The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
   Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
   The angels keep their ancient places;
   Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
   'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
   That miss the many-splendored thing.

        --the traffic of Jacob's ladder
   Pitched betwixt Heaven and (our) Cross.
      -- Francis Thompson: "The Kingdom of God"

In the popular piety of another day, June was the month of the Sacred Heart; July, the Precious Blood; August, the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Assumption; September, the Holy Angels; October, the Rosary; November, the Souls in Purgatory.

Holy Angels last month because of Saint Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and all angels. But this month, on the 2nd, Guardian Angels, so it is thus not too late to say a word about angels.

They are, as you no doubt are aware, rather prominent in spiritual reading these days. In any lay bookstore you'll find several dozen titles on angels. How good they are is a question. How Catholic, another question. Billy Graham's Angels in 1975 is one of the best and earliest in the trend, in fact preceded it. A friend counted fifty titles on angels at his bookstore, and did not finish.

Angels have been with us from the beginning of our history. Pure spirits of intelligence and will "...who behold the Face of the Father" (Mt 18:10), "mighty ones who do His word, who hearken to the voice of His word" (Ps 103:20). Christ is the center of this angelic world, but they were known to Adam and Eve (Gen 3:24), to Abraham (Gen 12:1; 18:1-2; 22:11), to Jacob (Gen 28:10-12), to Sodom (Gen 19:1), to the 3 youths in the furnace (Dan 3:57). They told the coming of John and Jesus, and they helped Joseph, Peter and the apostles. "And the Son of Man will come in glory and all His angels with Him" (Mt 25:31). For in Him all things were created in Heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers. He has made them messengers of His saving plan, "are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those who obtain salvation?"(Col 1:16).

So the angels have been present through the whole history of salvation, announcing and serving. The life of the Word Incarnate is surrounded by the adoration and service of angels. "Let all God's angels worship Him" (Heb 1:6). Their song at the Birth of Christ has not ceased: "Glory to God on high, and peace on earth" (Lk 2:14). They protected the infant Jesus, served Him in the desert, consoled Him in the Garden. They who proclaimed His Incarnation, also proclaimed His Resurrection. And they will attend Him at His final Coming.

And the Church continues the worship of the angels in the Holy, Holy, Holy of the Heavenly hosts, and also on earth: in that beautiful prayer in the Canon of the Mass in which we beg the angels to present the Sacrifice to God on high. We commend our dead to the care of the angels in the ancient "In Paradisum deducant te angeli:"  "May the angels lead you into Paradise." And beside each believer is an angel, a guard, to protect and shepherd. We are warned by Christ to avoid evil to children whose angels behold the Face of God.

In the face of which it is a little difficult to be sympathetic to some indifference to the angels. It would seem their ministry is more needful now than ever.

Our prayer to them is most fitting. One recalls the triple "Hail Mary," the "Hail Holy Queen," and the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel at the end of every low Mass for some 75 years, and offered for Russia. In the face of the outcome it seems rather gross to be casual about the angels. One morning we woke up and the communist empire had collapsed, without a shot being fired.

The challenge of the angels is, of course, in the call to faith, for we are dealing with something we can scarcely grasp: how, why, when, and where angelic intercession is at hand, puts questions that have no answers except in faith, let alone any insight into the conflict of the powers of darkness with the powers of light that goes on all around us.

And a look into our own lives may give rise to some wondering. Angelic intervention in your life? Very likely. Did you notice? Do you remember?  Or did you dismiss it in the way of the world and attribute it to accident, circumstance, luck, coincidence? Well, that's one way out. Here is another:
 

The year was 1938, and it was a cold, wet, dreary February afternoon. I was a sixteen-year-old boy who had been on the road for over four months. Life on the road in those Depression years was hard, and I was trying to get home. The place was the railway yards in Hayti, Missouri. I was standing under the shed of a warehouse loading-dock waiting for the freight train that was in the yards taking on water and coal to start moving out. You don't climb into a boxcar while the train is in the yards because the railroad bulls will hit you over the head with a club and kick you off.

The train started moving out, pulled by two large locomotives, which meant that it would gain speed quickly and that it was a long train.

I stood waiting until I saw a boxcar with a door open, then I started running to jump in. The boxcar was rather high off the ground because of the terrain. When I jumped, I only got halfway in, the lower half of my legs dangling out of the door and the upper half of my body lying flat on the floor of the boxcar. I couldn't pull myself in because I had nothing to hold onto. The train was gaining speed very fast as I lay there trying to pull myself in, my arms outstretched on the floor. I knew if I fell it would be certain death under the wheels of that freight train. I will never forget that moment. I thought my time had come.

As I was struggling on the floor, I can recall saying, "O God, please don't let me die here." I raised my head enough to see a very large black man, in his thirties, standing there looking at me. He didn't say anything to me and I didn't say anything to him. He reached down, got hold of me by the arms, and pulled me into the boxcar. I lay on the floor facedown for about half a minute to catch my breath and regain my strength. When I got up to thank the man, he was nowhere to be seen. The boxcar was completely empty; the other door was closed, and the train was moving too fast for anyone to jump out and live. There was no one in that boxcar but me. The black man had vanished.

If a person has his own guardian angel, then my angel is big and strong, and a black man in his thirties who saved me from a sure death at the wheels of a freight train and didn't wait around to be thanked.