
The days before Christmas are days when the Scriptures are filled with angels. Angels keep guard over many Nativity scenes in homes and churches. What are angels? Who created them? (God). Are they all friendly? Well, not according to history and literature. There were good angels (Gabriel, Michael, and the others, oh, yes, the archangel, Jim. Oops, that snuck in. I'm not on the archangel list.)
Essentially, the good angels are messengers of God's love. We express this in our prayer and refer to some as our guardian angels. Our popular spirituality suggests that each of us has a guardian angel - meaning a special protector from God - nudging us, encouraging us, cajoling us, and even pushing us to make the right decisions and do the things that God asks of us. The sociologist Peter Berger wrote a classic text in sociology called Rumors of Angels - presenting ways in which we can understand the divine in our world. I read it in the seminary and go back to it occasionally over the decades.
The late evangelist, Billy Graham, (note that I'm not talking about his son or referring to him in any way) said one time that two things he especially admired about the Catholic Church was our belief about two things - Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and angels. Billy Graham had integrity. If he made mistakes, he admitted them. A priest-sociologist-friend of mine wrote a couple of books about angels, one a novel and the other a collection of short stories. He used his imagination to think about these wonderful creations of God. Can we be more precise?
From the Bible, we learn that angels are powerful messengers of God's love. They are often fierce protectors, even warriors of God's love. The pictures we have of angels often come from the styles of art of particular eras. Go through the Metropolitan Museum of Art and look at the paintings of angels. They are all different and each reflected a particular era in art and design. In he first few years of our new parish church, I was delighted to host the director of the Vatican Museum who gave us a wonderful presentation on the angels in the Vatican Museums. Truly, there is no limit on the ability of people to reflect on angels - and to think of what God has done with angels over the centuries.
Angels are messengers of the good news of Jesus. They point the way to the crib as we learn from the Christmas stories in the Bible. In the interests of historical and theological accuracy, I am obliged to point out that it would appear that angels are not wimps. While it became popular for people to wear little angel pins or other depictions of angels (and there is nothing wrong with this), it is also clear that angels are God's powerful warriors. The painting at the beginning of this post gives an example of this type of angel.
My personal beliefs (so they must be correct!) about angels is that often they come into our lives disguised as family, friends, and even strangers. Anyone who gives us an understanding of God's love may be an angel - so be nice to them.
I had an experience a few years ago at the parish during Sunday Mass. I was hurrying in the sanctuary (I hurry too much which is really really stupid) and tripped over something that had been left there which I had not seen. I have had some knee problems - and I flew across a side of the sanctuary. There was no way that I could not have been injured, but somehow I stayed upright and was not injured. I could not come up with one reason why I was able to continue standing. I was out of breath, but ok. I kept thanking God in the rest of that liturgy saving me. It made no sense to me that I was still standing and not injured. After the Mass, I went to the videotape (just like football!) and carefully watched the type of that moment. I was that I tripped, went flying and someone did not go down. Have always believed from that time that my guardian angel had protected me.
In these few days left before Christmas, pray with gratitude for the angels God has placed in your life. They are real, really real. If you don't care for angels, then you probably are not a Cubs fan. So, to heck with you. Or maybe more appropriate since we're talking about angels, "behold, I bring you a message of great joy. A child is born in Bethlehem." Not a bad announcement to hear.
Angels, point the way. May we not miss you, especially this week.
