The will of God is the cause of everything; Angels: Day 126

St. Augustine argues that the will of God is ultimately the cause of everything that happens in the world. Along the way  he gives us a beautiful picture of Heaven, where the angels are “combined in one will by a kind of spiritual fire of love.”

Let us turn our thoughts to that heavenly country above, from which we are pilgrims down here. There the will of God, who makes the angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire (Ps. 104:4), presides among spirits joined in perfect peace and friendship. They are combined in one will by a kind of spiritual fire of love. There God’s will, in its own house and temple, sits, so to speak, on a high and holy secret seat. From there it spreads itself through all things by perfectly ordered movements of the creature—first spiritual, and then bodily. It uses everything according to the unchangeable choice of its own will—bodiless or bodily things, rational or irrational spirits, good by his grace or evil by their own will.

But the coarser and lower bodies are governed in due order by the living spirit, and the living spirit without intelligence is governed by the living spirit with intelligence, and the intelligent living spirit that falls and sins is governed by the intelligent living spirit that is pious and just, and that is governed by God himself.

So every creature is governed by its Creator. From, through, and in its Creator it is created and established.

Thus it happens that the will of God is the first and highest cause of every bodily appearance and motion. –St. Augustine, On the Trinity, 3.2

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

How could I combine my will with the will of the angels?

CLOSING PRAYER

Holy Lord, I am sinful, but accept my praise along with the praise of the holy Cherubim and Seraphim.

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