Get your own Free Home PageThe Trouble with Angels
by: Richard S. Clifton
Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 1, No. 19 (September 19, 1998)
I myself will send an angel before you before you to guard you as you go and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Give him reverence and listen to all that he says. (Exodus 23:20)
The trouble with angels is that they are real. True, disembodied spiritual beings, but as real as the soul that is our spiritual side. While they are not an article of faith, they have been called a "truth of faith". Hugh Hope points out that St. Jerome related them to the dignity of our souls (that spiritual nature we share with them) and the truth of them is a part of "the mind of the Church."
Personally, each of us has had an angel with us since birth whose commission is to guard our souls: our Guardian Angel.
These beings, created by God, are assigned to humans and their duty is to watch over their charges each and every day of his or her life. Their role is a dual one: to preserve us from evil and to guide us to good thoughts, words and works; in other words, as the Psalm says, "to guide us in all our ways." (91:10-12) The Guardian Angel has been called an imago dei, an image or form of God. They reflect not only God's goodness, but His wish for our welfare and His willingness to work actively towards it. Christ Himself referred to this protective spirit in Matthew 18:10 when He said, "See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you, their angels in heaven always behold the face of My Father in heaven." Thus not only do children have Guardian Angels, but such angels do no lose contact with God.
According to St. Augustine, these angels
But we have to enlist his aid. According to Bishop Tehophan the Recluse, we must " ... turn to him in our thoughts and heart. This is good during peaceful times and especially so during turmoil. When such contact with the angel is missing, he has no means of influencing us."
Therein is the "catch"--if we want our angel to work actively on our behalf, we must ask him to do so, i.e., angels come to us as a result of prayers. Which raises another question. How should we revere our Guardian Angel, or any angel, for that matter?
The veneration of angels is called Angelolatry. But there is a caution: angels are not to be worshiped. Only God is worshiped. During the early centuries of the Church, there was some debate over how angels should be treated and revered. The Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) included a belief in angels as a part of Church dogma; this caused a renewal of the veneration of angels which by 343 caused the Synod of Laodicaea to declare such worship as idiolatry in its 35th Canon. The Synod condemned any worship of angels as creators or rulers of this world. It wasn't until 787 that the Seventh Ecumenical Synod of the Church reinstated a carefully defined and limited reverence of archangels.
In more modern times, an interest in angels has been reawakened, but a part of this awakening has been what one writer, Steven Bushnell, has called "counterfeit angels". Identified as an outgrowth of the New Age movement, countless books have appeared in bookstores recounting stories and tales of the role angels have played in the lives of people many are sincere, advocating an open and grateful acceptance of angels in our lives.
There is trouble with these "counterfeit angels", however. First of all, many of these books which advocate an "angel centered" life fail to take into account those other angels: Satan and his legions. Beginning as early as St. Paul (Corinthians 11:12-15) through the present time, it has been described how these evil spirits have taken on pleasing forms to deceive us--coming to us not only as angels of light, but also as saints, the Virgin Mary and even Christ Himself.
Despite their fallen state, these creatures are still angels. And as God's angels come to us in pleasing shapes, so may the nether angels. The Church urges us to not to seek visions of angels and to be very questioning and skeptical when we do. Satan is a liar and, by confusing us, wins his ends. He is a capable of deception in both words and by masquerading as something he is not. God's angels obey God's words and commands. They would never ask us to do anything contrary to the will of our Heavenly Father.
Bushnell has pointed out several examples of these false angels, one being the so called "spiritual guides" of the New Age, a movement that has traded focus on the "inner child", channeling and crystals, for romanticized images of angels. Other include "angels" described by people who have had near-death experiences, and even the so-called "alien abductions". These may be examples of fallen angels enticing humans.
The trouble here lies not so much in centering on something which is essentially good and giving--the angel. The trouble is that angels become an end in themselves. It reverts back to the admonition against worshiping angels. It must never be forgotten that angels, in and of their offices, are means by which God aids us on the path to our own salvation. That path leads only one place and stops at only one being: God.
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