OCTOBER 2 is liturgically celebrated as the Memorial of our Guardian Angels, reminding us of this tremendous reality that we have these powerful spiritual beings who are assigned to each one of us to help us in our earthly life and, most importantly, to connect us with God.
The gospel reading of this memorial somehow tells us of the crucial role these guardian angels play in our life. (cfr. Mt 18,1-5,10) In it, we are made to understand that there is a connection between being child-like and being great in heaven, and why the angels are important in our life.
When the disciples asked Christ about who is the greatest in heaven, Christ placed a child in their midst and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.” And he further said, “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.”
A little later, he again said, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”
These words are worth considering very seriously because in them Christ somehow tells us the important role angels play in our effort to becoe child-like even as we grow in age and experience.
Let’s remember that angels are spiritual beings who upon their creation have made the eternal decision to be with God. There are also spiritual beings who upon their creation have made the opposite decision whose effect remains with them forever. These are the devils.
That the angels of children “always look upon the face of my heavenly Father,” as Christ said, can mean that these children who still are not in the age of reason, are always connected and guided by God. They are yet incapable of separating themselves from God.
In our case, since we already have our own mind and have accumulated a lot of knowledge and experience, we should try our best to be humble so as to be like children, always guided by the angels who are always on the side of God.
In other words, to be child-like is to be guided always by our guardian angels who will always connect us with God. There is a connection between being child-like and being with God through our guardian angels. We should not downplay the role of angels in our life, taking them for granted or, worse, considering them as unreal or just fictional literary devices, etc.
This is a truth of our Christian faith that we should always remember and act on. We definitely have to train ourselves how to be child-like and how to connect with our guardian angels all the time. Christ told his disciples that they had to humble themselves to become child-like, for the obvious reason that they—and us—are notorious for regarding ourselves as mature and totally independent, with hardly any need for God.
It would be helpful that everyday, we have the habit of consciously entering into a close engagement with our guardian angels. We should not dare to face our day simply relying on our own human powers. Each of us is assigned a guardian angel to connect us with God, and vice-versa, for God to enter into our lives, since these spiritual beings are God’s messengers to us.
