Homily
for the Memorial of the
Guardian
Angels
Oct.
2, 2025
Collect
Christian
Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.
Guardian Angel Guards a Child's Sleep
(Melchoir Paul von Deschwanden)
“O God, you … are
pleased to send your holy angels to guard us” (Collect).
We praise God
today, and we thank him because he’s given us angels, messengers of his divine
providence, to protect and guide us.
Angels appear often in the sacred Scriptures in such roles as well as
bringing messages from heaven, and they continue to fill such roles in the
Church. E.g., in France they’ve just
begun to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the appearance of St. Michael to Joan
of Arc.
In recent decades,
we’ve become more aware of the dark powers at work in the world. Pope Francis frequently warned about them,
and the office of exorcist is kept busy in many dioceses. We’re mystified as to why angels, beholding
God, would have turned away from him, become devils, and work to separate us
from God and one another. There’s
certainly a warning against pride there, the most capital of the capital sins.
But we’re glad there
are other spirits who remain loyal to their Creator and loyal also to us, our
allies in resisting evil and discerning our path toward happiness, the goal of
our lives. As each of us has his own
path according to God’s plan, isn’t it fitting that each has his own heavenly
guide?
As the collect
says, the angels defend us by their protection.
That can be even physical protection—there are stories from Don Bosco’s
life attesting to that[1]; so we
do well to pray to them for that. But
especially it means moral protection, and we do even better to pray for that. When we were young, we all learned a prayer
to the Guardian Angel, didn’t we?
When our Savior
was born, the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest.” They do that continually, and with their help
and by the grace of our Savior, we’ll eventually join them in choir, “united in
exultant adoration.” May they help us
attain that goal.
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