From beast to angel; Angels: Day 254

Animals don’t sin, because they follow the laws of nature laid down for them. Angels in Heaven don’t sin, because their wills are perfectly in tune with God’s. But we, says St. Augustine, are halfway between. If we subdue the part of us that’s like the animals, we can rise to the level of the angels.

It is a great question whether there is any rational creature for which there is no pleasure in what is unlawful. If there is such a class of creatures, it does not include man, nor does it include the angelic beings that did not stay in the truth. These rational creatures were made so that they had the potentiality of restraining their desires from the unlawful; and in not doing this they sinned.

Great, then, is the creature man, for he is restored by this potentiality, by which, if he had so chosen, he would not have fallen. And great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, who created man. For he also created inferior natures which cannot sin, and superior natures which will not sin. Beasts do not sin, for their nature agrees with the eternal law from being subject to it, without being in possession of it. And again, angels do not sin, because their heavenly nature is so in possession of the eternal law that God is the only object of its desire, and they obey his will without any experience of temptation.

But man, whose life on this earth is a trial on account of sin, subdues to him- self what he has in common with beasts, and subdues to God what he has in common with angels; till, when righteousness is perfected and immortality attained, he shall be raised from among beasts and ranked with angels. –St. Augustine, Reply to Faustus the Manichean, 22.28

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

How much does my life have in common with the beasts, and how much with the angels? How can I tip the scales toward the angelic side?

CLOSING PRAYER

God of light, who gives to the faint-hearted who put their trust in you those things into which angels desire to look, sanctify me in soul, body, and spirit, and make me worthy of your gifts.

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