SEVERAL TIMES IN THE LAST WEEK

Ever since Happiness heard your name,
It has been running through the streets
Trying to find you.

And several times in the last week,
God Himself has even come to my door—
Asking me for your address!

Once I said,
"God,
I thought You knew everything.
Why are You asking me
Where Your lovers live?"

And the Beloved replied,

Indeed, Hafiz, I do know Everything
But it is fun playing dumb once in a while
And I love intimate chat
And the warmth of your heart 's fire.

Maybe we should make this poem into a song—
I think it has potential!

How does this refrain sound,
For I know it is a Truth:

Ever since Happiness heard your name,
It has been running through the streets
Trying to find you.
And several times in the last week
God Himself has come to my door—
 So sweetly asking for your address,
Wanting the beautiful warmth of your heart’s fire.

                                       — By Hafiz (13th Century)

This is September. By an old tradition, September is the month of the Holy Angels. The feast of the Archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, is on the 29th, though to be sure, that of the Guardian Angels does not appear until early October.

How great the impact of the angels is on contemporary piety, I do not know. The article on “Angels” in Michael Downey’s Dictionary of American Spirituality, has a rather diffident approach to the subject, though the book as such seems to be traditional. The Catechism, however, is clear enough, even though brief in its coverage. Scripture and tradition have consistently served as adequate support for the angelic world. St. Bernard, among others, is outstanding in his love for the angels. And common piety—even non-Catholic varieties—keeps to the angels, at least to go by published material.

I tell you a story—in a way a typical story from the Courrier-Journal.² And one that no doubt can be met with a story of your own—an event that has no satisfactory answer save the intercession of angels.

So: A soldier is going home for Thanksgiving from his base in coastal Carolina, headed for a town near Fort Knox. He knows he needs gas when he leaves, but does nothing about it save thinking he will fill up somewhere along the way. He is deep into night on the Blue Grass Parkway before he begins to worry about his fuel, and of course finds no station, or none open at that hour of the night. In a long wooded area, wholly unsettled, so common along thru-ways, he runs out of gas. He gets out and with his flashlight hopes to signal some car or semi to stop and help him. In a few moments, he hears a woman calling for help. His first reaction: it’s a trick of some sort, a ruse. She keeps calling. He has stopped, he now notes, by the side of a deep gorge or gully, and the woman has somehow driven off the highway and down into this low ground, for he can make out the bulk of a car. Meanwhile a truck stops and the two go to look—a car turned over on its side, the woman thrown out and her legs pinned beneath it. She does not seem seriously hurt, but she cannot move. Eventually, as is obvious, they get help, get the woman off to adequate care, and look to the matter of the driver having no gasoline.

The driver, as might be expected, is wholly shaken by the experience and concludes with finality that it was the work of angels. “It is the only satisfactory answer as to how come he would happen to run out of gas on a lonely stretch of highway precisely at the spot where this woman had driven off the road into a deep gully and out of sight, helplessly pinned there for hours on a cold night until this driver happened to stop by.” His conclusion, and mine for that matter, is that angels are involved. It is certainly as good an answer as saying that it was coincidence.

For there is a God. And there are angels.

To respond: “But if that were so, there’d be no accidents.” Which, of course, misses the point. It is the occasional interference that makes the point.

Christ did not heal all lepers. Only a few. He did not raise all the dead. Only a few. He did not heal all the diseased. Only a few. Now and then. Here and there. Yes, but enough to let it be known—something is going on here and you’d better take note of it.

No point then in asking, “Where were your angels at the World Trade Center? Where was the angel  in New Orleans?" Take Care. For all we know, he or they may have been at both. The data is lacking.

Like the proprietor of Windows on the World at the top of the World Trade Center, as he comes to work and, almost there, on impulse drops into a jeweler to check his crooked glasses. While he is at it, the building collapses, his restaurant gone forever. And he alone left to tell.

I think it silly to try to come up with conclusive answers to the hand of God or the lack of it in what happens—good or bad—day by day.

I’d rather see the world of angels as an aspect of God’s beauty and loveliness, not to say His care for the world. The conflict of good and evil—for there are bad angels and good—goes on in every heart at some level or other. The outcome of the struggle is significant. And this battle goes on all the time, in everyone, everywhere. And I am sure the angels, good and bad, are involved. And since I love the good and the beautiful, as you love the good and the beautiful, it is certain God is on our side.

This is the joy of the angelic world—their magnificence, their number, their power. And who dared show themselves in their love for Jesus at His coming in Mary, in Bethlehem, at the Jordan, in the desert, in Gethsemani, at the Rising, and who knows where else and when.

I am sure they are as close to us, to Gethsemani [abbey], to Kentucky and our land, the world, as ever they were. And that should be a joy to us.

If God “loves the beautiful warmth of your heart’s fire” —and He does—the angels do, too.  Amen.
 

1. This is a talk Fr. Matthew gave to his community of Gethsemani in their Chapter room, Sunday, September 11, 2005, at the request of the Abbot who was absent on a personal retreat, and thus not available to give his own usual Sunday Chapter talk to the monks

2. The Courrier-Journal is a Louisville, KY daily newspaper.