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Extracted from 'New Age Angels', an essay by Leon J Podles
http://www.podles.org/new-age-angels.htm
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Theologians are accustomed to ditching dogmas—the Virgin Birth, the
Resurrection, and the like—with the explanation that "modern man can't
believe in these things anymore." What they mean by "modern man" are a
few thousand Kantians in German universities.
However, if by "modern
man" one means the vast majority of the population, including modern
Western societies, then modern man is capable of believing the most
remarkable things.
In Iceland, despite its secular Scandinavian culture,
there is still a strong belief in the huldufolk (creatures
like elves, but more dangerous) who live in rocks; and the roads are
designed so as not to disturb them. Dreams in Iceland are widely thought
to be messages from beings in the stars. For an idea of what Americans
believe, visit any New Age bookstore...
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Meanwhile, churches continue to be stripped of their images
and vigil lights. Felt banners with mottos like "Service and
Celebration" replace stained glass windows where radiant angels and
saints glow in the spiritual light that fills the world. But the modern
version of the Roman liturgy is something in which no self-respecting
angel participates. No one invites them anyway.
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As all Thomists know, one may sin by both defect and excess. Sinning
by defect in the belief in supernatural phenomena (including angels) is
to deny their existence or to almost completely dismiss their role in
the life of the Christian...
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Catholics have traditionally prayed to their guardian angels, and
Catholic children have learned the poem: “Angel of God, my guardian
dear/To whom God's love commits me here/Ever this day be at my side/To
light and guard, to rule and guide/Amen.”
Does contact with angels
vanish with age, like the craving for lollipops? Or is there a mature
faith in angels, our fellow citizens in the heavenly fatherland?
I think
there is.
Opus Dei has a charming and effective custom of praying to the
guardian angel of someone one wishes to influence to the good.
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Why
bother with angels—why not pray only to God?
Because by multiplying
intermediaries through whom He accomplishes His will, God gives them the
dignity of sharing in His causality, and increases the number of those
to whom gratitude is due.
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I have also discovered that guardian angels
can be relied upon to find parking places in almost all circumstances.
One law of the spiritual life is to begin with small things. First,
develop your faith by praying for, and receiving, healing from a
headache, then pray for healing from cancer.
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Angelic action has also been the path to faith for some in the modern
world.
M. Scott Peck attributes his conversion to Christianity to his
growing sense that the fingerprints of Providence were unmistakable in
the circumstances of life, as were, alas, the marks of the enemy,
including diabolical possession.
Our true struggle is not with human
enemies—Communists, abortionists, secularists, or even hardened sinners;
these are but agents of the spiritual enemy who seeks to oppose God,
and against that enemy we have every need of angelic help.
As Catholics
used to pray after every Mass: "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in
the battle."
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My own feeling is that angels are at work in the preternatural events
that defy rational explanation: sudden feelings that something is
happening to someone you love; brief glimpses that seem to overcome
space and time.
These happen too often to be dismissed as coincidence,
but they do not happen often enough to be examined scientifically. They
do not appear to be the operation of some natural, impersonal, psychic
unity of mankind. Rather, they bear the marks of personality.
They
cannot be predicted, but they accomplish some purpose when they happen.
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Perhaps angels are the channels of invisible communication among men,
the hidden messengers that allow us to see briefly into the mind of
another person.
Sophy Burnham... recounts an experience to
which many parents can relate in their own childrearing. She left her
baby sleeping on a bed while she worked in another room. She suddenly
thought "Molly's falling off the bed." She ran down the hall, rushed
into the bedroom, and caught the baby in mid-air.
There are few children
who would make it to adulthood if their guardian angels were not
clocking overtime. When we meet them face to face, we shall have much to
thank them for.
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Note: I added bold emphasis to the question and answer: Why
bother with angels—why not pray only to God? Because by multiplying
intermediaries through whom He accomplishes His will, God gives them the
dignity of sharing in His causality, and increases the number of those
to whom gratitude is due; because this is the stumbling block about angels for many Protestants.
Protestants usually believe in the reality of angels, in an abstract kind of way, but seldom or never think about their reality because they do not find any use for them in their spiritual lives, and (in order to avoid any risk of idolatry) prayers are always directed at God the Father or more often Jesus Christ.
But, as always, risk avoidance by elimination of a whole domain of Christian practice creates its own hazards - in this instance the lived experience of a 'hollow' spiritual world exclusively consisting of God and Man, emptied of the multitudes which lie between.
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