Talk 6

In our previous talk, speaking of the Angels of God, we did not say all that we intended to say about them; and specifically—we did not say how many they are and what order exists among them: for the rational Powers must necessarily have an order. Now about this we shall speak, brothers. So how many Angels of God are there, or all the Powers of heaven? The question is not unimportant for us: for every believer after baptism enters into fellowship with the Angels; and love and reverence toward them impels us to know—at least approximately—their number.

From our earlier talk, brothers, we know that Holy Scripture speaks of countless heavenly hosts, numbering them by thousands of thousands and myriads of myriads. For example, one Prophet saw in his vision that when the Ancient of Days, that is the Lord of Hosts, sat upon His throne, thousands of thousands served Him and myriads of myriads stood before Him. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, speaking of the number of angels and citing this passage from the book of the Prophet Daniel, remarks that “of thousands of thousands and myriads of myriads of angels—and not more—it is said not because such is their exact number, but because the Prophet could not express a greater number”62, that is, our human numbers are insufficient to encompass all the heavenly powers. Therefore, brothers, the angels are countless.

And this should be so by the very nature of reason itself. On earth, which constitutes the very insignificant part of all visible creation, we count both creatures of the same kind, especially those of different kinds, so many that we are almost lost in their number, not to mention how many we still do not know. Should not the immeasurably greater number be the incorporeal Powers, for whom, according to Holy Scripture, the entire heaven serves as a dwelling place, although Angels are not limited to place as we are? “The earth inhabited by us,” says Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, “is as if a certain point situated in the middle of heaven; therefore the heaven surrounding it has as many inhabitants as has greater space.” Further: looking at the autumn or winter sky on a cloudless evening, we see an extraordinary multitude of stars—so many that men who have studied the sky over the course of thousands of years to this day have not been able to count them for their multitude and distance. If in the visible, material world, the Almighty Creator has displayed His creative power, His magnitude so boundlessly, in such an incomprehensible multitude of heavenly lights: has He not shown Himself even more boundlessly in the world of bright spirits, has He not created an even greater number of creatures like Himself—so that they might glorify His perfections, enjoy His countenance, and be blessed? The greatness of God is more striking, more evident in the spiritual world: is it not there, in the world of spirits, in their countless multitudes, that the Lord Almighty, as the source of goodness, shines forth with eternal love? It was befitting to the boundless, all-good Creator to show Himself precisely in an innumerable multitude of rational creatures. And the best of men desire—when there is the opportunity—that there be as many as possible who are benefited by them. Would not the all-good God desire this, and therefore not have done it—since His desire is at the same time His deed? But many things with the Lord are not as they are with us. To Him our numbers mean nothing. To us thousands and millions seem already very great numbers: but with our Creator there are no thousands and millions: with Him one is as a thousand and a thousand as one, a million as a unit and a unit as a million—that is, both many and few for Him are equally insignificant. His “many” means our “without number.” Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of Angels, counts all the Angels as ninety-nine sheep of His own, but the entire human race as one, only one sheep. How many Angels there must be! Thus the holy Fathers understand the Savior’s parable of a man who has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. You see, brothers, what accounting the Lord has in His divine reckoning; for our human, limited counting is not fitting to Him, when it concerns the number of His creatures. Yes, the Lord has creatures infinitely many, not according to our numbers. Infinitely many of them on earth, and in heaven—all the more. Thus there is an innumerable multitude of Angels.

But with multitude there must be order. In the Wise Creator we see order everywhere: in heaven—among the heavenly lights, which in their turn rise and set, moving in constant order and never colliding with each other, though they have moved in the sky for entire thousands of years; and on earth, both in inanimate nature and in living nature; order and obedience are especially noticeable among certain animals, not to mention men, among whom order and subordination to each other have been present since the beginning of the human race. How much more must there be order and subordination among the heavenly Powers! If men have hierarchies: how much greater—with the inhabitants of heaven—and earthly, human hierarchy is only the weakest imitation of heavenly, angelic hierarchy. So, brothers, the Angels have their own hierarchy: there are on high rational Thrones on which God rests rationally and through which He establishes His righteous judgments; there are Dominions, Principalities and Powers, just as with us—on earth, in well-ordered states, there are Kings on whom God pours out His grace and through whom He governs peoples, so there are Dominions, Principalities and Powers. The holy Apostle Paul speaks of the Orders of Angels thus: “Through Him all things were created that are in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” What precisely was created on high, invisible? “Whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: all things were created through Him and for Him.” And so the Angels are divided according to Orders. How many Orders of Angels are there?

The holy Church teaches that Angels are divided into nine choirs or orders, and these nine into three ranks. In the first rank are those who are closest of all to God, namely: Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim; in the second: Dominions, Powers, and Authorities; in the third: Angels, Archangels, Principalities. All these Orders are met in Holy Scripture and there are no more than these. Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, a student of the holy Apostle Paul, says that the Orders of Angels were thus divided by the holy Apostle Paul himself. “All the heavenly Powers,” he says, “Holy Scripture has called by nine distinct names, and our Divine Instructor” (meaning the Apostle Paul) “divided them into three threefold degrees.” However, the teaching on the heavenly hierarchy is generally mysterious and incomprehensible to our reason while we are on earth and see the objects of the spiritual world only as in a mirror, in a riddle. For us it is enough to know only that Angels are an innumerable multitude—far greater than the entire human race—and that they are divided by degrees—into lower and higher, those closer to God and those less close. In honor and glory of the All-holy Spirit, the Lord Life-giver, whose coming upon the holy Apostles we celebrate today, we will add that the source of life and perfection for all the Orders of Angels is He, the All-holy Spirit, together with the Father and the Son, just as the holy Spirit also gives life to every human soul and raises it up to purity, illuminates it in the sacred mystery of the Trinity in unity.

What principle for our own lives shall we derive from the teaching on the number of Angels and their division by degrees? There is an innumerable multitude of Angels and all of them are bright, rational, good spirits, strong in power, yet even among them there are higher and lower according to their gifts and perfections; and they for their mutual benefit submit to each other in the most perfect way—the lower to the higher, these to the yet higher, these to the still higher, and so on: each of the holy Angels knows his place and his order. So it should be, brothers, among us also. People are likewise not equal in their gifts and abilities. For all to be happy, there must necessarily be mutual submission: in society there must be higher and lower, even—rich and poor, strong and weak: for with equality of all people, no one would serve another: each, in his present corrupt state, would be seized by pride, and people could even come to destroying each other.

We can further derive from this both knowledge and a principle for piety. We often hear in the temple that the Church magnifies the Mother of God as “more honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim.” Let us imagine, brothers, the greatness of the Mother of God. The world of spirits, we said earlier, is innumerable in the proper sense of the word, and they constitute a truly well-ordered, luminous world, gradually approaching God. The very closest to God Orders of Angels are the Cherubim and Seraphim—spirits most pure, lightning-like, burning with eternal love for God, shining with the light of God’s Wisdom and pouring out wisdom to others. In them God especially rests His grace, as the Psalmist says: He ascended upon the Cherubim and flew; or: He who sits on the Cherubim appeared. But the Mother of God is more honorable than even the Cherubim: more glorious even than the Seraphim, with no comparison whatever; for She not only held on Her most pure hands Him who sustains the entire world by His word, but also in Her womb, and is the true Mother of God the Word. Let us understand, brothers, as much as we can, the greatness of the Mother of God, and let us honor Her as is due, as the Mistress of Angels and men. Let us not forget to honor the Angels with proper worship as the friends of God, as the most perfect, rational creatures of God, in whom God especially rests His grace. Amen.