The inner speech of spiritual beings, Angels: Day 067

Last updated on: September 26, 2016 at 3:30 am by Pete Socks

The inner speech of spiritual beings, Angels: Day 067 2016-09-17T16:35:56-05:00 Pete Socks

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The inner speech of spiritual beings

When Scripture says that the Lord “speaks” to an angel, says St. Gregory the Great, we need to remember that angels don’t have lungs and throats and all the organs of speech. These things belong to human beings, who are mixtures of mind and body.

We need to give this careful consideration: what it means to say that the Lord speaks to Satan, or Satan answers the Lord. We need to figure out what it means by “speaking.”

Neither the Lord (who is the supreme and boundless Spirit) nor Satan (who does not have a fleshly nature) breathes in air with the lungs, like human beings, so that it should be forced back out through the throat in vocal sounds. When the in- comprehensible Nature “speaks” to an invisible nature, our imagination needs to rise above the properties of our own bodily speech and be lifted up to the sublime and unknown ways of inner speech.

When we need to express something that we know inwardly, we do so through the vocal cords, by the sounds of the voice, because, as far as others can see, we stand in the secret dwelling place of the mind behind the body as if it were a sort of curtain. When we want to make ourselves known, we go out through the door of the tongue, so to speak, to show what kind of people we are inside.

But that is not true of a spiritual nature, which is not a binary mixture of mind and body. –St. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 2.8

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

When I speak, what kind of person do I reveal standing behind the curtain? Do the people who hear me see an angel or a devil?

CLOSING PRAYER

Guardian Angel, be with me whenever I speak, so that I may call on the Lord with a pure heart and with sanctified lips.

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Saint Gregory the Great

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