Can’t you see them? You, Dear Parent, can’t you see the angelic and demonic all around? And why not? You see germs on a public water fountain. You see danger lying ahead in an empty street.
You see sickness coming on the face of your little one even before an army of doctors could. You see attitude in the body language of your teenager that speaks only to you.
You see all kinds of things that are there, even if the naked eye doesn’t actually see it. Your eyes are mere cameras, capturing light and darkness. Your soul, however, is able to capture far more than the material realm.
So I ask again: can’t you see them, those countless angels governing the material universe? That is right. There is an angel that makes the world turn around, not unlike the ancient Greeks believed that Apollo in his chariot pulled the sun across the sky. There is an angel that holds the earth in space, not unlike Atlas did on his shoulders.
God Almighty assigns armies of angels to hold all the beautiful constellations of stars in their beautiful pattern in the sky, not unlike Zeus assigned the virgin goddess Astraia to the constellation Virgo.
Holy Mother Church has long taught that while God put the laws of nature into the universe, He likewise assigns angels to govern them. Truly, it is angelic power that enables gravity to keep your little one’s feet firmly planted on the ground and keeps the planets in orbit around the sun.
In St. Michael and the Angels, we find a magnificent explanation of Church teaching on what has traditionally been called “The Empire of the Angels”:
According to St. Augustine, there are angels who preside over every visible thing and over each different species of creatures in the world, whether animate or inanimate. If God were to open our eyes and show us the angels under sensible forms, what wonders we should discover! [1]
Let us consider that all the comfort and benefit we derive from earth, air, water and fire, from the heavens, from animals – in fact from every creature, comes to us through the agency of the holy angels, who are God’s faithful ministers.
St. Thomas incidentally gives us another proof of angelic strength. He teaches that each great star, planet and sun, every heavenly body, even the greatest, has its own Guardian Angel to keep it in its course to and prevent any possible aberration. . . . To prevent disorder and confusion in the thousands of heavenly bodies whirling through space with inexpressible speed, God gives each one, in His all-wise Providence, an angel to keep it in its course and avert the dire calamities that would result where it to stray from its allotted orbit.
Can you see them now? Yes, you must invoke with the eyes of faith. But they are there, Dear Parent. They are all around.
Next time you feed your little one a vegetable or fruit, consider this: an angel used his own hands to mingle the soil’s nutrients and ushered them into the roots of the plant; and another dangled his fingers, like a puppet master, to make rain gently fall on the crops; and another whispered into the minds of bees (for they do not have ears) to fly and pollinate this plant and another.
And as a great conductor lifts his hands to raise the sound of the orchestra, another angel called forth the sprouting of the plant, raising it from the earth and into the very sun beam that his brother angel bore on his wings for ninety-two million miles.
There is no blessing in your life, Christian Reader, that has not been touched by the hands, the wing tips, or the hem of heavenly robes belonging to God’s courtiers. Do they not deserve your recognition? Your gratitude? Your honor, praise, and devotion?
Think how you honor your child’s doctor, teacher, or godparents. And what have they done compared to the heavenly beings who perform innumerable miracles a day just to keep your child alive one more day!
[1] St. Michael and the Angels (TAN Books, 1983), p. 10.
This article is taken from a chapter in Parenting for Eternity by Conor Gallagher which is available from TAN Books.
