Friday in the 26th Week of Ordinary Time, October 2, 2020

The Feast of the Guardian Angels

Exodus 23:20-23

Thus says the Lord: “See, I am sending an angel before you, to guard you on the way and bring you to the place I have prepared. Be attentive to him and heed his voice. Do not rebel against him, for he will not forgive your sin. My authority resides in him. If you heed his voice and carry out all I tell you, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes. My angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites; and I will wipe them out.”

A feast in honor of the Guardian Angels seems to have been celebrated locally in western Europe in the 1500’s.  The present feast was established in the 1600’s by Pope Clement X, deliberating setting it on the first open day after the feast of St. Michael.  The feast honors all those angels who, throughout the ages, have guarded, led, and inspired (not to say “pushed”) their human charges in the way of salvation.  At the time the Lord Jesus walked the earth it was already understood by the Jews that God assigned angels to individuals as well as to nations — the Book of Daniel tells us that St. Michael protected the Chosen People.  The Lord refers to personal guardian angels in Matthew 18, 10 when he says, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”  In this verse Jesus teaches us that our protecting angels, who dwell in heaven, ever behold the face of God.  That is, they are present in their persons in heaven and praise God there night and day, but are present in this world through their power.  They see us, as it were, in the pupils of God’s eyes so they need not take their eyes off his face in order to maintain vigilance over us.  Of course, God does not need their help in protecting us, but he wills to involve the angels in our salvation.  We are not related to the angels — they are not human — but according to the Fathers, particularly St. Augustine in his City of God, the souls of holy men and women will take the places in heaven of the fallen angels, and so it is fitting that they assist us.

The context of the First Reading for today’s Mass is the departure from Egypt by the Hebrews, and God’s promise to them to protect them as they make their way to the Promised Land, in which they will live.  The spiritual meaning here is God’s promise to the newly baptized that he will protect him throughout his life until he comes to the Promised Land of heaven.

“See, I am sending an angel before you.”  This angel will lead us, but not force us, as if from behind us, “to guard you on the way and bring you to the place I have prepared.”  God prepared the land of heaven for us even before we were born, and he created it for us.  The fact that the “land” is prepared for us might remind us of how Jesus said to the Apostles before the crucifixion, “I will go before you to prepare a place for you” (John 14, 3).  The place has long been prepared, but the Lord Jesus will bring humanity to it when he enters it with his human nature.  This is the “preparation” of which he speaks.

“Be attentive to him and heed his voice.”  Our angel speaks to us in the depths of our hearts and, indeed, in our consciences.  He urges us on to perform God’s will and to resist the temptations of the devil.  He does not  keep us from making evil choices or prevent us from suffering the consequences of our actions, but his powerful influence can make us saints if we make it our custom to listen and obey him.  We can feel his influence most potently in the Sacrament of Penance, when he helps us to recall our sins and to feel remorse for them.  “Do not rebel against him, for he will not forgive your sin.”  To sin against God is to rebel against him, and so rejecting the help our angels offer us is itself an act of rebellion, an act in which we echo Lucifer’s fearful cry to Almighty God: “I will not serve!”  Our angel cannot forgive this sin; God alone can do so, and we must seek his forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance.

“My authority resides in him”, and so our angel, who always looks upon the unsurpassed beauty of God’s face, represents God.  “If you heed his voice and carry out all I tell you, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.”  To obey our angels is to obey God, and thus to “allow” God to defend us from evil in the present moment but also to carry us in his arms throughout our lives and to enjoy the fruits of his Son’s victory over Satan on Calvary: the devil can only harm us if we allow him to, by giving in to temptation, especially habitually, or opening our souls to the devil through astrology, palm reading, seances, the use of the ouija board, tarot cards, or similar things.  Previous to the advent of the Lord into the world, the demons generally had free reign over the human race because of original sin and the absence of grace.

“My angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites; and I will wipe them out.”  These peoples dwelt in and around the Promised Land at the time.  These were very warlike peoples who lived akin to the ways of the Sodomites, including practicing human sacrifice.  They would have massacred any group of people whom they saw as a threat.  Spiritually, we can understand these as the demons that harass us and strive through temptation to lead us to our eternal destruction.  Our angels “bring” us to them inasmuch as they go with us in this world which is subject to temptation.  Or, we can understand this verse in the way we understand Matthew 4, 1: “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”  The purpose of this temptation as well as the fasting was to strengthen the human nature of Jesus for the combat he would wage against the devil over the next three years.  It is through exercise that our muscles are strengthened, and it is through temptation that our virtues are developed and grown.  That is not to say that we ought to look for temptations in order to work on our virtues, but we resist the ones that come our way, for we do not put the Lord our God to the test (cf. Deuteronomy 6, 16).

Let us listen to the guidance of our angels so that at the end of our lives here we may be led by them into the places reserved for us in heaven.