we are M. However, even these ages of ages are still time and only time, although it has for itself the touch of eternity, eternal life, precisely in the form of eternal torment. But it is still limited in duration, has its fullness, and ends with the torment of the repentant Satan, who during these "ages" returns to what he was created for. But to be the supreme archangel, Dennitsa, - the Creator called him to be such.

However, it is obvious that as salvation with the forgiveness of the sins of the whole world, inspired by [? - so in the book] by Satan, and even more so restoration - an apokatastasis, not feasible by a unilateral act, by only created force, just as it was impossible in relation to a person who, in need of God's redemptive help, received it through the Incarnation on the cross death of the Son of God. Therefore, the question inevitably arises, which was put forward with such insistence by both (and in fact the only) theologians of apocatastasis, Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa and they also affirmatively resolved: does the universal power of the expiatory sacrifice made “for everyone and for everything” also extend to demons? Or is it necessary to admit that it is limited, since it manifests itself only in relation to the earthly human world? But, obviously, it is impossible to allow any limitation in the power of the atoning sacrifice, as the Word of God proclaims this, testifying directly and undoubtedly: in the name of Jesus “every knee will bow in heaven, on earth and in the underworld - καταχθονίων (that is, angels, men and demons), and every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus Christ is to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:10-11, and "there shall be a God of all kinds in all" (1 Cor. 15:28). This puts us before the face of a general question about the significance of the incarnation for the angelic world (1.) Although it does not directly relate to the world of the incorporeal, yet indirectly it has a decisive significance for it, in connection with the last world with the human, in its co-humanity. The words of God, primarily from the Gospel, to the full extent of the participation of angels in the events of the incarnation, in particular, and at the end of the age (2), and in general in that struggle for the “lost sheep”, in which such an active participation of the holy angels takes place, and it ends only in the parousia. this is also connected with their participation in the Glory, in which the Son of God comes.

(1) Jacob's Ladder, ch. VIII. "The Angelic World and the Incarnation".

(2) “So it will be at the end of the age: angels will come out and separate the wicked from the midst of the righteous and cast them into the furnace of fire (Matt. 13:49).

living (1), and in the life of the next century. However, one may ask: is this completion of angelic co-humanity, which is a consequence of human salvation through the incarnation of God, only its reflected consequence, or does it have a basis for itself in its own angelic, albeit incorporeal, but still created nature? This question should be answered in the affirmative, since angels also have a created soul. This is the potentiality of their life, realized to a greater or lesser extent, precisely in relation to man and his humanity. In Christ, through the incarnation of God, it reaches its fullness, which is revealed in the co-angelism of people, as well as the co-humanity of angels. Through this, the angelic world also becomes involved in the glorification of the God-Man in Parousia, in which He comes into the world not alone, but all the holy angels with Him (as testified in the Gospel, Mt. 25, 31). T. arr., St. angels have their share in the salvation of the atoning sacrifice (as is liturgically evidenced by their presence at the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice and their spiritual communion with us: "now the powers of heaven serve with us invisibly") (2)

The power of the atoning sacrifice in relation to the fallen angelic world is realized, first of all, in its restoration through the revival of its created nature, namely, its spirituality. Here there is an analogy with its saving effect on a person, although with an inevitable difference. It is for man that restoration relates to his entire created soul-and-bodily composition, while for incorporeal spirits only to the spiritual nature due to the absence of corporality in it. However, the action of the atoning sacrifice cannot be limited here to the restoration of spirits to their original state through liberation from the darkness of sin. From the original state, characteristic of fallen spirits even before the fall, they are separated by the entire life of the world with its sin, since the tempter and his armies are guilty of it. But not only was the world darkened by blackness, the tempter was made, but the incarnation of God took place in it, through which the world became different from itself in comparison with how it was at creation. He became the Kingdom of Christ, and there is no other beginning of being in him. Therefore, the completeness of the apocatastasis presupposes not only

(1) “Whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, Him the Son of Man fasts when He comes in His Glory and the Father (i.e., in the Holy Spirit) and the Holy Spirit. angels ”(Luke 9, 26) Here the Holy Spirit is very clearly indicated, as the hypostatic Glory of the Father and the Son, communicating and glorified creature in the person of St. angels.

(2) Wed. in the essay "The Eucharistic Sacrifice" (handwritten).

the disintegration of that world minus that was introduced by Satan, but also the communion of the whole creation to this new being. Along with the abolition of the world failure created by Satan, his ascent to his prototype is not only a passive acceptance of forgiveness, but also an active ascent, a movement towards Christ of one who had in himself all the power of Antichrist. This movement, about which we can know nothing but this general theological postulate, requires, for its possible realization, still a new time, destined for that. The next "ages of ages" should therefore be devoted to this active overcoming of Satanism in itself. However, it must be remembered that it will no longer be carried out by the fallen spirits in their isolation, but together with the whole world, already free from the violent dominion of the "prince of this world." And it is especially important to take into consideration that all St. the angels with Michael and his armies at the head, who once overthrew Satan from heaven, will also, not sparing their soul even to death, drag him again to the heaven of heaven, to the former place of his heavenly glory. The Word of God is silent about this, which limits its revelation only to the life of this age, but this necessarily follows from the general prophecies about universal deification and the apocatastasis "God will be all in all." And of course, the salvation and glorification of Satan must be included in all this and all. But here comes the next question.

The place of Dennitsa was occupied in his absence from heaven by the angel-man John, the Forerunner of the Lord, who, together with the Most Pure One, is closest to the Lord of Glory (in Deisis), as the highest of angels and the greatest of those born by a wife. However, is this a matter of selfishness, pushing out its rival, or, on the contrary, is a new opportunity for the cause of self-denying, self-destroying, “self-deprecating” (Jo. 3, 30) love” being prepared here? Does not John here, an angel-man by ministry, but still a man by nature, show the power of love for those who, by creation, have an angelic nature, but also in its predestination to co-humanity, moreover, in the most extreme measure? Therefore, is it not natural if in this meeting it turns out that the highest of the angelic thrones, namely the angelic human, is the lot of not one, but two, of which the highest and most holy will give a helping hand to the fallen, but restored? At the same time, it should be further remembered that this help can be given and implemented only by the power of accepting and assimilating the atoning sacrifice of Christ, not only by the entire angelic world with Michael and his army at the head, who once led

war in the sky and overthrowing Dennitsa from it, but also by this latter himself. This new event in heaven will take place in the presence of the angel-man. We have no idea how it will be, but there is no doubt that it cannot be. But further this help cannot but be rendered by the whole church, not only heavenly, but also earthly, those glorified holy people who have the gift of a “merciful heart”, the kindling of universal love, as witnessed by St. Isaac the Syrian, who in this case is the mouth of the entire county of saints. And, finally, in heaven, and even above heaven, this help will be revealed to be the Most Pure and Most Blessed, the most honest of all saints. angels, the One whose merciful Heart is the seat of the Holy Spirit, the most hypostatic love. The power of Pentecost, communicated to the whole world, the fiery tongues that ignited all creation, will also kindle the dead, but resurrecting souls of the fallen spirits, and their salvation will be revealed. All this will be still new and new ages of ages, unknown and inaccessible to us. However, we know the love of God for creation and its promise that “the Lord has locked up all in disobedience, that he might have mercy on all. For all things come from Him, by Him and to Him. To Him be glory forever. Amen". (R. 11, 32, 36).

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Orthodox theory of personality:,.
Passions, their essence and ways to overcome:,.
Diseases and their origin. Ways to overcome:,.
The connection of sins, passions and diseases:,.
Repentance, its essence. The main sins of our time:,.
Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov. "About charm":,.
Asceticism, prayer (essence and varieties). Jesus Prayer: , .
About salvation in the world: ; .
Freemasonry and globalism:,.

Lecture text

We are opening a very important topic. What is its importance? And in that, my dears, that we experience the impact, we enter into communication with the invisible world - the angelic world and the demonic world. Regardless of whether a person wants it or does not want it, wants it or does not want it, this influence and communication still takes place. But if a person does not know the laws of the spiritual world, if he is not familiar with this world, then instead of the positive impact that comes from the angelic world, he can be exposed to the demonic world, fall into slavery to it, which will manifest itself in diseases - in bodily and mental, and in the destruction of one's life path, and in the intensification of passions and can lead to the death of the soul. Ignorance does not save us from the reality of influences. Look - there are laws of nature, there is a universal law of gravity - you may not agree with it, you can swear at it, but it still exists. And if any of you decide to jump from the tenth floor and fly, then, of course, he will break. And in order to live, we must take into account these laws.

you all heard and remembered that "... God is love» 1 John 4:8, God is goodness, God created man to participate in this love and goodness, in which He Himself dwells. So, in the last lecture, referring to the writings of the Old Testament, we said that “ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth» Genesis 1:1. By the creation of heaven, all the Holy Fathers understand the creation of the invisible world, the creation of the angelic world, that is, the invisible, non-material, in our understanding, the world is created before the rest of creation.

What is he and who are angels? As Saint Demetrius of Rostov points out: Angels are created in the image and likeness of God, just as man was subsequently created.» . « The image of God, as in man, is in the mind from which it is born, and» . Notice this expression, fix it internally, this is a very important thought: “ in which the thought is contained, and from which the spirit proceeds, assisting the thought and enlivening it". That is, a thought, and an expressed thought is a word; it certainly contains a spirit as well. This spirit, it also has an impact on people, on the world around us, which we will talk about when there will be a lecture on the word and its impact on a person. “This image, like the Archetype, is invisible, just as it is invisible in people. He governs the whole being in the Angel, just as in man. Angels are beings limited by time and space, and therefore have their own appearance. On the Causes of the Creation of Angels St. Gregory the Theologian, in his sermon for Holy Pascha, says: “The goodness of God was not satisfied with the contemplation of Itself: it had to pour out and spread goodness, so that many would become partakers of goodness, and this is characteristic of the greatest goodness. She, firstly, invented angels and heavenly spirits. Thought was a deed done by the Word, done by the Spirit» . You see - the whole Trinity is involved in this: " the thought was the deed"(For God, thought and deed are one and the same; we may have thoughts, but when they are embodied in deed is unknown; with God, thought is deed)," done by the Word, done by the Spirit”, that is, it was carried out by the Holy Spirit. " Thus the second lights were created(meaning the angelic world - approx. Father Alexy) , serving the first Light» . « With the unceasing face of song-singers, they surround the original Cause or bring something more, according to their ability to do more than song praise, shining with the purest light, illuminating it in various ways, according to either their nature or chivalry ...» . Let's stop at this place. What does it mean: illuminating with a special light, depending on the rank or one's own characteristics? We say that God is light, God is spirit. And this light, this spirit is the cause and foundation of all that exists. Now imagine the sun. The sun emits its rays. And if we take precious stones: emerald, sapphire, or diamond and put them in the sun, then the sun's rays, refracted in each stone, will give their own special, beautiful light. It will be the same sunlight, but each stone will give its own refraction. This is how the divine light, the Holy Spirit, entering the angels, is refracted. He gives them a special identity, a special effect, depending on how they were created, and depending on the place in the hierarchy to which they belong.

According to the great theologian, disciple of the Apostle Paul, Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, all angels have the following hierarchy: there is a higher, middle and lower hierarchy. The highest angelic hierarchy includes: seraphim, Cherubim And Thrones. The average angelic hierarchy consists of three ranks: dominance, Forces, Authorities. And the lower hierarchy includes the following three ranks: Beginnings, Archangels And Angels. Let us now dwell on this in more detail and try to understand to the extent to which the veil of this angelic invisible world opens up to us, and to the extent to which we are generally able to understand it.

« six-winged seraphim(Heb. - flaming, fiery), which are spoken of only by the prophet Isaiah (Is. 6: 2), are flaming with love for God and encourage others to it» .

« Cherubim (Heb. - chariots) - spiritual beings that the prophet Ezekiel saw in the images of a man, an ox, a lion and an eagle (Ezek. 1). These symbols mean that the Cherubim combine the qualities of intelligence, obedience, strength and speed. Cherubim stand before the throne of God (Rev. 4:6-7). They are the spiritual chariot of the Most High (Ezek. 1:10), therefore God is called sitting on cherubim (1 Sam. 4:4).
Cherubim guarded the entrance to paradise (Genesis 3:24). Images of two Cherubim overshadowed the Ark of the Covenant, the place of God's direct presence (Ex. 25:18-20).<… >
The many-eyed Cherubim, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, shine with the light of knowledge of God. They send down wisdom and enlightenment for the knowledge of God to the lower ranks» . That is, the Cherubim were given the special wisdom of God and therefore they are “many-eyed.” Many eyes means omniscience, knowledge. Then we will touch on this separately. Once one of the Cherubim, who was entrusted with the protection of the Earth, and whose name was Dennitsa, fell from a height and turned into a vile Satan.

« They (Cherubim) are "rivers of wisdom" and "places of God's rest"; hence some of the Cherubim are called " Thrones", since God Himself rests on them not sensually, but spiritually, with a special abundance of grace» .

« dominance (Col. 1:16) rule over the successive orders of Angels. They instruct earthly rulers appointed by God in wise management. They teach to control feelings, to tame sinful lusts, to enslave the flesh to the spirit, to overcome temptations.» . That is why people who are experiencing strong temptations can turn directly to the Dominions, asking them for spiritual strength and help. And those who turn to them, indeed, receive such help.

« Forces (1 Pet. 3:22) they work miracles and send down the grace of miracle-working and clairvoyance to the saints of God. They help people in carrying out labors, strengthen them in patience, bestow spiritual strength and courage.» . That is, these forces that God gives them, they share with people.

« Authorities (1 Pet. 3:22; Col. 1:16) have the power to tame the power of the devil. They repel demonic temptations from us, protect ascetics, help them in the fight against evil thoughts. They also have power over the forces of nature, such as wind and fire (Rev. 8:7)» . When during the fires people turned to the Authorities for help, this help came. Unfortunately, if earlier people understood the power and strength of angels, their ability to help, and therefore often turned to them, then at the present stage, due to our atheistic upbringing, many have lost this knowledge, many see it as a kind of fairy tale without an understanding of reality ongoing processes.

Now consider lower hierarchy .

« Beginnings (Col. 1:16) rule over the lower Angels, directing their activities towards the fulfillment of Divine commands. They are entrusted with managing the universe, protecting countries, peoples and tribes» . Every nation has its own guardian angel, and every city also has its own guardian angel. Often it happens precisely from the hierarchy of Beginnings. " They teach earthly authorities to fulfill their duties not for the sake of profits and personal glory, but in everything to seek the glory of God and the benefit of others.» . But this happens when a person is really open to God and to faith and wants it, and when he does not want it, the angels cannot influence him. The angelic world can influence a person when a person is open to goodness and light and seeks this help. The same applies to the demonic world. But more on that later.

« Archangels (1 Thessalonians 4:16) they proclaim great and glorious things. They reveal the secrets of faith, prophecy and the will of God to people, that is, they are the conductors of Revelation» .

« Angels (1 Pet. 3:22) are closest to people. They proclaim the intentions of God, instruct in the virtues and a holy life. They guard the faithful, keep us from falling, raise the fallen» .

All angels have free will, but unlike a person whose will constantly fluctuates between good and evil, and you and I constantly choose, and our death is a transition to another world, it sort of completes our choice. Here we are constantly in a choice. Each of our thoughts, each of our deeds is either an application to the divine, to the angelic, to the light, or a choice of evil, demonic, negative. And in the process of his life, a person can either repent until the end of his life and come to goodness, or by striving all his life, he can fall into sin at the end of his life, become stagnant in this sin and die in it. As it is said: " In what I will find, in that I judge» . And what does "what I'll be in" mean? Yes, at the hour of death, in which a person finds himself, this is the state with him and will be in the future. So, our death determines our final choice - where our will is inclined at the end of our life. This is the result of everything. If a person makes this choice during the whole life, then in the angelic world it has already happened. And it happened at the moment when the unclean spirit, Satan rebelled against God… But more on that later.

Those angels who have chosen good serve God and can no longer turn away from Him due to the fact that they are completely attached to Him. " All ranks of the Heavenly Forces bear the common name of Angels - in the essence of their ministry " . "Angel" in Greek means "messenger" or "messenger". " The Lord reveals His will to the highest Angels, and they, in turn, enlighten the rest» . « Thus, the mysteries of God go down the descending hierarchy from the Seraphim to the Angels, and each subsequent hierarchy is initiated only into those knowledge that they are able to contain at a given level of their spiritual development. The mysteries of God are revealed to people as they become spiritually enlightened, or, in other words, as they acquire the Holy Spirit.» .

The apostle Paul said: Are they not all ministering spirits sent to serve those who are to inherit salvation?? Heb. 1:14. That is, their activity is aimed at saving the human race. According to St. Gregory the Theologian, being servants of God's will " they are strong, both in their natural strength and in the strength they have acquired;» . However, according to St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, “ not only in helping to save the human race is the ministry of angels: but from this ministry they received their name among men, and this name was given to them by the Holy Spirit in Holy Scripture» . But the time of the creation of angels is not exactly indicated in the Holy Scriptures, but it preceded the creation of the material world and man himself.

How do angels take part in our lives?
Let's look at the Holy Scriptures, what is said about it there. " Archangel Gabriel initially announced to Saint Zechariah that John, the Forerunner of the Lord, would be born from him; six months after the conception of John, the same Archangel Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin Mary the greatest joy for angels and people - the conception of the God-man by the Blessed Virgin. An angel appeared in a dream to Righteous Joseph, the Betrothed of the Mother of God, announced to him his conception from the Holy Spirit and commanded him to call the son who was to be born the name Jesus (Matthew 1:20:21). When this longed-for all-holy birth took place in Bethlehem, an angel announced it to the shepherds, not far from this city, who spent the night vigil over their flock. “I bless you with great joy,” the angel said to the pious and humble shepherds, “it will be for all people: as if you were born today, the Savior, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this is a sign for you: you will find a baby, wrapped, lying in a manger. As soon as the Angel uttered these words, a multitude of the heavenly host suddenly appeared, singing the praises of God. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men”: such words consisted of the hymn of the Angels (Luke 2:8-14). The angel commanded Joseph to flee with the newborn God-child and the Mother of God to Egypt from the murderous plans of Herod; An angel announced to the holy Betrothed about the death of Herod, ordered him to return to Judea and settle down in Nazareth, a small and ignoble city of Galilee (Matthew 2:19:20). During the stay of the Lord in the flesh on earth, the Angels of God ascended and descended to the Son of God, serving Him (1 John 1:51)» . The angel warned the Magi against returning to Herod (Mat. 2:12). An angel appeared to strengthen the Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:43). The angel announced to the myrrh-bearing women about the Resurrection of Christ, to the apostles about the ascension of Christ to heaven (Mat. 28:1-8). An angel announced to the Apostle Paul that he must appear before Caesar (Acts 27:23-24). " through his angel» (Rev. 1:1) Jesus Christ gave the Revelation to John the Theologian. That is, we see the constant presence and participation of angels in all events that are important for the human race. Guardian angels are available not only for specific people, but also for peoples and states. When performing Holy Baptism, the priest prays to God for this. so that he assigns a Guardian Angel to the baptized. However, angels help not only the baptized, but also other people. But it is precisely at the time of Baptism that the Angel who co-presents a person receives great power to help him, constantly stay with him and inspire him with good, holy, pure thoughts. As if the Angel duplicates our voice of conscience, strengthens it, denouncing evil and inciting a person to good. He can warn us of impending danger. It has happened more than once with each of us that we really don’t want to go somewhere, there is some kind of deaf resistance, unwillingness to do something, and if we nevertheless force ourselves, based on logical necessity, to perform this action - then it turns out that we went there in vain, that it would be better not to do this and not appear there - this is the voice of the Guardian Angel. But it must be said that the help of angels is not unconditional. If a person decides to sin, if he decides to do evil, an angel cannot force him to abandon his decision. He can inspire him with a thought, induce him to repentance, but a person always chooses for himself. Both the angelic world and the demonic world cannot force a person to either good or evil. Man always chooses himself. And what happens to the Guardian Angel if a person sins? Then the Guardian Angel moves away from such a person, for an invisible stench of passions emanates from him. Every passion, sin has an invisible spiritual smell, a vile smell, a spiritual stench that Guardian Angels cannot endure....

One holy fool had a vision, during which those around him drew attention to his strange behavior. Approaching the brothel, where the young men entered, he suddenly began to cry, kissing the walls of this house, and approaching the church, he suddenly took stones and began to throw them at the walls of the temple. And everyone was perplexed about what such strange behavior means. And then he revealed to his disciple that at the walls of this harlot he saw the Guardian Angels of the poor young men who could not enter there during this vile and insulting act. And he wept with them and prayed for those who went to sin and destroy their souls. And when he came to the church, he saw unclean spirits that could not enter the temple, and he threw stones at them and drove them away from the church. Thus, we see that they are present, but to accept the will of either angels or impure spirits depends on the person himself. Therefore, if a person persists, then the Guardian Angel will retreat.

It must be said that the ability to accept spiritual help also depends on the spirituality of the person himself. The more sinful a person is, the further he drives away the Guardian Angel from himself. And on the contrary, being cleansed from sin, a person brings the Guardian Angel closer to himself, gets into contact with him and begins to hear him. I know several people who saw their Guardian Angel and even heard his instructions from time to time, and who received real help from the Guardian Angel. And the closer a person is to God, the more he feels his Guardian Angel and hears his word. There are many cases when the Guardian Angel really helped a person. I will tell you just a few of them.

« An amazing incident shocked the inhabitants of the small Don town of Semiluki: a nine-year-old girl, Oksana Danilevich, fell from the balcony of the fifth floor. As it happened, she itself she doesn’t remember: most likely, she leaned over the railing, lost her balance and flew down. According to doctors, a fall even from the third floor is fraught with injuries incompatible with life. And here is the fifth. Nevertheless, Oksanka, with all the abrasions, scratches and bruises received during the fall, was conscious. She adequately responded to the questions of the traumatologist of the local hospital, who did not leave the juvenile patient for a day, who miraculously escaped death. Having finally come to her senses, the girl gave out a version of why she had not crashed for good: “Next to me,” she said, “someone else was flying to the right and supported me. So I hit the asphalt not very painfully.” Probably, it was Oksanin's guardian angel. Who but him?» .

Interesting statistics. " It turns out that crashing planes, derailing trains, sinking ships, and buses turning into a pile of scrap metal as a result of an accident are usually filled with passengers 15-17.5% less than those with which nothing happens. Here it is more logical to talk not about happy cases, but about a certain pattern. Some secret higher power helps people feel trouble and avoid it» . « Catastrophes claim thousands and thousands of lives. But every tragedy is accompanied by a mysterious phenomenon: there are always those who, by some miracle, escaped disaster. More precisely, because of something they did not get into it. Who helped?» . « Moscow scientists are not the first who came up with the idea to measure the degree of intervention of higher forces in human life. Back in 1958, American sociologist James analyzed more than 200 train wrecks over the previous 30 years. It turned out that trains that ended their journey tragically were, on average, 61 percent full of the maximum possible number of passengers. While at least 76 percent went on safe trips. Shocked by the results, Staunton concluded that the mysterious 15 percent difference could only be explained by the existence of higher powers. It was they who took trouble away from people, simply not letting them near it.» . Indeed, my dears, if a person listens to the Guardian Angel, leads correct image life - the Guardian Angel takes him away from mortal danger and helps.

I must say that angels cannot exist outside of time and space. This is only possible for God. " Angels, being created beings and, therefore, limited, depend on time and space as a category of created being, although in relation to space and time Angels have incomparably greater freedom than people.» . So, angels, not being able to be in two places at the same time, nevertheless, move at great speed. Walls, fences, no physical laws can hold them back. Angels have immortality, the ability to know things, experience sadness and joy. The power of angels is very great, but not unlimited. The number of angels is very large and defies description. However, their number is not infinite. And in the Holy Scriptures, when it is said about their falling away from God, it is indicated that the number of fallen angels was one third of their total number. If we compare the degrees of perfection of angels and people, we can see that at the present time, when a person is in a state of fall, then the angels certainly surpass him. However, in the future, when the general resurrection from the dead takes place, righteous people will turn out to be no less perfect than angels, since sin and distance from God will disappear, and people themselves will combine two natures: the human soul will be like angels, and the body will be like the visible world . But even the body will have special properties, such as those of the resurrected Christ. After Christ was resurrected, he was instantly transferred from one place to another, that is, he possessed such special properties as resurrected people will have.

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Angels... What are they? What are these beings? Are there many? What do they do, how do they live in Heaven? Do they ever come to earth with us?

What are Angels? In all peoples at all times, along with the innate thought about God, there has always been a thought and this or that concept about the angelic world. And although we have not seen the Angels with bodily eyes, we can draw their image, we can say what kind of creatures they are: the thought of them is deeply embedded in our soul; mentally each of us imagines angels.

Angel ... Isn't it true, when we pronounce this word with our own lips, or hear it pronounced by the lips of others, or when we think about the Angel, then every time this name evokes in us an idea of ​​something unusually bright, pure, perfect, holy, beautifully tender, about something that the soul involuntarily yearns for, what it loves, what it worships? And everything that we do not notice on earth is holy, bright, pure, beautiful and perfect - all this we have a tendency to call and designate by the name of the Angel. We look, for example, at pretty children, admire their trusting eyes, their naive smile and say: “like angels”, “angelic eyes”, “angelic smile”. We hear harmonious, touching singing, sonorous, gentle voices, we listen to their various overflows and melodies, sometimes quietly sad and thoughtful, sometimes enthusiastically solemn and majestic, and we say: “As if in heaven, as the angels sing.” If we visit a family whose members live in mutual harmony, mutual love, prayer, where everything bears the stamp of some kind of quietness, meekness, some kind of extraordinary world, where the soul involuntarily rests, we will visit such a family and say: "They live like angels." Whether any extraordinary beauty strikes our eyes, we say again: "angelic beauty." And if we are asked, if we are instructed to draw an Angel, and if we own the colors, how will we depict him? Certainly in the form of a beautiful young man in snow-white clothes, with a bright, clear face, clear eyes, with white wings - in a word, we will try to portray something attractive, tender, alien to the earth and everything sensual. And the brighter in our drawing we imprint this alienation from the earth, this kind of airiness, lightness, spirituality, this incorporeality, heavenliness, the more perfect the drawing will be, the more eyes it will attract to itself, the more clearly it will remind those who look about the celestial being. So, then, what are angels, as our inner feeling, inner spiritual instinct, our inner direct experience tells us about this first of all.

With the name of the Angel, we associate the concept of everything that is most dear to us, holy, attractive, pure, perfect, beautiful, unearthly. An angel is assigned to our inner gaze as a being not of this world, spiritual, free from all coarseness and sensuality, in a word, as a heavenly being. And what our inner feeling tells us about the Angels, perhaps not quite clearly, vaguely, then with special clarity and obviousness reveals to us the word of God.

The Word of God is a message from Heaven and about Heaven. And the more often and deeper we read into it, the closer the heavenly-angelic world becomes to us, the more tangibly we will feel it with our heart, the more clearly its victorious songs will reach our inner ear. Just as the sun and the starry sky are reflected in pure water, so in the word of God - this source of living water - the spiritual sky is reflected - the angelic world; in the word of God we see angels, as it were, standing before us.

By nature, the word of God teaches us, angels are spirits. Are not all ministering spirits, says St. Paul, - sent to serve for those who have to inherit salvation (). “You want to know,” says the blessed. Augustine, is the name of his (Angel) nature? This is the spirit. Would you like to know his position? This is an Angel. In essence he is a spirit, and in activity he is an angel. But the Angels are spirits, not bound, like our spirit, by flesh, which opposes the spirit, captivates it with the law of sin, constrains it, cuts off its flights to heaven, constantly pulls it to the earth. Angels are spirits free from all carnality, its laws are alien to them. They are not tormented by hunger, they are not tormented by thirst. Therefore, all our stubborn labor is unknown to them in obtaining daily bread. “Cursed is the earth for you; in sorrow you will eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles she will grow for you; and you will eat the grass of the field; in the sweat of your face you will eat bread.” This formidable verdict of Divine justice is pronounced only to fallen man, and the Angels remained faithful to their Creator to the end. Thorns and thistles do not grow in heaven, sweat does not exhaust the face of an angel. They do not sow, they do not reap, they do not gather into barns, they are not dried up by concern for tomorrow; our struggle for bread, for existence, our mutual strife, strife, wars, anger, hatred, envy because of this are unfamiliar to incorporeal spirits. True, they feel hunger and thirst, but not our hunger with pain, not our thirst with suffering. Their hunger is a never ceasing need to be saturated with the sweetness of contemplating the beauty of the Divine, the sweetness of knowing eternal wisdom, to be saturated with the one living bread.

“Holy bread,” the priest prays with the words of St. Ambrose of Milan before the Liturgy - Holy Bread, Living Bread, Sweetest Bread. Bread of lust, Bread of the purest, full of all sweetness and incense! Angels in heaven feed on you abundantly; May the stranger on earth be satiated according to his strength with Thee! “The angels in heaven feed abundantly,” and everyone wants to be saturated with the sweetness of the contemplation of the Divine more and more. What a lofty, truly heavenly, most blessed hunger! The Angels are seized with thirst, but also with a heavenly and blessed thirst - a thirst for ever closer and closer communion with God, penetration by the Divine, enlightenment by Him. Their thirst is a never-ceasing yearning for God. A small semblance of this thirst occurs on earth. So the eagle, spreading its mighty wings to its full extent, soars up and flies, rises higher ... higher ... there - into the depths of the sky. But no matter how high he rises, he must again descend to the bottom. It happens like this: in moments of greatest spiritual tension, inspiration, prayer, powerfully breaking the bonds of the flesh, like an eagle, our mind rushes to heaven, contemplates God, is imbued with Him, thinks about Him. But, alas, our mind, fickle, wavering, again falls down from heavenly heights; breaks up into many vain thoughts, dissipates. Angels are not so: their mind is incessantly, invariably directed towards God, does not deviate from Him for a single moment, it knows no turning back. The angels “with a firm mind, a steady desire to lead beings” contemplate the Divine, the Church sings about them. "The love of the Divine inflamed" Angels. Inflamed even by this love, kindled by the dawn of the Divine being, from this Divine thirst, the Angels themselves become "God-bearing coal", "a communion of Divine fire, like a flame happens." “In fiery fires Cherubim, Seraphim, Lord!” (Octoich 3, tone 4, Tuesday, song 8).

What truly Divine, what sweetest thirst! Thus, in the unceasing contemplation of God, in constant striving and elevation towards Him, in the never-ceasing hymn of His immeasurable glory and majesty, Angels live in Heaven.

On the path of constant aspiration and elevation to God, they do not know any stops, barriers and obstacles, they do not know the most important, the most basic, the most difficult obstacle on this path - sin, which now and then with its bonds binds the wings of our spirit, constrains its flight. to Heaven and God. Angels can no longer sin. At first, according to the teachings of Blessed Augustine, they were created by God with the possibility of sinning, then by the steady exercise of their will in goodness they passed into the state of the possibility of not sinning, and finally, having strengthened themselves in obedience to God, by the power of Divine grace they improved so much that they reached the state of the impossibility of sinning.

It is in this most blessed and holy state that the Angels remain to this day in Heaven.

As spirits, incorporeal Angels know neither our space nor time; our modes of transportation, involving many efforts and difficulties, are unknown to them. Angels are fleeting, fast-moving: An angel is now in one place, in the twinkling of an eye - in another; there are no walls, no doors, no locks for the Angels. “They,” teaches Gregory the Theologian, “walk freely around the Great Throne, because they are fast-moving minds, flames and Divine spirits, quickly transported through the air.” And they pass through the closed door, and see through the walls, and no fortress, the most solid, high and impregnable, is able to restrain their flight. Angels rush uncontrollably, freely on their fleeting wings: before the noise of their spirit (), like smoke, all space disappears.

And it is not only the Angels themselves who rush so easily; An angel, if he approaches a person, takes him, lifts him on his wings, then space ceases to exist for a person too; covered with the roof of angelic wings, it is transported through the most remote distances in the twinkling of an eye.

Wonderful, marvelous, folks!

It’s strange for us, bound by flesh, it’s strange, for us, bound from everywhere by space, it’s not clear how it is possible: to be here now and at any second be transported through hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, millions of miles and find ourselves immediately in another place, in another country, among other people, to hear a foreign language, to see another nature. Strange, but not so much that we absolutely cannot accommodate such swiftness in our minds; incomprehensibly, but not so much that such speed is in direct contradiction to our mind. A person, diminished, according to the Word of God, before the Angels (), in himself bears the possibility of angelic speed. Indeed, tell me, isn’t our spirit moving quickly, isn’t our thought fleeting? For thought, for our spirit as well, because there are no barriers and obstacles. In the twinkling of an eye with thought we can travel over the most enormous distances, in the twinkling of an eye with the spirit we can visit different places. And this is now more and more intensifying, the desire to conquer, conquer space, to cut through it with all sorts of the fastest machines, this more and more growing thirst to get off the ground and, on newly invented airships, as if on wings, fly away there ... high - high, where the sky is blue - what does all this say, if not that a person is truly “belittled by the angels”, that his spirit is fast-moving, his thought is fleeting, that in spirit, in thought, a person is an Angel and also unbound by space.

Supported by the right hand of God, stand firmly, unswervingly on this path of spiritual growth and perfection in Christ Jesus, and you will become like the Angels - with all your soul you will feel how time, days, weeks, months, years begin to disappear before you, and before your eyes in all its majesty its own and immensity, as before the Angels, eternity, eternity ... eternity ...

Are there many angels? Can you count them? No. The bliss of the Angels is immeasurable, and their number is immeasurable. They surround the Throne of God with darkness and thousands of thousands. “I saw,” narrates the prophet Daniel, “behold, the thrones were set up and the Ancient of Days sat down ... The Fiery River came out and led before Him; Thousands of thousands served Him, and so many darknesses stood before Him. And the shepherds of Bethlehem on the holy Christmas night saw a numerous heavenly army, which sang: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill towards men” (). When the Lord Jesus Christ was taken in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the Apostle Peter, in defense of his Teacher, drew his sword, striking the servant of the high priest, the Lord said to Peter: “Return your sword to its place ... or do you think that I cannot now beg My Father, and He will present Me more than twelve legions of angels ”(). Legions of Angels... Numerous hosts... Darkness and thousands of thousands... You see how the word of God counts the Angels: with all this it wants to tell us: the angelic world is immense. That is why in the word of God Angels are compared with stars (). You can admire the stars, you can, looking at them, glorify the Creator, but you cannot count them; so are the angels: you can pray to them, you can sing about them, but you can’t say how many there are. So great, so vast is the angelic world! And what order, what wondrous harmony, harmony and peace reign in the angelic world, with all its immensity!

Here, firstly, under the position of the cornerstone one cannot understand anything other than the position of the foundation of the earth, the dispensation of its first principles, and therefore, under the morning stars one cannot understand the stars of the visible world, which were not yet at the foundation of the earth, but it is necessary understand rational beings, or Angels, who are called morning stars because they constitute the first creation of God, which preceded, like the morning stars of the visible world, the day of the orderly existence of the universe. Secondly, under the name of the sons of God, which is spoken of here, one cannot also understand anyone other than the Angels of God; so they are named above in the same Book of Job twice (); people, who are also sometimes called in Scripture the sons of God, did not yet exist at that time.

Thus, the Angels praised God even when the foundations of the earth were laid. From this we can conclude that the creation of the Angels preceded the formation of the material world.

The opinion about the creation of Angels before the material world was also dominant in the ancient church. Especially remarkable is the expression of this opinion in St. Gregory the Theologian. “Since it was not enough for Goodness,” he says, “to practice only in contemplation of Itself, but it was necessary that goodness should spread, go further and further, so that there would be as many beneficiaries as possible (for this is the property of the highest Goodness), then God invents, firstly, the angelic and heavenly powers. And thought became deed, which is filled with the Word and accomplished by the Spirit. This is how the second lordships came about... the intelligent world was created by God... since the first creatures were pleasing to Him, he invents another world - material and visible; and this is the orderly constitution of heaven and earth and what is between them” (Word 38). St. I. Damascene, accepting the opinion of Gregory the Theologian on the time of the creation of the Angels, adds: “I agree with the Theologian: for it was more fitting to first create an intelligent essence, then a sensual one, and then from one and the other human essence” (Exact citation in .2, 3).

Holy Scripture does not give exact instructions regarding the time of the creation of Angels. In patristic texts we find at least three opinions regarding the origin of angels.

According to the first, Angels were created before the material world. This opinion is the most widely held and is included in the Catechisms. It was shared by schmch. Irene of Lyon, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Epiphanius of Cyprus.

The word "spirit" means an immaterial and incorporeal being. It has the same meaning in the saying of the apostle, taught the sacraments of faith from the Lord Himself.

If the Word of God repeatedly mentions the appearances of Angels in a visible body; then in all such cases they showed intelligence and will, and generally acted in the way that rationally free, spiritual beings tend to act.

The image of the person in whom they appeared does not constitute themselves, but represents only the appearance of their appearance, therefore it does not at all disturb confidence in the spirituality of their nature, just as the Epiphany does not upset confidence in the spirituality of God's nature.

Such are the foundations of the spirituality of the nature of souls and angels, extracted from the Word of God by church teachers!

The question is: where are the subtle bodies in which spirits clothe themselves, appearing to people, stored? I answer: in the same place where the body of the Lord was kept, in which He appeared to Abraham, in which He wrestled with Jacob, in which He was visible in paradise, and so on. In all these and similar cases, He took the body for a while, therefore, took it somewhere. Thus, where the Lord took the body, there the spirits take it, and where those Lord's bodies were kept, there the bodies and spirits are kept.

They will say to this: so the Lord will command, and the elements will gather around Him and form a body; command again - the elements will be resolved, and there will be no body.

But the same Lord, who created the spirits in His image and likeness, could also grant them the ability to gather the elements around Himself and put on a visible body when it was necessary to fulfill His Holy will. I don't see anything impossible here. This is not impossible on the part of God: He is ready to give the creature every good that it is able to contain. The question is: can the spirit contain such a capacity? I answer: it can, because it is a force that really exists among other creatures, and a force higher than all material things, no matter how strong and powerful it may be. The higher nature can naturally dominate the lower natures, and the lower natures must naturally subdue and obey the higher ones.

Thus, I believe that God gave the incorporeal spirits the ability to attract certain elements to themselves, when necessary, and form a certain shell around them, and then, when the need is over, detach them from themselves and return them to their first state. In this way, the angels form for themselves both a body in the form of a human, in which they usually appear, and clothing and everything with which they appear; and in the same way all this is again resolved into its elements. And it seems to me that this method of explanation is the simplest and most natural, and most importantly, embracing all cases of angelic manifestations.

Take a magnet and place it among the iron filings - they will immediately be attracted to it and stick around it from all sides. Paralyze the power of the magnet in some way - the sawdust will all fall off, and the magnet will remain bare.

In the same way, spirits have a natural ability to attract and reject the elements, with the only difference that what works mechanically in a magnet, with spirits is accomplished in submission to freedom and reason. Our soul, as St. Gregory of Nyssa, forms her own body. But this process of formation is very long, and besides, the soul, having formed a body for itself, does not have the freedom to resolve it at will. The higher spirits, however, form bodies for themselves and permit them freely, and, moreover, according to their own desire or God's will. Also: our soul in a dream, and sometimes in reality, imagines itself in different states and forms. I transfer this to the spirits and say: what the soul can only imagine, the higher spirit can produce, of course, according to the conditions of its higher spiritual mode of existence and action and in submission to the ruling Supreme Being.

See what St. Damascene is about Angels, and you will agree that under no circumstances can one assume in it the idea of ​​the materiality of angelic nature. Hear, for example, how St. Damascene explains the mutual communication between the Angels.

“Angels,” he says, “are mental lights, second from the first and beginningless light, having enlightenment, not needing language and hearing, but without a spoken word, transmitting their thoughts and desires to each other.”

What is the substance here? If St. Damascene recognized them as material, he would say that the Angels have a tongue, eyes and other members, they see each other, talk with each other, visit each other. If St. Damascene does not allow anything of the kind, but on the contrary, he explains the mutual communication of the Angels in a spiritual, mental way, it is obvious that he does not recognize the Angels as material. Listen to what St. The Damascus relation of the Angels to the place.

“Like minds, they are in mental places, not being described like bodies: for, by their nature, they do not have a form or image similar to bodies, they do not even have three dimensions, but mentally they are present and act where they are commanded, and cannot be and act here and there at the same time.

This completely liberates the nature of the Angels from those gross forms in which they are presented by a new teaching that wants to give them materiality, based on the appearances of Angels and transferring the image of the appearance to the image of nature. And St. Damascene teaches that although they are not in heaven, when they are sent to earth, and although they cannot be here and there at the same time, but when they are in some place, it is not so that some kind of shape extended in height, length and width. They do not have such dimensions, they do not have any form, as bodies tend to have. Therefore, one can only say that they are here and not there, that they exert their effect here and not there. In order not to be considered that I arbitrarily interpret the words of St. Damascus on the attitude of the Angels to the place, which he called the “mental place”, I write out how St. Damascus.

“There is a mental place where it is contemplated, and there is a mental and incorporeal nature, where it is inherent and acts mentally, and not embodied bodily or like bodies. For it has no form to be embraced bodily” (Book 1, ch. 13).

Well, here's how to eat the incorporeal in a certain place. There is, inherent, acts, but does not occupy it and is not embraced by it. And here are his own words about the angelic place.

“The angel is not contained in a place like bodies, so as to take on an image or form. But it is said that he is in a certain place for the sake of what is mentally present in him and acts according to his nature, and that at the same time he does not happen in another place, but there he mentally imagines where he acts. For he cannot act in different places at the same time” (ibid.).

But if, therefore, according to St. Damascus, Angels do not occupy a place and are not embraced by him, if they do not have any extension and form, then it is obvious that, according to his teaching, they do not have any materiality, no matter how subtle they may imagine; because nothing material can exist without these accessories; and what does not have them is no longer material.

“Some say,” he says, “that the angels were created before any creation, as St. Gregory the Theologian: “Firstly, (God) invents the angelic, Heavenly Powers, and thought has become deed” ... I completely agree with the Theologian. For it was necessary first to create a mental nature, then a sensual one, and, finally, a man, one of both ”(Book 1, ch. 13).

And there are many similar cases in human life when Angels, being themselves invisible to people, send their help to them in one miraculous way or another, saving them from obvious danger, from obvious death. So, the Angels are filled with love for us, people, so they take care of us. Therefore, the Holy One prays to God, on behalf of everyone, calling to Him: “Deliver us from all sorrow, evils and illnesses, protect us with your holy Angels, but with their guarded militia and instructions, we will reach the union of faith ...”

But the Angels are not content with helping only a few people and, moreover, in some particular case or as needed. Not! This is not enough. St. believes that every person (Christian) uses angelic care individually and, moreover, not at one time, but throughout his life. According to the belief of the Holy Church, each Christian is given his own Angel at baptism, who takes him into his invisible and visible care, keeps him visible and invisible in spiritual and bodily life, which is why he is called the Guardian Angel. Being attached to a person from the very moment of baptism, the Guardian Angel remains with him and accompanies him until his death. He cares about both his eternal salvation and his temporal life. It is he who inspires him with good, soulful thoughts, helps him in doing good deeds, drives the devil away from him, destroying the devil's machinations, helps him in various difficult circumstances of his life, saves him from a needless death, etc., and so on. In a word, the Guardian Angel is the tutor or educator of a person, an invisible guide and protector who walks with him all the days of his life.

And here are examples of how the Guardian Angel saved people from unnecessary death. One day, late on the way, St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, entered the hotel for the night with his deacon. At midnight, the Guardian Angel pushed him in the side and said: “Polycarp, get up and get out of this hotel as soon as possible, for it will immediately collapse.” This warning was given by the Angel three times. As soon as St. Polycarp went out, the inn immediately collapsed, and all the others who were there were beaten up in it ...

There are many similar cases in our Russian Orthodox Church with God-fearing people. One soldier was walking home from military service. He carried a considerable amount of money with him. It was a dead autumn, when it usually gets dark early. At dusk, he came to a village and decided to spend the night there. There were many inns in the village. Approaching one of these, the soldier saw the owner at the gate and asked to spend the night. The owner, having learned that he was a soldier, at first refused to let him in, thinking that the traveler would not pay for food and accommodation, since, in his opinion, the soldier had nowhere to get a penny. But when the soldier reassured him about this, the owner agreed to let him in. The soldier entered the hut. Neither the owner nor the mistress liked him. Both of them were sullen, taciturn, ferocious. But the soldier thought: “It’s not a century for me to live here: today I’ve come, and tomorrow I’ll go out before light. I’ll spend the night somehow - fortunately I still found peace ... "

The soldier had dinner and immediately began to pay, so that in the morning early, without delay, set off. The owner and mistress, seeing the soldier had a lot of money, became more talkative. The owner suddenly said to the soldier: “It must be that you, a serviceman, are not going home with an empty pocket? Do you have any money, you see? The soldier replied: "There is a small fraction." "Where did you get them, soldier?" the old woman asked in her turn. The soldier answered her: “I served in the foreign army, and there they gave a big salary; so I took care of him - I endured the need, but I took care of it. I have a brother in the village with his family: I worked so hard for him to come to him with help. God willing, I will come, so we will get better.”

Rising from the table, the soldier threw off his overcoat, put the knapsack under his head, and soon fell asleep. Before going to bed, as usual, he prayed to God and read a prayer to his Guardian Angel. At night, he suddenly woke up, not knowing why - as if someone cold water doused it, and immediately began to rise to his feet. He looks, and the owner is standing near him and holding a knife over his very neck to stab him ... The soldier had nothing in his hands with which to defend himself, and he already began to think about death. Suddenly it occurred to him to say to the owner: “What are you doing? After all, I am not one of the soldiers here - there are many of us here, they will realize me. The owner seemed to be a little taken aback, thoughtful, but soon cheered up again and said: “It’s too late now to dissolve fables. Pray, and karachup to you. At this time, the hostess shouted to her husband from behind the partition: “Why are you listening to him?” Having said this, she ran out with an ax in her hands and rushed at the soldier. unfortunate hung by a thread. The soldier had nothing to look forward to but the help of God, for it was midnight and everyone around the village was asleep.

In anticipation that he would now be finished with an ax or a knife, the soldier fell to his knees and began to read a prayer to his Guardian Angel, as he had done more than once in moments of mortal danger. Suddenly, someone knocked hard on the window, so much so that all the panes trembled. Then a voice was heard from outside: “Master, master! Unlock quickly, otherwise we will break the gate: gentlemen, the officers have come to the inn. The owner and the hostess saw that now things were bad for them, and they fell at the soldier's feet. “Do not destroy, do not betray us,” they pleaded. – The enemy embarrassed us accursed…” But the soldier was not up to it. He grabbed a knapsack from the shelf, threw on his overcoat, but without boots, and darted out of the hut. He ran out into the street and saw that there was no one at the gate or anywhere. Yes, it must have never happened ... But he was overjoyed that he had escaped from under the knife, and ran at full speed through the village. He came to his senses when he ran into the middle of the village. Then his heart was relieved: he was saved.

Such good deeds for the soul and body are sent to a person by his Guardian Angel. That is why the Holy One prays (a petitionary litany) with the Lord God and asks, “The angel is peaceful, faithful mentor, guardian of our souls and bodies.”

But the visible miraculous actions of the Guardian Angel in a person's life are relatively rare. For the most part, these actions are invisible to bodily eyes. In order to notice them and distinguish them from various external random circumstances and internal human feelings and wishes, for this you need to carefully look into life, think about your actions, and also carefully listen to the voice of your conscience. Then we can discover many things that can only be explained by the action in our life of the Guardian Angel. For example, at least pay attention to how many times each person in his life has to be exposed to one or another danger? Often follows a person on the heels (for example, a stone or a log from above a house under construction fell on a person standing below and almost broke his head, a zealous horse rushed off, threw a rider out of the wagon and almost killed him to death, etc., etc.) - and yet, in many similar cases, a person escapes danger and, thank God, remains unharmed, sometimes without even thinking of remaining alive. And if you look at children?.. Who is not aware of cases when children fell from a considerable height to the ground, onto stones, etc., and still remained alive? Apparently, they should be smashed to death, and in fact, they often do not even receive any bruises and damage. Why does all this happen like this? From the fact that, by the will of God, the Guardian Angel comes to the aid of a person in danger and protects him from misfortunes, saves him from vain death according to the word of God, which says: “Evil will not come to you, and the wound will not approach your body, like an Angel Command your [Lord God] about you, save you in all your ways. They will take you in their hands, but not when you stumble your foot on a stone ”().

But, looking closely, you can especially often see how the Guardian Angel helps to deliver a person from spiritual death, from sinful falls. Here, for example, a man has planned to do some kind of criminal deed, to do some evil to his neighbor. Now he had completely decided to fulfill his intention, but suddenly his conscience spoke in him and disturbed his peace. The man thought about it, finally realized his delusion and abandoned the planned bad deed. His soul was delivered from superfluous great sin. What happened to the man here? Why did he have the prudent thought to abandon his criminal intent? But because his Guardian Angel stood guard over his heart, who led him to think about the criminality of the case, as a result of which the person, still having some spark of good in himself, heeded the voice of his conscience, awakened by the Guardian Angel, and after some struggle with left what he had planned.

For example, a man, dejected by some unfortunate circumstances, decided to take his own life, decided to commit suicide. He had already grown stronger in his pernicious intention and went to carry it out. But suddenly, during the journey, a revolution took place in his soul, or a special pity appeared for his family, which would be orphaned without him, about future eternal torments for his such a dishonorable deed, or a special love for life was felt, which forced him to abandon his criminal intention. What happened to the man here? After all, a person who has decided to commit suicide, obviously, had time to think properly about his family, and about future torments, and about everything that would come out of his unfortunate act, but he did not leave his intention, but now he suddenly, as it were, came to his senses ... Why did it turn out like this? Because at the most necessary, so to speak, last minute, the Guardian Angel, who was waiting for the sobering of a person, came to his aid, acted on his soul, as a result of which the thought that had previously occurred to him more than once, which he had already thought over properly , now acted on him differently, and the man was saved from eternal death. And in general, if you look at life, you can see many cases when the Guardian Angel helps a person for his spiritual benefit, when he removes obvious death from him.

But it must be said here that the Guardian Angel is close only to those in whom the spark of God has not yet been extinguished, who have the thought of their salvation, who have not yet completely perished in their souls. Therefore, the word of God says: “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him (the Lord) and delivers them” (). From those who have lost faith in God and hope in His mercy, who have no idea about the future life and eternal salvation, the Guardian Angel is far from those. He tried everything to approach them and help them in the affairs of temporal and eternal life, but their life and deeds drive him away, just as smoke drives away bees and doves - the stench. The place of the Guardian Angel near such people is taken by the devil, and the Guardian Angel is then already a formidable exposer of their evil deeds before the judgment of God. St. Andrew the Holy Fool, near a dying lawless one, once saw a formidable Angel, whose appearance was like a flame. The angel, who was invisible to others, held a fiery cane in his hand. He approached the dying man and began to beat him with this cane, saying: “Do you still want to transgress and defile various persons? You pretended to go to matins, but meanwhile you went to the devil's deeds. At this time, the lawless one gave up his spirit, and his soul was immediately taken by demons (Cheti-Minei, October 2).

If St. Angels wish people all kinds of blessings - temporary and eternal, if they are people's helpers in all their troubles and misfortunes, in all their good undertakings, if, finally, standing before the Throne of God, they bring people's prayers, intercede for them before God, then, of course, people, for their part, should do everything in which they could be worthy of such beneficences of the Angels, even to a small extent. First of all, people should honor them as great servants of God, and therefore give them worthy worship. At the same time, people in their prayers should thank them for the help and good deeds they have already sent, and also ask them for intercession in troubles and misfortunes that have fallen or are just preparing to fall on them. Especially a person should turn in prayers to his Guardian Angel. After all, the Guardian Angel is assigned to a person precisely in order to be his assistant in sorrows and misfortunes, and also to help him achieve eternal bliss. So, to whom can a person most likely turn, if not to the Guardian Angel, his great helper and intercessor before God? And let the Christian often turn to him. Lying down at night in bed and getting up in the morning from sleep, he must certainly pray to his Guardian Angel, along with other prayers, he must certainly bring a prayer to him. Here is the prayer that the Holy Church has established to be read to the Guardian Angel: “Angel of Christ, my holy Guardian and patron of my soul and body, forgive me all of you, sinning this day, and deliver me from all the wickedness of the enemy that is contrary to me, but not in what a sin I will anger my God, but pray for me a sinful and unworthy slave, as if you are worthy of me, show the goodness and mercy of the all-holy Trinity and the Mother of my Lord Jesus Christ and all the saints. Amen".

As already mentioned, angels are spiritual beings. But since, appearing to people, they take the form of a person, they are depicted in our country in the form of people. For the most part, Angels are depicted in white robes. This is, firstly, because in white clothes they often appeared to the eyes of people (for example, at the resurrection of Jesus Christ, when He ascended into Heaven, etc.), and secondly, white clothes signify that spiritual purity, that purity which is characteristic of the angels. In addition, we depict Angels with two wings (sometimes even with a large number, for example, with six, which is why they are called “six wings” in the sacred song). The wings indicate the special speed with which they fulfill the will of God. Finally, Angels are often depicted with many eyes (“many-eyed”). This signifies that everything is accessible to their gaze, that their gaze penetrates everywhere where the human gaze cannot penetrate.

Pavel Nikolsky. Holy Angels. Tambov, 1907

Why don't we see angels?

If Angels are real beings, then why can't we see them? And how many people believe that a glass of water is filled with the smallest living creatures swarming in the water? We all certainly believe this. Water is filled with microorganisms, and if right now we could examine a drop of water under a microscope, it would immediately come to life before our eyes. There are many things that are absolutely real, but not perceived by our senses. The place where you are now is filled with all sorts of voices. At this very moment music fills it, but you cannot hear it. But just turning on the radio is enough to be convinced of this. The fact that we may not see or hear something is not proof that the "something" does not exist.

The truth is that people have seen Angels; even animals could see them. In the Book of Numbers, in the twenty-second chapter, it is described how a man named Balaam rode one day on a donkey. Suddenly, the animal stopped moving, stopping in a narrow passageway between two walls. And even though Balaam began to mercilessly beat the donkey, she refused to budge, because an angel stood in their way. A moment later, Balaam saw the Angel; then he understood why the animal was not moving forward.

One of the reasons why angels are not often seen by man lies in the nature that we possess. In the eighth and ninth verses of the twenty-second chapter of the Book of Revelation, we read: “I, John, have seen and heard this. When I heard and saw, I fell at the feet of the Angel, showing me this, to worship him; but he said to me: look, do not do this; for I am a co-servant with you and with your brethren the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book; Bow down to God." Here we see how the great apostle John was rebuked for trying to worship the Angel. Well, if the extraordinary glory of the Angel had such an effect on this man of God, then what can we say about you and me? If God allowed them to often appear before people, they would certainly become objects of deification and worship. Generally speaking, Angels appear to humans in human form. In the thirteenth chapter of Hebrews, the apostle says: "Don't forget hospitality [hospitable attitude towards strangers], for through it some, not knowing, showed hospitality to angels." It is possible that you, without realizing it, met with an Angel who took the form of a stranger.

Further, although the Angels cannot be the object of our worship, their power should be appreciated. Sometimes God directs them to execute judgment on the wicked. One well-known example of this is the story of the Assyrian army defying the God of Heaven during Old Testament times. During the night a destroying angel appeared in the camp, and the next morning 185,000 Assyrian soldiers were found dead. This episode contrasts sharply with the Angels' usual guardianship and protection. But we must remember that it is with those who fear God that the Angels exercise their greatest power. “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and delivers them” ().

Angels are so real that they have been seen firsthand. Let's read about one incident described in verses 15 to 17 of the sixth chapter of 2 Kings: “In the morning the servant of the man of God got up and went out; and behold, an army round about the city, and horses and chariots. And his servant said to him, Alas! my lord, what shall we do? And he said, Fear not, for there are more of those who are with us than of those who are with them. And Elisha prayed, and said: Lord! open his eyes so he can see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw, and behold, the whole mountain was filled with horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

Angels interact closely with members of the human family. They carefully observe everything that happens to a person. They know us by our first and last names. They know what we do for a living. They know where we live. They know whether we pray or not. They know whether we support the cause of God or not. They know all the details of our life.

All the facts of our biography are fully revealed to angels, as they accompany us from the cradle to the grave. Each person has a Guardian Angel who seeks to influence him in such a way that a person chooses the right paths. He also protects us from a thousand dangers that we encounter on the path of life. “See that you do not despise any of these little ones; for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven” (). How else can we explain the miraculous intervention of invisible forces that keep us from harm? From time to time we are aware of their blessed presence, but more often than not we are not aware of the manifoldness of their service to us.

Although you have never seen your Guardian Angel, do not conclude from this that he is not with you. No one has seen his soul; while we live on earth, we will not see the Lord God; and yet ... we have a soul, was and will always be the Lord our God. We do not see the Guardian Angels, firstly, because the Angels are incorporeal spirits, and we ourselves are overlaid with flesh and our eyes are such that they can see only carnal and material things.

Secondly, we do not see the Angels of God because we are unworthy of it. We are sinners, but they are pure and holy. If you want to see the Angels of God, be like them, sinless and righteous. They really appeared to such people, for example, to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, the holy apostles and others. Be like these saints of God, then Angels will apparently appear to you too. However, do you want to know how, without seeing your Guardian Angel, to be sure that he is with you? Listen to what the holy father John of the Ladder says: “When, with any prayer of your own saying, you feel inner delight, or tenderness, then stop there. For then the Guardian Angel together with us prays. Even without seeing the Guardian Angels, we can feel their saving effect in our hearts.

How exciting will be the day when we can talk with our Protecting Angel, who has accompanied us throughout our life on earth. On this day, we will be able to learn about the countless unconscious encounters with and how the Angels saved us.

Compiled according to the book "Conversations of a village priest with parishioners." M., 1900

About Guardian Angels of Human Societies

Angels are given to preserve cities, kingdoms, regions, monasteries and churches.

According to the teaching of the Orthodox Eastern Church, in the hosts of the Angels of God there are those who are appointed by God as guardians and guardians of cities, kingdoms, regions, monasteries, churches and other human societies. In order to be convinced of the truth of this doctrine, which some of the Western Christians do not accept, let us look at what it is based on: is there any basis for it in Holy Scripture and other sources of Christian doctrine, and does it say anything in its favor? do not human reason and experience, at least both of them, contradict it?

In Holy Scripture, we do not find many such places that speak of the Guardian Angels of societies. In addition, these few places are subject to various violent interpretations. Therefore, when indicating such places, we consider it necessary to pay special attention to how the ancient teachers and church fathers understood and interpreted them. In this way, the true meaning of the disputed subject will be revealed to us by itself. So, where does the Holy Scripture say about Guardian Angels of societies? In the Old Testament we find two particularly remarkable and clearer references to this subject, one by Moses and the other by Daniel. In the Book of Deuteronomy () we read: “When the Most High gave inheritances to the peoples and settled the sons of men, then he set the limits of the peoples according to the number of the Angels of God.”

St. John Chrysostom, pointing to these words, directly concludes that every nation has a Guardian Angel. St. Basil the Great also concludes from the words of Moses about the existence of angels guarding the nations. He says: “That there are angels who are appointed to watch over the nations, Moses teaches us this when he says: When the Most High gave inheritance to the nations ... and so on.” Further, in the Book of the Prophet Daniel, the Angels of the Persian, Greek and Jewish people are mentioned: “the prince of the kingdom of Persia stood against me for twenty-one days” (). “Now I will return to fight the prince of Persia; and when I go out, then, behold, the prince of Greece will come ... And there is no one who would support me in this, except Michael, your prince ”().

Here the Angel, who appeared to Daniel, speaks not of some earthly rulers of the Persian, Greek and Jewish peoples, but of the Guardian Angels of these peoples. This of itself is very clear from the whole course of speech; why the ancients did not interpret the above passage differently. Dionysius the Areopagite in the ninth chapter of his book “On the Heavenly Hierarchy” explains it this way: “Showing that Israel, like other peoples, is entrusted to one of St. Angels, for the knowledge through him of the one principle of everything, Holy Scripture says that Michael was placed over the Jewish people. In the same sense they understand the words of the Angel who appeared to the prophet Daniel, St. Basil the Great and Blessed Theodoret. The latter says: “The archangels are entrusted with watching over the nations, as blessed Moses teaches, with whom blessed Daniel also agrees; for he mentions the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and then also of the prince of the Greek kingdom, calling Michael the prince of Israel. But how to understand that the Angel of the Jewish people wants to fight the prince of Persia? Some explain this by the fact that a good angel is given to a good people, and an evil angel is given to an evil people. But at St. of the Fathers, we find the following interpretation: the Angel, ruling over the Jewish people, together with Daniel, sent up prayers to God for the return of the Jews from captivity to Jerusalem, considering this a blessing for the captives. The angel of the Persian people prayed to God for the continuation of the captivity, referring to the benefits and benefits that come to people from captivity. Therefore, although they prayed with a good intention, but since neither one nor the other knew the will of God, this is where their mutual competition took place. Be that as it may, however, but from the place cited by the prophet Daniel it is clear that there really are angels who take care of entire nations, and, moreover, with such zeal that they even enter into battle for them. Finally, in the New Testament, it is in the Revelation of St. John, you can find some indications that there are angels who watch over entire societies of people, namely, communities of believers, or churches. These Angels are depicted here under the symbol of the stars (the seven stars are the Angels of the seven churches), and each of them is called the Angel of his particular church. What is said here about the Guardian Angels of the churches, in this the ancient teachers and holy fathers serve as our guarantee.

Origen says: "From what he wrote in the Apocalypse (John), it is clear that an Angel is assigned to every church in general." “I have no doubt,” says St. Gregory of Nazianzen, - that other Angels are the Guardians and patrons of churches, as John teaches me in the Apocalypse. We do not find other clearer indications of the Guardian Angels of societies in the Holy Scriptures; but even from the above it is sufficiently clear that such Angels really exist.

In this truth, the entire leading Church did not doubt at all, as we have already partly seen this, citing the testimonies of the ancients. But in order to be even more convinced that the belief in the existence of the Guardian Angels of human societies was universal, ubiquitous in the ancient Christian world, let us cite some more of the testimonies of the teachers of the primordial Church. St. Dionysius the Areopagite, in his book “On the Heavenly Hierarchy,” among other things, writes: “And other peoples were not ruled by other people's gods. But there is a single beginning of everything, and the Angels led their followers to it, each ruling over his people. Clement of Alexandria clearly says that "the angels are entrusted with the leadership of nations and cities." St. Basil the Great, with a certainty devoid of any doubt, writes: “Just as every believer has an angel-companion, so do entire nations.” In another place, he consoles the Nicopolitan presbyters in this way: “If you lament that you were cast out outside the city walls, then you are settling in the blood of the God of Heaven, and the Guardian Angel of the Church accompanies you.” In Blessed Augustine we read: “The Lord did not conclude the source of His goodness even in relation to alien nations, but entrusted them to the supervision of angels, taking the people of Israel as His inheritance.” St. Ambrose testifies about the Angels of the churches. “To protect the flock of God,” he says, “he not only appointed bishops (Jesus Christ), but also appointed angels.” Finally, and St. John of Damascus, the first of the theologians who systematically expounded all the dogmas of the Christian faith, clearly says that "Angels protect the countries of the earth, and are the defenders of the peoples and revenge, on which they are placed from the Creator himself." There are many similar testimonies from other ancient teachers and fathers of the Church, such as: Origen, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, St. Isidore Pelusiot, Blessed Theodoret and others, both Eastern and Western. This shows that the belief in the existence of the Guardian Angels of human societies in the first centuries of Christianity was universal, ubiquitous; for it is expressed by faces that belonged to various churches, lived in various Christian countries, the most famous at that time, and had nothing in common with each other except faith. Therefore, even if the Holy Scriptures did not set forth a clear teaching about the Angels who guarded societies, we still could not doubt its truth. For its very universality in the first centuries of Christianity, when, besides Scripture, the oral word of the apostles was also alive, this universality of the doctrine of the angels of societies could assure us that it was not invented by people, but borrowed from a Divine source, from traditions or oral apostolic instruction, just as some other dogmas of the faith are borrowed from there.

Why, then, do some of the Western Christians not recognize the teachings of our Orthodox Church about the angels guarding societies? Why do they not want to believe in the existence of these angels? Justifying their disbelief by the fact that Holy Scripture does not say anything positive about this subject, the groundlessness of which we have already seen, they add to their justification also the fact that the doctrine of Guardian Angels contains various inconsistencies with which it cannot reconcile common sense. Is it not strange, they say, to think that, in taking care of the fate of peoples and kingdoms, he makes Angels his helpers? Is He, omniscient and omnipotent, unable to watch over and protect them by Himself? But God entrusts the angels with the protection of peoples, not because he himself cannot, so to speak, look after them, and is not able to protect them by himself - such a thought is strange, absurd - but because he wants to give the angels their occupation inherent in nature, equally as well as because he has no need to act directly by the power of his omnipotence where he can achieve his goals, acting through the mediation of creatures created by him.

What exactly are angels? And what are they made for? Is it really only to sing songs of praise to God in silence and, immersed in the contemplation of His infinite perfections, to remain in complete alienation from everything, outside of His existing? No, being in close relation to the Creator, Angels cannot but have a relationship with the creatures of God, especially with people who are related to them in their spiritual nature. In the endless chain of the universe, incorporeal spirits are not some separate, alien link that has nothing in common with other links. They are most intimately connected with their lower rational creatures, which constitute the crown of visible nature, just as these latter are most closely connected with other creatures that are lower than them. But this natural connection of Angels with people, this, by their very nature, is a necessary mutual relationship, how else can it be expressed, if not by the concern of the former, as the highest and strongest, about the fate of the latter, as the lowest and weakest? If a person, for all his damage, who so often acts destructively on everything that surrounds him, often takes an involuntary part in the fate of his lower creatures, or sympathizing with them only in their miserable situation, or even saving them from natural disasters, then even more so. Angels - pure, immaculate spirits, capable only of loving, and not hating, doing good, and not harming, creating, and not destroying - cannot but take a brotherly part in the fate of their kindred creatures and not take care of them. And as the Angels are not all with the same perfections, but differ from each other in certain degrees of dignity (to which the mind agrees), it is natural that their concern for the fate of people should not be the same: for some, this care should have an extensive range, for others - closest; some should take care of individuals only, others - about entire societies. So, it is obvious that if God supplies Angels as guardians of kingdoms, regions, monasteries, churches and other human societies, then through this He delivers to them only what is characteristic of them by their very nature. It is also obvious that, acting in this way, He does the same thing that we see in general in all the affairs of His Providence, although He himself watches over everything as the supreme Ruler and Lord of everything, but he watches, so to speak, mediocrely, performs his looking through various , in the world itself the means are contained.

Paying attention to the visible nature, we notice that everything here is so arranged by the All-Wise that He supports and preserves one thing through the other, without using the direct influence of His omnipotence. The earth, for example, dries up and closes its fertile bowels for the creatures. How and how does God deliver her from such evil? A single wave of His almighty right hand, a single word of creative lips, would be enough for him to turn the barrenness of the earth into fertility; but He does not do this, but instead of the immediate power of His omnipotence, He uses natural forces: the warmth of the sun and the moisture that He sends down in the form of rain. The same may be true of the human race. And why, in fact, when he is exposed to such many different types of evil, both moral and physical, why should not the supreme Provider of everything protect him from all these types of evil in an ordinary, natural way, through other forces and creatures capable of this and by nature, and by that place? What is assigned to them from the Almighty in the circle of rational beings? Such a course of action, being similar to what we notice in all visible nature, is completely natural and does not contain anything contrary to sound reason.

Societies that do not accept the teachings about Guardian Angels justify themselves by the fact that it is not at all confirmed by experience. No one, they say, from living in society sees such Angels, sees or experiences their beneficent actions. It is true that none of us sees Guardian Angels; but it would be strange to demand that they appear to the peoples or societies they patronize in a sensual form, and it would be even stranger and more absurd for such a reason to doubt their real existence. If we were to take it into our heads to reject everything that is invisible and imperceptible to our senses, then we should have to part with the most sacred beliefs of our soul, we should have to reject the most comforting and saving truths of religion for us. As for the fact that experience does not present us with the actions of the Guardian Angels, this is a lie. If we really do not see the beneficent influence of the Guardian Angels on human societies, then this is the same reason why we often do not see the traces of Providence in the management of the universe, because we do not want to see it. And what happens to be the work of a heavenly patron, we attribute either to ourselves, or, even worse, to some beneficent occasion. Anyone who has looked with attention at the destinies of human societies, at those salvific changes to which they undergo, while they do not at all contribute to it themselves, at those dangers and disasters from which they are often delivered in some unforeseen and, as it were, miraculous way, he could not not to notice here the mysterious participation of higher, beneficent forces. They will say that the Providence of the Almighty acts over everything here. Quite rightly; no one will argue against this. But if, as mentioned above, where it is only possible to provide for one through the other, then why not conclude that various benefits apparently sent down from Heaven to human societies are performed through the mysterious mediation and assistance of the Guardian Angels, especially when we know from the Holy History that the angels not only mysteriously, invisible, but also openly showed their participation in the situation of human societies? We know, for example, that the Angel of God guarded the people of Israel from the army of Egypt (); at another time, an angel beat one hundred and eighty-five thousand hostile Assyrians under the walls of Jerusalem (). Who is this Angel? Nothing prevents us from thinking that this is none other than the Guardian Angel of the Jewish people. Consequently, in experience it is more likely to find a confirmation than a refutation of the teaching of the Orthodox Church about the Guardian Angels of human societies.

There are other objections to this doctrine, which in many respects is so comforting and instructive for us, but all these objections are such that their groundlessness is revealed at first sight to everyone. Such objections only prove that people who have arbitrarily deviated from the straight path of faith are ready to use every most insignificant pretext in order not to follow this path and justify their crooked talk.

Vasily Chubinsky. Guardian Angels of human societies. M., 1842

Sayings of the holy fathers about angels

The holy fathers and pastors of the Ancient Church not only taught that there really are angels, but, if possible, expounded this teaching even in detail.

St. Gregory the Theologian expresses the following thoughts:

“Angels freely walk around the Great Throne - and diligently serve the high commands of God. They have no matrimony, no sorrows, they are not separated from each other by either members or cloisters. They are all of one mind, and each is identical in itself: one nature, one thought, one love - around the great King God. They do not seek consolation either in children, or in spouses, or in carrying out sweet labors for them. Wealth is not desired by him, nor are those thoughts of evil which the earth brings to mortals. They do not sail the seas, they do not sow to please the unbridled womb, this source of sin. They have one most perfect food - to saturate the mind with the greatness of God and draw immeasurable light in the Holy Trinity. A lonely life is led by these pure servants of a pure God. They are simple, spiritual, imbued with light, they do not originate from the flesh and do not acquire flesh, but remain as they were created. For them, in virginity, the path of God-likeness is prepared, leading to God, concordant with the intentions of the Immortal, Who wisely rules the helm of the great world.

“They (Angels) so expressed and imprinted in themselves the good that they became secondary lights and, through outpourings and transmission of the first Light, they can enlighten others. Servants of God's will, they are strong both in their natural and in their acquired strength, bypass everything, they readily appear to everyone and everywhere - by zeal for service and by the ease of nature.

“Of these, some stand before the Great God, others support the whole world with their assistance, and each is given a special command from the Tsar to have under the supervision of people, cities and entire nations ...”

“Imagine,” says St. Cyril of Jerusalem, - how many are the people of Rome; imagine how numerous other rude peoples are now existing, and how many of them died in a hundred years; imagine how many are buried in a thousand years; imagine people from Adam to the present day: a great multitude of them. But it is still small in comparison with the Angels, who are more! They are ninety-nine sheep, and the human race is only one sheep. By the vastness of the place one should also judge the large number of inhabitants. The earth inhabited by us is, as it were, a certain point located in the center of Heaven, therefore the Heaven surrounding it has as much more inhabitants as the space is larger; the heavens of heavens contain their immense number. If it is written that "thousands of thousands served Him, and ten thousand thousands stood before Him," then this is only because the prophet could not express a greater number.

“She (the soul) is supported by the holy angels in the procession through the air and, rising, meets the ordeals that guard the sunrise, hold and stop ascending souls.”

Here is what St. John Chrysostom says about Guardian Angels: “God created Angels and Archangels all at once, and there are so many of them that they surpass any number.” "Angels are separate forms taken out of the flow of time."

“Just as on a clear noon the sky appears clear, not obscured by any cloud, so the nature of the Angels necessarily remains bright and brilliant, not darkened by any lust. Glorifying the Angels is our duty. When they sing of the Creator, they reveal His mercy and benevolence towards people. Angels not only protect but also guide believers so that they do not stumble.”

“There are Angels and Archangels, Thrones, Dominions, Principles and Powers; but not only these hosts exist in Heaven, but endless hordes and innumerable tribes, which no word can describe. The ministry of angels is that they are sent everywhere for us. God commanded that the higher Powers serve the abiding valley because of the dignity of the image with which man is clothed. Just as God created all the stars at once, so He created the Angels and Archangels at once, and there are so many of them that they surpass any number.

And St. Nil, a disciple of St. John Chrysostom, adds: “Know that the holy angels excite us to prayer and stand with us on it, rejoicing and praying together for us.” “Angels are present everywhere, and especially in the house of God they stand before the King, and everything is filled with these incorporeal forces.”

St. Basil the Great: "To each of the faithful is assigned an Angel worthy to see the Heavenly Father"; and in another place: “With each of the faithful there is an angel who, like a schoolmaster and a shepherd, manages his life, no one will argue against this, remembering the words of the Lord who said: see the face of my Heavenly Father "(). “Before the existence of the world, there was a certain state, befitting the heavenly forces, higher than time, higher, everlasting, and in it the Creator and builder of everything created intelligent and invisible beings and the entire cosmos of intelligible creations.”

“The angels, who do not have any covering like our flesh, are not hindered by anything from looking unceasingly into the face of the glory of God. Angels don't change. Between the Angels there is neither a child, nor a youth, nor an old man, they remain in the state in which they were created at the beginning, and their composition remains pure and unchanged.

“If you have deeds in your soul worthy of angelic preservation, and your mind is enriched with the knowledge of the truth, for virtue, God will inevitably put guards and guardians on you and protect you with angels. See what is the nature of the Angels! One Angel is equal to a whole army and a numerous militia. So, in the greatness of your guardian, the Lord grants you a militia, and in the fortress of an angel, as it were, protects you from everywhere with his protection. The angel will not depart from all those who believe in the Lord, unless we ourselves drive him away with bad deeds. As smoke and stench drives away bees and doves, so the guardian of our life, the Angel, is moved away by the sorrowful and stinking ... Since each of us has a holy angel, camping around those who fear the Lord, then sins can cause disaster: the wall will no longer close us, then there are holy forces that make people invincible while they are with them.

“The business of the angels is to praise God. It is one thing for the entire heavenly Host to send glory to the Creator. The ministering spirits come into being by the will of the Father, are brought into being by the action of the Son, and are brought into being by the presence of the Spirit. The fulfillment of angels is holy and being in holy. Angels do not tolerate change. Between the Angels there is neither a child, nor a youth, nor an old man, but in what state they were created at the beginning, in that they remain, and their composition remains pure and unchanged. The Heavenly Powers are not by nature holy, otherwise they would have no difference from the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, in proportion to the superiority of one over the other, they have a certain measure of holiness from the Spirit. Just as the concept of burning includes the concept of fire, however, there is another substance to be burned and another is fire, so in the Heavenly Powers ... their essence is an airy, if I may say so, spirit, or immaterial fire, according to what is written: You create with Your Angels flaming fire (), why they are limited in place and are visible, being holy in the form of their own bodies; but the Holy, being without essence, gives them perfection through the communion of the Spirit. They preserve their dignity by staying in good, as having freedom in election and never losing their unceasing striving for the true good. Therefore, if we mentally take away the Spirit, the angelic faces will be upset, the Archangel authorities will be exterminated, everything will come into confusion ... "

Angels do not leave us at the very end and take the souls of the dead to the land of eternity (). Theodore Studite writes about this: “always keep in your mind the thought of death ... think about the very separation of the soul from the body - the separation that will be under the commanding supervision of your Angel; meditate also on the subsequent withdrawal of the soul to the heavenly country.

Hilary of Pictavisky wrote: “The righteous will be filled with joy when they are led by the Angels to the abode of eternal rest, they turn their thoughts to the retribution deserved by sinners.”

Evagrius of Pontus speaks of the help given to us by angels during the spiritual struggle that most people face during prayer. “The angel of God,” he says, “appearing, with a single word, stops all the action of the enemy in us and sets in motion the light of the mind so that it acts without delusion.” Angels help us in our prayers. The grace of prayer is communicated to us by an angel. He gives us the knowledge of true prayer, so that after that we stand without any disorderly movement, despondency or neglect of the mind. “Know,” he says elsewhere, “that the holy angels urge us to prayer and stand with us at it, at the same time rejoicing and praying for us. Therefore, if we become careless and accept nasty thoughts, we will annoy them very much. After all, they fight so much for us, and we don’t even want to beg God for ourselves, but, despising their ministry and leaving their God and Master, we meet with unclean demons. Angels also help us in contemplation. They enlighten us in such a way that we become capable of perceiving the ideal foundations of created beings, which are grounded in God. This is one of the stages of contemplation in the spiritual teaching of Evagrius. “If you pray truly,” he says, “you will find complete confidence, and the Angels will converge on you and enlighten you with the ideal foundations (“logos”) of creatures.” “In the contemplation of the religious life, which is related to the commandments of God (that is, in the active life), the holy powers purify us from vice and make us impassive.”

We should not, however, wish to see Angels, just as we should not wish to have any vision in a sensual form, even the vision of Christ. This is dangerous, because demons can take the form of angels. “Do not strongly desire,” says Evagrius, “to see sensually Angels or Forces or Christ, so as not to become completely crazy for you, accepting a wolf instead of a shepherd and worshiping enemies, demons.”

St. Ignatius (Bryanchaninov): “Angels and the soul are called incorporeal, as they do not have our flesh, they are called spirit, as subtle beings, completely different from the objects that make up the material world.”

St. Dimitry of Rostov: “Do the chosen ones and the Angels have faith and hope in Heaven? Angels have neither faith nor hope, because from the time they were established in grace, they saw the One in Whom one must believe and in Whom one must hope.

They always see the face of the Heavenly Father, and in them there is no longer room for either faith or hope, for faith and hope have the invisible as their object. The elect of God in Heaven also lack faith and hope, because they see the One they believed in and have the One they hoped for. Both the Angels and the elect have only one immortal love.

Ephraim the Syrian: “In Heaven, although everyone, being ministering spirits, is incorruptible and immortal, God did not favor that everyone be in the same rank, on the contrary, it was established that the Divine servants had beginnings, powers and advantages.”

In conclusion, let us quote the words of Metropolitan Anthony of Surozh: “On the day of memory of the saint, whose name we bear, we say that this is “the day of our Angel.” And in a sense, in the sense of our dedication to the saint, this is true; but with different holy people - just like with the people around us - our communication develops in different ways. Some are closer to us personally through prayer and through their life, which we would like to imitate; we admire others as if from afar. With the Guardian Angel, our relationship is completely different. We are entrusted to him, and he is our Guardian, regardless of whether we turn to him, whether we remember him or not, like our mother and father, with whom we have an indestructible bond, no matter what we think, how no matter how they act towards them, no matter how they behave ... "

“Angels are messengers; An angel is one whom the Lord can send and who will completely fulfill His commission to the end. It may seem strange that we call a whole group of the Lord's creatures by a name that designates their position, their ministry, as if there is nothing else in them. And in fact this is so, and this is their holiness: purified, shining with the light of God, they are the second lights, reflections of the eternal light of the Divine. They do not have that opacity, that obscurity that allows us to be called by a name, and this name is the definition of our place in the face of God and our place in the creation of the Lord. They are the second lights. What does it mean? This means that a certain Divine Light flows through them unhindered, freely, in a wide river; but not just as along an empty chute, not only as through lifeless glass, but as it pours, and sparkles, and shines, and the light multiplies when it falls on a precious stone, reaches his heart and from there beats with a reciprocal radiance to the sides, illuminating, and sometimes blinding with its beauty. This is an image of true holiness, and in this respect they are really Angels, because we recognize them, experience them only as a radiance of Divine light, an unobscured radiance, but multiplied and joyful, bringing life - and the essence of their being and the essence of their holiness remains a mystery between them. and a God who knows the depths of His creation.”

Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow and Kolomna (Mikhail Petrovich Bulgakov). Orthodox dogmatic theology. SPb., 1868

The study of this problem was started by Fr. Sergei Bulgakov in The Burning Bush, continued in The Lamb of God, and completed in The Bride of the Lamb. It is the essence anthropological doctrine about. Sergius,

and therefore a comprehensive coverage of this problem requires special attention here.

The world was created by God and therefore is divine in its basis. The fullness of being is invested in it and all possible perfection is in it. Man does not begin, but completes creation with himself and includes it in himself, completing the wholeness of the universe. Fullness is the original state of the primordial man. He is chaste, and in his life there is the possibility of immortality.

Man was created from the dust of the earth, from the common created matter, and this connects him with all created nature. But God breathed into man the breath of life, gave him hypostatic, that is, personal, being, destined for eternity. And already by virtue of this origin, man is the son of God Himself. His created spirit has the features of its Divine Prototype, and only from Him can it be understood both in all the loftiness and absoluteness of its destiny in the world, and in all the relativity of its becoming, unfinished being.

A person is more complicated than the natural world and incorporeal angels, because a person is spiritual and at the same time soul-bodily. The spirit of a person is, first of all, his personality, personal free self-consciousness. The personality of a person is an unknown mystery inherent in everyone, an unexplored abyss, an immeasurable depth.

The image of God is embedded in man by God as an ontological, ineradicable and indestructible basis of his being; it is the original power given by God to man for life and creativity. It can grow in him and decrease, shine and darken depending on his conscious self-determination, freedom and spiritual efforts. The likeness of God is the free realization by a person of his image, his spiritual vocation, the main task of his life. Image and likeness from-

rush among themselves as a foundation and a goal, givenness and givenness, alpha and omega, beginning and end, fundamental principle and fullness of accomplishment.

The discrepancy between the image and likeness in a person or his potentiality and actuality, cash and predetermined is precisely the uniqueness of a person who, by his free will, either realizes or does not realize his ideal image in himself.

A person can be understood only starting from God, for the image of a person is created in the image of God, and the ways of a person are largely determined by the ways of God.

The core of the anthropological teaching of Fr. Sergius, which differs significantly from other Christian anthropological theories.

The history of the life of the primitive man begins with direct communion with God: according to the figurative expression of the Bible, God comes to paradise, “in the cool of the day”, in order to “converse” with a person as with a friend; and this conversation was not a gift of grace. It was the result of the integrity and sinlessness of man.

It is important to understand the metahistorical reality of the paradisal state of the world and man. The Garden of Eden is conceived in the biblical story as deliberately planted by God for the installation of man in it (Genesis 2:8). The whole earth concealed within itself the possibility of becoming a garden of God, if Adam had exercised creative obedience to God in cultivating and keeping this earth (Genesis 2:15).

Primordial man was created as husband and wife, and the context of the biblical presentation (Genesis 1:26-27) forces us to see in this dual unity the fullness of God's image in man. Between them, however, a certain hierarchical relationship is established; this is expressed in the creation of a wife from the rib of her husband, and not directly from the dust of the earth, emphasizing the primacy

the role of the husband. In his prophetic insight, Adam gave his wife the name Eve, which means "life."

God, in His love for the creature and in His condescension towards it, allows it to participate in creation. From the moment when the first-created man was told to “possess all the earth” and “have dominion over every creature” (Genesis 1:28), man became the responsible guardian of the universe, so that his own self-determination is also the fate of the whole world. In this sense, man, not being in any way the creator of the world, was, however, a responsible participant in its state and destinies.

But the life of Adam, as a created being, began in Paradise from a minor and even, as it were, from a newborn, i.e. inexperience, inexperience and ignorance of oneself, and childhood, although innocent, is defenseless against temptations. And in the sense of self-determination, Adam, as a newborn, needed to test and exercise his spiritual powers. Therefore, the ontological commandment was given to him about not eating the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life was given to him at his full disposal, i.e. immortality. In this commandment was given a call to Adam to self-determination. God, preserving the freedom of man, left Adam to himself, but warned him that if he ate the forbidden fruit, death would overtake him.

The commandment of God revealed to the primitive man the possibility of the emergence of good or evil, life or death in their opposition. This form of the commandment corresponded precisely to the untried, naive state of Adam. For holiness in a state of maturity and testing, such a commandment already loses its force, for for the righteous there is no law, but only love.

Man, according to the thought of God, was created for creative work in himself and in the world. The beginning of labor and creativity still refers to the heavenly state, i.e. to the very metaphysical essence of man's intact relationship to

world, when a person is not yet subject to the fear of death, because the tree of life is available to him, and he does not know the threat of hunger. Labor in the "paradise economy" was to be carried out in the name of love for God's creation, in the name of knowledge and improvement of God's nature. This is free, disinterested labor, imbued with love, in which the economy merges with artistic creativity.

The critical moment of choice, testing and self-determination inevitably stood in the way of Adam due to his creatureliness and the twofold possibility objectively embedded in him: to turn to God, to become a god by grace for the whole world, or, having turned to the world, to subsequently become its slave, to give the power of the element of sin and death.

As a created being, Adam had in himself the created weakness and instability of nature; it contained the possibility of life not only in God and for God, but also in the world and for the world.

A stable balance between the spirit and the soul-bodily flesh of a person can be found and realized only by himself with the help of divine grace. As a result of this, the possibility of temptation and the fall into sin is contained in the very created nature of man, its formation, instability and freedom.

What can be considered the cause of the fall of Adam and Eve? Did the created abyss open up in them in the process of becoming, free resistance to God, or did temptation play the main role here? And if temptation, where did it come from? Unexpectedly for the forefathers, this temptation came from the angelic world, in which the original satanic sin first occurred.

The nature of angels is unknown to us, but in the tradition of the Church and its hymns, the Revelation is preserved that angels constitute consonant hierarchies united in an “angelic cathedral”, as opposed to the totality of people forming the “human race”, in the sense of unity of origin through

reproduction. So, in the temple, a hymn addressed to the Most Holy Theotokos sounds: “Every creature, the angelic cathedral and the human race rejoices in You, O Gracious One…”

According to the data of Revelation, in the angelic world there was the highest First Angel. The prophet Isaiah calls him: "Daylight, son of the dawn!" (Isaiah 14:12). And the prophet Ezekiel writes about him (Ezek 28:12, 14-15): “You are the seal of perfection, the fullness of wisdom and the crown of beauty ... You were the anointed cherub to cover, and I put you on it; you were on the holy mountain of God, walking among fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, until iniquity was found in you.”

How did lawlessness appear in the “son of the dawn”? How could "the fullness of perfection and the crown of beauty" become a source of "satanic evil"? To answer these questions, one should first of all understand the life of angels, their relationship with the human world and their service to it.

Angels were created by God as incorporeal spirits, that is, they do not have a human body, but possess hypostases: they are not faceless, but hypostatic forces of God created by the Logos.

Angels have hierarchical differences, form ranks and armies. In the famous work of St. Dionysius the Areopagite "On the Heavenly Hierarchy" nine ranks of angels are established: angels, archangels, principles; power, strength, domination; thrones, cherubim, seraphim. Moreover, each rank has its own type of spiritual growth.

The life of disembodied angels remains transcendent for man as an incarnated being. However, with the spiritual side of his being, a person comes into contact with the spiritual world, and to this extent he is capable of some, albeit limited, comprehension of it.

Angels do not have their own world; therefore, with the energy of their being, they are turned to God, to the world of God.

natural. Their immersion in the Divine life constitutes the source of their own life, representing an infinitely blessed deification. Such a degree of closeness to God is inaccessible to man, and in this sense he is immeasurably lower than the angels. However, by his nature, by his hierarchical place in creation, in the world, man has an advantage over the angels, to a greater extent the fullness of the image of God belongs to him. This is irrefutably evidenced by the fact that Christ incarnated in a man, but not in an angel, and deified precisely human nature. The greater complexity of human nature corresponds to its greater wealth, it is the source of both strength and weakness of man. The angels know God directly, they are left only to love Him or, in the case of a perversion of their freedom, to envy Him; to seek God is peculiar only to man.

Despite the spiritual height of angels and their exceptional closeness to God, angels are ministering spirits representing the power of the Divine, His will. Angelic ministry to the human world is manifested primarily in the priestly, prayerful standing before the Throne of God to perform the sacraments, which is expressed in Orthodox liturgy and iconography.

The world, created by God “very well” (Genesis 1:31), was handed over to man and angels for its preservation and creative disclosure in full. The image of God was embedded in them as an indestructible "givenness", and they were granted creaturely freedom. The choice of ways for the realization of this freedom was rooted exclusively in the spiritual self-determination of angels and man. There were two ways. One - the true one - was affirmed in the coordination of self-determination and natural reality. This gift could be accepted as a gift from God. The creature could humble itself before the omnipotence and wisdom of the Creator and respond with love

on the love of God, imprinted in creation. It was possible to meet in love - the Creator and creation, love that gives and love that humbly accepts and thanks. But there was another way - ontological rebellion, insane resistance. Since in the angelic world the disembodied spirits see God face to face, such self-determination is a direct rebellion against God and enmity towards Him. Such a false use of creaturely freedom leads to a violation of the original norm of being, to self-mutilation, to opposition to the law of one’s own life, to kindling of the inner hellish “eternal fire”, to Luciferic evil. According to the teaching of the Church, such evil arose for the first time (ontologically and chronologically) in the spiritual world of incorporeal angels. And the first to embark on this godless path was the First Angel Dennitsa. There is no reason to believe that this rebellion against God was an instantaneous act; apparently, it was some kind of long spiritual and dynamic process that began with the gradual fading of Dennitsa's love for God. This entailed the awakening of spiritual self-love, self-centeredness, isolation and self-blindness, self-centeredness, seeing only oneself, the ignition of self-pride. Satanic pride obscures the image of God, quenches the love of God, distorts and stifles the image of sacrificially self-denying trinitarian Divine love. This altruism and humility of Divine love is opposed by the pride of satanic dislike. Egocentric self-Godness inevitably conceals in itself an indestructible and invincible consciousness of its own creation, the falsity of its claims, and at the same time the satanic temptation to recognize oneself as the Archetype. From here, the cold fire of jealousy ignites and hatred of God is born, incinerating itself, rivalry with Him, the madness of hopeless envy. Creation is forced to constantly convince itself of equality with its Creator and even of superiority.

over God. Such is this fatal chain of Luciferic ignition of Dennitsa: non-love - pride - envy - hatred - despair - dark flame. Satanic malice is the underside, dark face of inextinguishable love, turned into its opposite.

In the process of this spiritual fall, Dennitsa seduced a whole group of angels in an open way to a direct rebellion against God, to opposition to God in the name of their own self-Godness through a direct refusal to realize the likeness of God in their created image. Thus Dennitsa misused his creaturely freedom.

In the process of this uprising of Dennitsa and his angels against God, a grandiose struggle began with him in Heaven, led by the archangel Michael, who was indestructibly faithful to God, and his army. It ended with the complete victory of this bright angel, and Dennitsa, nicknamed Satan from that time on, with his “aggels” was cast out of the “heavenly abodes”. Since then, the holy archangel Michael became the First Angel instead of Dennitsa.

Dennitsa was perfect in his creation, and even in his insane fall, the indestructibility of his deep creaturely givenness, invested in him by God, was preserved.

The creaturely power of the former Primary Angel is now turning into an evil insatiable will for power and destruction, seeking to realize itself. And he becomes a demon-tempter of our spiritually inexperienced and unstable forefathers in metahistory, and later - the "prince of this world" throughout the empirical history of all mankind, up to apocalyptic times.

The first angel, together with his minions, was called to become the first friend of man, but this ministry could only be based on selfless love. When this love faded away, its place was taken by a thirst for power, fueled by envy of man, placed from the beginning ontologically higher than angels. From the guardian angel of the world, Satan

turns into a "prince of this world" who wants to appropriate the world. He becomes in the position of a predatory conqueror, who is guided not by love, but by envy and a thirst for power, not by truth, but by lies. As an angel, he is not transcendent to the world and has access to its life; like Satan, he is hostile to him and uses his power to distort the world in his own image, sow his own tares in it, poison and destroy the universe. In this creativeness of evil, Satan acquires objective life for himself.

Satan's insane desire to compare himself with God and take His place in the human world finds a temporary and apparent realization for itself, for really, under the influence of the evil one, the satanic creation of evil in the world and the struggle with God begin.

Father Sergius, with his characteristic mighty spiritual optimism, claims that the outcome of this struggle is already a foregone conclusion as a hopeless defeat, the insane bet of Satanism has been lost. There is no choice: the path of the devil will be passed to the end, but after that an inevitable catastrophe will occur in Satanism itself, and “a new era begins to abolish the kingdom of the“ prince of this world ”and to reign in the world of the true King - Christ, who came in glory into His Kingdom" .

The infliction of fallen Aggels to the life of the world leads to a change in their very nature: demons turn into demons, which become involved in the life of the human world both through man, and through the animal and the natural world in general. This terrible demonic disease is not localized, but spreads to the entire natural and human world. You can point to a number of places in the Gospel and in the New Testament in general, where the connection of spiritual and bodily ailments with the actions of Satan is directly revealed.

Instead of angelic service to the world, which does not change the nature and life of angels, there is

Thus, the history of fallen humanity has a prologue in Heaven, and evil in its purest form, which first appeared in the angelic world, inevitably leaked into the human world, through the fallen first angel - Satan and the fallen demons - tempting demons. But, in the end, the world, created by God and belonging to Him, returned to God, and Satanism is doomed to death.

To get rid of evil craft and satanic ways, the world needs exorcisms: all kinds of consecrations of things, places, houses, etc., as well as "prohibitions" before baptism. However, there is still a lot of unsolved and mysterious things in these questions, especially in mental illnesses, which have both spiritual and bodily foundations in various perversions of the way of being.

Evil in man differs from that of Satan, although it is connected with it; first of all, it differs in the degree of consciousness and intensity, due to the complexity of human nature and the world subordinate to it. Satanism is pure evil, as a direct rebellion against the directly visible God. But for a person who, thanks to his corporeality, has his own world and an active life in it, the existence of God is an object of faith; therefore falling away from God is here not a direct and conscious, rebellious act, but to a certain extent the fruit of misunderstanding and even deceit. The possibility of evil nests in the heart of man, in his freedom. However, in spiritual self-determination

The division of man involves a whole series of complicating points, as can be seen from the biblical account of the fall into sin.

Father Sergius considers the biblical myth of the fall of our ancestors as one of the hieroglyphs of Truth, which is subject to pious comprehension in order to understand the full depth and significance of the atonement for original sin through the highest Sacrifice of Christ. As always in his theological work, Bulgakov seeks to gain this comprehension through inspired prayer, standing before the throne of God, through the exertion of all his spiritual, intellectual and spiritual powers.

“Our attitude to the biblical story of the Fall must be strictly realistic,” writes Bulgakov. – What we learn from it is a fact, albeit of a special kind, and in this metahistorical reality all the details of the narrative – every word, every letter – have a special meaning, because they depict in a symbolically condensed and poetically abbreviated form the entire multi-colored fabric of human history , nature and destiny.

The beginning of the fall should be seen not in the evil will of man, opposing himself to God, but in the tempting whisper of Satan in the form of a serpent. The temptation of primitive people took place in a complex way of deceit and self-deception, error and delusion, the interaction of satanic and falsely directed human will.

Note, firstly, that, as the Bible says (Genesis 3:1), “the wisest serpent of all the beasts of the field, which the Lord God created,” refers not to Adam, but to Eve. Why? Adam knew the animal world more fully and deeply, for before his sin, as the Bible tells us, he gave “names to all the cattle and birds of the air and to all the beasts of the field”, which for this purpose “God brought to him” (Gen.

2:19-20). Therefore, seeing through the essence of animals, he could immediately expose the snake and resist him. Eve was easier to deceive due to the smaller stock of her knowledge, the greater naivety and passivity of her young, feminine perception.

Secondly, the serpent does not follow the open satanic path, as he tempted his Aggels to direct rebellion against God, to opposition to God in the name of his own self-God, through a direct refusal to realize the image of God. He chooses a different path: he addresses Eve as a natural being with a sly question: “Did God really say: do not eat from any tree in paradise?” (Gen 3:1). Eve innocently answers the serpent: “we can eat fruits from trees, only the fruits of a tree that is in the midst of paradise” (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil), “God said, do not eat them and do not touch them, lest you die” (Genesis 3 :2-3). The very fact of this conversation between Eve and the serpent represents the beginning of the fall - a double betrayal: both to God and to her husband. The primordial couple could live a full life and know God, only united in their love. Her betrayal of God lies in the fact that she did not stop talking with the serpent, but stooped to talking with him about God Himself and His truth, but the fact that Eve was talking about God in the absence of Adam with some mysterious creature, belonging to the flesh to the animal world, but in spirit - to some alien, unkind and hitherto unknown world for her - this circumstance is her spiritual betrayal of her husband. The serpent, seeing that the victim had fallen into his net, and continuing the conversation that had begun, said: “No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day you eat the forbidden fruit, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods who know good and evil" (Genesis 3:4-5). Here the devil, in the form of a serpent, is clearly lying, for he is "a liar and the father of lies," and slanders God, attributing to Him envy of people and fear of rivalry. Here comes the central moment of the fall of Eve: alienated from

her husband, alone, deprived of his protection, Eve falls away from love for God, believes more in the snake than in Him, and embarks on the path of betrayal of God, the path of self-affirmation and sin. The Bible says: “and the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasing to the eyes and desirable, because it gives knowledge; and took its fruit and ate” (Genesis 3:6). It can be seen from the biblical text that the fruit of the forbidden tree became the subject of Eve's independent carnal pleasure, aroused in her lust, which, as we will see below, violated her chastity.

In this temptation, Satan assumed the face of Lucifer, a Gnostic teacher who promised knowledge on the path of development and strengthening of human egocentrism. Meanwhile, God's commandment commands the overcoming of egocentrism in divine and conjugal love. Eve fell, but her fall did not stop there: she gave the forbidden fruit to her husband. Adam could not accept the fruit offered by Eve, not succumb to temptation, but make an attempt to save Eve with the power of his love, especially since his lack of vigilance allowed her to talk with the serpent. However, due to his inexperience, Adam could not fully understand what threatened him if he followed his wife. It is possible that the egoism of human love, the desire to please Eve, also spoke in him. But the fact turned out to be irrefutable that his wife became closer to him than God and His commandment; Adam ate the fruit, which made him lust.

And from that moment, as can be seen from the biblical myth, their original chastity was violated: if earlier, being naked, they were “not ashamed” of their nakedness (Genesis 2:25), then after eating the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, they “learned that naked,” and sewed aprons for themselves out of fig leaves (Genesis 3:7). And for the first time they hid from God when they heard His voice in Paradise. “And the Lord God called to Adam: Where are you? He said: I heard your voice in paradise

and was afraid, because I was naked, and hid myself. Who told you that you are naked? God asked. “Did you not eat from the tree from which I forbade you to eat?” (Gen 3:9-11). Adam confessed that he ate this fruit after receiving it from his wife, and Eve said that she also ate it, seduced by the serpent.

What is the essence of the original sin of our forefathers? According to God's thought, man was created by God for creative work in himself and in the world. This path of doing in the name of God is a difficult path for a person, full of temptations and requiring effort in his unstable balance. At the same time, it is a royal, incomparable path, the path of freedom. The world for man and especially the primordial is not yet a tested field, but at the same time it is the breadth and depth of his own life. Perfection is sought after, but not given to a creature that does not know a masterpiece, and this is not only from sin, but above all from creatureliness. In the creative self-determination of the creature, therefore, there is room for imperfection and mistakes, for different paths and possibilities. But this is not yet evil, just as a mistake is not a sin - it belongs to the formation of the creature. If the world were an automaton, it would act with the precision of a mechanism or with the infallibility of instinct, but then there would be no place in it for created creativity, which is a synonym for life, and it would be dead. However, God did not create death. The natural world was created by God "very good," but even in this primordial perfection, the subhuman world was designed for the creative cultivation of the earth (Genesis 2:5); the crown of nature - man - was settled in the "Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it" (Genesis 2:15), he was to turn the whole world into the garden of God. Thus, even the whole of nature was to a certain extent entrusted to the creativity of man in order to raise it to perfection and completeness. But although man at his creation was given full strength and grace-filled help, he still had to show his free self-determination.

share in your own creation. Having in itself, as it were, two centers of being, spiritual and created, the primordial man - in the form of Adam and Eve - made his choice, deviating towards the flesh, subordinating his spirit to its calls, and not mastering the flesh spiritually. This is the ontological event that is symbolized in the Bible as a violation of the commandment, or the fall into sin. Adam closed his path to divine life, almost died spiritually and in fact ceased to be a potential God-man, but became a natural man. And nature appeared before him with its created face, in an improper and abnormal, perverted state, like the earth, doomed to suffering because of man, together with all living creatures, co-sighing with those who conquered it. The image of God was obscured in Adam, for he took an improper step towards the natural animal world, placed the carnal eating of the forbidden fruit above the food given to him. Instead of the food of the tree of life, as a prototype of heavenly food, the bread of life, the primordial man ate from the food of the earthly knowledge of good and evil, and thus entered the path of the magical, i.e. natural rather than spiritual mastery of the world. And through this, instead of the innocent feeling of the body, the evil sensuality of the flesh, opposing the spirit, which in itself already carries its own condemnation - shame, took possession of man. Having become involved in the animal world, the progenitors descended in a certain sense below it, for in the animal world there remains its own innocence, corresponding to the animal soul. Animals do not know depravity, which is available only to man: the greater the height, the deeper the fall, in this way the power of man over the world has been weakened.

In original sin, a person extinguished the grace-filled life in himself, interrupted direct grace-filled communication - “conversation” with God, ceased to be a friend of God, but became a natural being. And this was spiritual suicide: as the soul is the life of the body, so God

is the eternal life of the soul. Having turned away from God, man lost the strength and source of true spiritual life in himself, and, weakened, he could no longer hold his body in eternal life. Death has entered the world. At the same time, he, being the ontological center of the world, his soul, lost the ability to "dominate the world." And this world fell into orphanage, was left without a loving and wise owner. The Fall was a cosmic catastrophe in metahistory and manifested itself not only in human, but in all natural existence. The whole world would be different if it were not for Adam's sin. Having thus a cosmic significance, Adam's sin also had a universal significance, so that the sin of one became the lot of others. This event was the beginning of the second eon of history and our historical time. Being only an individual, Adam acts as an all-man, who by his free self-determination has imposed a sinful seal on all nature and responsibility for an act on all mankind. However, it must be emphasized, firstly, that the fall of Adam is not a satanic sin, but a human one, for Adam was not opposed to God of his own free will as a Dennitsa, but was involved in sin by deceit, and secondly, that original sin is a sin of the human condition , not its entire essence. Therefore, it is necessary and possible to revive a person through the interaction of human efforts and the grace of God, that is, synergy.

The action of original sin is revealed in the history of mankind, firstly, as the weakness of nature, expressed in the mortality of man, for it should be firmly remembered that God, creating man, did not create sickness or death. After the original sin, the human spirit does not sufficiently master its body at birth, so that from the very beginning of its birth, along with the energies of life, the energy of destruction begins to develop and accumulate. Mortality is

already the main internal quality of life, its incompleteness, manifested at the end of life by death. The morbidity of the body is only a particular expression of its mortality. Related to this is its dependence on natural elements, on hunger, cold and other conditions; his fatigue, weakness, limitedness of mind and knowledge, weakness of the will and its fluctuations, affectivity of the whole passionate being of man. The weakness of nature is the consequence of original sin; it is invincible and irremovable by any human holiness. But this weakness is not a personal sin. The Lord Jesus Christ voluntarily took upon Himself "the likeness of the flesh of sin, the infirmity of nature." This weakness essentially differs from sins as human deeds, crimes, as manifestations of the creation of evil in the world. The power of sin in a person can increase to the level of demonization (antichrist) or incarnation (antediluvian humanity), but it can also weaken to such an extent that a person is able to rise to the highest holiness, personal sinlessness, the peak of which is reached in the Virgin Mary. The Most Pure Virgin descended from the holy fathers of God, who absorbed all the Old Testament holiness and grace. By her natural origin from Adam, having in herself all the power of original sin as weakness, She remains free from any personal sin, from any participation in the creation of evil, of course, the help of divine grace. The infirmity of Her nature is most clearly expressed in the fact that She was subject to the natural law of death, which she accepted in her honest Dormition.

This weakness of nature causes the activity of the power of sin, gives rise to sinfulness, which allows the “prince of this world” to rule over a person. However, this power of sinfulness can be weakened and brought closer to the state of potentiality. Therefore, the active force

sin is subject to change. Here, of course, there is a fundamental difference between the Old and New Testaments, more precisely, between the state of those who received baptism and those who do not know it (which is all of the Old Testament humanity). In the waters of baptism, the guilt of original sin is washed away and the grace of new life is given. However, the weakness of human nature, which opposes the good in the body and will of man, remains in force. Therefore, a baptized person also has the ability to sin and needs the sacraments of repentance and communion of the holy mysteries. According to Orthodox teaching, original sin deprived a person of grace gifts: nature was violated in him, a person lost power over himself and became mortal. After the fall, man changed in all his condition, but he did not lose his indestructible divine foundation.

Weakness, as the common destiny of the whole world and man, is inaccessible to overcoming by individual human strength and is, in this sense, a constant value. It is conquered only by the power of Christ's incarnation, incarnation and His glorious Resurrection. The Savior, remaining free from original sin, however, along with the "likeness of the flesh of sin" accepted its consequence - weakness, out of love for humanity, in order to overcome this weakness from within, atoning for sin. Here is the sacrifice of love - the whole and the only one.

The second consequence of the fall is that the power of sinfulness is a variable. It can be more and less, sometimes thickening to the antediluvian corruption and abomination of Sodom, sometimes enlightening to the righteousness of God's friend Moses and the purity of John the Baptist, reaching the pinnacle of absolute personal sinlessness in the Blessed Virgin Mary. It goes without saying that this personal sinlessness cannot be realized solely by human forces without the grace of God.

There was no violence in the commission of original sin, no fatal doom; it was perfected in freedom and therefore imputed to Adam and Eve. However, the Fall did not abolish the image of God in them as the inner basis and norm of nature, did not abolish either freedom or self-creation in man, although they were diminished by sin.

The created freedom of man in a certain sense is already limited in the very act of creation through the image of God, which constitutes the indestructible given of creation. Although this freedom may oppose the givenness of the image of God, it cannot, however, turn into absolute self-will as satanic. Such illegal freedom would be an ontological rebellion, and in the end, the spiritual slavery of the creature to its very nature and, as a result, death. On the contrary, true freedom is found only when it is accepted by free agreement with the thought of God about us: “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free,” says John the Theologian (John 8:32).

The problem of evil in the world is closely connected with the problem of creaturely freedom. First of all, evil is not a substance, but a state of created being. The “prince of this world” is not a god, but only a creature that rebelled against God.

For creaturehood, becoming is essential - a process in which the fullness, plan and idea of ​​creation, outlined by God Himself, is realized. Each step in this process is not yet completeness, it reveals a search, imperfection, not infallibility. Perfection is sought after, but it is not given to the creature; at each stage of becoming, different possibilities open before the creature, which are unequal and unequal and can lead to errors; despite the limitations of the creature, here its creativity is revealed, which is included in the plan of the creation of the world. But in this creativity there is no divine perfection and fullness, there are inevitable

errors, which, however, do not represent evil, but prepare a place for it.

The imperfection inherent in the creature manifests itself both in the spiritual and animate world, and in the realm of nature, even in inorganic being. The lower on the ladder of life a given species of creature stands, the more fully it realizes itself, and in this sense the more perfectly and unmistakably it expresses itself. And vice versa, to a greater extent, the images of creation, left to their own improvement and creativity, are marked by imperfection and limitation, namely man. Therefore, it has a history that is not characteristic of the instinctive life of animals. The historicism of human existence (and through man and incorporeal spirits) is at the same time evidence of the incompleteness of man in each individual epoch, and of his calling to perfection through his own creativity - the high lot of the sons of God. Since the purpose, the task of the very life of the creature is the formation, change, growth, then each state of it must be understood dynamically. It is determined not by what it is, but by what it was and what it will be, that is, by the direction of its growth. The lack of goodness is tantamount to a creature's failure to fulfill its destiny, its resistance to its idea, its unwillingness to realize in itself a similarity to its image. Instead of growth, movement upward, forward, there is a kind of stop or even a reverse movement, and every moment of this improper state increases the distance between what the creature should have become according to its task, and what it actually becomes. Everything is here in constant change: there is no state of neutrality or rest here and cannot be. “Whoever does not gather with me, he squanders” (Mt 12:30). This discrepancy between the given and the real, image and likeness can be a weakness of the good, its impotence and exhaustion. But this is not yet true evil, but rather a disease of being, a weakening of its vitality.

noah strength. Evil, in the proper sense, appears when this absence of good is the result of a personal will that does not want to grow according to the will of God, but wants to manifest its own will, whatever the cost.

So, evil is not created by God, but by creation. But the victory will be with God in metahistorical eschatology, when God, without any limitation, will be in everything. The bearers of real evil are Satan and his Aggels. Satanic evil is a reality and an active force in the world, and, of course, it is not enough to understand it only as the absence of good or imperfection. It has its kingdom and its "prince", although they have already been defeated by Christ and act in the world only "until the time".

Good arises together with evil and is the reaction of holiness to sin and evil. Having arisen in creation, evil casts its ominous shadow over everything and causes opposition to good, which is a tempted and active holiness as an opposition to evil. The temptation approached the One Sinless One, the Son of God and Man, who entered the world, which is in the power of "the prince of this world." The Lord came to destroy his deeds and abolish his power by accepting temptation in the fight against evil: "Behold, the prince of this world comes, and has nothing in Me" (Jn 14:30). The final victory will remain with Christ - in the lives of the saints in the world, in Parousia and in eschatology. The world was handed over to man and angels to keep it. The seed of God is indestructible. Love will win. Let a rabid person want to destroy the image of God in himself, to abolish the very thought of God. The image of God in man is indestructible, being obscured and distorted, it must be restored and revealed. This restoration is the work of God's economy, the "salvation" of the world, about which the promise is given by God when the forefathers are expelled from paradise.

The life of a person who has submitted to vanity is empty and devoid of the highest purposefulness and expediency. Vanity is emptiness; it is a life torn off from its highest meaning, devoid of spirit and worthy purposefulness. In the fall, an unnatural rupture of nature and man took place, after which man became a slave of nature, bearing the curse for his sin. The natural, God-conceived relationship between man and nature has changed to the opposite: it is not man who controls nature, bringing it to God, being its high priest, but nature controls man, leading him away from God, intimidating him with her power, bewitching him with her charms, conquering with her wealth. She makes him "flesh" and enslaves him by dependence on her to sustain life.

But just as man, in his fall, did not destroy the image of God in himself, but only darkened and weakened it, so nature, breaking away from man, did not lose its divine foundation, although it darkened its face.

Positive in its divine foundation and content, nature, as a result of the fall of man, received an improper existence. Doomed to inevitable independence, it became a godless, self-sufficient world, while the animal world, deprived of human grace-filled guidance, became doomed to the struggle for existence, to mutual self-destruction. In its defiance to man, nature acquires its own power over him. The forces of nature in their elemental life become the abode of demons who identify themselves with the natural spirits called upon to protect it. Nature is not humanized, but man is dehumanized, becoming a natural being. Nature is stronger than an exhausted person. Man had to organize the life of nature. But in his fall, man actually ceased to be the soul of nature, although he retained

in itself its potency. Therefore, nature finds its soul outside of man, as a kind of false center, and therefore it is dangerous for the human spirit to merge boundlessly with nature, to entrust itself to its royal domination. He must, loving nature, oppose it, ascetically asserting his spirituality. After the fall, nature beckons a person to become lower than himself, to abandon himself.

This tragedy is most aggravated in the area where merging with nature is most intimate: in beauty and in art as a creative service to beauty. However, beauty can harbor poison, be deceptive, because the beauty of nature or natural beauty can be autonomous from the spirit, indifferent to good and evil. But for a person turned to God, beauty is inseparable from holiness, it is “smart”, and not just natural beauty. For spiritual, intelligent beauty, beauty and sin are incompatible. To reject beauty means to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, from whom beauty comes. To be blind to beauty is to close one's soul to His breath in nature. To surrender blindly to beauty, having abolished one's spirituality for its sake, means chasing a ghost, because true beauty is spiritual, although it is revealed in nature. This is the artist's tragedy.

Man faces a great cosmological task: to restore the severed connection of his spirit with nature.

Overcoming the power of natural sin and restoring the original state of man could only be accomplished by the act of incarnation - the death and Resurrection of the New Adam - Christ. However, the fight against sins has always remained the main task of every person. The path of spiritual work, the path of struggle and active ascent is common to all mankind. The main drivers on this path are: Christian faith, the acquisition of grace, humility, love and mercy, boldness and creativity in the Holy Spirit.

The word "angel" is Greek, meaning messenger. The Angels received this name from serving their salvation of the human race, for which they are used by the All-good God and which they fulfill with holy zeal and love. The Apostle Paul said: “Are not the whole essence of the ministry of the soul, sent into service for those who want to inherit salvation?” (Heb. 1:14).
So “the Angel Gabriel was quickly sent from God to the city of Galilee, whose name is Nazareth” (Luke 1:26) to the Blessed Virgin Mary to announce to Her that She was chosen to be the Mother of the Word of God, accepting mankind for the redemption of mankind. So, the Angel of the Lord at night opened the doors of the dungeon, in which the twelve apostles were imprisoned by envious Jews, and, bringing them out, said: “Go, and become in the church, speak to the people all the words of this life” (Acts 5:20), that is, the teaching of Christ, which is life. On another occasion, an angel led the apostle Peter out of prison, who had been thrown there by the impious king Herod, who had already killed the apostle James Zebedee and who wanted to amuse the God-killing people of the Jews with a second, pleasant execution for him. Miraculously delivered from prison, the Apostle, convinced that he was seeing not a vision, but the deed itself, said: “Today, truly, God has sent His angel, and I have been taken out of the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the people of Judea” (Acts 12:11) . However, the ministry of the Angels does not consist in only helping to save the human race: but from this ministry they received their name among men, and this name was given to them by the Holy Spirit in Holy Scripture.

The time of the creation of angels is not definitively indicated in the Holy Scriptures.; but, according to the teaching generally accepted by the Holy Church, the creation of Angels preceded the creation of the material world and man.

Angels are made from nothing. Suddenly seeing yourself created in marvelous grace and bliss; what gratitude, reverence, and love they felt for the Creator, who gave them both existence and spiritual pleasure! The contemplation and glorification of the Creator became their uninterrupted occupation. The Lord Himself said of them: “When the stars were made, praise me with a great voice, thou my angels” (Job 38:7). These words of Holy Scripture clearly prove that the Angels were created before the world we see and, being present at its creation, glorified the wisdom and power of the Creator. They were created, like the visible world, by the Word of God. By this, and about Him, you have dwelt” (Col. 1:16).

Here the Apostle, under the name of thrones, dominions, beginnings and authorities, understands the various offices of the Angels. The Holy Church recognizes three such officials; each rank, or hierarchy, consists of three ranks.

The first hierarchy is made up of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; the second - Dominions, Forces and Powers; the third - Beginnings, Archangels and Angels.

The teaching about this division of the Angels was expounded by Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, a disciple of the holy Apostle Paul, who in his writings, as we have seen, names certain ranks. Those closest to the Throne of God are the six-winged Seraphim, as Saint Isaiah the prophet saw in his vision. “Videh,” he says, “the Lord sitting on the throne is high and exalted, and the house is full of His glory. And Seraphim I stand around Him, six wings to one, and six wings to another: and two of them cover my face, two cover my legs, and two fly. And I called to one another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: fill the whole earth with his glory” (Isaiah 6:1-3).

According to the Seraphim, the God-wise, many-eyed Cherubim, then the Thrones and, in order, the other Angelic ranks are coming to the Throne of God. The Angels stand before the Throne of God with great reverent fear, which is poured into them by the incomprehensible majesty of the Godhead, not with the fear that repentant sinners feel and which is taken away by love, but with fear that endures for ages and is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, - the fear that terrible is God to all those around him. From the unceasing contemplation of the immeasurable majesty of God, they are in unceasing blissful frenzy and rapture and express it with unceasing praise. They burn with love for God and in self-forgetfulness, in which they exist in God, and no longer in themselves, they find inexhaustible and endless pleasure. According to their ranks, they are endowed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of wisdom and reason. Spirit of advice and strength. Spirit of God's fear.

This variety of spiritual gifts and different degrees of perfection by no means produce competition or envy in the Holy Angels: no! They have one will, as St. Arseny the Great said, and they are all filled with grace-filled consolation in God and do not feel any lack. According to this grace-filled unity of will, the Holy Angels of the lower ranks with love and jealousy render obedience to the Angels of the higher ranks, knowing that this obedience is obedience to the will of God. “We clearly see,” says St. Dimitry of Rostov, “in the book of the prophet Zechariah that while the Angel was talking with the Prophet, another Angel came out to meet this Angel, commanding him to go to the Prophet and announce what was to be done with Jerusalem. Also in Daniel's prophecy we read that the Angel commands the Angel to interpret the vision to the Prophet."

In general, all Angels are sometimes called the Heavenly Forces and the Heavenly Host. The leader of the Heavenly Host is the Archangel Michael, who belongs to the seven spirits standing before God. These seven angels are: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Salafiel, Uriel, Yehudiel and Barahiel: These seven spirits are sometimes called Angels, sometimes Archangels; St. Demetrius of Rostov ranks them among the rank of Seraphim.

Angels are created in the image and likeness of God, just as man was later created.

The image of God, as in man, is in the mind, from which it is born, and in which thought is contained, and from which the spirit proceeds, assisting the thought and enlivening it. This image, like the Archetype, is invisible, just as it is invisible in humans.

He governs the whole being in the Angel, just as in man. Angels are beings limited by time and space, and therefore have their own appearance. Only nothing and an infinite being can be formless: an infinite being is formless because, having no limit in any direction, it cannot have any shape; and nothing is formless, as having no being and no properties. On the contrary, all beings are limited, the greatest and smallest, however subtle, have their limits. It is these limits, or ends, of the being that make up its outline, and where there is an outline, there is certainly a view, even if we do not see it with our coarse eyes. We do not see the limit of gases and most vapors, but these limits certainly exist, because gases and vapors cannot occupy an unlimited space, they occupy a certain space, corresponding to their elasticity, i.e., the ability to expand and contract.

One God is invisible, as an infinite being. In relation to us, Angels are called incorporeal and spirits. But we humans, in our state of fall, cannot in any way be taken as a basis for drawing up correct concepts about the visible and invisible world. We are not what we were made to be; and again renewed by repentance, we do not become what we are in an ordinary passionate position. We are a fickle and wrong yardstick. But it is precisely by this criterion that Angels are called incorporeal, immaterial, spirits. ( From the book of St. Ignatius Brianchinov )

Angels in Scripture

What can we say about Angels? What are our literary sources? Naturally, Holy Scripture. The very word “Angel” is ours, Russian, in fact, not a Russian word at all, but the Greek “ἄγγελος”, which literally means “messenger, messenger”. But this is also not the original form of this word, but the literal translation of the Hebrew word מלאך "malach". This word also means "messenger, messenger" and comes from a Hebrew root that means the verb "to send." What can we conclude from this? The word "Angel" does not describe to us the nature of these beings. What kind of spirits they are, what their nature is, we cannot say. We can only say of their ministry that they are "ministering spirits."

In Hebrew, instead of the word "Angels", the word "malachim" is used. If you read the Old Testament in Hebrew, this word will be used very often there. Moreover, the word "malachim", as a "message", can be used in a double meaning. On the one hand, this is the message of God as such, impersonal, addressed to a person, on the other hand, the word “malach” can denote a living being, the spirit that transmits this message.

In the Holy Scriptures, among other things, the word "Angel" can be used not only for incorporeal spirits, but also for prophets. Before you is the icon "John the Baptist, the Angel of the Desert." It is no coincidence that John the Baptist is depicted with wings, since here there is a direct reference to the text of the Gospel of Matthew (11:10), which quotes an even more ancient text (Malachi 3:1): “For he is the one about whom it is written: behold, I send my angel before you, who will prepare your way before you." Here, please, we call John the Baptist "Angel, messenger."

Another word used for celestial spirits is אלוהים "Elohim". If you open the first book of Scripture, the Book of Genesis, in Hebrew, in the first chapter, the first stanza, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," the word "Elohim" will be used. The word "Elohim" will be used in the Bible both to refer to God, along with "Yahweh", and to refer to Angels.

Angels in the Old Testament

An important role in the formation of the doctrine of angels was played by the ancient Jewish apocrypha, which is called the "Book of Enoch". This is a work of the III-II centuries BC. In particular, the apostle Jude refers to this book in his epistle (verse 14), quoting it: “Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also prophesied about them, saying: “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His holy angels ...”. The same text is mentioned by ancient writers, by Origen, by Tertullian, until the late Middle Ages the Book of Enoch was very popular. But what is interesting is that its text was unknown to us until the 18th century. It has been preserved in its entirety only in the canon of the Ethiopian Bible, only in the sacred language giyz. By the way, the Ethiopians believe that originally the language of the original of this book was the language of giyz. I remind you that this is the liturgical language of the Ethiopian church.

Angels in the New Testament

There are also many references to angels in the New Testament. Archangel Gabriel proclaims

Zechariah about the coming birth of John the Baptist, announces to the Virgin Mary about the coming birth from Her of the Savior of the world. And also the Resurrection, Ascension and most other events of Sacred History take place in the presence of Angels. In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, we also meet with Angels, for example, an Angel leads Peter out of prison. We'll talk about this later. So, in the New Testament, in addition to mentioning the word "Angel", for the first time we meet the mention of the Archangels. Archangel in both Latin and Greek means "chief of the angels." We will also talk about them a little later. In addition, the Apostle Paul, in his epistles to the Romans, to the Ephesians and to the Colossians, also mentions such Heavenly Powers as Thrones, Dominions, Principles, Authorities and Forces.

angelic world

We also know about the angelic world that there was a fall of a part of the angels. Details about this we can only read in the apocrypha. Since the details of the fall of a part of the angelic world are not directly related to the cause of our salvation, we will find practically no mention of this in Holy Scripture. The Apostle Jude says (1:6): “God keeps the angels who did not retain their dignity, but left their dwelling place, in eternal bonds, under darkness for the judgment of the Great Day.” The Lord testifies in the Gospel of Luke (10:18) that "He (the Lord) saw Satan falling from heaven like lightning." It is believed that the fall of the angels did not take place at the same time, that Dennitsa fell first and carried away an uncountable number of angels. There is a legend that the end of the world will come when the number of the righteous will make up for the number of angels who have fallen away. By the way, the holy fathers assume that even the fallen angels retained their hierarchy, in view of the fact that the hierarchy originally existed in the angelic world. The Holy Scripture speaks of the world of evil spirits as a kingdom headed by Satan, which translates as "resisting", this is not a personal name.

Nature of angels

In the Holy Scriptures, angels appear to us as rational and free beings, if they were not free beings, then some of the angels would not have fallen away from the Lord in due time, it was their free will. John of Damascus gives the following definition of an angel: "An angel is rational nature, endowed with mind and free will." The same John of Damascus testifies to the incomprehensibility of angelic nature: “Only the Creator knows the form and definition of this (angelic) essence.” But what we can say for sure about them is that they are spiritual and incorporeal. "The spirit has no flesh and no bones," we read in the Gospel of Luke (24:39). According to the interpretation of the holy fathers, the sensual images in which Angels appear (numerous phenomena are described in Sacred History, in the Old and New Testaments) are not a reflection of their nature, but only their temporary state.

Blessed Theodoret explains: “We know that the nature of angels is incorporeal; they take on images, in accordance with the benefit of those who see, ”so that the one who looks at them is not afraid, but at the same time understands that before them is not an ordinary person, but really a messenger of the Lord. Saint John of Damascus says: “Angels, appearing to worthy people by the will of God, are not what they are in themselves, but are transformed in accordance with how the beholder can see them.”

About the relationship of Angels to space and time, we can also say that, in the words of John of Damascus, they are “not held back by walls, doors, locks, or seals ... and stay in places comprehended only by the mind.” Numerous testimonies of both Holy Scripture and later descriptions of miracles associated with angels tell us that angels instantly move from one point of the universe to another, and nothing holds them back. Accordingly, they have more freedom than humans in terms of space and time.

The perfection of the angelic nature is expressed in their special approach to God. They are endowed with the highest knowledge, understanding, but not omniscient, like the Lord God. Only part of the knowledge that they possess is open to angels, and thanks to which, according to apocryphal texts, they control the Universe. The holy fathers also raise the question of the relationship between an angel and a person: who is more worthy in his calling? There are two points of view on this matter. On the one hand, we can say that the Angel is certainly more majestic and his nature is more perfect than human nature. On the other hand, many holy fathers argue that the Angels are diminished before man by the fact that, unlike him, they do not have the ability to create. In this man is even higher than the angels, and more like God.

God is the Creator, and a person can be a creator, but Angels are not creators. And many holy fathers insist on this in principle. John of Damascus speaks of the Lord: “The Creator of Angels, who brought them from the non-existent into being and created them in His own image” and denounces those who “call angels the creators of whatever essence ... For ... Angels are not creators.”

About the number of angels, we can only say that it is limited, but very large. The prophet Daniel (7:10) describes the angelic host as “thousands of thousands and ten thousand” (these are millions and tens of millions). Cyril of Jerusalem wrote about it this way: “Imagine people, starting from Adam to this day: their multitude is great, but it is still small, in comparison with the angels, who are more. They are ninety-nine sheep; and the human race is only one sheep.” Here Cyril of Jerusalem refers us to the parable told by the Lord that the good shepherd leaves 99 sheep for the sake of one lost sheep, and sets off in search of it in order to carry the lost sheep on his shoulders and return it to the flock. In this, the holy fathers from ancient times saw an image of the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ, incarnating, leaves the perfect world, the Divine world, leaves the angelic world faithful to Him and descends after one fallen sheep - in order to save mankind. Before you is the Sucevitsa Monastery in Romania, a painting on the outer wall of the temple, which depicts the Ladder of John of the Ladder. This is a visual attempt by the artist to depict the countless celestial forces.

What is the ministry of angels? This, of course, is serving God, chanting His greatness and fulfilling His will, because angels are ministering spirits, and their purpose is to serve God. If we recall the book of the prophet Isaiah (6:2-3), it speaks of his vision of the Lord sitting on the throne, and the seraphim stood in front of the throne, constantly singing a song to God: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts! The whole earth is full of His Glory!” Constant, unceasing, eternal praise. Similar images are found in the book of Revelation, which speaks of animals, of a tetramorph, which also serves before the throne of God. "Angels contemplate God... and have it as food," says John of Damascus. Examples of the service of Angels to God as an instrument of Divine Providence in relation to the visible world and man, we read in Holy Scripture. This is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the salvation of Lot with his daughters, whom the Angels lead out of the destroyed city. This is also Jacob's dream, when Jacob dreams of a ladder along which numerous angels ascend and descend from heaven. This is Jacob's battle with the Angel in the night. An angel frees the Apostle Peter from prison.

All this is a manifestation of the service of the Angels and their fulfillment of the will of God. One of the types of indirect service of angels to God can be the service of guardian angels. After baptism, each person is assigned a guardian angel, who must lead the soul of this person to salvation. In this, the Providence of God is also manifested, which means that this is one of the options for the service of angels to God. In ancient times, it was believed that cities, kingdoms, and peoples also had guardian angels. In particular, the Archangel Michael was considered the patron saint of the Jewish people. By the way, the Holy Scriptures mention the Guardian Angels of individuals in the Gospel of Matthew (18:10): “Look, do not despise any of these little ones; for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” When the angel takes Peter out of prison, the apostle comes to the house where the congregation of Christians is, stands at the door and knocks. The maid saw him, went and said that it was Peter, but they did not believe her, deciding that it was Peter's Angel, and not Peter himself.

How angels are portrayed

The classic robe of an angel is a tunic, a himation (a cloak thrown over a tunic). Attributes are wings, as a symbol of speed, lightning speed of action. A ribbon in the hair, which in our tradition is called toroki or rumors. There must be a wand, a sphere or a globe, or a mirror (variously called). Since angels are the leaders of the heavenly host, since they are the guards at the throne of the Lord, they are often depicted in court robes.

Angelic ranks

It follows from the Holy Scriptures that there are various orders of angels. There are 9 ranks of angels mentioned in the Holy Scriptures.

seraphim

Of all the ranks of heaven, the Seraphim are the closest to God; they are the first participants in divine bliss, the first to shine with the light of magnificent divine glory. And what most amazes and astonishes them in God is His infinite, eternal, immeasurable, unsearchable love. They, in all their strength, in all their depth, incomprehensible to us, perceive, feel God precisely as Love, through this approaching, as it were, to the very doors, to the Most Holy of Holies of that “unapproachable Light” in which God lives (1 Tim. 6:16 ), through this entering into the most intimate, most sincere communion with God, for God Himself is Love: “God is loved” (1 John 4:8).
Have you ever looked at the sea? You look, you look at its boundless distance, at its boundless expanse, you think about its bottomless depth, and ... the thought is lost, the heart stops, the whole being is filled with some kind of sacred awe and horror; to fall prostrate, to close oneself before the clearly felt, boundless majesty of God, displayed by the boundlessness of the sea. Here is some, although the weakest, similarity, a barely noticeable, thin shadow of what the Seraphim are experiencing, constantly contemplating the immeasurable, unsearchable sea of ​​Divine love.
God-Love is fire, and the Seraphim, constantly clinging to this fiery Divine Love, are filled with the fire of the Divine primarily before all other ranks. Seraphim - and the word itself means: fiery, fiery. The flaming Divine Love, by the inexpressibility of Its mercy, by the immensity of Its condescension to all creatures, and above all to the human race, for the sake of which this Love humbled itself even to the cross and death, always leads the Seraphim into an indescribable holy awe, plunges them into horror, makes everything shudder. their being. They cannot endure this great Love. They cover their faces with two wings, their legs with two wings, and fly with two, in fear and trembling, in reverence in the deepest singing, crying, crying out and saying: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts!”

Burning with love for God themselves, the six-winged Seraphim ignite the fire of this love in the hearts of others, purifying the soul with divine fire, fulfilling its strength and strength, inspiring preaching - to burn the hearts of people with the verb. So, when the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, seeing the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, surrounded by Seraphim, began to lament about his impurity, exclaiming: “Oh, accursed Az! For I am a man with unclean lips ... - and my eyes saw the King, the Lord of Hosts! .. Then, - says the prophet himself. One of the Seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a burning coal, which he took with tongs from the altar, and touched my lips and said: Behold, I will touch this with your mouth, and I will take away your iniquities and cleanse your sins ”(Is. 6: 5-7).

Cherubim

If for the Seraphim God appears as a fiery burning Love, then for the Cherubim God is a shining Wisdom. Cherubim incessantly delve into the divine mind, praise, sing of it in their songs, contemplate the divine mysteries, penetrate them with trepidation. That is why, according to the testimony of the Word of God, in the Old Testament the Cherubim are depicted crouching over the Ark of the Covenant.
“And make,” the Lord said to Moses, “two Cherubim out of gold… Make them on both ends of the lid (of the Ark). Make one Cherubim from one side, and another Cherubim from the other side ... And there will be Cherubim with wings spread upward, covering the lid with their wings, and their faces will be towards each other, the faces of the Cherubim will be towards the lid ”(Ex. 25: 18-20) .
Marvelous image! So it is in heaven: Cherubim with tenderness, with fear, look at the Divine Wisdom, explore it, learn from it, and, as it were, cover its secrets with their wings, keep them, cherish, revere them. And this reverence for the mysteries of Divine Wisdom is so great among the Cherubim that any bold inquisitiveness, any proud gaze at the Mind of God is immediately cut off by them with a fiery sword.
Remember the fall of Adam: the forefathers, contrary to the commandment of God, boldly approached the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, became proud of their minds, wanted to know everything like God; they set out, as it were, to rip off the veil that hides the secrets of Divine Wisdom. And, look, one of the guardians-keepers of these secrets immediately descends from heaven, one of the servants of God's Wisdom - Cherubim, with a fiery turning sword, expels the forefathers from paradise. So great is the zeal of the Cherubim, so strict are they towards those who boldly encroach on the unknown mysteries of heaven! Be afraid to test with your mind what you need to believe!
If, according to St. Basil the Great, “one herb or one blade of grass is enough to occupy our whole thought with the consideration of the art with which it is produced,” then what can be said about that abyss of wisdom that is open to the Cherubim? The Wisdom of God, as in a mirror, imprinted in the visible world, the Wisdom of God in all the construction of our redemption, is all “the manifold Wisdom of God, ... in a hidden mystery, God foretell the world before the age for our glory” (Eph. 3:10; 1 Cor. 2:7)…

Thrones

Of course, you know what a throne is, with what meaning this word is often used among us? They say, for example, "The King's Throne" or "The King's Throne", "The King said from the height of the Throne." With all this they want to show dignity, royal greatness.
The throne, therefore, is the personification of royal majesty, royal dignity. Here in heaven there are their Thrones, not our material, soulless ones, made of gold, silver, bone or wood and serving only as symbols, but intelligent Thrones, living bearers of the greatness of God, the glory of God. Thrones, primarily before all the ranks of the angels, feel, contemplate God as the King of Glory, the King of the whole universe, the King who creates judgment and justice, the King of Kings, as “Great, Strong and Terrible God” (Deut. 10:17). "Lord, Lord, who is like You?" (Ps. 34:10) ... “Who is like You in bosekh. Lord, who is like Thee: glorified in the saints, marvelous in glory” (Ex. 15:11). “Great is the Lord and highly praised, and His majesty has no end” (Ps. 145:3) ... “Great and has no end, high and immeasurable” (Bar. 3:25)! All these hymns to the majesty of God, in all their fullness, depth and truth, are understandable and accessible only to Thrones.
Thrones not only feel and sing of the majesty of God, but they themselves are filled with this majesty and glory, and others are allowed to feel it, poured, as it were, into human hearts, filling them with waves of majesty and glory of the Divine.
There are moments when a person is somehow especially clearly aware of the greatness of God in his mind and with some special strength feels the greatness of God in his heart: peals of thunder, the flash of lightning, marvelous views of nature, high mountains, wild rocks, worship in some magnificent large temple - all it often captures the soul so much, strikes the strings of the heart so much that a person is ready to compose and sing laudatory psalms and songs; before the perceived greatness of God, he disappears, is lost, falls on his face. Know, beloved, such holy moments of a clear sense of the greatness of God do not happen without the influence of Thrones. It is they who, as it were, join us to their mood, throw its sparkles into our hearts.

domination

God is called the Lord because he takes care of the world created by Him, provides for it, is its Supreme Owner. “He,” says blessed Theodoret, “is himself both a shipbuilder and a gardener who has grown matter. He created the substance, and built the ship, and constantly controls its helm. “From the shepherd,” teaches St. Ephraim the Syrian, - the herd depends, and everything that grows on the earth depends on God. In the will of the farmer - the separation of wheat from the thorns, in the will of God - the prudence of those living on earth in their mutual unity and unanimity. It is in the will of the king to arrange regiments of soldiers, in the will of God - a certain charter for everything. So, another teacher of the Church notes, “neither on earth nor in heaven, nothing remains without care and without providence, but the care of the Creator equally extends to everything invisible and visible, small and great: for all creatures need the care of the Creator, equally as well as each separately, according to its nature and purpose. And “not for one day does God cease from the work of managing creatures, so that they would not immediately deviate from their natural paths, by which they are led and directed in order to achieve the fullness of their development, and each to remain in its kind what it is.”
Here, in this domination, in this management of God's creatures, in this care, God's providence for everything invisible and visible, small and great, and the Lords penetrate.
For the Seraphim, God is flaming Love; for the Cherubim - take out the luminous Wisdom; for Thrones God is the King of Glory; for Dominions, God is the Lord-Provider. Predominantly before all other ranks of the Dominion, they contemplate God precisely as a Provider, sing of His care for the world: they see “and in the sea the way, and in the waves of His strong path” (Wisdom 14: 3), they look with fear how “He will change times and years, he sets up kings and sets them down” (Dan. 2:21). Full of sacred delight and compunction, the Lord enters into the many different cares of God: he puts on the curtains of the village, “as Solomon in all his glory is clothed, as if he is one from these” (Matt. 6:29), as He dresses “the sky clouds, prepares the earth for rain vegetates grass and grain on the mountains for the service of man: he gives their food to the cattle, and to the chicks of the crows that call on him ”(Ps. 146: 7-9). The Dominions marvel at how God, so great, embraces everyone and everything with His care; keeps and protects every blade of grass, every midge, the smallest grain of sand.
Contemplating God as a Provider - the Builder of the world, Domination and people are taught to organize themselves, their soul; they teach us to take care of the soul, to provide for it; they inspire a person to dominate his passions, over various sinful habits, to oppress the flesh, giving scope to the spirit. Dominions must be prayerfully invoked to help anyone who wants to free himself from any passion, wants to dominate it, to get behind some bad habit, but cannot do this because of weakness of will.

Forces

Predominantly before all other ranks, this angelic rank contemplates God as creating many powers or miracles. For the Forces, God is the Miracle Worker. “You are the God who works miracles” (Ps. 76:15) - this is what constitutes the subject of their constant praise and glorification. Forces delve into how "wherever God wills, the order of nature is overcome." Oh, how enthusiastic, how solemn, how wondrous must these songs be! If we, clothed in flesh and blood, when we are witnesses of some obvious miracle of God, for example, the sight of the blind, the restoration of the hopelessly ill, come into indescribable delight and trembling, we are amazed, moved, then what can we say about the Forces when they are given to see miracles that our minds cannot even imagine. Moreover, they can delve into the very depths of these miracles, their highest goal is revealed to them.

Authorities

The angels belonging to this rank contemplate and glorify God as the Almighty, "who has all power in heaven and on earth." A terrible God, “His vision dries up the abyss, and the prohibition melts the mountains, who walked, as if on dry land, on the splashing of the sea, and forbade the storms of the winds; who touches the mountains and smokes; calling on the water of the sea, and shedding it on the face of all the earth."
The angels of the sixth rank are the closest, constant witnesses of God's omnipotence, they are given the opportunity to feel it before others. From the constant contemplation of the Divine power, from the constant contact with it, these angels are imbued with this power in the same way that red-hot iron is imbued with fire, which is why they themselves become carriers of this power and are called: Powers. The power with which they are clothed and filled is unbearable for the devil and all his hordes, this power puts the devil's hordes to flight, into hell, into outer darkness, into tartar.
That is why all who are tormented by the devil must prayerfully call for the help of the Authorities; about all the demoniac, various seizures, hysterics, spoiled ones - one must pray daily to the Authorities: “Holy authorities, with the power given to you by God, drive away from the servant of God (name) or the servant of God (name) the demon who torments him (or her)!”

Beginnings

These angels are so called because God entrusted them with command over the elements of nature: over water, fire, wind, "over animals, plants and in general over all visible objects." “Creator and Builder of the world. God, - says the Christian teacher Athenagoras, - placed some of the angels over the elements, and over the heavens, and over the world, and over what is in it, and over their structure. Thunder, lightning, storm... all of this is controlled by the Beginnings, and directed, as it pleases the will of God. It is known, for example, that lightning often strikes blasphemers; the hail beats one field, leaving the other unharmed ... Who gives such a reasonable direction to the soulless, unreasonable elements? Beginnings do it.
“I saw,” says the seer of St. John the Theologian, - a strong angel descending from heaven, clothed in a cloud; over his head was a rainbow, and his face was like the sun ... And he put his right foot on the sea, and his left on the land, and exclaimed with a loud voice, like a roaring lion; and when he cried out, then seven thunders spoke with their voices” (Rev. 10:1-3); the apostle John saw and heard both the "angel of the water" (Rev. 16:5) and the "angel having authority over the fire" (Rev. 14:18). “I saw,” testifies the same St. John, - four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, so that the wind would not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree ... - it was given to them to harm the earth and the sea ”(Rev. 7: 1-2 ).
The principles also have dominion over entire peoples, cities, kingdoms, and human societies. In the word of God there is, for example, a mention of a prince or an angel of the kingdom of Persia, the kingdom of Hellenism (Dan. 10:13, 20). The beginnings lead, entrusted to their superiors, the peoples to the highest good goals, which the Lord Himself indicates and outlines; “They are building,” according to St. Dionysius the Areopagite, - how many can those who willingly obey them, to God, as to their Beginning. They intercede for their people before the Lord, “inspire,” notes one saint, “people, especially kings and other rulers, with thoughts and intentions related to the good of nations.”

Archangels

This rank, says St. Dionysius of learning". Archangels are heavenly teachers. What are they teaching? They teach people how to arrange their lives according to God, that is, according to the will of God.
Different paths of life are before man: there is the path of monasticism, the path of marriage, and there are various kinds of service. What to choose, what to decide, what to stop? This is where the Archangels come to the aid of man. To them the Lord reveals His will concerning man. The archangels know, therefore, what awaits a famous person on this or that path of life: what hardships, temptations, temptations; therefore, they deviate from one path, and direct a person to another, teach them to choose the right path, suitable for him.
Whoever has broken his life, hesitates, does not know which way to go, he must call on the help of the Archangels, so that they teach him how he should live: “Archangels of God, determined by God Himself to teach us, admonish, teach me which path to choose I’ll go and please my God!”

Angels

These are the closest to us. The angels continue what the archangels begin: the archangels teach a person to recognize the will of God, put him on the path of life indicated by God; Angels lead a person along this path, guide, protect the one who walks, so that he does not deviate to the side, they strengthen the exhausted, and lift the falling one.
Angels are so close to us that they surround us from everywhere, they look at us from everywhere, they watch our every step, and, according to St. John Chrysostom, "the whole air is filled with angels"; Angels, according to the same saint, "appear to the priest at the time of the terrible Sacrifice."

Guardian angel

From among the angels, the Lord, from the moment of our baptism, assigns to each of us another special angel, which is called the Guardian Angel. This Angel loves us so much as no one on earth can love. The Guardian Angel is our true friend, an invisible quiet interlocutor, a sweet comforter. He wishes only one thing for each of us - the salvation of the soul; to this he directs all his cares. And if he sees us also caring about salvation, he rejoices, but if he sees us being careless about his soul, he mourns.
Do you want to always be with an angel? Run away from sin, and the Angel will be with you. “Just as,” says Basil the Great, “smoke and stench drives away the bees, so the Guardian of our life, the Angel, is driven away by the mournful and stinking sin.” Therefore, be afraid to sin!
Is it possible to recognize the presence of the Guardian Angel when he is near us and when he moves away from us? You can, according to the inner mood of your soul. When your soul is light, your heart is light, quiet, peaceful, when your mind is occupied with contemplation of God, when you repent, you are touched, then, therefore, there is an Angel nearby. “When, according to the testimony of John of the Ladder, at some utterance of your prayer you feel inner delight or tenderness, then stop over it. For then the Guardian Angel prays with you.” When you have a storm in your soul, passions in your heart, your mind is haughty, then know that the Guardian Angel has departed from you, and instead of him the demon has approached you. Hurry, hurry then call the Guardian Angel, kneel before the icons, fall down, pray, make the sign of the cross, cry. Believe, your Guardian Angel will hear your prayer, come, drive away the demon, say to the restless soul, to the overwhelmed heart: "Be quiet, stop." And great silence will come in you. Oh, Guardian Angel, always keep us from the storm, in the silence of Christ!
Why, someone will ask, is it impossible to see an Angel, why can’t you talk, talk with him the way we talk with each other? Why can't an angel appear in a visible way? Therefore, in order not to frighten, not to confuse us with his appearance, for he knows how cowardly, fearful and timid we are in front of everything mysterious.

Angel Day, name day

Every Orthodox Christian bears the name of the saint after whom he is named. The name is chosen according to the church calendar, each day of which is dedicated to the memory of a particular saint. The day of remembrance of the saint, whose name the Orthodox Christian bears and is called: Angel Day, or.

After the sacrament of baptism is performed, the saint whose name is chosen for the child or adult being baptized becomes his heavenly patron. You yourself can choose from several saints the one who is especially close to you. If you do not know anything about any of them, consider as your heavenly patron the one whose memorial day on the calendar is closest to your birthday.

"The Lord gives each of us two Angels- teaches us Fedor of Edessa, - one of which - the guardian angel - keeps us from all evil, from various misfortunes and helps to do good, and the other angel - the holy saint of God, whose name we bear, intercedes for us before God, prays to God for us. His prayers, as more worthy, pleasing to God, are more likely to be accepted than ours, sinners.

Angels Being ministers of love and peace, they rejoice in our repentance and progress in doing good, they try to fill us with spiritual contemplation (to the extent of our receptivity) and assist us in every good.

“Saints,” wrote St. Silouan of Athos, “in the Holy Spirit they see our life and our deeds. They know our sorrows and hear our ardent prayers... The Saints do not forget us and pray for us... They also see the suffering of people on earth. The Lord gave them such great grace that they embrace the whole world with love. They see and know how we are exhausted from sorrows, how our souls have dried up, how despondency has bound them, and, without ceasing, they intercede for us before God.

The name given to a person at baptism does not change, except for a few, very rare cases, such as, for example, when taking vows as a monk. With the name given to a person at baptism, a person remains throughout his future life, with him he passes to the next world; his name, after his death, is repeated by the Church when prayers are offered for the repose of his soul.

Prayer to the Guardian Angel, Canon to the Guardian Angel

“See that you do not despise any of these little ones, for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven”(Matthew 18:10).

Troparion, tone 6

Angel of God, my holy guardian, guard my belly in the fear of Christ God, establish my mind in the true path, and hurt my soul to the love of the heavens, so that I can guide you, I will receive great mercy from Christ God.
Glory, and now:

Bogorodichen
Holy Mistress, Christ our God Mother, as if bewilderingly giving birth to all the Creator, always pray for His goodness, with my guardian angel, to save my soul, obsessed with passions, and grant me the forgiveness of sins.

Canon, Tone 8

Canto 1
Let us sing to the Lord, Who has led His people through the Red Sea, as if He alone was gloriously glorified.

Sing and praise the song, Savior, worthy of your servant, the incorporeal Angel, my mentor and guardian.
Chorus: Holy Angel of God, my guardian, pray to God for me.
I am now lying alone in foolishness and laziness, my mentor and guardian, do not leave me, perishing.
Glory: Direct my mind with your prayer, do God's commands for me, so that I will receive remission of sins from God, and instruct me to hate the evil ones, I pray to you.
And now: Pray, Maiden, for me, Your servant, to the Benefactor, with my guardian Angel, and instruct me to do the commandments of Your Son and my Creator.

Canto 3
You are the affirmation of those who flow to You, O Lord, You are the light of those who are darkened, and my spirit sings to You.
I entrust all my thought and my soul to you, my guardian; deliver me from every scourge of the enemy.
The enemy tramples me, and embitters me, and teaches me to always create my own desires; but you, my mentor, do not leave me perishing.
Glory: Sing a song with thanksgiving and zeal to the Creator and God, give me, and to you, my good Guardian Angel: my deliverer, deliver me from the enemy who embitter me.
And now: Heal, Most Pure, my many-ailing scabs, even in the souls, live the enemies, who always fight with me.

Sedalen, voice 2
From the love of my soul, I cry out to you, the guardian of my soul, my all-holy Angel: cover me and keep me from crafty trapping always, and instruct heavenly life, admonishing and enlightening and strengthening me.
Glory, and now: Theotokos:
Blessed Mother of God, Most Pure, Even without a seed, giving birth to all the Lord, Togo with my guardian angel pray, deliver me from all confusion, and give tenderness and light to my soul and sin cleansing, I am one who will soon intercede.

Canto 4
I have heard, O Lord, the mysteries of Thy sight; I have understood Thy works, and glorified Thy Divinity.
Pray to the God of mankind, you, my guardian, and do not leave me, but keep my life forever in the world and grant me irresistible salvation.
As an intercessor and guardian of my stomach, I receive you from God, Angela, I pray you, saint, free me from all troubles.
Glory: Cleanse my filthiness with your sanctuary, my keeper, and let me be excommunicated from a part of Shuya by your prayers and I will be a partaker of glory.
And now: Bewilderment lies before me from the evils that have befallen me, Most Pure One, but deliver me from them soon: I have resorted to Thee alone.
Canto 5
Morning cry to Thee: Lord, save us; You are our God, unless you know otherwise.
As if having boldness towards God, my holy guardian, beseech Him to deliver me from the evils that offend me.
Light bright, lightly enlighten my soul, my mentor and guardian, given by God to my Angel.
Glory: Sleeping me with an evil burden of sin, as if keeping vigil, Angel of God, and lift me up to praise with your prayer.
And now: To Mary, the Lady of the Virgin, the brideless, the hope of the faithful, put down the enemy's exaltation, and rejoice in those singing Thee.
Canto 6
Give me a robe of light, clothe yourself with light like a robe, many-merciful Christ our God.
Free me from all misfortunes, and save me from sorrows, I pray to you, holy Angel, given by us from God, my good guardian.
Illuminate my mind, blessed, and enlighten me, I pray to you, holy Angel, and always instruct me with useful thoughts.
Glory: Tire my heart from a real rebellion, and vigilantly strengthen me in the good, my guardian, and guide me miraculously to the silence of animals.
And now: The Word of God has dwelt in Thee, O Mother of God, and by man has shown Thee the heavenly ladder; For you, the Most High has come down to us to eat.
Kontakion, tone 4
Appear to me mercifully, holy Angel of the Lord, my guardian, and do not leave me, the filthy one, but enlighten me with the untouchable light and make me worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Ikos
My soul, humbled by many temptations, you, holy intercessor, vouchsafe unspeakable glory of heaven, and a singer from the faces of the incorporeal powers of God, have mercy on me and save, and enlighten my soul with good thoughts, but with your glory, my angel, I will be enriched, and depose evil-thinking enemies to me and make me worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Canto 7
From Judea, the youths came down, in Babylon sometimes, by faith of the Trinity flame, the cave was trampled, singing: God of the fathers, blessed be Thou.
Be merciful to me, and pray to God, the Lord Angel, for I have an intercessor in my whole belly, a mentor and guardian, from God granted to me forever.
Do not leave my damned soul on the path to be killed by a robber, holy Angel, if from God you were betrayed to be blameless; but guide me to the path of repentance.
Glory: I bring all my shameful soul from my evil thoughts and deeds: but beforehand, my mentor, and give me healing good thoughts, always deviate me to the right paths.
And now: Fill all with Wisdom and Divine Fortress, Hypostatic Wisdom of the Most High, for the sake of the Theotokos, crying out in faith: our father, God, blessed be Thou.
Canto 8
The King of Heaven, Whom the angels sing to, praise and exalt for all eternity.
Sent from God, strengthen my life, your servant, the good Angel, and do not leave me forever.
Thee is an angel of goodness, my soul mentor and guardian, most blessed, I sing forever.
Glory: Be my cover and take away all people on the day of trial, good deeds and evil deeds are tempted by fire.
And now: Be my helper and silence, the Mother of God Ever-Virgin, Thy servant, and do not leave me deprived of being Thy dominion.
Canto 9
We truly confess Theotokos, saved by Thee, Pure Virgin, with bodiless faces of Thee majestically.
Jesus: Lord Jesus Christ my God, have mercy on me.
Have mercy on me, O my only Savior, for you are merciful and merciful, and make me a partaker of righteous faces.
Think with me ever and do, Lord Angel, grant good and useful, as if you are strong in weakness and immaculate.
Glory: As if having boldness towards the King of Heaven, pray to Him, with other incorporeal ones, have mercy on me, damned.
And now: Have a lot of boldness, Virgin, to the Incarnate from You, change me from the bonds and grant me permission and salvation, by Your prayers.

Prayer to the Guardian Angel

Holy Angel of Christ, I pray to you, my holy guardian, given to me to keep my sinful soul and body from holy baptism, but with my laziness and my evil habit, I angered your most pure lordship and drove you away from me with all studish deeds: lies, slander , envy, condemnation, contempt, disobedience, fraternal hatred, and malice, love of money, adultery, rage, stinginess, gluttony without satiety and drunkenness, verbosity, evil thoughts and crafty, proud custom and prodigal rage, having self-desire for all carnal lust. Oh, my evil will, even the beasts of speechlessness do not create it! But how can you look at me, or come to me, like a stinking dog? Whose eyes, angel of Christ, look at me, entwined with evil in vile deeds? Yes, how can I ask forgiveness for my bitter and evil and crafty deed, I fall into it all day and night and at every hour? But I pray to you, falling down, my holy guardian, have mercy on me, a sinful and unworthy servant of yours (name)

Movies about angels

Angels and demons. Who are they?

Orthodox stories. N. Agafonov "The Tale of How Angels Fell from Heaven"

Angels and Demons (lecture by teacher at Sretensky Theological Seminary)

Orthodox stories. The story of angels and demons