Creation Invisible

10-05-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

It is for Thee that this dense host of countless princes engage in battle: but it is victorious Michael, the standard bearer of salvation, who unfurls the standard of the Cross. He casts the dreadful head of the dragon into lowest hell and lightning like he hurls from the heavenly ramparts the leader with his rebels.

May Gabriel the strong Angel come to put to flight our ancient enemies and revisit the temples dear to heaven which the Conqueror has established throughout the world.

As the physician of our salvation may the Angel Raphael come down from heaven, that he may heal all who are sick and give guidance in the uncertain affairs of life.

328 The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls "angels" is a truth of faith. The witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of Tradition. Who are they?329 St. Augustine says: "'Angel' is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is 'spirit'; if you seek the name of their office, it is 'angel': from what they are, 'spirit', from what they do, 'angel.'" With their whole beings the angels are servants and messengers of God. Because they "always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven" they are the "mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to the voice of his word". 330 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 of the Catholic Church (emphasis added)

The angelic activity in the material world is stated plainly in Holy Scripture; While there is no work to be done in the material world so great that the least of the angels could not take care of it, there is an orderly distribution of angelic activity according to divine providence that leaves the first hierarchy of angels exclusively engaged in the courts of heaven. St. Thomas makes the comparison with the regime of a temporal kingdom in which not all of the counselors of the king are ambassadors, some remaining permanently at the court as participants of the secrets and counsels of the king, others receive the royal commands and plans and pass them on to the actual messengers.

In the court of heaven, the highest hierarchy (Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones) are members of the divine household whose whole activity is centered on the divinity itself. The first choir of the second hierarchy (Dominions) serve as the medium between the heavenly court and its messengers; while the last two choirs of the second hierarchy (Virtues and Powers) and the third hierarchy (Principalities, Archangels, Angels) have the actual administration of the material world. As they all enjoy seeing God face to face, all the angels are said to be assisting angels, assisting at the throne of God; but the first four choirs (Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions) are assisting angels; the last five (Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels) are administering angels.

Of the two groups, the assisting angels are far more numerous, a conclusion reached on the grounds that what is more perfect in the world, what is more directly and fully an image of divine perfection, is more directly the intent of nature and nature's author. Just as there are many more angels than there are material bodies, so there are many more of the higher angels than of the lower. The assigning of guardian angels to human beings, a fact completely certain from abundant places in Holy Scripture, is an insistence on the human being’s integral place in a perfectly ordered universe.

In that universe, the lower is ruled and regulated by the higher, the movable and variable by the immovable and invariable, the lower material things by the higher material things, the bodily by the spiritual. Angelic guardianship extends to every individual human being. If we find it hard to believe the extravagance of divine generosity in delegating a heavenly prince to every human being, it is principally because we so consistently underestimate the dignity of the human individual in the scheme of the universe and the plans of the divine architect.

On the same grounds, the crucified Son of God was a stumbling block to the Gentiles. As a matter of fact, there is probably no one who does not have the help of more than one of these guardian angels because there is no one who is not a part of some larger body, some social organism. As these social organisms, like the laws that govern them, are perpetual of their nature, they have their own guardians; there is an angel guardian of a kingdom, a state, of a city, perhaps even of a diocese, a parish, a religious order or a monastery.

The angelic guardians of individual men are drawn from the lowest choir of the third hierarchy, the choir of the angels. Each angel, of. course, differs from all others Within the choir which furnishes guardians for human beings there is the same graded order of perfection that is to be found in the whole universe; and that graded order is made use of in the actual assignment of guardianship. The more perfect angel is given the greater work, thus preserving the proportion between the perfection of nature and the perfection of function; for example, the more perfect angels are given as guardians to those men from whom more is demanded in the line of spiritual perfection, such as the saints, of intellectual labors, as the men of genius, of work for the common good, as statesmen, and so on. Where the object to be guarded is more universal, the guardian angel chosen is of a higher choir; so, going up the list of cities, states, kingdoms and so on, we pass up the line of the angelic choirs destined to guard the world of men and women.

It is the work of a guardian angel to lead human beings to that vision which constitutes their eternal happiness, so the individual has no guardian angel in heaven or in hell, but rather a companion reigning with him in heaven, or a persecutor punishing him in hell. The guardianship of the individual soul begins, in the opinion of St. Thomas, at birth, not at conception. Beginning at birth, that guardianship continues up to the moment of death when human nature is disintegrated by the separation of the body and soul. At no time during the span of human life is a man deserted by his guardian angel, at no time is he without the protection of that heavenly prince.

Besides the good angels there are also fallen angels, which fact would immediately lead one to suspect that angelic activity in the material world is not exclusively of a beneficent nature. These devils harbor no love either for God or man; their very nature gives them the power to act on the senses and imaginations of men, to coax the human wills and to feed human intellects with the material for knowledge. They have the motive for acting and the power to act; the fact is that they have acted in the material universe from the days of the first man.

There is first that terrifying hatred and envy of God that so consumes the devils now. Pride led them to mimic the selfsufficiency of God; pride cannot now let them forget the shamed exposure of their insufficiency. As it led them to ape the divinity itself, so now it leads them to ape the divine government of the world; Satan's kingdom sends its own ambassadors into the material world to work to the ends of evil that divine beneficence might be thwarted. Over and above this pride and envy of divine things, there is a definite hatred and envy of human beings as participants of the divine life and divine happiness, an envy that drives the devils on to every effort to impede that union of God and men.

The devils are not stragglers from a once proud army, plundering where and when they like; they are not guerilla bands that have escaped a pursuing army; nor are they an army of evil that has fought the legions of God to a standstill. They are by no means out of control; rather they are and completely subject to God. The extent and power of diabolic attacks on men are themselves subject to divine ordination; the divine government is wise enough to fit even such things into the working out of the perfection of the universe, for it knows how to use evil by ordering it to still greater good. One of the chief weapons against these enemies is the protection of the guardian angels and the use of Holy Water.