I find these three readings converging on a single pastoral lesson. The Apostolic Tradition (the church-order manual) presses the necessity of inward integrity before outward admission: candidates are probed about marriages, trades, and habits precisely because the soul’s state must ground sacramental life; the community protects its liturgy by admitting only those whose lives show habitual ordering toward God. Augustine’s reflection on the angels and the heavens turns our gaze upward: angels “read” God without letters because they eternally behold and choose the immutable counsel, reminding us that true knowledge of God issues from a loving, continual turning toward the divine face — and that our present sight is only a foreshadowing of a future, complete vision (cf. Ps 36:5; 1 John 3:2). Thomas, in Summa Q23, locates moral species in t ...