What does the Gospel say about angels and demons - directly and allegorically? How to understand that we are accompanied by a guardian angel, but do not see him? In what ways is man superior to angels? Is Hell Prepared for Man?
Good afternoon dear friends. Today we will lead a conversation on such a difficult, but interesting topic for everyone, as the angelic world and the demonic world. After all, there are angels who are light, serving God, strong, but humble, and evil, who do not love God, who envy man.
We don't have to believe in angels: the Creed says nothing about angels. Although in the prayer "Our Father", at its end, it is said: "Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one," so you need to remember that there is an adversary, there is a certain accuser, the one who will then say to God at the Last Judgment like an accuser at a human trial, pointing a finger at the guilty one: “Why do you have mercy on him? How can you have mercy on him if he served me? He did not pray to You at all. You're fair! Is not it so?" This is the work of the slanderer: he stands on trial and has the audacity to accuse the one whom God justifies.
The topic "Angels and Demons" is quite important because we live in an occupied territory. Clive Lewis owns a very apt, I think, expression: he, speaking about the Nativity of Christ, said that Christ was born in the occupied territory. Like a paratrooper who has landed in enemy-occupied territory. Because everything around is sown with deeds pleasing to the enemy. Angels, saints and bright, who have not ceased to serve God, are also constantly present here, with us, in our life. And although in the Creed we do not say anything specifically and directly about them, at every service we ask God for "an angel of peace, a faithful mentor, keeper of our souls and bodies." And in the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great it is said that the Lord God, providing for His creation, “appointed the angels as guardians of the human race. Elemental Angels, Angelsgoverning entire nations, angels assigned to an individual …
In general, the gospel story is so closely connected with the angelic world that it is impossible not to talk about angels. Not to speak of them, our invisible friends, is a criminal neglect. We will see them, they will lead us by the hand to the throne of God, they have already delivered us from thousands of temptations, they pray, shielding us with a sword of fire from all filth and evil, and we cannot but talk about them. Christ is conceived after the gospel of the archangel. The signal for the Holy Spirit is Mary's consent to the words of the archangel: "Wake me up according to your verb, I am the servant of the Lord." It is necessary for the angel to say: "She agreed" - and then the grace of the Comforter overshadows Her, and the Lord Jesus Christ is conceived in Her. Then Christ is born - and the angels sing: "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will in men." Then the angel, repeatedly appearing to Joseph, saves the Infant Jesus from thosewho seeks His soul. At least three phenomena are listed and others are indicated. Here is the angel says: "Hold up and drink the Child and His Mother and flee to Egypt," because Herod is looking for the soul of the Child. And in Egypt: "Throw up and drink His Child and His Mother, and go into the land of Israel"; “Get up, take the Baby and His Mother and go there” - Joseph was constantly under angelic guidance. This speaks very highly of that person.
Along the way, I would like to say that we somehow notice little of Joseph in the saints. But already from the fact that Jesus Christ called him daddy, one can simply dissolve into tears. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, who has God as His Father, on earth with His childish language, babbling, innocent, called Joseph Pope. And Joseph taught Him carpentry skills, said: "So, son, keep it here like that, here they drank with a saw, here with a plane like that" - can you imagine? And Christ showed him obedience in everything. I looked at him from the bottom up, like a child at a parent. And Joseph taught Christ to read the Law of God. The one who gave the Law of God, Joseph taught him to read. This is the greatest person who needs to be discussed separately. And pronounce his name with great love.
So, Joseph was led by angels: angels constantly appeared to him and commanded him … This means that he had a pure soul, because a dirty person dreams of dirty things, and a sinner dreams of a sinner, and the Lord comes to a clean one in a dream. “The elders will see your visions and will be instructed in visions,” the prophet Joel preached that prophetic dreams will be with the best, by the action of the Holy Spirit.
Then Christ goes out to preach - and the angels accompany Him and watch Him. How do we know this? - From the words about the Resurrection: when the angels sit at the empty Tomb and meet the myrrh-bearers, they say to them: “Remember how He told you when He was still in Galilee” - they remind the words of the Gospel to the apostles and myrrh-bearers. Obviously, they listened very attentively to everything that the Lord said. Then, when Christ was resurrected, they sat in this place, waiting for people to tell them: "He is not here - He has risen." And then there are very important words: "What are you looking for Zhivago among the dead?"
Promotional video:
White angel. Fresco of the monastery in Mileshevo, Serbia. XIII century
I would like to dwell on this moment too. Christ was not buried in a cemetery in the literal sense of the word. There were no dead people where He was buried: it was a garden, there was a cave in the garden, and no one was ever buried in this cave. It was a purchased coffin for another that was donated to the crucified Jesus, who died on the Cross, and He was buried in that coffin in the garden. And the angel speaks as if He was lying in the cemetery, as if the graves of the dead were around. There was no such thing! But he says: "What are you looking for Zhivago among the dead?" What does he mean? “He means some other death. When we talked about death, we said that there are many deaths. There is the spiritual world, there is good death, when a person is dead to sin, but alive to God. So the angel means spiritual death:don't look for the living among the dead - don't look for the Life-giver between the spiritual dead.
The angels then stand on the Mount of Olives, when the apostles, lifting their heads, watch as Christ ascends. And for a long time they could not lower them, because Christ ascended slowly: without using outside help, Christ, who rose from the dead as the King of the world, rose slowly in their eyes and blessed them. Raise His hand and bless them - He blessed them with both hands - in the bishop's way. He ascended - and they looked at Him. And when He was already out of sight, they still did not lower their heads. And they lowered their heads when the angels said to them: “Men of Galilee! Why are you standing and looking at the sky? This Jesus, who ascended from you to heaven, He likewise will come from heaven to earth. And they went to Jerusalem, praising and blessing God, waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit.
And then, in the history of the world, angels constantly come to the aid of man. Angels accompany the apostolic preaching, lead Peter out of prison, open the gates of brass before him, etc. They are everywhere: the whole history of the Church is the history of people and of invisible help to them from angels. They live in some other world, modern physics assumes the presence of several dimensions, except three. There are more than three dimensions. Einstein's physics calls time the fourth dimension, but there is physics that assumes that in addition to the three dimensions of the volumetric world in which we live, there are also other dimensions. And angels dwell in them. The explanation is very simple: imagine a flat surface where there are two dimensions - length and width, but there is no height and depth - that's just a flat something. Draw a little man here. And imagine that you are his god. This flat little man began to live - and he lives in the space of this flat dimension. And next to it is another flat man. They see each other like that, but they don't see what is outside the plane. And we, in order to look at them, need to bend like this, cross this plane. And then they will see an alien from another dimension.
These bright spirits, fire-winged, loving the Lord, fragrant with prayer, are here, next to each other, all the time, they just do not frighten us, because one can die of fear upon seeing them.
The angel of the Lord of hosts is a priest, as the prophet Malachi writes: "They seek the law from his mouth, because he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts." If the real angels were priests, we would be very scared to come to church. They would be formidable saints, and we would be some sinful, small, weak against their background. For example, it would be scary to come to confession to an angel, because he would not know what he did for your iniquities and ugliness. Therefore, it is very important that a person performs the angelic service in the church.
A person can do a lot of angelic things: he can praise the Lord, pray, comprehend the Law of God. In addition, there are things that an angel cannot do, but a person can. For example, a carpenter made a stool, it turned out to be strong, beautiful, good. Such a fine stool - and he likes his handiwork. So, the angel does not have this joy. If a person prays and loves God, then the angel has this joy. And if a person did something good, for example, the hostess baked a pie, everyone ate, they say: “How good! What a craftswoman you are! - and it is pleasant to her, and it is good that she did - the angel does not have this joy. Man has the joy of material, physical creativity - an angel does not. In a sense, man is richer than angels.
I still can't get over to the demons, and I don't want to get over to them, because they are truly vile. They are our enemies, and they would have torn us like a dog with a heating pad if we were not kept by Divine grace. Therefore, I want to talk about angels. And I repeat that man is in some sense more blessed than these disembodied spirits. You might think that they are better than us. In a sense, yes: they are stronger, smarter, cleaner, better, but in a sense they are not better, because we combine the angelic and the material, visible and invisible, tangible and intangible. As Gabriel Romanovich Derzhavin writes beautifully, the Kingdom of Heaven is to him, in the ode "God":
Part of the whole I am the universe, Delivered, it seems to me, in a venerable
In the middle of nature I am the one
Where did you end the spirits of heaven
And you began bodily beings, And the chain of beings bound them all by me.
Why is man so dear to God? - Because in it, in fact, there is everything that is in the angel: conscience, prayer, faith, reason, memory … And it contains everything that is in general in the entire Universe. Everything that is scattered throughout the cosmos is present in a person in some micro-lobes. The whole periodic table is in man. Microcosm - that's what the ancient Greek philosophers called it. Everything material is in man, and everything spiritual is in man. Here it is - a particle of the entire Universe in the middle of nature, where celestial spirits ended and bodily beings began. And the chain is tied by you and me: you break - the whole chain will break. The entire chain of the universe vibrates and the whole world trembles and staggers like a drunken man when a person sins and does not fulfill his destiny. This is why it is so important.
Ordeals. Fragment of a fresco in the Rila Monastery, Bulgaria.
As for the enemies of our salvation, we must remember that they invented sin: why we will be pardoned, because we are the victims of sin, and not its inventors. And a lot of this topic, perhaps, will have to talk more, this demonology to touch on, but in parting today we will say the following: once a stranger came to Anthony the Great, the founder of monasticism in the Christian world and said: “Pray for me that God would forgive my sins ". Antony says: "What is your name?" He says, "God will reveal to you." And Anthony got up to prayer, honestly fulfilling his promise, began to pray: "Forgive me, Lord, the sins of that man who came to me recently." And he heard the voice of God: "Do you know who it is?" - "Not". “This is the devil in human form. He will come to you in a week - tell him that I will forgive him if he repent. "And this strange man, this strange citizen, as it is said in the parable of the Prodigal Son about the owner of the pigs that the prodigal son grazed … so, this strange citizen, the demon, walked from afar, and Anthony saw him and told him from afar: “I know, Who are you. God will forgive you if you repent. " Then the evil one changed his appearance into something ugly, characteristic of him more than a human appearance, laughed and said to the saint: “You stupid old man! The whole world obeys me, and I will repent ?! " And with a laugh he went into the desert.than a human appearance, he laughed and said to the saint: “You stupid old man! The whole world obeys me, and I will repent ?! " And with a laugh he went into the desert.than a human appearance, he laughed and said to the saint: “You stupid old man! The whole world obeys me, and I will repent ?! " And with a laugh he went into the desert.
And the Gospel tells us about the evil one. For example, in the parable of the Merciful Samaritan, a man who fell into the hands of robbers is Adam, who fell into the hands of demons, this is beaten and ulcerated Adam, to whom the merciful Samaritan - Christ - came and washed his wounds, put him on a donkey - that is, on His flesh, having accepted our sins with His flesh; He brought him to the hotel, which is the Church, and gave him a hotel room so that he would take care of him further, paying him two coins, that is, the Old and New Testaments - "Use this for treatment, and if you spend more, I will come and reimburse you." … And a strange citizen, the owner of pigs in the parable of the Prodigal Son … - and there is a lot about the devil.
It is very joyful for man that hell was not created for man: the Lord, in his words about the Last Judgment, says that He will say to some: "Depart from Me, you damned, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" - hell is not prepared for man. A heavenly dwelling is prepared for man. For this, man was created. It is so complex, so valuable, so theoretically and potentially beautiful, God has laid so much wisdom in every human eyelash that God does not want to throw anyone into the fire, He does not want this beloved creature to be firewood for a hellish fire. Eternal fire - for the devil and for his angels. And for us it is a bright paradise. This is where we are striving with you.
At parting, I wish you to be delivered from all demonic intrigues and that the bright angels and our invisible friends, strong and beautiful, do not leave you. Goodbye.
Archpriest Andrei Tkachev
