The trouble with angels

The trouble with angels is that they are always with us but hard to know. Now as the Christmas season approaches, angels come to life in the carols that tell of their appearance to shepherds to announce the birth of Christ. They begin by telling the shepherds not to be afraid.

It’s a timely warning. The angels of the heavenly host are giants, clothed in robes of pure light bright enough to turn night into day. And their voices joined in harmony must surely hold the listener spellbound. Or so I imagine. I have never seen or heard an angel.

That’s the trouble. Maybe it’s just me with a spiritual antenna that needs adjusting to pick up the angelic frequency. There was an angel once on top of our Christmas tree, but we traded her in for a star. There was nothing theological about the swap, just a practical decision because the star had a wider base that gave it a more secure purchase on the treetop.

Of course, there are guardian angels, those spiritual body guards that haul us out of the soup or prevent us to begin with from falling in. I must have been in second grade when I was introduced to mine. We even learned a little prayer to greet him or her and ask for their protection through the day. I am sorry to say I haven’t been very good about keeping in touch.

Through the eyes of almost any faith, angels or similar spiritual intermediaries between the Divine and the human are real entities that touch our lives in profound ways. They can be found in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism and are usually grouped in categories or choirs defined by their function and their closeness to God.

Christian religions describe nine choirs of angels beginning with the mighty seraphim, cherubim, and thrones who are closest to God. They are said to guard divine mysteries, reflect God’s glory, and manifest divine judgment.

The middle choir of dominions, virtues, and powers oversee and protect the order of the universe. If you know anything about angels from religious texts or popular culture, you are probably more familiar with principalities, archangels, and guardian angels who are closest to humans.

These are the ones responsible for watching over nations, peoples, and institutions, delivering important messages, and making sure you swerve in time to avoid that car that just ran the red light.

The ministry of angels is a nice comforting thought, and just because a thought brings comfort, it doesn’t mean it is not true. Through the eyes of psychology, angels or the idea of angels qualifies as a Jungian archetype, a cultural manifestation of a universal human experience, in this case, our need for guidance and protection.

That need generates the universal idea of a spiritual protector who takes concrete shape first in religious teachings and then in the wider cultural milieu of language, art, music, and films.

Either way you look at it, angels in one form or another are here to stay. If they are real spiritual entities, they can have direct effects on the material world to protect us from harm. When you escape a ruinous outcome through no effort of your own, it is not unreasonable to assume that forces beyond your control played a part in your rescue. Perhaps it was the Divine itself, maybe the intercession of your favorite saint, or your late father looking out for you from another realm. Maybe even your guardian angel.

As cultural expressions of our psychological need for protection, angels can activate our self-protective instincts and direct our energy toward safe, sane, and moral behavior. When you take action to work for a goal, to break a bad habit or build a good one, perhaps you are connecting with your ego ideal or, as Lincoln called it, “the better angels of our nature.”

Real beings or merely helpful archetypes? It’s hard to know, and I am afraid Hollywood has made it even harder. I know the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life” is a classic and deservedly so.

Fans tune in every Christmas to see how Clarence, a guardian angel, cures the Jimmy Stewart character of his wish never to have been born. In a flash of genius, Clarence shows the depressed fellow a movie about how much worse his world would have been if he had not been a part of it.

Granted there’s a lot about angels we will never know, but really? Clarence was a human and became an angel after he died? And he must earn his wings? Sorry, it just doesn’t work that way. Angels are angels and humans are humans. Angels come with their wings intact and they are an ontologically distinct order of being from humans. How do I know? There’s a lot about angels I do not know, but some things just do not make sense.

The trouble with angels is more likely our trouble than theirs. If they are hard to understand, perhaps we are not paying attention. If we want angels in our lives, they are there through the eyes of faith or, if we prefer, as archetypes of all the qualities we associate with them.

They are guides, protectors, helpers, exemplars of virtue, conduits of inspiration, bearers of Divine glory, and messengers from the spiritual realm. Pay attention, call them and they will come.