Parente - The Angels: In Catholic Teaching and Tradition

Nihil Obstat:	Joseph D. Brokhage, S.T.D. Censor Librorum
Imprimatur:		Paul C. Schulte, D.D. Archbishop of Indianapolis December 28, 1957

Copyright 1961 by Society of St. Paul, New York, NY. Originally published by the Society of St. Paul, under the title Beyond Space: A Book About the Angels.

Copyright 1973 by TAN Books and Publishers, Inc. First published by TAN Books and Publishers, Inc. in 1973 under the title Beyond Space: A Book About the Angels . Republished by TAN Books and Publishers, Inc. in 1994 under the title The Angels: The Catholic Teaching on the Angels .

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 94-61948

ISBN: 978-0-89555-515-1

Cover design by Milo Persic, milo.persic@gmail.com

Cover image, Icon of the Archangels Gabriel, Michael and Raphael

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

TAN Books
Charlotte, North Carolina
2013

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Pascal P. Parente, Ph.D., S.T.D., J.C.B., scholar, professor and author, had a long-standing reputation as the foremost authority on ascetical and mystical theology in the United States. For 22 years he was professor of these subjects at Catholic University of America and for three years Dean of the School of Sacred Theology.

The secret of Father Parentes great popularity as a professor and author lay in his ability to express profound thought in simple, everyday language. In addition to numerous articles in theological magazines, Encyclopedia Britannica and the Catholic Encyclopedia, Father Parente published the following books: The Ascetical Life, The Mystical Life, The Well of Living Waters, Susanna Mary Beardsworth, The Case of Padre Pio, School Teacher and Saint and Beyond Space .

In June 1960, Father Parente retired to his country home in Cambridge, New York, where he divided his time between scholarly pursuits and gardening, his favorite hobby. He expressed the hope that, at last, he would have the opportunity to write the many books for which the busy life of a professor left no time.

In 1970, the author passed to his eternal reward.

CONTENTS

PART I

THE SPIRIT WORLD

CHAPTER I

THE ANGELS

M ORNING S TARS OF C REATION

P URE spirits, the closest image and likeness of the Creator, were the effect of a divine act of creation. A spirit world was produced, at once, in its fullness and in its grandeur. When, at the word of the Almighty, lights first rays lit up the primeval, shapeless world, still wrapped in a mist as in swaddling clothes, a wondrous song, a joyful melody filled the new heavens with never-ending strains. The Lord recalls these primordial times when He asks, Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? When the morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God made joyful melody. These sons of God, living witnesses of the creation of the material universe, were our Angels, the morning stars of creation.

It is an article of faith, firmly established in Scripture and Tradition and clearly expressed in Christian Doctrine from the beginning, that this spirit world, our Angels, began with time and was created by God. This traditional belief of both

From this definition we learn that the Angelic spirits were created when time began and not from eternity. Like all other creatures they were produced by the almighty power of God, out of nothing. It would be heretical to affirm that the Angels are an emanation of the divine substance. Spiritual substances do not divide or split or multiply in any form whatever, nor change one into another; their individual existence can only be explained by creation.

The creation of the Angels is implicitly affirmed in all those passages of Sacred Scripture in which it is stated that all things were made by God; explicitly and formally their creation is mentioned by Saint Paul in one of those incomplete enumerations of the Angelic orders: In Him [the Son of God, the Logos] were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers: all things were created by Him and in Him.

Creation itself is a revealed truth, not so the exact time when the Angels were created. Nothing definite can be

Saint Thomas, with some of the fathers of the Church, regards as more probable the opinion maintaining that the Angels were created together with the material universe because they are part of that universe. He does not regard as erroneous the opinion of those who hold that they were created before the visible world. The peculiar astronomical notions common in his day attributed to the Angels many duties that pertained to the physical government of the world, and thus they appeared more as a necessary part of the visible world than they actually are.

Another reason for that opinion is the authority of some of the fathers who saw the creation of the Angels in the words of Genesis, chapter 1:1, more exactly in the creation of Heaven: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Thus, for example, Saint Epiphanius: The word of God clearly declares that the Angels were neither created after the stars nor before heaven and earth. It must be regarded as certain and unshakable the opinion that says: None of the created things did exist before heaven and earth, because in

The wording of the definition by the Lateran Council, reported before, which seems to be opposed to the opinion of priority of creation of the Angels, creates no difficulty whatever. It is said there that God created together [ simul ] in the beginning of time both creatures, the spiritual and the

Both the existence and the creation of the Angels are dogmas of faith presenting one of the most inspiring and consoling aspects of our religion. As the first creatures of this universe, the Angels were the first revelation of the Supreme Goodness of God and of His transcendent Beauty. Even though part of the universe, the Angels really constitute a world to themselves, the spirit world, so exalted and so different from our visible, material world.

When God created the first life in this world He bade it to multiply upon the earth. The Lord blessed the first human couple He had created, saying, Increase and multiply and fill the earth.from the start, and their number was complete from the beginning. Their spiritual nature, just like our human soul, cannot be produced except by the Divine act of creation, with the difference that the human soul is created only in the course of time, when it is needed to inform a human body at the time of generation. Except for the apostasy and desertion of the fallen Angels, the Angelic family has remained the same from the time it was called into being by the loving Father of all.

No matter when the Angels began, there was a time in that endless eternity when the Angels, like all the other creatures, did not exist. The Eternal Wisdom, the Word of God, refers to such an epoch in the timeless existence of God, where It says, The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before He made anything from the beginning. Therefore, they were not created from all eternity but in the beginning of time.

T HE P OPULATION OF THE A NGELIC W ORLD

The exact number of Angels that inhabit the heavenly Jerusalem has not been revealed. To try to determine their number must appear like an idle question, since man has not been able even to determine the exact number of stars. The vast number of stars, each one a sun in itself, is awe-inspiring and quite beyond our powers of comprehension. Until now, no known mechanical device has been able to even remotely suggest the magnitude of this visible universe. What must be the magnitude, the splendor and the glory of the invisible, immutable Angelic part of the universe? What the vastness of the spirit world, the number of those splendors that decorate the heavenly home, the House of God, if the house of man, our Earth, is surrounded by such an infinity of stars? Who has ever been able to count all the men and women who have inhabited this Earth from the beginning to the present time?