Angels of God

There is a mysterious verse from Psalm 85: "Goodness and truth will meet, justice and peace will kiss, truth will sprout from the earth, justice will appear from heaven" (vv. 11-12). A Jewish midrash comments on this by imagining that before creating human beings, God goes to the most important angels of his court, Goodness, Truth, Justice and Peace, to ask for advice. Goodness says to God: «Of course! Create them! Created by you, they will be capable of great acts of goodness! »

The Truth thinks differently: «Don't create them! They will be full of lies!” «Created – says the angel of Justice – they will be perfectly able to observe the laws». «Do not create them – the angel of Peace contradicts him – because they will be in continuous conflict». These four angels in contrast with each other tell us that compromises cannot be made in life. Man is called, because he was created by the goodness of God, to choose Goodness and with that make Truth flourish from the earth, to choose Peace so that Justice may descend as a gift from heaven. He is called to hold together what seems not to go together: Goodness with Truth, Justice with Peace. As? Specializing more and more in recognizing the Angel of Light and rejecting the Angel of Darkness. We no longer hear about angels, yet the existence of angels and demons is an essential dogmatic fact, says Jean Daniélou. In the Gospels the angels surround Jesus from the annunciation to the resurrection to testify to the presence of God in him. From temptation to the Passion, the existence of evil spirits is also attested. The work of Christ, beyond appearances, appears as a conflict with the prince of this world and his angels of darkness. Conflict which, after their apparent victory on Good Friday, ends with the definitive defeat on Easter morning.

Those who love Jesus, believe in him and want to follow him must face the same conflict. But, like him, with the help of the good angels and with the awareness that the black angels also have their function. «The thoughts that come from our heart, says Origen, sometimes come from ourselves, sometimes from opposing powers, sometimes they are sent by God through the holy angels. It might seem like an imagination, if Scripture did not bear witness to it." If God allows the action of opposing powers, Origen adds, it is because we are able to overcome them. The thought of Origen is at the root of Christian spiritual psychology, followed by the Desert Fathers, Evagrius in particular, up to the Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Yes, but how do you discern, given that the result of a choice is often understood long after it has been made?

Meanwhile, rereading the fateful chapter 3 of Genesis every day: the fruit offered by the serpent is good to eat, beautiful to look at, desirable. We do evil because it seems good, beautiful and desirable to us, otherwise we wouldn't do it. Then from the results we realize that instead of good it is bad, instead of beautiful it is ugly, instead of desirable it is detestable. We discover ourselves naked, divided within ourselves, from God, from others, from nature, from life and even from death. We cannot live using the instinct for pleasure like animals, but by keeping together, as the midrash says, instinctive life with rational and spiritual life. Holding opposites together.

Difficult? Yes. But not impossible, if it was the Goodness of God who created us. We need God's help which comes to us through the presence of good angels, who are also warrior angels.
Excessive rationalization is as bad for the life of faith as excess mysticism. The Christian life is balance. It should flow immersed in mystery, in an apparently invisible world crossed by angels of light and angels of darkness that sensitivity teaches us to recognise, with their feet well rooted in the land of reason and will. Then the impossible will become possible: goodness and truth will meet, justice and peace will kiss.

Flaminia Morandi
NP April 2024