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| Angel of the Birds-F. Dvorak |
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| Diane Salamon |
September 29 is the feast of St. Michael and other Archangels and October 2 the feast of our Guardian Angels.
In the past few decades ANGELS have gotten a “bad rap” by people who use them in all sort of weird contexts. But perhaps no aspect of Catholic piety is as comforting to parents as the belief that there is an angel who protects their children from dangers real and imagined. Yet guardian angels are not only for children. Their role is to represent individuals before God, to watch over them always, to aid their prayer and to present their souls to God at death.
In the past few decades ANGELS have gotten a “bad rap” by people who use them in all sort of weird contexts. But perhaps no aspect of Catholic piety is as comforting to parents as the belief that there is an angel who protects their children from dangers real and imagined. Yet guardian angels are not only for children. Their role is to represent individuals before God, to watch over them always, to aid their prayer and to present their souls to God at death.
Most of
us who grew up Catholic learned the simple prayer:
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.
Bl. Pope
John XXIII gave us this Meditation for
the Feast of the Guardian Angels - 2 October 1959:
According
to the teaching of the Roman catechism, we must remember how admirable was the
intention of divine Providence
in entrusting to the angels the mission of watching over all mankind, and over
individual human beings, lest they should fall victims to the grave dangers
which they encounter. In this earthly life, when children have to make their
way along a path beset with obstacles and snares, their fathers take care to
call upon the help of those who can look after them and come to their aid in
adversity.
In the same way our Father in heaven has charged his angels to come to our assistance during our earthly journey which leads us to our blessed fatherland, so that, protected by the angels' help and care, we may avoid the snares upon our path, subdue our passions and, under this angelic guidance, follow always the straight and sure road which leads to Paradise... Everyone of us is entrusted to the care of an angel.
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| Lauren Ford- Our favorite |
In the same way our Father in heaven has charged his angels to come to our assistance during our earthly journey which leads us to our blessed fatherland, so that, protected by the angels' help and care, we may avoid the snares upon our path, subdue our passions and, under this angelic guidance, follow always the straight and sure road which leads to Paradise... Everyone of us is entrusted to the care of an angel.
That is
why we must have a lively and profound devotion to our own Guardian Angel, and why
we should often and trustfully repeat the dear prayer we were taught in the
days of our childhood.
May we
never fail in this devotion to the angels! During our earthly pilgrimage we may
often run the risk of having to face the natural elements in turmoil, or the
wrath of men who may seek to do us harm. But our Guardian Angel is always
present. Let us never forget him and always remember to pray to him.
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| Marc Chagall- Mainz Germany |
Angels
are servants and messengers from God. "Angel" in Greek means
messenger. In unseen ways the angels help us on our earthly pilgrimage by
assisting us in work and study, helping us in temptation and protecting us from
physical danger. The idea that each soul has assigned to it a personal guardian
angel has been long accepted by the Church and is a truth of our faith.
The
concept of an angel assigned to guide and nurture each human being is a
development of Catholic doctrine and piety based on Scripture but not directly
drawn from it. Jesus' words, "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."
Catholics
set up altars in honor of guardian angels as early as the 4th century
and devotion to the angels began to
develop with the birth of the monastic tradition in the 6th Century.
St. Benedict gave it impetus as did St. Bernard of Clairvaux (the great
12th-century reformer), who was such an eloquent spokesman for the guardian
angels that angelic devotion assumed its current form in his day.
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| Giuilanna Lazzarini |
However,
it was not placed in the General Roman Calendar until 1607 by Pope Paul V. The
papal decree establishing the feast was cosigned by St.Robert Bellarmine, which
has led some scholars to speculate that the feast was created under the
influence of the Society of Jesus (The Jesuits).
When one
of us dies in the monastery, or someone related to us, or perhaps someone we do
not know directly, we sing the beautiful and haunting:
"May
the angels lead you into paradise;
may
the martyrs come to welcome you
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| Chagal |
the
new and eternal Jerusalem."
(Rite for Christian Burial)
I love the window of Marc Chagall which shows an angel carrying the soul to heaven. I have often used this to show children death is nothing to fear.
I love the window of Marc Chagall which shows an angel carrying the soul to heaven. I have often used this to show children death is nothing to fear.
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