Monday's readings for the feast day honor Michael, Gabriel and Raphael -- angels also called Saints!!!--remind me of the many times I have been asked to write a letter of recommendation or make a telephone call on behalf of someone seeking college admission or a position in a firm. No doubt many of you here for this liturgy this morning have found yourself making such request or being asked to make similar intercessions where you can.
We learn from our earliest years on this earth in most instances of life there is a simple sentence that sums up so much of human experience and achieving goals. The sentence: "It’s just a matter of who you know!"
We become so caught up in the storms and challenges of life that we often fail to look beyond the friend, the boss, the Pastor, the counselor, and, perhaps, the government representative from Mayor to President. Who can best help me achieve the desire that I have, the need the is so important, or the goal that would make my life so different?
Today’s feast honor the three angels named in sacred scripture is a reminder, at least to me and my giving little more attention to angels than their place on Christmas cards or suspended mid-air over a Bethlehem manger, that I may have been letting special aides go unused in my life. A good hour on the Internet last night chasing down these invisible yet present creations was truly rewarding and a good refresher course. I did read one attempt at understanding angels that was interesting. One writer holds the position that "the spirit world is more real than the material and visible world." He wrote that our experience of that world might be likened to our experience of electricity: most of us do not understand what electricity it but we know its there.
Angels, we learn from several places in scripture, are God’s messengers. In the Bible there are some 300 references to angels. Artists render them more in the feminine whereas scripture writers name them in the masculine.
Angels we learn from the Book of Job were worshiping God as he was creating the world. We know that one of the evil angels, Lucifer, was in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were there.
So, if we stop to think about it, perhaps the spirits we might indulge in when we feel the need for support and care would best be the angels God has created for us. Remember the following words?
Angel of God,my guardian dear,
to whom God's love commits me here,
ever this day,be at my side
to light and guard,
to rule and guide. Amen.
