Angels are unchangeable because they love God; Angels: Day 017

Angels are unchangeable because they love God

The nature of  angels is changeable, says St. Gregory the Great. But the good angels are unchangeably good, because they are bound by love to their unchange– able Creator.

“Even in his servants he puts no trust, and his angels he charges with error; how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth” ( Job 4:18-19).

Although the angelic nature remains unchangeable in its own state, because it stands fast in the contemplation of its Creator, yet in that it is a created being it does have the possibility of change in itself.

To be changed is to go from being one thing to being another; a thing that changes does not have stability in itself. Every being is becoming some other thing, by as many steps as there are changes it goes through. Only the incomprehensible Nature cannot be moved from its fixed state: it is always the same, and cannot be changed.

Since the essence of angels was created good by its Maker, if it had not been changeable, that nature in the corrupt spirits would never have fallen from the pinnacle of its blessed condition. But in a wonderful way God created the nature of the highest spiritual beings good; yet he made them at the same time capable of change, so that those who refused to remain would come to ruin, and those who continued as they were created might be confirmed in that state even more worthily because it was their own choice, and become all the more meritorious in the sight of God because they had resisted the motions of change by the staying power of the will.

So the angelic nature itself is also changeable, but it has overcome that changeability by being bound by chains of love to God, who is always the same. –St. Gregory the Great,  Moralia in Job, 5.68

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

Every human being is changing—but are my changes leading me closer to the un-

changeable angelic nature that is bound by chains of love to God?

CLOSING PRAYER

Save me from the difficulties of this world, Lord, and lead my will in conformity with yours, so that at the end I may be counted worthy to dwell with all your angels in eternal bliss.

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