If you are a family of six, you have within your household twelve persons created in the image and likeness of God. Why? This is because each human person has a guardian angel who is also a person. The angel is more like God’s being than a human being because being totally without matter; he is like the Godhead who is above and beyond materiality. We tend to forget that the universe was created by God to include purely spiritual beings who think and love, some of whom were created for the precise purpose to guard and watch over human beings. (Satan and devils are another subject matter.) A plenitude of spirits was created for their own sake without any other function than to praise, adore and love the Godhead himself. They are called the cherubim, seraphim and thrones. However, some of them may have a part in the mission of administering to human beings but not to the extent of the guardians.
The sacred scriptures remind us that there are countless angels, thousands upon thousands that minister to God himself. Finding an absolute number on them is impossible for us but one can speculate that if the world population is in the billions and each has a guardian angel, and if there are nine ranks of angels, reason suggests tens of billions of these persons. The liturgy speaks of “countless hosts.” The angels are all really distinct from one another with each containing its own unique species, each like a world of unimaginable beauty and distinctness in a vertical hierarchy. That is, each angel has someone above him and below him with the exception of the highest angel and the lowest angel. If God takes a special care to create each human soul to infuse into the procreative activity of husband and wife, and each child is loved with a potential destiny to enjoy the complete happiness of heaven, then God took even more loving care in creating these purely intellectual substances who exist without matter.
Since God freely created the universe with an almost infinite plenitude of material beings, both microscopic and macroscopic, which includes billions of stars, and then billions of human and purely spiritual persons, he did so to manifest his infinity of being. In addition, He specially loves all who will remain living forever, each in a particular way. One aspect of his care shows forth with guardian angels for humans since angels do not need guardians.
Given the weakness of human nature, we all need special help to keep us from wallowing in moral turpitude by doing evil actions. We also need occasional help from physical harm as in potential car or plane accidents, tripping and breaking a leg, and the like. So, guardians, while they cannot know our inmost secrets, nor force our wills to do the right thing, can influence our memories, imaginations and to some extent our feelings to ward off temptations of the flesh and the devil, erroneous judgment calls, and even physical dangers. Sometimes, in an act of extraordinary divine providence, they do rarely appear to anyone under the form of a human being with the command of God to do something. (With God’s permission, devils can do likewise.)
Getting practical, family life consists in a lot of necessary conversation and we all tend to talk too much or blurt out nonsense we eventually regret. Consequently, it is very helpful for husbands and wives to develop the habit of turning to one’s own and one’s family members’ guardian angels before discussions which involve serious decisions begin. Experience of the saints shows that often needless arguments do not take place. False recriminations, hot-headed accusations and bitter arguments become diminished and sometimes do not take place when good people turn to angels beforehand. Discussions generate light not heat because when we cooperate with the guardian angels, they do their best to dispose family members to listen more intently not merely to someone’s underlying feelings but to the ideas that come forth leading to good decisions.
Moreover, this devotion to the guardians is exceedingly helpful when correcting children or teenagers. Often corrections can be overbearing, mean-spirited, willful (malicious?), impatient, or just petty. These attempts at changing a person’s behavior do the opposite and just harden one’s children or spouse to continue to do the opposite of what is asked. While there is no infallible way to change damaging behavior simply because one prays to the angels, over the long run, the witness of the saints has shown that if such devotion and the use of one’s intellect to solve minor or major problems in family life is begun early in one’s marriage, many but not all, crises of family life are curtailed. More often than not serious trials and tribulations have solutions for the waiting because angels are more profoundly intelligent with know-how decisions than humans. No one becomes impeccable in this life but many delusory fires can be dimmed or diminished, if not put out by being devoted to the angels.
Angels of course can be directed by God to intervene in any situation whether or not one prays to them. However, experience shows that when we attend to people in a good way in our neighborhood, it redounds in a good way to one’s household. As St. John of the Cross once said, “Where there is no love, put love there and you will find love.” So, when we show our guardians that we believe and trust in them, they are more likely to facilitate solutions to problems than if we ignore this secondary content of our faith.
The teachings on the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Sacraments and devotion to Mary and Joseph are certainly primary aspects of our faith life. Devotion to our guardian angels as well as the archangels is supplementary but very helpful. It is not the primary or most important practice of our faith, but it can be like the honey we put in our tea or coffee when we get up in the morning feeling grouchy!
Father Basil Cole, O.P. is currently a Professor of Moral and Spiritual Theology, Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. Father is also author of Music and Morals, The Hidden Enemies of the Priesthood and coauthor of Christian Totality; Theology of Consecrated Life. A native San Franciscan, Father has been a prior in the Western province of the Dominicans, a parish missionary and retreat master, and invited professor of moral and spiritual theology at the Angelicum in Rome.
