THINKING ABOUT ANGELS
It’s hard to think about the angels because we can’t see them. We know by our faith that they exist because God created them. But where exactly do they fit into the whole scheme of things? If our faith didn’t tell us that angels exist, we might have guessed it by thinking about the created world.
Imagine going for a walk in the woods. As you walk along a shaded trail, you’re bound to see any number of rocks. The rocks exist but they aren’t alive. As you continue on the trial, you’ll see various types of plants: ferns, weeds, flowers, and trees. Unlike rocks, the plants are alive. They grow and require nutrients. The leaves of the plants bend towards the sun, straining to get the light they need.
Going farther into the woods, you will probably see different types of animals: birds, chipmunks, squirrels, foxes, deer, or even bears. Like plants, they are alive, but unlike plants, they can move around freely and can see, hear, eat, and bark, growl, chirp or make other sounds. Some even communicate with one another in certain ways.
Neither rocks, plants, nor animals, however, can write books, launch a rocket into a space, pray, or develop rich interpersonal relationships that can last many years and endure despite great distances. But people can, We can do these things because we are rational, with minds and wills. We are also bodily beings. So human beings are unique in the world because we unite the material world with the spiritual world.
As we see this progression from rocks to plants to animals to people, we may wonder whether there is a further step. Are there beings who are not at all material, but purely spiritual beings? Yes! They are the angels. While reason alone might speculate about angel’s existence without being able to prove it, by our faith we know that they do exist.
Angels have been called “minds without bodies”. They are not composed of matter. They are spiritual substances who are intelligent and free, having their own minds and wills. The angels are personal beings.
HOW MANY ANGELS ARE THERE?:
We don’t know the exact number of the angels. But it is reasonable to think that God created a great multitude of angels. The Bible, in a vision the prophet Daniel had of God in glory in heaven: “A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him” – Daniel 7:10.
If God created such a huge material universe, it’s reasonable to think that he also created a huge spiritual universe of angels.
WHAT ARE THE CHOIRS OF ANGELS?:
The “choirs” of angels have nothing to do with singing! Instead, this refers to a way of arranging groups of angels in relation to one another. People in the ancient and medieval Western world loved to arrange things in order.
Three “hierarchies” of angels, each of which has three “choirs”.
The nine choirs of angels is an arrangement based on some speculation about the angels and is not part of official Church teaching. Here they are:
First hierarchy:
- Seraphim
- Cherubim
- Thrones
Second hierarchy:
- Dominions
- Virtues
- Powers
Third hierarchy:
- Principalities
- Archangels
- Angels
DO ANGELS HAVE BODIES?
No, angels don’t have bodies. Their very nature is to be wholly spiritual beings, without bodies or any sort of material being. What about the places in Scripture where angels are said to have appeared so that people could see them? They did not actually change into bodily beings, but somehow through God’s power assumes a visible form.
DO ANGELS KNOW THE FUTURE?
When it comes to knowing the future, we can make some distinctions. It is possible for us to know for certain some things that will happen in the future, for example, that the sun will rise tomorrow. We can know that because we have some understanding of how the physical world works. Some other things we can know with less certainty but with a certain amount of probability. Angels can know these things too, because their minds are very sharp, more so than ours.
But when it comes to knowing future events themselves, or exactly how things will play out, only God knows for sure. That is because everything is eternally present to God, who knows all things. Despite their sharp minds, the angels cannot know the free future. God might choose to reveal it to them, but that is outside our experience.
CAN ANGELS KNOW OUR THOUGHTS?:
Only God can know what is in our hearts and minds. So angels cannot know what we’re thinking. However, just as we can often get a good idea of what another person is probably thinking by reading body language, angels can do that too. We can give ourselves away by an angry look on our face or by a smile. But only God has access to the deepest places of our hearts.
DO ANGELS HAVE FREE WILL?:
Yes, the angels have free will. As purely spiritual creatures, they are intelligent and have both minds and wills, and so they can freely choose goodness.
ARE ANGELS LOVING BY NATURE?:
Angels have intelligence and free will, and love follows on knowledge. In other words, a person — human or angelic — loves only what is known. An angel’s intellect is sharp and penetrating, so the angels can know us quite well! And they love us all the more for it.
Has it ever happened that you got to really know a person you did not particularly care for? In so doing, in seeing things through that person’s eyes, you found yourself understanding where he or she was coming from — and that made it all that much easier to respond with love. Well, the angels love us so much because they can quickly grasp more of our story than most of our friends and family members will ever come to know. They see, better than we do, the odds we’re up against the effort t hat we put into things that often fall apart — and through all of this they find our good qualities.
WHAT WAS THE SIN OF THE ANGELS?:
Because the angels are purely spiritual beings and don’t have bodies, many of the sins we commit aren’t even possible for them. For example, an angel can’t sin by gluttony, lust, drunkenness, or any of the many other ways we sin through our bodies. But angels could commit “spiritual” sins, that is, sins committed in their spirits, through their minds and wills: pride and envy.
