Angelic Help

Angelic Help

Last week I wrote about the first of two unexpected presents which I had just received: the picture of a Hallowe’en witch and her cat.  The second was a birthday present from Mairi and Bill, two friends who live in Linlithgow, not far from Edinburgh.  Mairi apologised for not sending it sooner, but in actual fact I was delighted when I opened the parcel to see how timeous its arrival was!  It contained these two items: a lovely silver pendant and a little 
notebook, both showing the spiky sculpture on top of Saint Michael’s church, Linlithgow.

The sculptor, Geoffrey Clarke, was asked to create a new aluminium replacement for the previous stone sculpture of a crown. (The church is beside the former royal palace.)  To me, it looks more like a collection of weapons, with a tall spear in the middle.                          

That would be appropriate, because Saint Michael is an unusual saint – not a holy person who was canonised by the Pope, but an angel, in fact an Archangel, who is referred to as the leader of all the other angels in God’s army, in the fight against evil.  So, having recently written my post Protection Needed, I was glad to wear my Saint Michael pendant at Hallowe’en!

Now, in this age of rapid advances in technology, many people would, I dare say, scoff at the very idea of angels.  And yet research has shown that there are many who do believe in angels, even if they would hesitate to admit it in public. I remember being very surprised to hear my practical down-to-earth mother tell me, one summer evening at dusk (a good time for confidences!), that she had once seen an angel.  It was when she was expecting my sister, Freda, who is nine years younger than me.  Having lost three premature babies, Mum was very anxious about this pregnancy.  But one night she suddenly saw a golden angel at the foot of the bed, with the reassuring message that this time all would be well.

The word ‘angel’ means ‘messenger’ – specifically one bearing a message from God.  The most famous case is the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel told a young virgin, Mary, that she would have a son – Jesus.  The Italian artist Fra Angelico painted several variations on this theme.  I love how he depicted Gabriel in various colour schemes, each with wings matching his different robes!  I have a copy of one on my bedroom wall, just above my bed.

However, angels don’t necessarily have wings.  Sometimes they appear suddenly, in ordinary human form, then, having provided help and/or reassurance to someone in need, they disappear again just as suddenly.  This once happened to me at a very challenging time, when I was fervently praying for help.

It was early on a Saturday morning and I had just wakened up at the sound of the teamaker alarm clock beside the bed.  After yet another operation to remove cancerous cells from his bladder, Bob was still in pain and passing blood, so I was upstairs in Sally’s single bed.  (She was then at university.) Bob, Linda, Michael and Bob’s mother - who now lived with us because of her Parkinson’s disease – were all still asleep.  I poured out a cup of tea and sat up straight, cradling its warmth and marshalling my thoughts.

What did I have to do today?  The usual Saturday jobs: at least two loads of washing; tidying and cleaning the house.  Linda and Michael would help – but would there be time to cook extra stew for the freezer? or to weed the garden?  The ironing could wait until tomorrow evening, but I urgently needed to drive to the supermarket for next week’s supplies. After that I would like to take the car to the car wash – but I’d better not stay away from home too long, just in case Bob might once again need emergency post-operative care at the hospital. And in any case, I remembered that I had a pile of exam papers to correct!  Somehow or other I would have to find a couple of hours before bedtime tomorrow to mark the French Listening Test so as to have the results ready for my colleagues on Monday morning.  I made a determined effort to calm my over-active mind as, holding the still-warm cup, I prayed for strength.

But suddenly I found that I did not need to go through my usual relaxation routine.  With lightning speed, I ‘saw’ myself – that is, my conscious self – leave my body and soar outside.  Up, up I was rising, over the tall cypresses in our garden, swiftly down the nearby street to join the main road into the town, then, gathering momentum, down Ayr High Street to the harbour.  A swift left turn, and I was following the River Ayr to the sea.  Soaring across the Firth of Clyde then over the mountainous island of Arran, I ‘reached’ the Kilbrannan Sound between the south end of Arran and the Mull of Kintyre.  Ah, what an exhilarating sense of weightlessness and freedom!

All at once I was aware that I was no longer alone.  Three or four beings of light surrounded me.  Using a silent means of communication, they imparted a message of comfort: that I was never alone or without support.  They had come to remind me that my present difficulties were all part of the challenges which I had agreed to face so that my soul could progress.  They were my friends, and were supporting me.  I was filled with a wonderful sense of love and belonging.

Then, their message delivered, they sped off again and I also swiftly returned by the way I had come, until my inner self was back in my body, and I found myself sitting up in bed, still holding my cup of tea.  That proved to me that this powerful vision had not been a mere dream.  If I had fallen asleep, even for a second, my fingers would have relaxed, letting the cup drop and spilling the tea, as had happened on several previous occasions…

So that, dear blog readers, is why I believe in angels - because of my own experience!  Some of you may have read the above account already, in my book, Joyful Witness, but I make no apology for repeating it, because I think it could be an important source of comfort to anyone in deep distress.

Jesus once said of a child, “Never despise one of these little ones; I tell you, they have their guardian angels in heaven.” (Matthew 18, v10) He did not say that children’s guardian angels left them as the children grew older!

William Wordsworth gave this a lot of thought.  As we leave childhood behind, we become engrossed in material, rather than spiritual, matters, and are less open to angelic messages.  In his Ode: Intimations of Immortality, he wrote: 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting … Heaven lies about us in our infancy!  Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing Boy, but he beholds the light, and whence it flows, he sees it in his joy … At length the Man perceives it die away, and fade into the light of common day.

Another quotation which I have loved since my teen-age years is from Francis Thompson’s poem The Kingdom of God (In no Strange Land):

                                                                                                                                                              The angels keep their ancient places; Turn but a stone, and start a wing!  'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces that miss the many-splendoured thing.                                                                                                                                   

But I have found that even people who say they don’t believe in angels are willing to make an exception when it comes to the Parking Angel!  They agree that sometimes, in desperation to find a parking place, they have muttered, “Oh, God, where am I to park?” whereupon they see another car pull out from a nearby space, immediately solving the problem!  However, they usually admit that this happened when they were on some kind of mission to help somebody!  When I told my French friend Pascal about this, he looked at me incredulously – almost pityingly!  But a few weeks later, he wrote to me, saying that he now believed in the Parking Angel!

Try it for yourself, the next time you are looking for a parking space when you are trying to help/visit someone in need!

Deo gratias