What are angels and what effect, if any, do they have in our lives? To begin with, angelic and human natures are totally separate and distinct forms. People often confuse angels with deceased persons, probably stemming from countless Hollywood depictions such as Clarence, the angel in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Real angels are spiritual beings who have never been attached to a body. Just so you and I will never become angels because we are human, something entirely different in both essence and nature. Catholic teaching has long insisted that our special human dignity derives from the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of God. But if God is pure spirit it would seem more likely that he is reflected in his angels, not men and women. Yet man actually bears a closer resemblance to God than even the highest angelic hosts. We know this because God himself took the form of a man, not an angel, in the person of Jesus Christ.

Angels are quite literally God’s ministers who execute his divine will in the universe as they have from the beginning. They are of the spiritual order which is superior to and in control of the material order. They are like cosmic traffic cops charged with implementing and directing the physical laws of nature. Science may understand, for instance, how gravity hold stars, planets, even galaxies together and can even make mathematical predictions based on it’s laws. But what science cannot fully answer is why gravity exists in the first place and what mysterious forces cause it to behave as it does. In other words there must be, behind all the physical sciences, some Divine science which ultimately orders the cosmos. Continue reading →