The Christmas Invasion

The Catholic Thing

By Michael Pakaluk.
"Hark the herald angels sing. . . .Joyful, all ye nations rise, Join the triumph of the skies." We have sung this hymn many times over the last several days. But I wonder about those angels in the skies. Probably you picture them as appearing among the stars, like the Milky Way. But what does Luke actually say?
He says that the appearance of the many angels was preceded by the appearance of just one angel. This solitary angel was not in the sky but stood alongside the shepherds on the ground: "And behold an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them; and they feared with a great fear." (Luke 2:9, Douay-Rheims)
This angel came upon them suddenly and caught them by surprise standing there. Compare how Luke uses the same expression (in Greek) for the appearance of two angels after the resurrection: "And it came to pass, as they were astonished in their mind at this, behold, two men stood by them, in shining apparel. And as they were afraid, and bowed down their countenance towards the ground, they said unto them: Why seek you the living with the dead?" (Luke 24:4-5) These two men, or angels, were most definitely not in the sky, as they were standing then in a cramped tomb!
The solitary angel tells the shepherds not to be afraid. He must have been a terrifying sight in the dark night from his startling radiance. He tells that the Messiah has been born that very day in Bethlehem and that they can find him wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God, and saying: Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will." (Luke 2:13-14) If this multitude was indeed "with" the solitary angel, and that solitary angel was standing next to the shepherds, then this multitude was also standing next to the shepherds, and it was not suspended in the skies.
How can this be? What could they have looked like? Luke takes pains to tell us that the shepherds were out in the fields. His word suggests that they even lived out in the fields. (The Cambridge Bible comments: "This does not prove, as some have supposed, that the Nativity took place in spring, for in some pastures of Palestine the shepherds to this day bivouac with their flocks in winter.")
But has an army never been in the fields? Some readers of Luke's Gospel would have seen Roman legions maneuvering across fields preparing for battle. We ourselves have seen movies where Roman battles are recreated, for example, Spartacus. It's not like there is no room "out in the fields" for an array of men or of angels.
And so, that is how it would have looked like, each member of this multitude of angels presumably luminous and visible, probably in the form of a man. They appeared suddenly, as when smoke or fog clears, and you discover that you are actually in the midst of an invading force. Think of the scene in The Longest Day when the German soldier in the bunker looks out to the English Channel and is astonished to see an invasion force of thousands of ships appear suddenly in the dawn light.
Luke's word really does mean an army. It was "a multitude of a heavenly army" which suddenly appeared. Not "an army in the heavens," but "a heavenly army," on the ground. "Behold the wonderful working of God," St. John Chrysostom comments on the passage, "He first brings Angels down to men, and then brings men up to Heaven. The Heaven became earth, when it was about to receive earthly things." The Heaven does not become earth unless those angels are standing on the earth. Multitudes of saints will go up to heaven as a multitude of angels came down.
The word "army" is important (Greek, stratia). Translators keep rendering it "host." "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host" (RSVCE, also NABRE). "With the angelic host proclaim," says the hymn.
Yet no one uses the word "host," or even knows what it means. A host for ...