WHY CARE ABOUT ANGELS? (FATHER’S FAITH NOTES: SEPTEMBER 5, 2021)
With all our focus on angels, you may be wondering, “Why? Why is it important to know about and have a relationship with these beings we can’t see?” One answer is – we don’t have a choice! Whether we care about the spiritual realm of angels or not, they care about us, for good and for ill. As St. Paul writes in the Letter to the Ephesians, “Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens (Ephesians 6:11-12).”
If that is true, and it is, then our choice is not whether to engage with “principalities”, “powers”, and “spirits” but whether to invoke the full help of the good angels in a struggle that affects us whether we choose it or not. When we pray to our Guardian Angel, to St. Michael, or to any of the other angels, we are asking them and giving them permission to engage in this spiritual struggle on our behalf. This is what we pray after every Mass at St. Michael’s when we invoke our patron and ask him to “defend us in battle”. We may not see clearly how these “evil spirits in the heavens” work to tempt us, challenge us, or steal our peace, but the angels do. And, by God’s grace, we can ask them to weigh in on our side.
Angels are sent to help us, to protect us, and to guide us in the spiritual realm that we struggle to engage with and to see. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, quoting St. Thomas Aquinas, “The angels work together for the benefit of us all”. By honoring them together as a parish, we are invoking their help so that, as St. Paul says, we can stand firm.