Posted on 10/02/2014 3:29:07 AM PDT by markomalley
The world’s quicksand is shifting under our feet.
More than ever we need the help that God sends us through the loving help of our Guardian Angels.
Yes, there are angels. Open your Bible and, within a few pages, you’ll find angels.
From the Martyrologium Romanum (which you readers can put into perfect yet smooth and elegant English):
Memoria sanctorum Angelorum Custodum, qui, primum ad contemplandam in splendore faciem Dei vocati, a Domino etiam apud homines commissi sunt, ut iis invisibili sua, sed sollicita, praesentia adessent ac consulerent.
There are three types of persons, divine, angelic and human. Of the three types, divine persons, the Holy Trinity One God, are uncreated. Angelic and human are created persons. Angels have no material component, but humans do.
Because angels are not limited by matter, or individuated in matter, and since they are purely spiritual persons, each angel is his own species. They are like in that they are angels, and unlike in that each one is particular to himself. There is, therefore, a hierarchy among the angels. But all of them always contemplate God, as angels can. They don’t have to be limited to any place, since they have no bodies. They simply are where they are in action.
So aligned are they with the will of God that when they appear in Scripture and speak, sometimes it is hard to tell when God is speaking and when they speak.
Our angel guardians can be from the anywhere in the myriads and myriads of ranks of the angels. They could be from the highest of the high or even from the lowliest little angel at the bottom of the hierarchy. But even the lowliest of the angels is beyond any human conception of mightiness. The least of the angels, were God to will or permit, could mash the cosmos into a little pea and flash the Big Bang again.
Provided that it falls within God’s will, from which it is impossible for them to stray, the material universe presents no obstacles to them. They know the essences of things directly, without having to figure them out.
Do you pray to your Guardian Angel? I sure do. I am constantly asking for help with problems and, especially, with other people. I will sometimes also ask the angelic guardians of other people to help me work something out when there is great need. And I, a weak sinner, have need all the time.
Though I loath the pastels and the foofy portrayal of these fearfully beautiful beings, I love idea behind the old pious images made for children’s bedrooms. You see a bright yet obviously invisible angel preventing a distracted little kid from plunging off cliff as she tries to pick a pretty flower that is just out of reach.
They guide us dopey children back to a safer path.
We all all get into trouble and we all need this help.
God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, sends us mighty help before whom the fallen angels of Hell withdraw in terror and pain.
The memory of the saints, the Guardian Angel, who, for the first time myself to behold in the brightness of the face of God that were called, by the Lord with the men , too, are committed to , to let them have their own invisible , but careful , the presence of , and the persons present, to consult .
My wife was ascending on the 2nd part of a split stairway. The fall would have been at least 10, possibly 18 feet. She was falling backward. She received a push from behind to stabilize her. No one was visible. She is still here 25 years later.
You realize, of course, that this is idolatry.
You evidently don’t know what ‘prayer’ means.
Prayer is not worship unless it is addressed to God.
Prayer simply means ‘asking’ - as in the English expression “I pray thee”.
Because I am trying to understand: If angles are about doing the will of God wouldn’t it be presumptuous to ask anything of the angels?
Making a request is "idolatry"?
It's certainly possible to stray into the idolatrous adoration of an angel, just as it's possible to put other created goods in the place of God. (Like cars, houses, money, sex, power, fame ... all the kinds of idolatry that are devastating this society right now.)
But by denying the possibility of prayer to angels to ask them to do things that are within the will of God, you are in danger of straying toward the opposite error, that of denying that angels exist and are sent by God to help his faithful.
And one error is not "better" or "holier" than another.
Still less (therefore) is it presumption to ask help from an Angel - or from a Man. After all, this is what we are here for: to love one another; to help one another.
Hope this is helpful.
I still don’t get it. Sure I pray to God but then the chain of command goes to the angel to execute God’s will. Isn’t praying to angels like asking one parent when the other already turned you down? Again, trying to understand. Thank you.
The Bible doesn’t teach to pray to angels. Jesus never prayed that way either or told us to. This is nothing but heresy.
Full explanation here:
Thank you
Thanks for the Angel book tip.
You’re welcome.
Withdraw in terror and pain? Not according to scripture.
Daniel 10:13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.
He asked her for water. He prayed to her that she might give him water.
Remember: prayer means 'polite request'.
Prayer is not in itself an act of worship, unless it is addressed to God.
Nice. Yes, I pray for my GA’s guidance every day, but I had never thought of asking other people’s GA for help.
Yeah, the portrayal of angels has caused problems for me. When I was trying to introduce my eldest grandson, who was 4 at the time, to the concept of his Guardian Angel and of angels in general, I bought some children’s books and a GA nightlight.
Problem was that all of the angels, as he peevishly pointed out to me, looked like girls. St. Michael, of course, is the most manly looking, but the depictions, in addition to seeming a little too gruesome for a 4-year-old, all had the good saint in long hair. :)
God apparently delights to work though His creatures, rather than directly appear Himself.
If you are lying in a gutter, dying of an overdose, and you ask Him for help - how does He answer you?
Does He come Himself?
Or does He send an Angel or inspire a fellow human to come and help you?
Answer: most of the time He works through one of His creatures. One of your fellow humans will come and help.
Remember God told us that Love of God and Love of Neighbor are the two greatest commandments.
He appears to delight in acts of love that involve us directly helping one another - one neighbor helping another - rather than directly appearing Himself.
Also: it may be that He will indeed answer your prayer - but only if you ask that unfriendly-looking thug over there for help. Because that way He gets to help you AND work acts of grace through that thug at the same time. Again: one neighbor helping another.
And what God does through one order of created beings (humans) He can also do through another order of created beings (angels): usually when no human agency can help.
Hope this was helpful.
Well we remember the famous movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life” and the guardian angel name Clarence who saved George Bailly from killing himself.
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