Homily for the Feast of the Archangels

Homily for the Feast of the Archangels

The angels are not at the heart of the Christian mystery. Christ is at the heart. The angels are peripheral. They are “framers”….literally. In the medieval images they frame the scene. Angels around the Blessed Virgin Mary and the child Jesus, or at the sides of the Cross. But we ignore the angels to our own peril. Because they are very real and they influence the world of human culture.

In the beginning, the scriptures tell us, God created the heavens and the earth: things both visible and invisible. He therefore intended a holy society of angels and men. They, pure spirits, of intellect and will, incorporeal, knowing and loving God. We embodied spirits of animal and rational nature, living with God in and through time, in and through the body, in human community, in the material world. Angels and human beings alike and even in some real way, together, glorifying God. A holy society, the primitive Church, of the first creation in grace.

The angelic sin of the devil and the original sin of human beings, upset all that order, that society. When we tend to think of the consequences of original sin, if we do at all these days, we think of the loss of harmony within the human person, our internal woundedness and chaos, the internal turmoil of sin. Or we think of the fallen character of human civilization. The way human beings invariably fail to get it right. We say, “it’s a fallen world,” and that’s true.

But there is also a wound, more hidden, of our human concord with the spiritual world, of our alienation from the invisible and our superstition about the invisible world. In a fallen world, the fallen angels strive to turn the minds of men away from God, toward themselves. They seek to make human beings in their own image, proud, defiant, atheistic. Or they seek to turn the hearts of men toward idols, idols of the senses or the spirit, or even toward the worship of angels, or the fear of them. Enslavement to the senses. Bartering with spirits. It’s part of one strategy.

One of the deeply healing effects of Christ is the restoration of that original society of holy men and holy angels, in an economy of grace. In the mystery of Christ, who is at the center of our lives, there can be a new life of grace in Christ that is shared, between men and angels. The restoration of that primitive Church of angels and men.

We see it in Luke’s gospel from the very beginning, at the Annunciation. Gabriel speaks to the Virgin Mary. “Behold, full of grace.” (Luke 1:28) The Incarnation begins this new life of interaction in the work of salvation. And then on Christmas night, the angels appear to the shepherds. “Glory to God in the highest.” (Luke 2:14) A message from the heights given to the lowliest, connecting them within one work of God. In the temptation narratives of Luke and Matthew, Jesus vanquishes the tempter, the wicked angel, and sets us free from him to serve God alone. (Luke 4:1-13; Matt. 4:1-11) In the Resurrection, the apostles encounter angels, at the empty tomb, and on the day of the Ascension. They great them with news of Christ risen from the dead. (Luke 24:5; Acts 1:10-11) As Jesus says in John’s Gospel: “you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:51)

Of course there is a tendency for us to suspect that this is all mythology, images from an ancient religious civilization. But that’s not quite fair. After all, an experience of the angelic world is supernatural. It is an effect of a very special grace, that all do not necessarily receive. How do you want the Biblical authors to portray these particular encounters with the angelic world? They have to give us portraits, and portray things according to our human manner of understanding, in words and images. They represent to us the mystery in words and images.

The angels can seem far way to us, because we think and live in and through sensations and we don’t sense them, or at least quite rarely do we sense them. We know that they exist in the faith. But to acknowledge them in the faith is quite helpful to us, even for understanding ourselves in our everyday life. For the angels help us see that we are the beings in the middle of the creation, in the intermediary spot, between angels and animals.  Above us are the pure spirits, below us are the animals deprived of rationality. And we are the spiritual animals, neither pure spirit nor beast, but a challenging combination. It is difficult to live in this intermediary position. We each have in us the hidden nostalgia to be either a pure spirit devoid of the flesh, or a beast free from the impulses of spiritual reason. But the challenge is to be neither a beast nor an angel, but a human being.

We do have distinct advantages over the angels. Otherwise God would not have created us. Most of these advantages pertain to spiritually noble acts we can accomplish because of the physical body. We can have families and take moral responsibility for children that we nurture and educate. Angels cannot do that, nor can the other animals. We can work in the domains of art and industry, changing the physical world, spiritualizing that physical world. Angels cannot do that, nor can the other animals. We can enjoy a particular interdependency of society in which there is mutual friendship and learning. This of a university as an example. Angels cannot do that, nor can other animals.

But most especially there is the supernatural mystery. Because we have a body as well as a spiritual life, we are the beings in whom God can become incarnate. A human being was the mother of God: our sister, our Mother, the Virgin Mary. She gave birth to the person of the Word. And from the Word incarnate there are the sacraments: physical channels of grace, in which God elevates material things to serve as conduits of salvation. There is also martyrdom and death in Christ. Martyrdom in reality is quite frightening, but it is also so beautiful. We can die in the Lord and thus glorify him out of love.

Last of all, there is the priesthood. There are no angel priests. The priest exists in the flesh, and the priest in his spirit and in his flesh,  is called to be conformed to Christ in a particular way, to be an instrument of the very person of Christ in the midst of the world. Through the priest the Eucharist is confected, the real presence of the body and blood of Christ. Graces of forgiveness are dispensed in the sacrament of penance. And the Gospel is preached. To preach the saving divine truth to all creatures: that is not the work of an animal or an angel, that is the work of a priest. The priest who elevates the host before the people, the priest who absolves sins, the priest who preaches the truth of the Gospel.  He is a mediator between God and men, in Christ, and he participates in the inauguration this new kingdom of Christ, this new world of communion in grace, a kingdom in which Christ is king. We should pray to the angels that we find our place in this world, and if that place is the priesthood, we should embrace it with joy. For there is no higher or more beautiful form of life.

By Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.

Homily for the Feast of the Archangels, Sept. 29, 2012