Angelic Assistance Series, Part 2: What the Church Wants Us to Know About Angels

[Denise]

What the Church Wants Us to Know About Angels
This second installment of our Angelic Assistance Series follows from our first article concerning the dangerous distortions about angels that come from our culture. To guard against these erroneous ideas, it is important to know a few basic truths about angels that only the Catholic Church teaches with accuracy. Divorced from Christ's true doctrine and Tradition, angels become creatures of comfort. Their true nature, however, is not a matter of comfort or being helpful in daily life; it is a matter of our salvation.

The first thing to know is that angels are purely spiritual beings. Some writers of the early Church thought that angels' bodies may have been composed of some airy substance that made it possible for people to see them from time to time. The Church, however, later clarified that angels have nothing material whatsoever in them, not even wisps of air or ether:

The profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council affirms that God "from the beginning of time made at once (simul) out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then the human creature, who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body." (Catechism, 337)

As pure spirits, angels are not bound by the laws of physics or time that rule the material world, so they come and go in our world as God wills. Since they have no material bodies, they make themselves known to men by assuming temporary human form, which they put on and take off like a very elaborate costume. They usually come to deliver messages from God to men, which is consistent with their name "angel" which means "messenger".

The second thing our Church wants us to know about angels is that they are persons, not impersonal, disembodied spirits. In this, angels and humans have something in common. Like us, angels have their own center of identity consisting of individual minds and wills. Each angel is a unique spiritual being. But since they don't have material bodies, angelic minds and wills are much stronger than even the strongest human faculties, which are bound to the flesh.

A human mind, for example, gets its information from the senses and does its thinking through the complex mechanism of a brain. A human being can grow tired of thinking for that reason! Angels have no such limitations. Whenever they turn their minds to anything, they see it as sort of an instant snapshot, and they perfectly understand everything they know. That amazing capacity is entirely beyond the human ability of rational thought.

As purely spiritual creatures angels have intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures, as the splendor of their glory bears witness. (Catechism, 330)

Along with their supreme intelligence, the angelic will is flawlessly devoted to the will of God (or perfectly rebellious against the will of God as in the case of demons.)

This leads us to the third important fact about angels: namely, that because they have free will like us, some of them abused that free will and sinned. The rebellion of the angels took place before time began, and we can read the mysterious story of it in Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation which depicts St. Michael battling Satan and the rebellious angels.

The spiritual rebels were cast out of heaven and down to earth: "But woe to you earth and sea, for the Devil has come to you in great fury", says Rev 12:13. In that same chapter it says the dragon's tail "swept a third of the stars from the sky" as he fell from heaven, which probably means that a third of the angels rebelled with him and became demons.

No need to worry, though. Two-thirds of the angels remained faithful to God, which is twice the number of demons!

Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil". The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing." (Catechism, 391)

With the understanding that the demons were originally created good, Catholics distance themselves from esoteric religions (Buddhism, for example) that see good and evil as equal forces in the world (i.e., the yin/yang principle).

But we don't believe that evil is equal to good. We believe that evil is a corruption of the good, which we will have to fight, like St. Michael and his angels, until the end of time.

And on that score, God has not left us spiritually helpless against the power of demons either:

From its beginning until death human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. "Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life" (St. Basil). Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God. (Catechism, 336)

Thankfully, He has given each one of us a spiritual companion called a Guardian Angel "to light and guard, to rule and guide" us through the battlefield of this life to the victory of heaven!

Source: Peter Darcy, Natures of Fire: God's Magnificent Angels, 2021.

Your friend in Christ,

Thomas McKenna