Angels hide their faces from the Triune mystery, Angels: Day 057

Angels hide their faces from the Triune mystery

If Christ, the only-begotten Son, has existed from eternity, how was he begotten? Even the angels, says St. Ambrose, hide their faces from that mystery,  and we should follow their example.

Do you ask me how he is a Son, if he does not have a Father existing before him? Then I ask you: when or how do you think the Son was begotten? For me the knowledge of the mystery of his generation is more than I can reach. The mind fails, the voice is dumb—yes, and not mine alone, but the angels’ too. It is above Powers, above Angels, above Cherubim, Seraphim, and all that has feeling and thought. For it is written, “the peace of God, which passes all understanding” (Phil. 4:7). If the peace of Christ passes all understanding, how can such a marvel- ous generation not be above all understanding?

So cover your face with your hands, like the angels. For it is not your business to look into surpassing mysteries! We are allowed to know that the Son is begotten, not to argue about how he was begotten. I cannot deny the one; the other I fear to search into. If Paul says that the words he heard when caught up into the third Heaven might not be uttered (2 Cor. 12:2-5), how can we explain the secret of this generation from and of the Father, which we can neither hear nor reach with our understanding –St. Ambrose, Exposition of the Christian Faith, 1.10

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

When it comes to the deepest mysteries of the Faith, am I willing to show the intellectual modesty of the angels, who cover their faces with their wings rather than gaze deeply at the mysteries they can’t understand?

CLOSING PRAYER

My Guardian Angel, you know so much more than I, and I know so much less than I think I know. Increase my self-knowledge, that I may be humble and grow in the knowledge of God.

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