Every Angel Is Terrifying

So says Rainer Maria Rilke, in either the first or the second of the Duino Elegies — off the top of my head I can’t remember which.

Meanwhile, over at Touchstone’s Mere Comments blog, they’ve been talking about angels. Though the conversation begins with the question of angels’ existence, which of course can’t be confirmed by any empirical process, what people seem really interested in discussing is whether or not angels have bodies.

The children and I were just talking this matter over the other day. Our catechism lays it out pretty plainly: an angel is a created spirit without a body. There’s no confusing him with man, who is a creature with both body and soul, and this seems important. While we may become as angels in heaven, we won’t actually be angels. And while at times they may resemble us — like Raphael on the road with Tobias, or the bewildering young man in white at the empty tomb — they aren’t the same order of being at all.

Still, we picture them as human, and that’s not entirely inappropriate. Not only do the stories say that they look like us at times, but they’re still closer to us, probably, than to anything else in the created order, and we to them. As far as we know, dolphins, though undeniably sentient, won’t ever become as angels.

So they’re represented thus:

But also thus:

If the first icon represents a window into heaven, I sort of hate to think what this one represents a window into.

Still, I guess that once you’ve started rendering angels into human form at all, you’ve started down the slippery slope that leads, among other things, to questions of . . .

All About Angels

[Rating: 26/100]