Equal to angels – but not; Angels: Day 291

If  we’re to be like the angels, who have no bodies, then what becomes of  the resurrection of the body? St. Methodius of Olympus  explains that we’re to be equal to angels, but not identical. Our nature will never be other than human.

Here’s another point you should consider, Aglaophon—for you’re very much misled here, if you’ll forgive me for being blunt when the subject is so important. You said that the Lord declared plainly that those who gain the resurrection will be as the angels (Matt. 22:30). This was your objection: the angels are as happy and glorious as can be because they have no flesh. Since we are to be made equal to the angels, we must be stripped of flesh like them, and be angels.

But, my dear sir, you forgot this: God, who created the universe out of nothing and established its order, made the immortal beings to be not only angels and ministers, but also Principalities, Thrones, and Powers. Angels are one kind of being, and Principalities and Powers are another—immortal beings are not all the same rank, nature, group, and family, but there are differences of kind and group.

The Cherubim do not stop being Cherubim and become Angels. Angels do not take on another form. They can only be what they are, what they were made to be.

Since humanity was made in the original order of things to live in the world and rule over everything in it, when we are immortal we will not be changed from human beings into angels or anything else, just as the angels do not change from angels into something else. When Christ came, he did not announce that human nature, when it is immortal, would be remade or transformed into some other nature, but that it would be made again into what it was before the Fall. –St. Methodius of Olympus, Discourse on the Resurrection, 1.10

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

Do I live with a fixity of purpose as the angels do? Am I true without corruption to the nature God has given me?

CLOSING PRAYER

Our Father, Thy will be done, on earth as it is among the angels in Heaven.

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