Understanding the Hierarchy of Angels

God created the hierarchy of angels.

He created the entire hierarchy. The nine choirs were all created

instantaneously at once, which is billions upon billions

of angels. So if you think about it, every single human being that's ever

existed

had a guardian angel. So just at the level of angel,

and that's only

one part of that choir, there's 20 billion angels, I think,

just in that choir. When they were created, their way of knowing,

or the,

it's called the mode of knowing, how they understand things

is fundamentally

different from us. In fact, it's the, the exact opposite.

For us, in order to get a conceptual knowledge of

something, we actually have to

come into contact with things for a little while.

So it takes us a while to actually come to understand

certain things.

With the angels were different. So when they were created, St.

Thomas says they're, it's called the three instances.

So the first instance is when they were created, God created them

into a complete act of knowing. It meant they knew who God

was, who they were, what their nature was, what their assigned task was,

what their relationship was in relate- to all the other angels, what would

happen if they did not accept their task, what would

happen if they were faithful, that they would have the beatific vision.

St.

Thomas also said they had the infused virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which

means they also had knowledge of the incarnation and the blessed trinity,

so they

knew God was gonna become man. This is one of the reasons why we see in

scripture

the angels were very often, or the, the demons, at first, they can't figure

out if this is the guy, right? So they're asking Christ,

they're testing him, and

they're trying to see what's going on, and they're not really sure if this

is him.

But it's after he starts doing miracles on a regular basis that they realize, "This

is it. It has to be him." Two, one of the things that they noticed

is that that

Christ, unlike even the prophets and the givers of the law,

Christ had perfect coercive power over demons, and that meant that any time he

just told them, "You're out," boom, they were out.

So they knew when he gave a command that it was actually coming from God,

the second person of the Trinity, and so they knew they had to obey.

So this full and complete act of knowledge meant

there's a concomitant delight in the will.

So the first time they see the beauty of God's plan, instantaneously they

fully comprehend it to the degree that they're capable of.

He said there was delight, and even demons,

when you have them in session, you can

hammer them and force them to think of that delight of their first instance,

and it

causes them tremendous pain. The second instance

is then they made their choice

whether they're gonna actually accept their assigned task or not.

And if they accepted their as- assigned task, then in the third instance,

St.

Thomas says then God, there's no reason for delay in reward or

punishment. So instantaneously they got to see the

beatific vision if they were

faithful to him. Whereas the demons, when they rejected their assigned

task, that meant they were immediately damned,

and so they had an

immediate experience of God's judgment and the fact that they had

failed, and that they immediately experienced the

pain of loss, which is what it's

like to be in hell.