angels

Jesus invites us to participate in his life and the communion of the angels and saints.

He promised that he would be there so that she would not have to die alone. The hospital called that her time was closer while the priest was visiting another ill parishioner. He finished up as fast as he could, and unfortunately ran into traffic, and too many lights turning red instead of staying green. And although he pushed the speed limit, when the priest arrived at the nursing station and asked for the name of the woman, the nurse informed him that he was too late, she had already passed.

He felt horrible because he promised her that she would not die alone. As he was mulling over the unfortunate timing, the nurse continued. “An interesting thing happened. An orderly came in with another patient, and I had no order for her to be in this room. This woman looked at your friend and asked if she could have her bed closer to hers, then reached out her hand. They held hands while the orderly and I left to check into the matter. When we returned, your friend was dead. The orderly then moved her bed out. The funny thing is that I have been checking since they left and found no record of this orderly or his patient being in the hospital.”

She did not die alone after all. Was this a visit from two angels?

Today we celebrate the feast of the archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and Rafael. Angels are eternal, spiritual beings. They are not human but can take on human form in their appearance. Also, when we die, we do not become angels. We are human beings, and as such we are human and spiritual.

One of the possible reasons that Satan, who is the archangel, Lucifer, and the other angels, now called demons, rebelled against God was because in our participation in the life of Christ, we become higher than the angels. That was too much for them to take and so choosing their pride over God, they rebelled.

Jesus, fully God and fully man, is infinite and eternal as Son, while at the same time finite as human. In Jesus coming close to be one with us in our humanity, we are offered the opportunity to participate with him in his divinity. Like the angels, God has given us the ability to reason and the freedom to choose. We can choose to grasp at divinity on our own terms through our pride, as Satan and his minions, or we can receive the gift of God’s love, participate in the life of his Son, and become like God. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are divine by their very nature, whereas we are given the grace to participate in their divine nature.

We don’t lose ourselves and become absorbed by God, we remain distinct and experience the fullness of our humanity in our participation in the divinity of Jesus. In his resurrection and ascension, Jesus has assumed his glorified Body. He is the first born of the new creation and through our baptism we participate in his life and through him, the life of the Trinity. As we surrender our lives to God, take up our cross, die to ourselves, and follow Jesus, we grow in holiness. We join in the new creation Jesus has won for us. With each faithful step we draw closer to the heavenly Jerusalem, and we become more united to the Body of Christ.

The wonderful reality we can ponder today is that in God’s order of creation, with each breath we take, we can rest in the truth that we belong to an incredibly extended family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the angels, and the saints. We can rest in the reality that no matter what challenges we are going through, we all have a significant part to play in God’s plan, we are all interconnected, and we are not alone. We are loved, we are in communion with many in heaven and on earth who are not only cheering us on but loving us, willing our good, and guiding us on our journey.

Photo: Each unique ripple reflects the brilliance of the rays of the sun, making for a beautiful symphony. Much like each angel and saint in heaven and us here below.

Link for the Mass readings for Monday, September 29, 2025

When we die: We don’t become angels? We neither marry nor are given in marriage?

The Sadducees present an absurd scenario for Jesus to respond to: a woman’s spouse died leaving her childless. She then successively married her husband’s six brothers who all subsequently, died, also leaving her childless. The Sadducees then asked, “Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.” (Lk 20:33)? The Sadducees sought to have Jesus weigh in on whether or not there was a resurrection of the dead.

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection from the dead because they only believed in a literal interpretation of the Torah, the law, or the teachings, which we as Christians today recognize as the first five books of the Old Testament. In the Torah, there is no overt reference to the resurrection. The Pharisees recognized the written Torah, but also acknowledged an oral tradition beyond the written text, and thus acknowledged the resurrection of the dead. Jesus deftly answered the question by keying in on the verse from Exodus: “That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive” (Lk 20:37-38).

Jesus pointed out that God was not a God of the dead but of the living. He also granted some insight into the heavenly realm as he continued: “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise” (Lk 20:34-36).

Heaven is a different reality than we experience here on earth, a different dimension beyond the temporal time as we know it. We will no longer marry because we will be living eternally, there will be no death, so there will be no more need to procreate. We will be “like angels” in that we will be eternal beings. That said, we will not be nor do we become angels. Angels are finite, eternal, spiritual beings. We are finite, eternal, human beings consisting of a soul and a body.

Our bodies are separated at our death from our soul, as Jesus pointed out with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in sharing that God is a God of the living, but will be reunited at the end of time when the new age that Jesus has ushered in with his death and resurrection comes to fulfillment. Until that time in heaven those who have gone before us are experiencing what we hope to experience. God face to face. A deeper and more intimate communion with the living God.

Many would scoff and say, “That’s it?” I am sure there is more, but if that was all, there would be more joy, more acceptance, more totality of being than we could ever imagine or embrace in just a second of that eternal gaze. As the psalmist wrote: “Better one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere” (Psalm 84:11).

Definitively speaking, heaven is a mystery. That stated, the Mystery of God is not a problem to be solved but a relationship to experience and develop. Looking up to the things of heaven, in which we will eventually experience the fulfillment of our deepest longing, helps us to realize that what we experience here on earth is not all there is.

We may be taken aback when Jesus shared that there is no longer marriage in heaven, but he is revealing the promise of deeper and more intimate relationships, even more intimate than the marital, sexual embrace. We will know one another more deeply because we will be free from that which puts up barriers between us, the wounds, insecurities, and attachments we engage in here.

In heaven we will be free from any stain of sin, healed from emotional, psychological, and physical wounds. We can simply be. We can experience the freedom of resting in God’s loving gaze and embracing who we are and who God has created us to be for all eternity. We will also experience one another in the same way, with the same unconditional love. The greatest joy we have experienced in this life will be far surpassed by an eternal present and ever growing consolation from the infinite outpouring of God’s eternal love for us and our eternal and unconditional love for one another.

Photo: JoAnn is now where I one day will be.

Link for the Mass readings for Saturday, November 23, 2024