Light and darkness, Angels: Day 071

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

Light and darkness, Angels: Day 071 2016-09-24T19:41:00-05:00 Pete Socks

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Light and darkness

Genesis 1:4 says that “God separated the light from the darkness”; St. Augustine suggests that it refers to the separation of the good angels from the evil an– gels. But even if that’s not what the original author intended, he says, describing the one group as “light” and the other as “darkness” is still accurate.

“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” ( James 4:6). One group lives in the Heaven of heavens; the other is thrown out of there, and rages through the lower regions of the air. One is tranquil in the brightness of piety, the other tempest-tossed with desires that cloud the way. One, at God’s plea- sure, tenderly helps and justly avenges; the other, attacked by its own pride, boils with the lust of conquering and hurting. One is the minister of God’s goodness to the utmost of their good pleasure; the other is kept back by God’s power from doing the harm it wants to do. The first laughs at the second when it does good unwillingly by its persecutions; the second envies the first when it gathers in its pilgrims.

These two angelic communities, then, are different from and contrary to one another, the one both by nature good and by will upright, the other also good by nature but by will depraved. We see them thus in other and more explicit passages of holy writ, but I think they are spoken of in this book of Genesis under the names of light and darkness.

And even if the author might have had a different meaning, yet our discus-

sion has not been wasted time; for, though we have not been able to discover his meaning, yet we have stuck to the rule of faith, which the faithful gather well enough from other passages of equal authority. For, though it is the material works of God that are spoken of here, they have certainly a resemblance to the spiritual, so that Paul can say, “For you are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness” (1 Thess. 5:5).

–St. Augustine, City of God, 11.33

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

In St. Augustine’s description, which most resembles my own inner life: the life of the fallen angels, or the life of the holy angels?

CLOSING PRAYER

Holy angels, humble angels, may I desire what you desire—to serve—that I may be found in the city of God at the fulfillment of history.

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