Trusting in our Guardian Angels

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Today we celebrate the memorial of the Guardian Angels. There are many references to angels in the Bible. We know how the angel Gabriel announced that Mary was to be the mother of Jesus, our Saviour. But nowhere in the Bible does it say specifically that we each have one angel who is our guardian. Perhaps today's texts come closest when Exodus 23:20 says that, ''The Lord will send an angel before you to guard you as you go to the place I have prepared.'' And in the gospel Jesus says that the angels of children are continually in the presence of his Father in heaven. Psalm 91:11 says clearly, ''For he will command his angels to guard you in all your ways." Sometimes people who missed a plane that crashed say, ''It must have been my guardian angel that saved me.'' Have we had such experiences when we have been saved from danger as if by chance?

 

Once I was driving on cruise control at just below 100 k when I suddenly felt an impulse to go out of cruise control and the speed dropped to about 70 k per hour. At that moment a truck came around a bend just ahead going too fast and out of control on the wrong side of the road. If I had still been going at a hundred, the car with the two passengers would have been totally flattened. Did I receive a message from my guardian angel? I like to think so. If we look back over our lives, I am sure that we will remember times when we have been protected by God. Did he act directly or through his angels? Luke in Acts 8:26 tells us how He can act through angels: "The Lord's angel said to Philip. 'Go south along the desert road to Gaza.' So Philip left, met and converted the Ethiopian official." Let us see what thoughts come to our mind as we celebrate the feast today.