion against God.
They aim not only to bring individuals into their rebellion, but whole societies.
Again, it is somewhat like the mafia.
Once a person cooperates with them, it's hard to get out.
One of the principle reasons Jesus Christ came into the world was to break the
power and influence of the demons and to restore all of creation to right order, freedom, and
peace based on the justice, truth, and love of God.
And one receives the victory of Jesus Christ by repenting for one sins before God and living
a life of faith, hope, and love in the church.
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