When we were in the early stages of preparing the Melbourne religious education texts, I was asked whether angels would be included in them. But how can we not include them? If the angels find a significant place in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (nos. 328-336, 391-395) religious educators, starting with parents, should teach that angels exist and explain their care for us. But we have to be clear what angels really are.

The holy angels are part of our Catholic Faith. They are found in the experience of Christians over the past two millennia and form part of our spiritual inheritance from Israel. The teaching Church, the Scriptures and tradition, and especially the liturgy all proclaim the reality of angels.

But what does the Catholic Church teach about angels? Basically it is quite simple and brief: angels exist and help us.

ANGELS EXIST

In the Nicene Creed we profess faith in "God the maker of all things seen and unseen". A more accurate translation of the creed would be "all things visible and invisible" because this does not mean only "unseen" creatures like microbes. It refers to the spiritual creation. The creed affirms that God creates a spirit order, which includes not only our human souls but pure spirits who are not embodied like we are. These pure spirits are "intelligent and free creatures", "personal and immortal creatures" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 311, 330) and are called "angels" because of their work, as "messengers" sent by God to us.

"Jesus Christ is the centre of the angelic world. They are his angels." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 331. When we read the Gospels and look back across the Old Testament, the presence of angels focuses on the coming of the Son of God in our human flesh. At his conception and birth, at his temptations and the agony in Gethsemane, finally in his future coming as Judge of all, the angels are serving their Lord. His blessed Mother Mary also is called the "Queen of Angels".

The Church only names three great angels or "archangels": St. Michael, St. Gabriel and St. Raphael, celebrated together on September 30. There are other candidates in Scripture such as Ariel, but the Church is cautious about naming these pure spirits. Angelic names are in fact only titles, describing their relationship with God or how they carry out his work in the visible universe. Michael means "Who is like God?" Gabriel means the strength or messenger of God. Raphael means the healing of God.
According to sacred tradition there are various levels of being in the angelic creation. Some Fathers of the Church described different levels in the hierarchy of angelic "choirs". In the prefaces of the eucharistic prayer at Mass, we adore the Holy Trinity joining the "angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven", including the "thrones, dominations and powers", higher beings who may have no direct relationship to us. They serve God in ways we do not yet understand.

ANGELS HELP US

However, in the Scriptures we learn that some pure spirits have a specific relationship with us. Our Lord teaches that each of us has a guardian angel when he warns people not to despise children because "in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 18:10). But notice the fascinating point Jesus Christ makes. At the same time that the guardian angels care for us here on earth they see God face to face in eternity. They enjoy the beatific vision. This breaks down crude ideas of angels following us around like friendly pets. In a way we cannot explain, they are with God and with us at exactly the same time. They form a bridge between time and eternity.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Saint Luke mentions a guardian angel. Saint Peter is freed from prison by an angel. But when he reaches a safe house and tries to gain admittance, his friends cannot believe that this really is Peter. They think the maid at the front door is seeing "his angel", that is, his guardian angel (Acts 12:15).

There is also a tradition that, not only individuals, but communities and nations have their own angel guardians. All the holy guardian angels are celebrated in the Roman Calendar on October 2.

OBJECTIONS

Some objections have been raised against angels. 1. that they are mythical, 2. that they are part of our psychology and 3. that they are super humans.

Some claim that the Jews adopted belief in angels from Persian or Assyrian mythology, that is, only after their exile in Babylon.

This academic argument brushes angels aside. But it is not so simple. Modern Old Testament research indicates that before the exile in Babylon Jews believed in angels and their role in temple worship. Later on, in the Second Century A.D. some Jewish scholars even reacted against an interest in angels, possibly because by that time they were so much a part of the faith of early Christians.

Jesus Christ clearly believed in angels and taught that they exist. They appear throughout the Gospel narratives and in the letters of Saint Paul. They crop up in every century in the lives of saints, including modern saints such as Saint Gemma Galgani and Blessed Padre Pio. To relegate them to Middle Eastern mythology would be reduce Christ our Lord to the level of a deluded man of his times and his saints would be ignorant or unstable people. One also wonders whether those who repeat this argument believe in a spiritual order at all - including the reality of the human soul.

It is interesting to note that angelic beings are known in other great world religions. While the Jewish and Christian traditions largely influence Islam in this regard, other religions seem to have developed a belief in angelic beings independently. This indicates the wider providence of God in all societies.

Some claim that angels are only symbolic figures, figments of human imagination to comfort us, like friendly fairies.

This is the psychological approach: the "angel in you" is a part of your personality that is projected somehow to comfort you, or that represents the better side of your personality. This opinion is represented by cartoons that depict the human conscience as an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil on the other. But the conscience is not like that. Again, this psychological approach has nothing to do with Christian revelation and the experience of Christians. The angels are beings, distinct from us, who relate to us, at times in surprising ways that are not particularly in line with our wishes or our comfort.

Some claim that, if angels exist, they would have to have huge wings with a massive breastbone, like a giant seagull!

This misses the essential point that angels are spirits, not material beings like us, with bodies. In the face of materialist mistakes, it seems best to remind children that angels do not need wings because they are pure spirits.

Scriptural imagery and art usually, not always, depict angels with wings, but pure spirits do not need material assistance to "fly". They can locate themselves instantly wherever they wish to be, or wherever God intends them to be. In fact we cannot even use the word "locate". Pure spirits do not occupy space, as Saint Thomas Aquinas is supposed to have indicated with his question: how many angels can sit on the tip of a needle?

"SENSITIVE NEW AGE ANGELS"

Today it is hard to ignore angels when the New Age movement is promoting them, with recurring coverage in films and television. This is another reason why they must find some place in modern catechetics. But these "new age angels" inhabit their own realm of fluffy clouds and bad art. They pop up in science fiction and adorn sugary little books and calendars. This trend can confuse us because the "sensitive new age angel" is not what the Catholic Church really teaches about angels.

The "new age angel" sometimes turns out to be a dead human being who "turned into an angel", echoing the nonsense once told to bereaved children, "Daddy has gone to be an angel". But people do not turn into angels. There is an essential difference between human beings and angelic beings. When we die, we do not turn into some other being.

ANGELS AMONG US

Hollywood has also promoted the opposite fantasy, that angels can turn into people. This takes a melodramatic turn when a male angel falls in love with a human being and "falls" down into human nature so he can marry her. There are traces of this mythology in Jewish tradition and it is a faint echo of the real fall of some angels into demonic status.

However, angels becoming people is based on encounters with angels in a visible human form. Saint Mark described a "young man" at the empty tomb of Our Lord (Mark 16:5). Saint Luke described angelic messengers as "men in dazzling apparel" at the empty tomb and the ascension (Luke 24:4; Acts 1:10). But pure spirits have no gender and cannot reproduce themselves, even if they are described as "young men" in Scripture. More recent appearances of angels, such as to the children at Fatima, have involved a beautiful human figure. Perhaps God gives visible kind of bodily form to angels in certain chosen situations so that those present can "see" and hence relate to a pure spirit who is otherwise invisible.

I have also heard accounts of "angels among us" in human disguise. Some of these incidents may only be revealed when the witnesses directly involved have died. At least this form of angelic intervention is possible. It finds its roots in Old Testament traditions, for example when Abraham encounters the "three men" at the oak of Mamre (Genesis 18).

DEVOTION TO ANGELS

Angels in films and television may provide touching insights into angelic care for us, but they often fail to relate the angels to God. The whole Christian tradition is a God-centred understanding of angels. They are totally dependent on God. In some cases, "New Age angels" become substitutes for God and that raises a problem the early Church encountered - angel worship, that is, turning angels into gods.

We dare not worship angels. As the First Commandment teaches, there is only One God. Angelic beings cannot be treated as gods. That would be idolatry. In Revelation 19: 9-10 there is a warning against this kind of angel worship, written when the early Church encountered angel cults. But the problem is not locked in the past. Recently a pious movement in Austria was disciplined by Rome for going too far in this direction, that is, by giving new names to angels and by promoting exaggerated devotion to them.

What then should be the limits of devotion to angels? We do not worship them. But we certainly join them when we celebrate the liturgy. Read through your missal and note the recurring references to angels in the prayers. They are present among us when we pray at other times, joining us especially in eucharistic adoration and personal prayer. We should invoke their help in those moments and be aware of their presence with us. We should also cultivate a sense of the loving presence of our own angel guardians and seek their protection and assistance in times of trial, temptation and fear.

Devotion to the angels is not childish prayer. It is good for adults to be aware that, in his loving providence, God has given each of us a companion being, a spirit sent "to light and guard, to rule and guide".

Awareness of angels also keeps us in our place. It is an antidote to human pride. The existence of angels reminds us that at present the human person is not the pinnacle of creation. In the words of Psalm 8 we have been made "a little less than the angels", but like them we wait in joyful hope to be crowned "with glory and honour".