One can ask many existential questions in life, but I have come across one that is particularly thought provoking to me: If God and the angels are pure spirit, then what is the purpose of the material world? Why do we as humans have a material (and spiritual) existence? Shouldn’t we be just like them? The answer I have come up with is no way taught by the Church as doctrine, but does find its roots in my formation as a Roman Catholic.
Something that we know about angels is that as pure intellect, they do not change. At the moment of their entrance into existence, they were given the ability to choose to serve God or not. But after that moment, they live with the choice they made. We see this evident with Lucifer who stated that he would not serve and ⅓ of the heavenly hosts followed suit. This juxtaposed with Michael and the rest of the heavenly hosts who choose God and serve Him for eternity.
The same applies to God Himself. He does not change. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. All of time is present to His never changing gaze. Yet, we do see moments in scripture where different attributes of God manifest themselves to humans, and He appears to change. While this can be confusing and a seeming contradiction, I would like to propose a possible solution: It is not God who changes, but us who experience His various attributes at different times for the purpose of our changing.
The material universe, all of time and space, is for change, which ultimately means the material world is made for love. Every attribute of nature goes through change, whether it be the seasons, life cycles, or development of civilizations. As humans, we change too. We progress from an embryonic stage to adulthood and ultimately to death. Our life is constant material change.
Because our material bodies are us, this means that the spiritual part of us (our souls) also have the ability to change in this material world. As we go through life, we have the ability to choose right from wrong and the more we choose vices or virtues, the more likely we are to choose them again, changing us into the person we choose to be (full of vice, full of virtue, or somewhere in between). Yet, at our death, there is no more choice. We stand before God with our souls laid bare, and what we chose on display.
All of these choices in our life are meant to orient us to one fundamental choice: Do we love God or not? God created us in this material world for the purpose of choosing Him, but He allows us to decide whether or not we choose him. What the material world does is it provides a multitude of chances to change, regardless of our previous failures. It provides hope for salvation so long as there is material life. It allows us to grow and develop who we are meant to be not through coercion, but through loving invitation.
But the thing about change is that it hurts. Any athlete can tell you that when training the body, sacrifices will be made and pain will accompany the process. The same goes when changing the spiritual life. When we dedicate ourselves to a relationship with God, sacrifices will be made for the love of Him, and there will be moments of immense pain. But this is what it means to change. If we do not feel the tension of the spiritual life for an extended period of time, odds are we have become complacent and are failing to progress in love of God.
So what does this mean? Simply that if this world was made for change, we must embrace the change that God wants to make in our lives. We must not rely on our comfortable lives fueled by money and entertainment to fulfill us. We must embrace the cross of change from sinful humans into the adopted sons and daughters of God. And we must take hope in that change is not our eternal state. When the material passes away, we will be in a state of completeness, whether that is in the presence of God (heaven) or cast out of His presence (Hell). So we are truly headed to our eternal rest, but in this life, we need to embrace the change that allows us to love God so that at our judgment, our souls are able to recognize in love, not fear, the God of the universe who desires to spend eternity with us.
