There was war in heaven
In a world of wars and division, it may be too much to contemplate the idea of war in heaven. The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels reminds us of the spiritual warfare between good and evil. But it doesn’t simply leave us with opposition and division, with war and enmity. In a way, we are saved by grammar. “There was war in heaven, “ not there is! But on earth? In human hearts? That is, I am afraid, another matter. This remarkable feast reminds us of the struggle for the good in human hearts and human lives. The struggle, as Revelation suggests, is cosmic, a struggle against spiritual forces, as Paul indicates, against principalities and powers.
Angels belong to the created order. They are, we might say, God’s thoughts in creation. The Gospel reading touches upon an important intellectual consideration: “angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven,” Jesus says. The Gospel reading recalls us to the biblical witness to angels as spiritual beings that are with us in some sense. They are, as the long philosophical tradition of reflection teaches, pure spiritual beings, sempiternal, defined by their will and attention to God. But Revelation reminds us of the fallen angels, of sin and evil as the principle of the denial of God and of their own creation. It is expressed in a series of terms: “the great dragon”, “that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” Such images take us back to Genesis and to the conditions of creation in the commandment not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and to the subsequent story of the Fall with the wiles of the serpent whose questions insinuate doubt and denial of what is called emphatically “good”, indeed “very good.”
The questions of the serpent to Adam and Eve deceive by suggesting an alternative explanation at the expense of what God has actually said. Thus, the Genesis story sees sin and evil as rooted in disobedience. The further ramification of such disobedience is seen in the angelic revolt of that great dragon, that old serpent (recalling Genesis), called the devil and Satan. Another term is Lucifer, meaning the light-bearer who becomes the prince of darkness because he literally turns his back on God and on the vocation and truth of his own being. Such is the radical nature of evil, a denial of the Good upon which our being and knowing utterly depend. It is absolutely self-contradictory; it depends upon that which it rejects. Such is the folly of sin and evil. It means to live in contradiction to the principle of the Good which is by definition greater and prior. The passage from Revelation shows us the victory of St. Michael and All Angels over all that opposes the truth and goodness of God. The victory is through the blood of the Lamb, a reference to Christ and his passion and sacrifice for us, a victory which is cosmic in its extent and force.
Angels are part and parcel of the scriptural landscape of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions as well as the spiritual imaginaries that arise from them in their histories through their interaction with Hellenic philosophy. Jesus says to Nathaniel, for instance, that he will see “the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (Jn. 3. 51). They belong to an intellectual and spiritual understanding of reality.
The angels teach us, Thomas Aquinas argues, by “mov[ing] our imaginations and strengthen[ing] our understanding.” We are in their company in our thinking and willing God and his will for us. That is a journey of the understanding about the nature of the Good, of God and his goodness in creation. We confront our evil in our wilful ignorance of his goodness. This feast reminds us that God and his goodness is greater than our folly and evil. It teaches us to behold God and his truth.
The angels remind us that we are in a spiritual company and that we, too, are spiritual creatures. To let the angels move our imaginations and strengthen our understanding is the counter and corrective to our misuse of creation and one another. We are, as it were, carried on the wings of angels in our liturgy, singing with the angels the praise of the Trisagion, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” even as the angels carry the thoughts of God down to us.
The flying buttresses of the great medieval cathedral of Rheims literally hold up the massive stones of that soaring edifice. On the top of each of the supporting buttresses are angels. It is a marvellous image: the angels lifting up the whole material structure to God. It is a way of imagining the purpose and nature of the building and of our humanity. We are lifted up to God on angels’ wings and carried into the life of God. Such is the power of the Good even in the face of our evil.
There was war in heaven.
Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Michael and All Angels
September 29th, 2020