When Angels whisper in Heaven, In Eternity, they frequently recite the story of George, a 4th century soldier who slew a fierce dragon, saved a doomed Princess, and freed a small town from the ravages of the beast, a terribly ugly, formidable creature.
First, the reader may wonder why the Angels choose to whisper in Heaven. Is God a tyrant who forbids casual conversation? Of course not, for there is no such thing as casual conversation in Heaven, nor on Earth, for that matter, for all words spoken or thought count, even those that rend the hearer. Well then, Is there something about the story that needs to be kept hidden, as if something could be kept hidden from God in Heaven or on Earth? Foolish mortals. No, and know, The Angels whisper as they tell the story from the lowest rank of Angels, up the nine ranks of the hierarchical ladder to the highest, the Cherubim and Seraphim, and then back down the hierarchical ladder to the Archangels and Angels, because all Angels know that their voices spoken loudly and clearly, can shatter the Cosmos, an event whose time has not yet arrived, though all human and cosmic history is moving toward that glorious event.
Angelic telling is different from human story telling since Angels see substances and forms clearly, whereas humans see surfaces and that fairly dimly at the best of times. As a central instance, consider the Catholic Mass. At the heart of the Mass is the Eucharist, the consecration of the so-called simple substances of bread and wine transubstantiated into the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is to say, When the human participant in the liturgy receives the wafer, the bread, from the priest, the pilgrim recipient sees in his hand the surface of the wafer, a simple thing subject to the conditions of humidity or drought or any other Earthly accident. What the invisible Angelic presence at the Mass sees, and there is always an Angelic presence at the Mass, is Christ himself, present in the wafer and in the wine. Poor humanity, how can it understand such a profound mystery, you ask? Only, the Scriptures tell us, and as the Heavenly choir chants it, by Faith and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Indeed.
Back to the Angelic telling then, the story of George is a story of many dimensions, all present to the Angelic eyes at once, for such is the Angelic seeing. On one level, George is the human soldier who, riding his perhaps not-so-magnificent horse through the Earthly countryside, spies a lovely maiden chained to a rock outside a darksome cave. George’s first thought is to rescue her, free her from such bondage, which he sets out to do. However, having snapped the first chain, George awakens the dragon in the cave who comes rushing forth, breathing smoke and fire, intent on devouring maiden and soldier as one.
Now, the Angelic delight and celebration, whispered up and down that Heavenly ladder: George, the ever courageous soldier and knight, raises his sharply pointed spear and pierces the creature’s throat, putting an end to the terrible threat. Once George makes certain the dragon is dead, he frees the maiden, and the timid towns folk come forth rejoicing.
A simple story, or not quite, for what the Angelic host celebrates is the mystery at the heart of the story. What the Angels see is into the heart of George, and as in the Eucharist, they see that the heart of George is also the heart of Christ present in the man, as the dragon is the presence of Sin that attacks all of humanity (especially storytellers); the maiden, in their vision, is the Bride of Christ, the Church in bondage that can only be rescued by the sacrifice of George, who is rightly seen as the lowly warrior, Heavenly knight, the Earthly saint, the Man born to be King. Therefore the story, whispered up and down the Heavenly ladder, celebrates the story of Christ, in another Earthly incarnation, an ancient story, perhaps first told in the Golden Legend, but superbly told in Book One of Edmund Spenser’s magnificent Faerie Queen. Thus the Angels, like Spenser, delight in ringing the changes on the story of Saint George and the terrible, destructive dragon, Sin. And so the Heavenly whispers filter down the Angelic hierarchy and into human hearts, human souls, and human minds, and bring forth in some blessed humans, divine love and desire.
I forget the name of the artist, but, obviously, an artistic telling of the story of Saint George.