HOMILY WEEK 26 01 – Year I
Believing in Angels:
Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels
(Exodus 23:20-23; Ps 91; Mt 18:1-5, 10)
******************************************
A young boy asked his parents to be alone with his newly born baby sister. The parents listened in and heard him say to his little sister, “Quick, tell me what God is like. I’m starting to forget.”
That little story, which might even be true, connects with the statement of Jesus closing today’s gospel, “I tell you, their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.” It also invites us to believe in, and walk with, our guardian angels.
We struggle to believe in angels in our materialistic culture, yet the phenomenon of interest in angels is very present, especially some years ago when there were all kinds of angel memorabilia for sale in stores, and books on them seemed to proliferate.
More biblically, in Exodus, God tells Moses he will send an angel to guard, guide and teach him and the people of God. All Moses has to do is to believe, be attentive, and listen to the voice of the angel who would accompany them through that desert period of their lives.
Jesus links little children to angels and uses a child to describe the attitudes one must have to live within the kingdom of God. He calls for conversion, change, metanoia, a transformation of attitudes. We must become childlike, not childish. To be childlike is to trust in God completely, to be humble, innocent, open, pure of heart. These are kingdom qualities we must cherish and nourish within us if we truly want to be in that kingdom.
I like to play a trust game with young children, asking them to stand stiff as a board, hands by their side, and fall backwards in the assurance that I would catch them. I am often amazed at how complete the trust of some children is as they comply totally, and inspired to be as trusting with God as they are with me!
In one of his articles, Ron Rolheiser OMI wrote on how we move from childhood innocence to a sophistication later in life during which we lose that innocence. Our second half of life task invites us to arrive at a post-sophistication when we come back to that childlikeness from a different perspective. As he puts it, we believe in the Easter Bunny again!
Fr. Gerry LeStrat OMI shared at our Eucharist one morning in our community chapel a French prayer to the guardian angels he vaguely remembered as a child, but somehow forgot about the time he entered the seminary (perhaps his period of sophistication). He recounted how the priests had placed a large picture of that prayer and a guardian angel with some children in the dorm at a residential school. Lucie Leduc, who was present, spontaneously prayed it in English: “Angel of God, Guardian dear, to whom His love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide.” Perhaps this prayer can help us move into post-sophistication and childlikeness again!
In the end, Jesus puts the emphasis on humility. Humility is the root out of which all the other virtues can grow. It is the key to healing. A humble person is open, transparent, has a beginner’s mind, and allows the Holy Spirit free reign to do whatever the Spirit of God wants to do within us.
Sometimes, angels can be other human beings who share a message with us that otherwise would not make sense. As a young priest, I was counselling a grade eleven student when she suddenly uttered the words, “You’re not finished yet.” I was stunned, partly because those words came out of nowhere, totally out of context with her situation that we were discussing, but also because I immediately sensed they might have something to do with a struggle I was having with my own personality at that time, involving my stubborn self-will. Her statement led me to stop resisting and agree to go to a prayer meeting in Saskatoon with Sr. Gabrielle Simard SGM that weekend, and there, I received a healing of precisely that defect of character when a priest and lay couple prayed over me. That student was an angel for me at that time, for which I am grateful to this day.
Recently, I experienced another angel intervening in my life, in the person of a man who got out of his truck on the Yellowhead freeway at a red light, to call out to me and inform me that the back tire on my scooter was worn down to the cord. I was planning a long trip the next day on the same scooter, and am deeply grateful to this stranger who possibly saved me from either great trouble on that trip, or even my life as I could have had a blow out at 110 kilometers an hour! And who but an angel would take the trouble to get out of his vehicle on a freeway during rush hour? That man was an angel for me.
This memorial of the role of angels in our lives also reminds us of our dignity as human beings, for the angels are our ministering servants – they minister to us!
The Eucharist is, as Rolheiser puts it, our one great act of fidelity. It is an occasion when we see the angels of God ascending and descending to and from heaven, as we join them in their celestial praise of the goodness of our God.
So, may this memorial strengthen our faith in these benevolent spiritual beings sent to guard and guide us, and empower us to be more childlike, trusting, innocent – and even believe in the Easter Bunny once again.
