Their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly father to intercede for them. The Church commemorates today the holy, guardian angels. It is a commemoration of the long held belief that upon creation, God assigns to each of us an angel who acts as our protector and guide during our journey on earth. The Scripture is awash with stories of angels who came to the aid of God’s people who found themselves in desperate/impossible situations. In the Old Testament, we see the involvement of God’s angels in Israel’s journey through the desert following their departure from Egypt. When the Israelites were threatened by Pharaoh’s army as they camped beside the Sea of Reeds, God stationed an angel between the two camps to protect the Israelites (cf. Exodus 14:19). And in today’s first reading, we see God promising the Israelites who are en-route to the Promised Land protection and guidance by God’s angel. In the New Testament, we read about angels intervening to guide and assist the apostles in their missionary activities (cf. Acts 5:19, 10:3, 12:7, 17:23).
To say that each created human person has a guardian angel is to say that God continues his creative care for creation. The uncontainable love which propels God to create is the very love that continues to accompany creation in its journey back towards the Creator. Moreover, God would want nothing to frustrate his creative plan for the universe. God knows that the evil one is constantly prowling upon God’s creation (cr. 1 Peter 5:8) in order to lead them astray (cf. Job 1:6ff). The guardian angel is assigned each human person to help him/her circumvent the traps of the evil one so as to faithfully make his/her way back to the Creator. May we remain open to God’s guiding us through our guardian angels as they lead us to eternal life.