we're not like angels ... we have brains and they don't ... their nature is to be separated from matter ... ours is to have a capacity for union with it ... not to possess a body ... not to have it ... but to work with it ... to be with it ... and not necessarily always the same body ... I say we I mean we souls have a natural capacity say a need for union with a variety of bodies according to their excellence and our own ... we are like angels ... we have minds ... they have them too only in a better souped-up engine faster more precise ... we both have reason ... theirs just works much more immediately than ours ... we were born to plod first and fly later ... to find the form and to fill it out ... to live up to our potential by bringing the potential to life ... and that potential is the material world which is right now out of order ... which we have been sent to fix by putting ourselves in order ... the right order being love ... the more we do that ... love in full knowledge and the right order ... the more angelic we become
cf aquinas, compendium 86
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