KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 25 September
They overcame him by the blood of the lamb
Above the entrance to the Romanesque Basilica San Michele Maggiore in Pavia, in northern Italy, stands a bas-relief of the figure of St. Michael the Archangel. He is depicted as looking straight ahead, calm and serene, while standing upon a dragon-like serpent. Around the portal a whole collection of creatures are arrayed, each chasing and devouring one another. It depicts. in an imaginative way, the important contrast and connection between two different forms of thinking: ratio and intellectus.
The angels remind us of the necessity and the priority of intellectus, the power of understanding, without which we are lost and consumed in ratiocination, our linear, calculative kind of thinking, chasing one thing after another without any sense of the whole; literally lost in the parts. Intellectus is about the gathering together of all things into understanding, into wisdom, and as such redeems our more instrumental forms of thinking which by themselves lead to destruction and despair. The redemption of ratio is found in its participation in intellectus, something which is wonderfully shown in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, a work which draws upon Augustine and important intellectual developments in late antiquity. Both Augustine and Boethius are buried in another church in Pavia; San Pietro Ciel d’oro, mentioned by Dante in the Paradiso of his Divine Comedy. Such are just some of the profound aspects of intellectus, a gathering into understanding.
We need to be reminded about the different forms of thinking. The angels are part and parcel of the scriptural landscape and intellectual thought-world of the ancient Greeks and of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic imaginary. They belong to our life together as an intellectual and spiritual community which is especially the role of Chapel in the life of the School. They remind us of the important truth and insight that there is more to reality than what is known by our senses. We can’t see the angels. In a way, that is the point. We can only think them. They are pure mind, spiritual and intellectual beings who are the invisible thoughts of God in creation.