It’s been a while since we’ve had space for another ti morceau, but this week we can add another one! We’re considering the Saints. After some introductory comments on all the saints, in the last morceau we treated the “super saint,” the Blessed Virgin Mary.
You might be thinking that I’m going now to treat our patron, St. Joseph. Well, I’m tempted! But I think I will leave him until next time. Because there is one category of saints that outranks even him, being only slightly less holy than Mary herself. I’m talking about the angels, beings of pure spirit.
According to Catholic tradition and Scriptural witness, angels are directly created by God but do not have physical bodies. You can contrast them with us humans, who are both body and soul, and lesser animals, who are body alone. (And of course they also are distinct from the Three Persons of God, who is an uncreated Being.) Angels exist in eternity, whereas we humans, for a while on earth, also exist in time. Like us, angels possess free will, but because they exist in eternity, their choice “for or against” God is once-for-all: those who choose holiness thus live in perpetual holiness, or sanctity, in the presence of God Himself. For this reason they are recognized as saintly. (Those angelic beings who reject God must be eternally separate from Him and so are by their own choice demons.)
Theological speculation and poetry over the centuries have categorized the angels into some nine different categories (in order of dignity: seraphim, cherubim, and thrones; dominions, virtues, and powers; and principalities, archangels, and angels). Various functions of divine service have also been identified in them, such as being messengers to humanity, fighting Satan and other fallen demons, praying for and strengthening certain things such as God’s justice, and of course serving as “guardian angels” of individual human beings.
Again, angels are saints, for they live eternally in God’s presence. While much of their identity and existence is so mysterious – we only know the names of three, for certain: Sts. Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, the archangels, and we can be certain of little else about them – they are God’s creatures and so deserving of our respect and admiration. They can inspire and assist us too in response to God’s will and to our prayers.
