ANGELS:

FROM THE TEACHINGS OF SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS

The following is from the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, from the Summa Theologica Ia, The First Part, Questions: 50-64 and Questions: 106-114 as presented in the book A Tour of the Summa, written by Msgr. Paul J. Glenn. Used with permission. Publisher TAN Books and Publishers. To see the teaching on angels from the complete Summa Theologica, go to: http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FP.html#TOC03

60. LOVE IN THE ANGELS
1. Love is a natural inclination of a will towards its object. It is the fundamental operation of will. Where there is will, there is love. Hence there is love in the angels.

2. Love in an angel is not only a natural tendency, it is a knowing tendency of the intellectual order, and involves not only inclination but choice.

3. Every being loves itself in as much as it seeks its own good. Free creatures love themselves in this manner, and tend to, or desire, what will be a benefit to them. And in so far as free creatures exercise choice in striving for a beneficial object, they are said to love themselves by choice. Angels love themselves both by natural tendency and by choice.

4. Natural love of one creature for another is based upon some point of unity or sameness in lover and beloved. Since angels are all of the same spiritual nature, they naturally love one another. [Note: The angels are generically one; they are of the same genus or general essential class; we have already seen that they are specifically distinct, that each angel is the only one of its specific essential kind.]

5. By natural love, angels love God more than they love themselves. All creatures belong absolutely to God; they naturally tend to God as their ultimate end or goal. Freely loving creatures must recognize God as their end or goal and tend to him before all else. Hence love of God comes naturally (in free creatures) before love of self, and is the greater love. If this were not so, natural love would be a contradiction, for it would not be perfected by attaining its true object, but would be fruitless and self-destroying.