The Church is the meeting place of the faithful with God, who is not isolated from His heavenly creatures. In an old Coptic homily, the church was described as “the place of consolation, the assembly of angels and the place of the Cherubim and Seraphim.” It was also said that St. Pachomius of Egypt saw the church full of angels.
Origen says, “If the angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear God and brings them deliverance (Ps. 33:8), it would seem that when a number of people duly meet together for the glory of Christ, they will each have his own angel, encamped beside him, since they all fear the Lord. Each angel will be with the man he has been commissioned to guard and guide, as happened with Tobias the son of Tobit. Thus when the saints assemble, there will be two churches, one for men and one for angels.”1229
This understanding is reflected in the architecture and art of Coptic churches. The church building, representing the life of the church, is full of icons of the heavenlies. You will never find a picture of Hades. It is seldom that you find pictures of Satan, and if any were found, he appears in the form of a serpent or dragon, defeated and falling under the feet of an angel or saint.
In Holy Scripture, the Lord’s glory is associated with heavenly creatures. For instance, Isaiah the prophet saw the six-winged Seraphim (Isa. 6) and Ezekiel the prophet saw the Cherubim full of eyes (Ezek. 1:18), while St. John the Beloved saw choirs of angels praising Him. Moreover, when the Lord appeared to Abraham, two angels accompanied Him and were sent to Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18).
The Old Testament tells us about God sending angels on missions to prophets and believers as part of God's plan for our salvation. In the New Testament you rarely find an important salvific event or an event concerning our peace with God without angels taking
1229 Jean Daniélou and Walter Mitchell. Origen (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955).
part in it. That is why angels are portrayed in icons of the events of our salvation, such as those of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26–27), the Lord’s Nativity (Luke 2:8–15), the Temptation (Matt. 4:11, Mark 1:13), Christ’s agony in the garden (Luke 22:43), His Resurrection (Matt. 28:2), Ascension (Acts 1) and the second coming (Matt. 13:4).
There are cases where angels appear holding crowns on top of saints' heads. These indicate the accessibility to heaven for believers and the resemblance between the believers and the angels. There are also icons of heavenly creatures, in particular, those who were mentioned in scripture, such as Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.
The Fathers cited
- St. Pachomius