Further, St. John says: "Thus the Angel is an essence endowed with intellect, constantly moving, free, incorporeal, serving God, having by grace received immortality for its nature: only the Creator knows the form and definition of this essence. And it is called incorporeal and immaterial in comparison with us. For everything is in comparison with God... turns out to be both gross and material, because only the Divinity in the strict sense is immaterial and incorporeal."

What else can we say about these amazing celestials?

Angels have no gender, no age... "Angels do not undergo change. There is neither boy, nor youth, nor old man among the angels, they remain in the state in which they were created in the beginning, and their composition is preserved pure and unchanged" (St. Basil the Great).

Although angels are incorporeal, they are spatially limited. "For when they are in heaven, they are not on earth, and when they are sent to earth by God, they do not remain in heaven" (St. John of Damascus).

Like bodiless spirits, the Angels know neither our space nor time; Our modes of locomotion, which involve many efforts and difficulties, are unknown to them. Angels are fleeting, fast-moving: they are 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 St. Gregory the Theologian, "walk freely around the Great Throne, because they are swiftly moving minds, flames and divine spirits, swiftly transported through the air." And they pass through the "closed doors" and see through the walls, and no fortress, the firmest, the highest, and the most impregnable, is able to restrain their flight. On their swift-flying wings the Angels fly irresistibly, freely: before the noise of their spirit (Dan. 14:36), like smoke, all space disappears.

And yet, their corporeality is of a completely different order, so subtle and elusive that it has led some theologians to speak of the perfect spirituality of the Angels. However, they are not absolutely spiritual, for God alone is the all-perfect and absolute Spirit. Angels are spiritual, so to speak, relatively. They are spiritual for us, for our nature. In the space of our universe, they really, as St. John of Damascus says, "are not held back by walls, doors, locks, or seals." For God, they are just a creation. Of a different kind than people and in general everything that belongs to this cosmos, but an ordinary creation.

It is impossible to describe the Angels. Once again, I will draw attention to the fact that they belong to a completely different level of world existence, our categories are hardly applicable to Angels.

We can describe angels conditionally based on the service they carry. And according to this "functional" description, we can imagine the Angels as sublime and beautiful (for what is near God is beautiful in the highest sense) winged beings. (The wings of the Angels are not some part of their body, their wings depict the swiftness of the Angels' fulfillment of the will of God.6

This is how the Angels usually appear to people. "Appearing by the will of God to worthy people, they are not what they are in themselves, but are transformed according to the way in which those who behold them can see them" (St. John of Damascus).

Мы можем вспомнить многократные случаи явлений Ангелов древним людям. Чаще всего это было явление именно прекрасных юношей, как в случае с Воскресением Христовым. Когда пришедшие воздать последние погребальные почести Господу женщины заглянули в гроб, они увидели «двух юношей»,7 сидящих у гроба.

Ангелы служат человеку. «Бог повелел, чтобы высшие силы служили пребывающему на земле (человеку) — по причине достоинства образа,8 которым облечен человек» (св. Иоанн Златоуст).

Но как служат? Еще с ветхозаветных времен есть мнение о том, что эти служения многоразличны. Есть Ангелы, приставленные к каждому верующему, есть Ангелы, охраняющие целые народы или несущие иные послушания. Св. Григорий Богослов писал: «Эти Умы (Ангелы) приняли каждый какую-либо одну часть вселенной, или приставлены к чему-нибудь одному в мире, как это было ведомо все Устроившему и Распределившему. И все они… по мановению Зиждителя всяческих воспевают Божие величие, созерцают вечную славу, и притом вечно».

«Я уверен, — говорит св. Амвросий Медиоланский, — что особый Ангел покровительствует каждой Церкви, как учит меня ап. Иоанн в Апокалипсисе», Ангелы «охраняют части земли, правят народами и местами, как поставлены на то Творцом» (преп. Иоанн Дамаскин).

«Все Ангелы имеют как одно наименование, так, конечно, и общую всем природу: но одни из них поставлены начальствовать над народами, а другие быть спутниками каждому из верных. Но в какой мере целый народ предпочтительнее одного человека, в такой же, без сомнения, достоинство Ангела народоправителя выше достоинства Ангела, которому вверено попечение об одном человеке» (св. Василий Великий).