The angels learned the gospel along with us; Angels: Day 167

Introducing the Gospel of John to his flock, St. John Chrysostom tells them they are about to hear what the angels themselves didn’t know until it was revealed to us and them—the  full truth of the Gospel.

All Heaven is his stage. His theater is the inhabited world. All the angels are his audience—and all of us who are angels already, or want to become angels. For only such people can hear the harmony truly, and show it in their works. But the rest are like little children who hear but don’t understand what they’re hearing, because they’re thinking about candy and toys: stuck in merriment and luxury, liv- ing only for wealth and power and pleasure, they sometimes hear what is said, but they display nothing great or noble in what they do. They don’t make themselves part of the clay that forms bricks for the Church.

Beside this Apostle the powers from above are standing, marveling at the beauty of his soul, and his understanding, and the blooming virtue that drew Christ himself to him, and won him the grace of the Spirit. He has made his soul ready, as if it were a well-made lyre with golden strings, and given it up to the spirit to play something great and divine.

Since this is no longer just the fisherman, the son of Zebedee, but the One who knows the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10)—I mean the Holy Spirit—that plays this lyre, let us listen. For he will not speak to us as a man, but he will say what he says from the depths of the Spirit, from those secret things that even the angels didn’t know before they happened. They also have learned what we know from the voice of John with us, and even by us—as another Apostle declared: “that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the Principalities and Powers in the heavenly places” (Eph. 3:10). –St. John Chrysostom, Homily 1 on the Gospel of John

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

Do I make time to listen to the message that the angels were so eager to hear?

CLOSING PRAYER

You are the Gospel and the light, Savior and keeper of my soul and body.

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