Today is the Catholic feast day of the Holy Guardian Angels. Angels are referenced throughout the Bible, and as a young child, I was taught that every individual soul has a guardian angel.

One description of the role angels play can be found in St. Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews:

“But to which of the angels has He ever said: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool?’ Are they not all ministering spirits sent to serve, for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?” Hebrews 1: 13-14

Angels are all around us, waiting to lead us to Your love.

St. Augustine of Hippo also wrote poignantly about angels. He described in detail their existence “beyond the firmament” — or in other words, beyond the veil that separates the physical and spiritual worlds. Here’s an excerpt:

“Other waters [and beings] there are above this firmament, I believe, immortal and kept free from earthly corruption. Let them praise Your name. Let the supercelestial peoples, who are Your angels, praise You, they who have no need to look up at this firmament, or by reading to know Your Word. They always behold Your face, and, without any syllables of time, they read upon it what Your eternal will decrees. They read Your will; they choose it; and they love it. They read forever, and what they read never passes away. For, by choosing and loving, they read the actual immutability of Your counsel. Their book is never closed, nor is their scroll folded up, because You Yourself are this to them, and You are this for eternity. For You have set them in order above this firmament, which You have made firm above the infirmity of a lower race, where they might look upwards and know Your mercy, telling in time of You who made all times.”1

Angels are all around us, desiring to reveal all that You are.

It is beautiful to ponder, how all of this works together.

1The Confessions of Saint Augustine, translated by John K. Ryan (New York: Image Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, 2014), pages 313-314.