While some people are struggling with temptations to change their gender, I often wish I had been created an angel. It’s not because I have lived an angelic life in my past or because I have an angelic intellect. It’s rather because we humans face millions of tests to get to heaven, where angels only had one major test of their obedience and sacrifice of their wills in order to be saved. I suppose it’s my laziness that makes me wish I could have just been saved by simply one decision (like the angels) instead of many, as we humans on earth have to do every week.
Last year, I read the Bible again. This year, I’m reading St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa from start to finish (at least the main body part of all Questions and Answers.) I recently came across a section comparing the test of angels to get to heaven to the test of men to get to heaven. St. Thomas Aquinas writes in the Summa: “Man was not intended to secure his ultimate perfection at once, like the angel. Hence, a longer way was assigned to man than to the angel for securing beatitude.”
Notice above that the main difference is that God planned here for men a pilgrimage to heaven, where the angels’ decision to enter beatitude as an angel or hell as a demon was quite instantaneous. Because this site is called “Padre Peregrino” I thought it might be appropriate to show in this Life-Update section some thoughts on St. Thomas Aquinas on how men (not angels) must fulfill a longer pilgrimage in order to get to heaven.
I have walked the Camino in Spain twice. On one of those pilgrimages I started this blog called “Padre Peregrino” just for about five people back home to keep up with me. And I don’t even think those five people read my articles! In any case, I never expected this little blog to turn into a Church reform project. Nevertheless, the original title of this site reflects my perpetual spirituality, namely, that of a pilgrim wandering (but firm) in his destination.
St. Thomas continues: “Merit and progress belong to this present condition of life. But angels are not wayfarers traveling towards beatitude. They are already in possession of beatitude. Consequently, the beatified angels can neither merit nor advance in beatitude.”
This means it was God’s will for men and women to have a long pilgrimage on earth to heaven through many glories, sacrifices and trials. And if falls should happen along the way, we have confession (something that the angels never got.) Although I find this long pilgrimage exhausting at times, there is a beauty to it that the angels do not experience. Just as people struggling to change their gender need to realize God created them as God wanted them, so also I need to realize God made me for a pilgrimage that is slower and harder than the angels.
God did not make you and me angels, yet we can still get to heaven. Our arrival can be equally glorious if we accept our lot in life in grace. We are “wayfarers traveling towards beatitude” but not there yet. That is why pilgrimage may be the supreme analogy for all Catholics on earth.