How do the Angels receive the grace of God?

"Holy bread," the priest prays in the words of St. Ambrose of Milan before the Liturgy, "Living bread, sweetest bread. Bread of lust, Bread of the purest, full of all sweetness and incense! By Thee the angels in heaven feed abundantly; let the stranger on earth also be satisfied according to his strength with Thee!"

"The angels in heaven eat abundantly," and everyone wants to be satiated with the sweetness of contemplation of the Divinity... Man has the highest gift of God's love – the ability not only with his mind, soul, but even with his lips and body to receive the highest Holiness – the Body and Blood of Christ. An angel who does not have a body cognizes God and receives His divine currents of grace with his luminous being.

As one ascetic wrote: "What a lofty, truly heavenly, most blessed hunger! The Angels are also seized with thirst, but also with a heavenly and blessed thirst — a thirst for ever closer communion with God, for penetration by the Divine, for enlightenment by Him. Their thirst is a never-ceasing longing for God. A small semblance of this thirst occurs on earth. Thus the eagle, spreading its mighty wings in all its breadth, soars upwards, and flies, rises higher and higher... above... there, into the depths of the sky. But no matter how high he rises, he must descend again. This is how it happens: our mind, in moments of the greatest spiritual tension, inspiration, prayer, imperiously breaking the bonds of the flesh, like an eagle, soars to heaven, contemplates God, is imbued with Him, thinks about Him. But, alas, our mind, unstable, wavering, again falls from the heavenly heights to the bottom; is broken into a multitude of vain thoughts, dissipated. Not so with the Angels: their mind is incessantly, invariably directed towards God, does not deviate from Him for a single moment, it does not know turns back."

The angels "with a firm mind, with an unswerving desire to lead the Being" contemplate the Divinity, the Church sings about them. The angels are "inflamed with Divine love." Inflamed by this love, kindled by the dawn of the Divine being, from this Divine thirst the Angels themselves become "a God-bearing coal," "communion of the Divine Fire, as a flame is." "In the flaming fires stand before Thee the Cherubim, Seraphim, O Lord!"

On the path of constant striving and elevation to God, the Angels know neither fatigue nor any kind of stops, obstacles or obstacles. They do not know the most important, the most basic and difficult obstacle on this path – sin, which now and then binds the wings of our spirit with its bonds, constrains its flight to heaven and God. The angels are so rooted in goodness, so sanctified in their minds and with their whole being, that, according to the Holy Fathers, they can no longer sin. At first, according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, they were created by God with the possibility of sinning, then, by the unswerving exercise of their will in good, they passed into the state of the possibility of not sinning, and finally, having been strengthened in obedience to God, by the power of Divine grace they were so perfected that they reached the state of the impossibility of sinning.

In this most blessed holy state, the Angels remain in heaven to this day.

Angel Names

The Bible gives the names of two angels: Michael (in the Old Testament) and Gabriel (in the New Testament).

These are the highest of the Angels of God. Tradition, following the classical system of dividing the Angels into 9 ranks, places Michael and Gabriel in the highest rank and calls them Cherubim.

Michael, whose name is translated from Hebrew as "Who is like God?" and who is sometimes called the Archangel, that is, the Military Leader, is one of the closest to God and the most powerful Angels. According to a number of instructions from the Holy Scriptures, it was he who was entrusted with the fight against the rebellious Satan and cast him down from Heaven: "And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought [against them], but they did not stand, and there was no longer a place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, the old serpent, called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world, cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."22

Gabriel, "God is mighty" or "Man of God" (Hebrew), appears in the pages of the Old and New Testaments. In the presence of God, he stands,23 which, according to the ritual of the royal court, means that he is a personal servant of God.

It is Gabriel who gives people the most important messages from God. In the book of the prophet Daniel, he appears to the prophet, interprets his visions and admonishes him, in the New Testament he brings Mary the news that She will become the Mother of the Savior of the world.