Listen to That Angel on Your Shoulder
Lesson 10
Listen to That Angel on Your Shoulder
Listen to That Angel on Your Shoulder
Though we are lower than the angels,
they are eager to raise us up.
Question 10
How can people in the twenty-first
century believe in angels?
Thomas answers that . . .
“There must be some incorporeal creatures. For what is principally intended by God in creatures is good, and this consists in assimilation to God Himself. . . . Now God produces the creature by his intellect and will. Hence, the perfection of the universe requires that there should be intellectual creatures. Now intelligence cannot be the action of a body, nor of any corporeal faculty limited to here and now. Hence the perfection of the universe requires the existence of an incorporeal creature.”
— Summa Theologica I, 50, 1
Where Can We Learn about Angels?
God sometimes works in delightfully surprising ways. Little did I know as I knelt in prayer before a Latin Mass yesterday morning and included a petition for guidance in starting this chapter, that in just a few minutes our Gradual Prayer would read as follows (in English translation, that is):
God has given His Angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. In their hands they shall bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.94
Further, we would hear in the course of the Gospel reading that the Devil recited this very verse to Jesus as he tempted Him to throw Himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple. Jesus responded: “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matt. 4:7, citing Deut. 6:16). While Jesus did not call upon the angels in that instance, we do know that they came to Him when He needed them most; for example, during His agonizing night of prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, “there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him” (Luke 22:43). Further, legions of angels were always on standby, should Jesus call them into action. When Jesus bade Peter to put away his sword after a great armed crowd came to arrest Him, He declared: “Do you think I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26:53).95
As Catholics, we should not hesitate to believe in angels, on the authority of both Scripture and Tradition. Jesus knew them and spoke to us about them. Of course, we even know some of them by name, such as Gabriel, who announced to young Mary that she had been selected by God to bring Christ into the world and, as we have seen, gave us the first words of the Hail Mary (Luke 1:28). Angels were not unknown to the Jewish people either. They figure prominently in many books of the Old Testament, such as Michael in the book of Daniel and Raphael in Tobit. We learn that angels have different ranks and duties; Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, for example, are referred to as “archangels.” St. Paul’s letters and various passages in Scripture mention nine ranks or orders. St. Thomas arranged and described them as shown in a table in our appendix.
We have already mentioned one other extremely powerful and unfortunately infamous angel in our citation from St. Matthew’s Gospel. That angel, fallen angel to be exact, is the Devil, also known as Satan, and originally as Lucifer (light bearer), who turned against God, fell from heaven, cajoled many angels to join him in his rebellion, and persuaded our first parents to bring sin into the world.
Angels appear time and time again in many books of the Old and the New Testaments, from Genesis through Revelation. Theologians have elaborated on the angels over the centuries in the most intriguing and remarkable ways, and none more elaborately or intriguingly than our Angelic Doctor.
What Are Angels, and Why Should We Care?
We’ve touched on the question of where we can learn about angels, their various orders and duties, and even who some of them are, but we shouldn’t go further until we’ve addressed just what they are. St. Thomas was indeed a stickler about defining terms! This probably will not come as a surprise to you, but we’ll also turn to Thomas to delve into that answer — to define those beings and show how they fit into the divine design. Of course, Thomas is the Angelic Doctor, and one reason is the “Treatise on the Angels” that appears in the Summa Theologica, part I, questions 50–64. Not nearly finished with them yet, Thomas examines them in more depth in the “Treatise on Divine Government” in I, 106–114. Never has there been a more exhaustive examination of just what angels are and why they are so important. So let us fly to the Angelic Doctor and open his sublime treatises to see what light he can shine for us on his mighty, mysterious, numinous namesakes.
We should begin by noting that our word “angel” derives from the Greek word angelos, “messenger.” Indeed, when we see angels in Scripture, they are often shown in just that role, as when the archangel Gabriel delivered to the Blessed Virgin Mary the most important of all messages. Thomas confirms that angels do indeed act on earth, fulfilling missions for God, citing for example, Exodus 23:20: “Behold I send an angel before you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place which I have prepared” in I, 112, 1. He notes in the next article, however, referencing St. Gregory the Great and Dionysius,96 that the higher ranks of angels do not perform exterior services outside of heaven.
Let’s now look at a sample of what Thomas said about what angels really are and some of their most profound and fascinating characteristics. Please note that every one of Thomas’s conclusions about angels is presented within the context of very elaborate, nuanced counterarguments and replies based on scriptural references and philosophical and theological principles aplenty. Here I will leave out the vast majority of the discursive reasoning and merely provide a whirlwind tour of his bottom-line statements. In a sense this is particularly fitting for the subject of angels, since Thomas tells us that, unlike humans, angels do not require chains of reasoning to lead them to truth, but they acquire truths all at once and instantly, “as an object and its image are seen simultaneously in a mirror” (I, 58, 3). Of course, for those who would care to examine the reasoning behind St. Thomas’s conclusions, I’ll provide citations to direct you to the relevant questions and articles in the great Summa itself. So, without further adieu — up, up, and away we go to the angels!
I’ll stop here with the angelic highlights, since we have so much more celestial ground to cover related to this chapter’s life lesson, on remembering to call on the angels. I hope you have a taste now for what angels are, as Thomas has helped us penetrate some of their most principal principles. We’ll zoom in directly on why we should care about angels in the very next section, on pulverizing the sins that can hold us back from acting on this life lesson, and become, in a sense, a little more angelic.
Pulverizing That Devil Sitting on Your Shoulder
We’ve all seen the cartoons showing a little devil on a person’s shoulder, whispering into one ear, while a little angel sits on his other shoulder, whispering opposing advice into the other ear. Indeed, retentive readers will recall that the title of this chapter is “Listen to That Angel on Your Shoulder!” I imagine that only readers as old as or (heaven forbid) older than I am will remember from the 1970s the comedian Flip Wilson’s character “Geraldine,” whose most famous line was, “The Devil made me do it!” In fact, I just watched online on old skit in which, defending her actions before her husband, she blames the devil for making her buy three dresses in the same week and for crashing her car into a church. She describes scenarios in which the devil not only tempts, cajoles, and tries to persuade her but grabs her steering wheel and even pulls a gun on her — to compel her to buy that third dress!102 Such cartoons and skits are crafted in fun, with a humorous intent, but they also raise a serious question. Can the devil or his subordinate demons really make us do it? Thankfully, St. Thomas has provided a clear answer.
St. Thomas says “the devil can nowise compel man to sin” (I-II, 80, 3). But we must still, so to speak, give the devil his due; in this case, meaning due acknowledgment of what he can do in regard to moving or tempting us to sin. St. Thomas notes that the devil does not have power over our free will. Scripture tells us, for example: “Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). The devil can tempt us by stirring our sensitive appetites and imaginations, feeding us with impulses and images that lure us toward sin, but God has not allowed him dominion over our intellectual souls. As Augustine has noted, “nothing else than his own will makes man’s mind the slave of his desire” (cited by St. Thomas in I-II, 80, 1). How important, then, to train ourselves in virtue and to render ourselves open to God’s grace, so that we may “just say no” to the devil!
Angelic Goads to Virtue
If we are to practice the virtues that good angels would bid us to do, we must begin with the virtue of faith, believing in God and all that He has revealed, including the reality and the power of angels. This includes a basic awareness of not only the heavenly angels, but also the demons of hell, and where both of them came from.
In I, 63, 4, Thomas asks “Whether Any of the Demons Are Naturally Wicked.” The key word here is “naturally,” and the answer, in one word, is “No!” Everything God has created is good in the very fact that it has being. “It is written (Gen. 1:31): God saw all the things that He made, and they were very good. But among them were the demons. Therefore the demons were at some time good” (I, 64, 5). And speaking of very good, the devil himself, by the nature God gave him, was the very highest of the angels. God gave the angels intellects and wills, and those that became evil did so through their own power of choice. And what was the devil’s evil choice? “It is said, in the person of the devil (Isa. 14:13–14), I will ascend into heaven. . . . I will be like the Most High” (I, 63, 3).
Thomas elaborates that the devil’s sin of pride consisted of seeking to exist, not as the glorious creature God made him, but as God Himself. He sought to attain his own last end of beatitude, not in cooperation with God’s grace, but entirely according to his own power, which belongs to God alone and not to even the highest of creatures. He sought as well to be like God in dominion over others. He used his free will to reject God and thereby fell from God’s grace and embraced evil, irrevocably rejecting the lofty degree of perfection that was possible to him.
We learn from Revelation 12:4 that “the dragon drew with him the third part of the stars of heaven.” The devil did not cause a third of the angels to sin and reject God, but he induced and exhorted them to make that irrevocable choice of their own free will. They proudly chose him as their prince to lead them to the beatitude they, too, would obtain without the aid of God.
It is the same kind of power that Satan exercised on a third of the angels that he and his demonic minions try to exercise upon our souls, so we need to be aware of them and their tactics.103 The presence and action of Satan and his demons is expressed explicitly in Scripture time and again, and throughout the history of the Church. Indeed, in regard to the seven deadly sins, demons were recognized to play a role sometimes in inducing us into such sins. Acedia, or sloth, which we’ve met a few times already in these pages, was called “the noonday devil” by the ancient Desert Fathers, drawing from Psalm 91:6: “the destruction that wastes at noonday.” St. John Climacus (579–649), for example, wrote that the desert monk afflicted by the “noonday” demon of acedia will become bored by his prayers, will feel fatigue and weakness, will feel like leaning while standing and like sitting while leaning. It will lead to distractions. At the slightest noise, the hermit will look out his window. Further, some theologians even provided names for the demons who encouraged each of the deadly sins.
While we must be aware of fallen angels and their powers to tempt us, we must remember Thomas’s lesson that they cannot compel us to sin, and the ultimate virtue, that crucial addition to faith, that will allow us to resist them, is again that highest virtue, charity. Recall the words of St. James: “Even the demons believe — and shudder” (James 2:19). They believe in God, of course, but their faith is useless and barren because it lacks charity, which produces not sin but good works.
Not only should we recognize our power to resist fallen angels, but, just as importantly, we should recognize that good angels are indeed there on our shoulders, prodding us toward charity and all manner of virtues, and we should train ourselves to listen to them. Thomas has written a full eight articles on “Of the Guardianship of the Good Angels” (I, 113), and it would behoove us right now to take a peek at some of the most fascinating and useful highlights:
Angelic Prayer
What a difference it should make in our daily lives on earth to think there is an angel watching over every one of us! Yet, how often do we ever reflect on this (except perhaps that one day every year before Christmas, when we watch George Bailey and his guardian angel, Clarence, in It’s a Wonderful Life)? One way to remind ourselves of the angels’ presence, and to avail ourselves of their aid, is to think of their presence in some of our most beloved prayers. In the Our Father, when we acknowledge that God is in heaven and His will is done there, we can recall that in heaven God dwells with the great myriad of angels, who exist to praise Him and do His will, which includes how He wills them to help us. The Hail Mary should also remind us of the beautiful and mysterious reality of angels, since its opening salute quotes the archangel Gabriel. Of course, the Angelus starts with the words “The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary.” Every mention of heaven in the Creed should also remind us of angels.
Perhaps even more importantly, we should remember to pray for the intercession of our own guardian angels, and to pray prayers dedicated to particular angels, including the powerful prayer Pope Leo XIII added to the end of the Low Mass in 1886 — another time when the Church was threatened by the growing darkness of secularism and early modernistic ideas — the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel:
St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
In 1994, Pope John Paul II wrote: “Although this prayer is no longer recited at the end of Mass, I ask everyone not to forget it and to recite it to obtain help in the battle against the forces of darkness and against the spirit of this world.”104 This prayer does remain at the end of Traditional Low Masses, and several years ago, the bishop of my diocese, and the bishops of several others, have reinstated it at the end of the Novus Ordo as well. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in these turbulent times!
Angels at the Altar of the Highest Sacrament
We started this chapter with a reference to the angels in the Mass of the First Sunday in Lent. We should be well aware, however, that we are surrounded by angels, who join in our prayers, throughout every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Many saints and Church Doctors, including St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and Pope St. Gregory the Great, have written of the angels’ presence at Mass, and some, including St. Bridget of Sweden, Blessed Henry Suso, and St. Padre Pio, have even experienced their mystical presence at Mass.
Though most of us have probably not been blessed with such an angelic mystical vision, if you are blessed to have a church with a high altar, the odds are pretty good that you see at least statues of angels there. The practice goes very, very far back. When Bezalel of the tribe of Judah, filled with the Spirit of God and blessed with the gift of craftsmanship, built the Ark of the Covenant before the time of Christ, he adorned it with two angels of gold. “The cherubim spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, with their fiery faces one to another” (Exod. 37:9).
Indeed, my earliest memories of Mass include two elegant angels flanking Christ upon a prominent crucifix. Lest we think such depictions are quaint and truly childish distractions, outgrown by the maturity of our current “modern man,” let’s recall again some wise words from St. Thomas: “spiritual impressions easily slip from the mind, unless they be tied as it were to some corporeal image, because human knowledge has a greater hold on sensible objects” (II-II, 49, 1).
As for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass itself, the angels play most significant roles in both forms of the Mass. Here are but a few examples:
Speaking of angels, sacraments, and the Angelic Doctor, we should note as well that the Blessed Sacrament has been referred to as “the bread of angels,” echoing the description of the manna from heaven (Ps. 78 [77]:25), and if you have ever heard Pavarotti, Bocelli, or any other great singer or choir sing “Panis Angelicus” (Bread of the Angels), the title and the lyrics come from the hymn “Sacris Solemnis Juncta Sint Gaudia” (Let Joys Be Joined to Solemn Feasts), first written for the then-new solemn and joyous feast of Corpus Christi (The Body of Christ) by none other than our own Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas. It would appear that he never forgot the angel on his shoulder or the God-made-man they adore in body and spirit.
Life Lesson 10 Summa
God has crafted us higher than the animals and lower than the angels in raw perfection of being, and yet He assigned angels to attend not only to His Son as the Incarnate God-man, but also to every one of us. We should take time to learn about, think about, pray to, and listen to the guardian angels “on our shoulders” and the angels all around us, especially at Mass, so that we might grow in faith, and, like the angels, better serve God in charity. We should be aware of the capacity of fallen angels to tempt us to all manner of sins and of the fact that God has not allowed them power to overcome our free will to resist temptation and send them fleeing. Many of the most beautiful prayers and hymns on earth were inspired by, spoken by, or refer to God’s holy angels. May we pray that the angels might help us become more angel-like on earth so that we may one day pray, “Holy! Holy! Holy!” with them around God’s throne in heaven.
94 Gradual prayer for the First Sunday in Lent, from Ps. 91 (90):11–12.
95 This event is reported in all four Gospels, though only in John 18 is Peter identified as the sword wielder and Malchus as the servant, and only in Luke 22 is it reported that Jesus healed the servant’s ear.
96 Please recall our footnote at the start of chapter 3 on the identity of Dionysius.
97 Thomas uses natural reason and divine revelation to examine the existence and the nature of angels, creatures who reflect the Creator in their immaterial, bodiless, spiritual nature. Inanimate objects, such as rocks, have matter, but no soul. Plants have material bodies and souls, but lack the ability to sense and perceive the world. Animals have bodies and souls too, along with the ability to know particular things. Humans have bodies and souls, but our souls have spiritual, intellectual capacities that allow us to grasp universal principles, to understand things, and to seek what we deem good through the power of free will. Our spiritual intellects and wills must operate, though, on the data that comes from our bodily senses. Angels complete the hierarchy of created beings, possessing yet higher intelligence and will, without any dependence on a material body.
98 Thomas’s scriptural reference here is the heavenly mystical vision around the throne in Daniel 7:10: “A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.”
99 Thomas draws an earthly parallel here: “An example of this can in some measure be observed in ourselves. For some people there are who cannot grasp an intelligible truth, unless it be explained to them in every part and detail; this comes of their weakness of intellect; while there are others of stronger intellect, who can grasp many things from few” (I, 55, 3). (I submit that the extent of St. Thomas’s intellectual grasp is indeed another reason he merits the title Angelic Doctor.)
100 Bear in mind that Thomas is saying that angels know all that they know at once, and not that like God, they know everything there is to know at once. We saw above, for example, that they do not know things such as the future or our innermost thoughts.
101 Walafrid Strabo (ca. 808–849), Benedictine monk and theologian.
102 When her husband asks Geraldine why she didn’t slam on the brake when the devil grabbed the steering wheel, she replies she was busy trying to kick him!
103 Readers are directed to C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters for a masterful depiction of many of their tactics in modern times.
104 John Paul II, Regina Caeli, April 24, 1994.