Two truths are quite clear to us, that God has arranged the whole of creation into an ascending scale of being, and that it is one principle of His divine governance of the world to work upon the lower by means of the higher. The first principle that has just been stated is perfectly clear; every day it is made by science even clearer. The various kingdoms of which we hear in our elementary studies in the physical sciences are themselves set in order; then within the domains of each kingdom the several kinds and species can themselves be grouped in a scale of perfection. There is no need to set this out at length; all that will be necessary will be to note that the ascending grade of nature is measured by the diminution of its dependence on matter. Thus the mineral is entirely immersed in material existence and cannot be said to have any real life (though that word itself seems almost incapable of definition). Above this is the vegetable world, having certain properties which, though material in the sense that they can be materially described, are yet endowed with a freedom and a motion that are denied to minerals. Above this comes the animal kingdom, which obviously again is material in its manifestations, and yet has that about it which raises it altogether above the merely material order: the swift guidance of instinct lifts the life of the beast to a higher plane than the vegetable can be said to have reached, though even with the latter, careful observers have discovered something which looks like the rudimentary beginnings of instinct. Above the beast is man, whose glory it is that he can rise so much superior to all other material creation, yet whose shame it is that with all this he can also be brought so low.
We continue this principle by expecting to find that there is above man, and on that account even more removed from matter than he, a race of spirits: for man with all his powers of mind, made even more wonderful by his elevation to the supernatural order, is still a body composed of flesh and blood. This race, then, of spirits superior to man, because more full of life and less immersed in matter - in fact spiritual in its nature - will, on the second principle enunciated, be the means through which God works on the soul of man; for it is evident that God's way of dealing is as far as may be to carry out the whole design of creation by means of creation itself. Obviously there are certain things in God that are altogether incommunicable; but for the actual continuance of the universe, He has endowed it with a power of recuperation, material and spiritual, that requires always the instrumentality of God, but conveyed through created channels. Thus the very law by which He began the life of the world was that of itself it should increase and multiply. So, again, the mineral world is brought out to its perfection not directly by God, but mediately by the hammer and the tools of man. So also the beauties of nature's fruits and flowers are enormously affected and are at times even necessarily dependent on the instrumentality of the winds and insects and birds and man; while the wild life of the beasts is itself guaranteed by the inter ference of man. He may have caused the destruction of the animals that he fears, or the animals that please his palate, but he is also no less the preserver of many others. Finally, in the Sacred Scriptures we find that it is through the instrumentality of angels that God works upon the souls of men.
Surely, then, there is comfort for me in this. I have been told by God Himself that the very hairs of my head are numbered, and that neither the least of His creatures nor the greatest can fall without the separate decree of the Father of all. Then I find that in other places He tells me that the very prayers of the saints (presumably the blessed ones on earth) are carried to the throne of God by the ministry of angels, and that the very care of the children of men and of the nations is committed to the protection of spirits whose business it is to "post o er land and ocean without rest." Near to me yet above me, filled fuller with the radiance of life, lit up with a greater brightness than I can boast, fired by a more splendid love, there is an attendant spirit that has been entrusted with my goings-out and comings-in. If my eyes were really open and I could see the heavenly messengers on their way up and down from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth, I should find the whole of the universe alive with these bright workers. Our Lord warned me from harming children or doing them scandal because their angels saw the face of God in Heaven. And my own angel? Should not the thought of his presence, alert, loving, wise with the very wisdom of God, help me in my struggle against the troubles of my life? Patiently he awaits my movements, whispering in ten thousand ways, by these angel voices, by the cries of nature, by the beauties of man's own making, by the friendships of life, giving me frequent counsel. Am I grateful, am I even conscious?
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.