The angels speak one to another.
The Scripture uses the same word of their conversation that it does to designate human speech :
” The Seraphim cried out one to another and said, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of20 The Angels. Sabaoth ” (Isa. vi. 3) ; ” If I should speak with the tongues of men and of angels” ( i. Cor. xiii. i) ; ” When Michael, the archangel, was disputing with the devil, he said, The Lord command thee ” (Epis. Jude i. 9) ; and so all the Fathers. The angels, therefore, can speak to God. They praise His power, they extol His majesty, they beseech His clemency, they consult His wisdom. Thus, it is related in Zachary, the angel replied to God, and said: “Lord of Armies, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Juda? ” (i. 12).
In the book of Job, Satan is introduced many times as speaking to God.
In like manner, the angels can speak to men, as the arch angel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin. St. Thomas, and with him the generality of theologians, are of opinion that though angels can speak of their own natural powers, yet, in com munication with themselves there is no need to make use of words, but that God has so made them that mind speaks to mind.
This, too, seems more noble, and more in ac cordance with our notions of the angels. “Cast your eye over that outspread ocean, whose shores lie so faintly and far off in the almost infinite distance. It gleams like restless silver, quivering with one life, and yet such multitudinous life. It flashes in the light with intoler able magnificence.
Its unity is numberless. Its life is purest light. Into the bosom of its vastness the glory of God shines down, and the universe is illuminated with its refulgence. It is an ocean of life. Who can count the sum of being that is there ?
Who but God can fathom its unsearchable caverns? What created eye but is dazzled with the blazing splendour of its capacious surface? It breaks upon its shores in mighty waves ; and yet there is no sound.
Grand storms of voiceless praise hang over it for ever, storms of ecstatic lightning without any roll of thunder, whose very silence thrills the souls of the human saints, and is one of their celestial joys that deep stillness of unsound- ing worship. This is the world of angels.”
