We were made to glorify God on earth; Angels: Day 296

Last updated on: May 15, 2017 at 3:30 am by Pete Socks

We were made to glorify God on earth; Angels: Day 296 2017-05-06T20:36:15-05:00 Pete Socks

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The angels glorify God in Heaven, says St. Gregory of Nyssa, and human beings were made so that God would be glorified by intelligent beings in the material part of creation.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him” (Gen. 1:27). Certain writers before us have explained the reason for creating this animate being this way:

The whole creation is divided into two parts: that which is seen, and that which is not seen, to use the Apostle’s words—“not seen” meaning the intelligible and immaterial, “seen” meaning the sensible and material. Since it is divided that way, the angelic and spiritual natures, which are among the things not seen, live in places above the world, and above the heavens, because such a residence cor- responds with their constitution—for an intellectual nature is a fine, clear, unencumbered, agile kind of thing, and a heavenly body is fine and light, and perpetually moving, and the earth on the contrary, which stands last in the list of sensible things, can never be an adequate and congenial spot for intellectual beings to sojourn in. For what correspondence can there possibly be between that which is light and buoyant, on the one hand, and that which is heavy and gravitating on the other?

Well, to keep the earth from being completely devoid of the intellectual and the immaterial living in it, man (these writers tell us) was fashioned by the Supreme forethought, and his earthy parts formed over the intellectual and godlike essence of his soul. So this mixing with what has material weight enables the soul to live on this element of earth, which has a certain relation to the substance of the flesh.

The purpose of everything born, then, is that the Power which is above both the heavenly and the earthly universe may be glorified by intelligent beings in all parts of creation. –St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Infants’ Early Deaths

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

As an intelligent being, I am akin to the angels. God made me that way. Does my life reflect that truth?

CLOSING PRAYER

Lord, you are always willing to sanctify me. Send me your Holy Spirit, so that I may show forth your glory in my thinking, as the angels do in theirs.

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A Year with the Angels

Mike Aquilina

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Saint Gregory of Nyssa

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