Last week was Pentecost – the coming of the Holy Spirit. This week, we see the result of the coming of the Holy Spirit: the sanctification of our humanity, the deification of people from every tribe and nation across the earth, and the redemption of all creation.
In a very real sense, our Lord’s vision has come to fruition when he said:
“I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18).
Satan’s dark hold over man, over the kingdoms of man, has fractured.
Now light is piercing through the dark cloak that Satan, sin, and death have held over humanity’s hearts and eyes for thousands of years.
“The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death — Light has dawned” (Matt. 4:16).
What is the result of the downfall of Satan, the defeat of death on Pascha, the Ascension of our Lord in His humanity, and the coming of the Holy Spirit?
This is where ancient Christianity differs from modern concepts of salvation. All of these things I just listed didn’t happen merely to offer us a cozy place we can dwell for eternity. Even heaven itself is often misunderstood – it’s not so much a place as it is a state of being – a state in which we dwell in Christ who is seated at the right hand of God.
Let’s look at some biblical passages that we can bring together to help us understand that the saints have an important role to play in the redemption of creation itself.
Hints in Genesis
First, we have the Garden of Eden in the opening chapters of Genesis. There, we see Adam and Eve being tempted to grasp divinity for themselves without God. They are never rebuked by God for yearning for something greater, but rather for trying to snatch it for themselves. Reaching into the heights of the fruit tree, they hoped to usurp God – or at least be equal to Him – though doing all this without His grace.
Fast forward a few chapters, and we find ourselves at the Tower of Babel, which I spoke about briefly last week. It is the same story as the Garden – just with different characters and a different setting. We as mankind set out to reach up into the heavens and grasp divinity for ourselves by our own strength. Same story – same pattern as Eden.
Even the result is much the same: after their fall, Adam and Eve turned on one another, blaming God and each other for the fall rather than repenting. After Babel, mankind was scattered across the earth into different tribes and nations.
Gods, Nephilim, and Demons
And this is where my homily is going to start to sound a bit strange to some of you. We’re going to talk about gods and nephilim and demons.
Pre-modern people believed in local deities. There were spirits and gods everywhere and in everything: trees, rivers, mountains, and even cities and kingdoms were under the authority of a hierarchy of gods. Athens was named after its patron Athena, and we see a riot form in the book of Acts when the legitimacy of Artemis is challenged by the presence of the Apostles in Ephesus.
Modern scholars – who are thoroughly modern in their thinking – imagine that the stories of these gods arose as people sat around campfires and tried to make up a mythology for themselves. But that is highly unlikely.
What is far more likely — and what Scripture reveals — is that there were angels assigned to every group of people across the earth – sometimes called “The Watchers.” When mankind rebelled at the Tower of Babel, God scattered them, handing the nations over to the care of these angelic watchers or guardians. Moses speaks of this spiritual inheritance that each nation received when he says,
When the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations,
When He separated the sons of Adam,
He set the boundaries of the peoples
According to the number of the angels of God.
(Deut. 32:8, LXX, DSS)
The various tribes and kingdoms had angels to guide them aright. But what happened? These angels began to accept sacrifices for themselves. And instead of directing worship to the Creator, they demanded it for themselves. Falling into an almost fleshly state, they began to delight and “feed” upon sacrifices and immoral behavior.
This idea of how reality works would later lead to the old Jewish and early Christian idea of the nephilim being descendants of fallen angels and human women, mentioned in Genesis 6:2:
“The sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives.”
The angelic watchers “saw” (Genesis 6:2) in a way that mirrors Eve’s gaze on the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:6), highlighting a lustful fixation.
The Physicality of Spirits and Territorial Claims
Of course, a reading of that passage that is both mythological and literal leads to the difficult question: how exactly could spiritual angels have relations with human women? While I think the answer lies in ritualistic temple prostitution and fallen angels possessing men, I don’t want to get too bogged down in these details because it distracts us from where I’d like to take this homily.
There is no such thing as a “supernatural realm,” unless we are speaking of the realm above nature in which the essence of God dwells. Before the Scholastic Era in the West, angels and demons have been understood to have a bit of physicality to them. Even the word for spirit in both Greek and Hebrew is the same word for wind or breath (pneuma, ruach).
So, spiritual beings were thought to be something akin to air, but even more subtle than air itself. St. John of Damascus writes,
“All we know of an angel is that it is incorporeal, immaterial, and only by comparing it with God—who is incomparable—can we see that it has some density and body after all, since in reality only God is truly immaterial and incorporeal” (Exact Exposition, 2.3 “Concerning Angels”).
When sacrifices were offered to the various gods that dwell around us and above us in the air, it was understood that these spirits “fed” (in some sense) upon the steam and smoke that went up from these sacrifices since that steam was of a more similar nature to them. Early Church Fathers wrote that demons literally inhabited the hollow cavities of pagan idols. Because their aerial bodies were thick, dark, and corrupted by sin, they required a form of nourishment to sustain their dense presence. They were thought to literally “feed” on, or find sensual pleasure in, the heavy steam, blood, and aromas of animal sacrifices.
The spirits can – without a doubt – interact with the physical world; they can appear and disappear; and they occupy certain places at certain times. And of course, they also ruled over various principalities. We perhaps get the clearest picture of that in the book of Daniel when a great angel visits Daniel and explains his tardiness in coming to him,
“But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia… And now I must return to fight with the prince of Persia; and when I have gone forth, indeed the prince of Greece will come. But I will tell you what is noted in the Scripture of Truth. No one upholds me against these, except Michael your prince.” (Dan. 10:13,20-21)
So, I think we have well-established that the earth was being ruled by various fallen angels who held sway over large groups of people, demanding worship for themselves. And now that Western society has rejected God as a whole, it seems these ruling spirits have allowed their veil to slip a bit – so to speak. That is why St. Paul tells us in Ephesians,
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).
Many years ago, I remember reading in monastic literature about an elder who allowed the eyes of his disciple to be opened to see the spiritual world. The disciple was terrified — seeing hosts of demons flying every which way, hither and thither, on various missions. We are surrounded by angels and demons at all times and have no clue.
We have a hard time understanding these things because we live in what one priest called a “two-story universe,” in which we relegate God and spirits safely “upstairs” while we go about our lives here on the main floor. But the universe is one-story – not two. Everything is here all around us: the angels, demons, God, the Holy Spirit – all dwelling in one realm and one reality. And that is why we must wrestle against the demonic hosts and principalities – because everything is inherently spiritual.
Perhaps you are thinking, “All that is quite interesting, but what does it have to do with All Saints Sunday?” I’m glad you asked!
The Great Cosmic Coup
The Incarnation of the Son of God as Jesus the Christ changed everything. It shook the entire created order, and things have never been the same since then. And Christians weren’t the only ones to notice.
An ancient Pagan named Plutarch (46-119 AD) wrote a treatise titled “On the Failure of Oracles.” In it, he laments that by the end of the first century, the local gods and the daemons across the empire had suddenly fallen silent. Early Christian writers – including Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria – cited these exact pagan admissions as proof of a cosmic shift: Christ had arrived, and the rebellious tyrants were being evicted.
For centuries, the demonic powers demanded to be fed by blood and smoke; sex and sacrifice; they enslaved humanity through fear. But the Incarnation and the coming of the Holy Spirit broke their reign.
So now we come to the understanding of what we are celebrating – at least in part – on All Saints Sunday. We are celebrating the overthrow of the devil and his hosts in ruling over various principalities. Now, the saints rule in their place.
Last night, we heard this affirmed during Vespers from the Wisdom of Solomon
The [righteous] will govern nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them for ever. (W.Sol. 3:8)
This is happening even now. Ireland once had a pagan deity as its master, but now St. Patrick watches over that land, alongside more localized saints like Brigid, Columba, and Kevin. George is known as the patron of England, Andrew of Scotland, David of Wales, Demetrius of Thessalonica, Peter & Paul of Rome, and the Virgin Mary of many lands and places. Here in America, we have our own local guardians who walked our soil: the recent Olga of Alaska, John of San Francisco, and Raphael of Brooklyn. The canonization process has begun for the American priest-monk Fr. Seraphim Rose. The Holy Spirit is moving powerfully across the world, and even here in America.
In these numerous places, it seems the prayers of these saints are especially effective. People are healed, disease and plague subside, others are protected from danger and harm, and invading armies have been driven away. Demonic rule is being challenged as the saints are raised up.
Conclusion: Entering the Regeneration
What we know from our Christian experience and history is affirmed by our Lord, who said in the Gospel this morning:
“Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28).
The twelve thrones are symbolic of completeness, and the twelve tribes of Israel are symbolic of the whole universal Church – and in some sense – the whole world which is to be brought into the Church in the cosmic salvation offered through Jesus Christ and His Body.
This word – regeneration – means the total renewal of the world. Christ did not defeat the powers of darkness just to leave the world a vacuum. He did it to enthrone humanity in Himself through His Body the Church.
On this All Saints Sunday, we celebrate the fact that the spiritual chairs of governance over this one-story universe are no longer occupied by rebellious, parasitic daemons. They are occupied by our older brothers and sisters — men and women of flesh and blood who were sanctified by the Holy Spirit. They are reigning with Christ, shielding our cities, hearing our prayers, and stewarding the creation in the way it was meant to be. Let us honor them, emulate them, and join them in taking up our own mantle of cosmic stewardship.
You and I are now being invited to participate in this regeneration and healing of creation. The cosmos is being properly reordered by the grace of the Holy Spirit in the saints through Christ’s Church. Will you take up your part to redeem creation?
Image courtesy of Getty Museum. All rights reserved.