What Are Angels? Background and a modern understanding

The Commemoration of Angels and Adoration of The Archangels                                   Celebrated today in the Western Church, primarily among Roman Catholics

The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet                               An excerpt from Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake’s latest book.

“Metaphysics

“It may seem unlikely that a scientist and a theologian would discuss angels in the twenty-first century. Both disciplines at the end of the modern era appear equally embarrassed by this subject. For theologians, it became an embarrassment for three hundred years even to mention angels. During the Newtonian-Cartesian industrial age, angels were banished, trivialized. The Baroque churches built in the seventeenth century, the same century that science and religion split, depicted angels as chubby, cute, little babies that you want to pinch. 

Basically, religion took the soul, which became more and more introverted and puny, and scientists took the universe. Through the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, the universe was mechanized, and at the same time the heavens were secularized. They were made up of ordinary matter gliding around in perfect accordance with Newtonian laws. There was no room in them for angelic intentions. Angels had no place in a mechanistic world, except perhaps as psychological phenomena, existing only within our imaginations.

But this mechanistic worldview is now being superseded by science itself. And although the scientific and theological establishments have ignored angels, recent surveys have shown that many people still believe in them. In the United States, for example, over two-thirds believe in their existence, and one-third state that they have personally felt an angelic presence in their lives. We are entering a new phase of both science and theology, where the subject of angels becomes surprisingly relevant again. 

Both the new cosmology and the old angelology raise significant questions about the existence and role of consciousness at levels beyond the human. When the two of us held our first discussions on this subject, we were fascinated by the parallels between Thomas Aquinas speaking of angels in the Middle Ages and Albert Einstein speaking of photons in the last century.

…

The traditional Western understanding of angels is much deeper and richer than the more individualistic modern angel literature would suggest, and far more concerned with community and our common development and our relationships with one another, God, and the universe. These values fit with a more holistic or organic understanding of nature and of society.

Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge common experiences that emerge in all world cultures and religions when we are living in an ever-shrinking global village. All cultures, including our own, acknowledge the existence of spirits at levels beyond the human. We call them angels, but they go under different names in other traditions (Native Americans call them “spirits”). 

Angels constitute one of the most fundamental themes in human spiritual and religious experience. It is difficult to imagine deep ecumenism or interfaith advancing among the world’s cultures and religions without acknowledging angels in our midst and angels in our own traditions. Experiences that we human beings face together, including the ecological crisis, require all the wisdom we can muster. Angels may be able to assist us in this work and may well prove to be indispensable allies, truly guardian angels, instructing us in safeguarding our inheritance of a once healthy but today endangered planet.

For all these reasons, it is important to return to our own spiritual tradition to examine what it tells us about angels, and to connect that wisdom to today’s evolutionary cosmology. …To assist us in this task of exploring our own spiritual tradition, we have chosen to concentrate on three giants of the Western tradition whose treatment of angels is particularly broad, deep, and influential.  They are Dionysius the Areopagite, a Syrian monk whose classic work The Celestial Hierarchies was written in the sixth century; Hildegard of Bingen, a German abbess of the twelfth century; and St. Thomas Aquinas, a philosopher-theologian of the thirteenth century.

Dionysius the Areopagite made an amazing synthesis of the currents of the Neoplatonic philosophies of the Middle East in the light of his own Christian theology and experience. Hildegard of Bingen, though she called on the tradition of angelology handed down through the monastic tradition of the Western church, nevertheless worked especially out of her visionary experiences with the angelic realms. Thomas Aquinas created a synthesis of the study of angels, including the views of the Muslim philosopher Averroes, the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, the science and philosophy of Aristotle, and the biblical tradition. He also raised profound, speculative questions that are provocative even today, and are especially interesting in light of the cosmology now emerging from today’s science. It is likely that these three thinkers devoted more of their intellectual labor to angelology than any other three major thinkers of the West.

What is an angel? And what do they do?

First, angels are powerful. When an angel appears in the Scriptures, the first words are, “Don’t be afraid.” Angels are awesome. The poet Rilke says that every angel is terrifying.

Angels are essentially understanding beings. They think deeply. They are experts at intuition, and can assist our intuition. Angels are also special friends to the prophets, and we need prophets today in every profession, in every role of citizenship, in every generation.

In addition, angels have very strong wills and have serious cosmic duties to perform, relating to the wisdom and the knowledge that they carry. One of these tasks is to praise.

Both Hildegard of Bingen and Thomas Aquinas teach that the devil does not praise, and that’s what makes the devil different from the angels—a refusal to praise. How much of our culture in the last few centuries has indeed been a refusal to praise?

The angels are agents and co-workers with us human beings. Sometimes they guard and defend us; sometimes they inspire us and announce big news to us—they get us to move. …

Angels make human beings happy. It is very rare to meet someone who has met an angel who doesn’t wear a smile on his or her face. They call us to be greater beings ourselves.

In the Middle Ages, as in all previous ages, it was generally believed that the heavens were alive, the whole cosmos was alive. The heavens were populated with innumerable conscious beings associated with the stars, the planets, and maybe the spaces in between. When people thought of God in heaven, they were not thinking in terms of some vague metaphor or some psychological state, they were thinking of the sky.

“Our Father, who art in heaven.” Nowadays, many Christians assume that this is a merely metaphorical statement, nothing to do with the actual sky. But this isn’t how people used to think. They thought that the heavens were full of spirits and of God. And indeed, if you think of God as omnipresent, everywhere, divinity must be present throughout the whole universe, of which the earth is but an infinitesimal part.

In the first century, when the Christian scriptures were written, the number-one question going around the Mediterranean basin was: Are the angels our friends or our foes? Everyone believed in angels in Greece and Rome; they were part of the accepted cosmology. But the question was: Can we trust these invisible forces of the universe that are moving planets and the elements? How trustworthy is the universe?

That’s so interesting because in the twentieth century, Einstein was once asked, “What’s the most important question you can ask in life?” And his answer was, “Is the universe a friendly place or not?” It’s the same question. I tell my students that every time you see angels mentioned in the Bible, you should think Einstein, because you’re dealing with the same issue. It’s the ultimate cosmological issue. Can we trust the cosmos? Is the cosmos benign?”

Adapted from Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet by Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake. Used with permission from Monkfish Book Publishing.

– See more at: http://spiritualityhealth.com/articles/physics-angels-exploring-realm-where-science-and/page/0/1#sthash.VxSwHf1J.dpuf

October 3

Angels con’t   

6 Signs Angels Are Nearby; God’s messengers leave their mark everywhere they go.

By Stephanie Hertzenberg

 There are always angels in this world. Unfortunately, many people do not know the signs that show angels are nearby. As such, they remain unaware of the divine company they keep. …

Learn how to recognize when angels are nearby so that you can take advantage of their wisdom and the hints they leave you. Here are six signs that angels are nearby.

 Friends With Feathers

Though the portrayal is not necessarily accurate of what angels look like, most people in the West picture angels as having white, feathery wings like a swan or dove. As such, it should come as no surprise that one of the biggest signs that an angel is nearby is finding feathers. 

White feathers are most commonly associated with angels due to prevailing imagery, but there are many theories about the meaning of the colors of the feathers you find. Brown feathers, for example, are sometimes associated with friendship, home and respect. Red feathers are believed to signify passion, courage and good fortune. Some feathers are even believed to be signs from specific angels. 

When it comes to angel messages, the feathers you find may not be on the ground. They may still be attached to brightly colored wings. Birds are a common sign that there are angels nearby. When you see birds coming closer to you than usual, keep your eyes open for other signs of angels. This is especially true if the birds in question are doves, cardinals, robins or hummingbirds. All four are closely associated with God, angels and messages. 

 Pennies From Heaven

The phrase “pennies from heaven” is usually used to express that an event was an unexpected bit of good fortune or sudden windfall. One sign of angels in the area, however, is stumbling across what are, more or less literally, pennies from heaven.  If you have found coins in unusual places or have repeatedly stumbled across more than you would expect to find in a given day, those coins might well have been left there for you by angels. 

Repeated Numbers

You see numbers in dozens of places every day. Each time you look at a digital clock, you see at least three numbers. Whenever you purchase anything, you are dealing with numbers. Most of the time when you write a date you use a set of numbers. Numbers are absolutely everywhere in daily life. As such, they are an easy way for angels to get your attention. If you think that there may be angels nearby, pay attention to any sets of repeated numbers.

If you seem to always look at the clock at 11:11, there may be an angel nearby. The same is true if a happy thought seems to strike you every day at 4:44. Repeated numbers do not only have to be sets of the same number repeated in a sequence such as 888 or 111. If you bought a lunch that cost $12.17, got an email from your boss about a promotion at 12:17 and the due date for your sister’s baby is December 17, there is probably an angel nearby.

 Moving Music

Music has always had the ability to touch people’s souls. Sometimes, however, a new song seems to punch you in the gut or an old favorite abruptly takes on new meaning. Perhaps you are scanning through the radio when a song that perfectly describes your mood beings to play.

Music is an easy way for angels to reach you because music does half the work on its own. People naturally respond to music. As such, it is easy for angels to reach you through it.

Unexpected Connections

In addition to leaving little signs on their own, angles sometimes work through other people to make themselves known. A person that you were thinking about may suddenly call you, or you might find yourself with the perfect opportunity to mend bridges with a person you want back in your life. When such things happen, there might well be an angel peering over your shoulder looking to help you. 

When angels are involved, you might also find that someone around you says exactly what you need to hear. They might give you a bit of good news on a day when you desperately need some joy. If you are struggling to make a choice, someone you have not mentioned the decision to might start talking about a similar choice they had to make and why they either regretted it or were pleased with their choice. You might meet a stranger who has the perfect bit of advice for you. When those sorts of things happen, angels are in the area.

Dreams

There is probably no way of encountering angels more classic than finding them in your dreams. If you are dreaming of angels or find that your dreams are filled with symbols that make you think of angels, there might well be a winged messenger looking out for you. Be aware that the symbols in your dreams that represent the nearby angels may not be as straightforward as white feathers or doves.

If for some reason, your subconscious associates a cat or even an hourglass with an angel in your dream, that is likely what the object represents. Dreams do not follow the same logic as the waking world, so do not be surprised if what you dream of does not match up with what you would expect.

  One only needs to be paying attention to those supposed coincidences that appear in life. 

  “Make yourself familiar with the angels, and behold them frequently in spirit; For without being seen, they are present with you.”     St. Francis de Sales