An Angel of God is to Light and Guard to Rule and Guide

For your edification here is a snippet from the

Public Domain Sermons from the Latins
by Dr. St. Robert Bellarmine, translated by James Joseph Baxter

First Sunday: Angel Guardians
Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 18 

Brethren, with the single exception of Christ’s soul, all others have had and have their own duly appointed angel guardian. From the first moment of its creation until the settlement of its final destiny the angel of God is by its side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. In joy and sorrow, through virtue and through sin, the faithful monitor is ever there, beseeching, prompting, or applauding. From the lost soul he parts reluctant at the gates of hell or stands triumphant at the heavenly portals to welcome in his charge. It helps us to realize the value of a human soul to think how God has hedged her roundabout with safeguards and protectors.

A soul is God’s most precious treasure, which He needs must leave for a time in a foreign land, but which meantime He guards with almost incredible care and vigilance. God’s heart is where His treasure is, and the eyes of His providence are ever on her. The law of Nature, and the divine and human laws are as three walls, or rather a trench, a moat, and battlement, thrown round the soul to guard her from her enemies. The innumerable benefits bestowed on her are as so many chains of steel, binding the soul to God, while the law of Christian charity, ” Love thy neighbor as thyself,” makes all the world her champion.

But men are weak and oftentimes corrupt and traitorous, and so, lest man should fail in duty to his fellow man, and robbers steal the treasure, God posts a guard of angels of sure fidelity and matchless strength. How precious must that treasure be that God doth guard so jealously! What lofty dignity is man’s! Christ said: ” Despise ye not even the lowliest of My little ones, for I say to you their angels are ever gazing on the face of My Father who is in heaven.” The humblest child is as a princeling to his heavenly Father, and always has his guard and tutor by his side.

Not only to one but to many of His angels has God entrusted us, for besides the individual guardian of each soul, there is another for each parish, city, state, and nation — an angelic hierarchy. Thus the prophet Daniel speaks of the angels of the Jews„ the Greeks and Persians. Besides, St. John in the Apocalypse, writing to the Asiatic Bishops, styles them the seven angels of the Church in Asia, and Christ, concerning John the Baptist, quotes the words of Malachias: ” Behold I send My angel before thy face who shall prepare thy way before thee.” Bishops, pastors, therefore, and preachers of the word of God, as well as parents and pedagogues, are by reason of their office, angel guardians.

Behold then the vast array of visible and invisible forces God has marshalled in the cause of righteousness and our soul’s salvation! How happens it, you ask, that, notwithstanding, many souls are lost? Ah, the devil has his angels too, and he hath given them charge over us, to drag us down, if possible, into sin and hell. Angels of darkness invisible and visible too, for every foul blasphemer and perverter of mankind is Satan’s accredited agent, even though he believes and tries to prove that devils do not exist. God in His wisdom permits such things to be to prove us and enhance our heavenly reward. But while He merely tolerates the devil and his works, the whole activity of the guardian angels is by God’s express command. Not but that the angels are right eager for the work, for loving God, they love God’s images, our souls, for whom He died, and ardently desiring our salvation, they closely guard us in all our ways.

Along the steep and rocky path of life, by awful precipices and over yawning chasms, up the narrow way of virtue, they lead us heavenward. Ah, how many times we have stumbled, aye, and fallen! How often had our fall been final were not God’s sweet angel there to lend a helping hand! The way of life is hard, and for the most part tiresome, but for the just man doubly so. The wicked ship their oars and give themselves to carousal and debauch while drifting toward the cataract, but the virtuous must pull up-stream and strain incessantly.

There is no pause or break in our life’s journey. As men aboard ship, whether they sit or sleep, are ever moving on, so on the road of life even when we rest neglectfully or slumber in forgetfulness, we are ever moving on. Things glide by us and are forgot, the joyful and the sorrowful alike. So on a journey pleasant fields and stately homes and barren wastes are seen and passed and left behind. We step in the footprints of those who went before, and others follow after us in ours, and where those were but yesterday we are to-day, and where we are to-day others will be to-morrow.

Ask the money in your pocket how many men have called it theirs; ask your land how many owners it has had since time began, and learn from them that life is a journey — that man has here no permanent abiding-place. How hard is the climb to eminence! yet pontiffs even and kings are barely seated on their thrones when lo! they must make way for others. And woe to us should we forget we are but passing through! Woe to us if we should load ourselves down with worldly goods, or gaze too long or lovingly on the things we pass, for the night of sin will overtake us and those robbers and wild beasts — the devils — work our ruin. Angels and ministers of grace defend us, for woeful need have we, poor wayfarers, of their guidance and protection!

Brethren, in all religion there is no doctrine more poetical, more beautiful, more touching, and consoling than the doctrine of the angel guardians. It brings home to us our dignity as God’s own children, His tender, fatherly love, the existence of innumerable foes to our salvation, our duty to cooperate with grace, and the purity and sanctity that should mark our lives, living, acting, speaking, thinking as we ever do in the presence of our angels. The effect of such a doctrine should certainly be to make salvation easier, and God forgive the sacrilegious hand that fain would rob us of it. Let us learn and frequently repeat that prayer:

So will our angels shield us from harm here and when our hour of dissolution comes, their hands will bear us as they bore the soul of Lazarus onward, upward, heavenward, into Abraham’s bosom.