Tuesday in the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time, August 1, 2023

Matthew 13:36-43

Jesus dismissed the crowds and went into the house. His disciples approached him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” He said in reply, “He who sows good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the Kingdom. The weeds are the children of the Evil One, and the enemy who sows them is the Devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. Just as weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his Kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

The holy angels play an important role in the general resurrection at the end of time of the living and the dead, and this is fitting, for they have a stake in the salvation of the just.  As St. Augustine teaches, the choirs of angels look about in heaven and see many places empty from which the wicked angels fell.  They look forward to the time when these places will be taken by the saints, men and women who attain sanctity with the grace of God and their cooperation with it.  The angels of heaven see that they are to help us through their prayers and, when directed to do so by Almighty God, by their direct intervention, as has happened many times in our history.  A human’s guardian Angel will assist his charge, when that charge dies in the grace of God, either to purgatory or to heaven.  At the end of time, the Lord Jesus will come with the whole company of angels.  Many myriads of angels will go forth to the graves of all who have died to reconstitute their bodies, which will then be glorified by God so as to possess immortality from then on.  The angels will gather the risen dead and all those still living to the place of judgment.  The angels will there separate the good from the wicked to the right and to the left of the Lord Jesus.  After the judgment is concluded, the saints will rise with the angels to take those vacated places in the heavenly choirs.  “They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  The holy angels will also assist in the punishment of the wicked who made themselves over as slaves to the demons.  They will cast them, body and soul, into the fearful fires of hell that never slacken nor ever go out.  They do this not out of malice but as instruments of God’s justice.  Once this duty is performed, they will return to the bliss of heaven.  And we can well imagine that of the righteous of the human race “shine like the sun”, how much more those pure intelligences the angels!