Question Five of Chapter Eight of the Second Decade
Whether local distance impedes the speech of angels to one another
It is asked whether local distance impedes the speech of angels to one another.
To this it is answered negatively, because in everything which is abstracted from place and time and from here and now, distance of place and diversity of time do nothing at all and produce no effect.
But the speech of an angel, which consists in an intellectual operation, is abstracted from place and time and from here and now. Therefore, distance of place does nothing with respect to it.
But if it is argued to the contrary that it is said in Isaiah, chapter 6, that the angels cried one to another, and this cry appears to have been on account of obstructing local distance, it is answered as follows.
An angel is said to cry insofar as he turns himself toward another in order to show himself so that the other may apprehend him, or in order to show the magnitude of the thing which is said or the magnitude of its effect.
Thus Gregory says in Book II of the Moralia: “The less anyone cries, the less he desires.”
All these things are from Thomas, First Part, question 107, and the doctors upon Book II of the Sentences.