“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.”[1]

George Eliot

She stands with hands clasped and head bowed in prayer vigil facing the bedroom window of our disabled son Erik. The life-sized alabaster statue of a winged angel appeared on our garden patio thirty years ago. I have no idea where it came from. Who placed it there? Years ago, Erik would have had horrendous seizures during the night. His bed was next to the window. My bed was a few feet away. In the darkness Erik would awaken with a gasp. The bed would shake. Erik curled up in a spasm of contorted muscles. He struggled to breathe, as his throat and lungs were seizing. I placed my body over him and held on to his flailing arms. I pulled his nostrils up to open the airway. This went on for eight minutes. If it didn’t stop, we would have to call the paramedics. The seizure slowly subsided. I looked out the bedroom window to see the angel statue illuminated by a full moon. It seemed that light emanated from within the figure. These night terrors were common for many years. Thankfully, with new medications, a vegus nerve implant, and recent brain surgery, today Erik has minimal seizures. The alabaster garden angel continues her prayer vigils. Above Erik’s bed is a Russian icon of Saint Michael the Archangel.

As children, you and I may have been told we have guardian angels to watch over us, especially when we are anxious about the night. As adults, tutored by materialist science, we should let go of such creatures of our imagination. Or should we?

In my forty-five years of college teaching on the religions of the world, my agenda was to open the minds and hearts of my students to the spiritual treasures of the world’s religions, and the stories of mystical spiritual transformations. We have a deep inner longing to connect with a transcendent Presence. Most of the world’s religions share encounters with angels.

“Angel” can refer to a physical spiritual being or a holy presence of the divine. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptures affirm that angels are real. They appear in times of desperation or spiritual transition. Western art and music are filled with allusions to angels. Remember the music of Christmas. In the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, we find this affirmation: “from infancy to death human life is surrounded by their (guardian angels’) watchful care and intercession. Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life.”[2]

Conservative Christians affirm the real presence of God’s angels. Progressive, liberal Christians may see angels as a special presence of God, coming as strengthening grace.

Spiritual writer Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI, counsels:

“Those who believe that angels are real have a strong case. Even if we just look at the origins and dimensions of physical creation (whatever scientific version of this you subscribe to) mystery immediately dwarfs our imaginative capacities. It is all too huge to grasp! We know now that there are billions of universes (not just planets), and we know now that our planet earth, and we on this planet, are the tiniest of minute specks inside the unthinkable magnitude of God’s creation. If this is true, and it is, then this is hardly the time to be skeptical about the extent of God’s creation, believing that we, humans, are what is central and that there can be no personified realities beyond our own flesh and blood. Such thinking is narrow, both from the point of view of faith and from the perspective of science itself.”[3]

What is behind our skepticism about mystical experiences, such as encounters with angels? We now live in a rational, secular culture that is suspicious of religious experience. If religion can be defined as “that which connects all of life together,” there was a time when all aspects of daily life were connected to God. In medieval Paris, France, this was true. There was no separation between the sacred and secular. It was an enchanted, spiritually charged world.

With the philosophical movement of the Enlightenment, scientists found knowledge in the Book of Nature rather than the dogma of the Bible. Philosopher Rene Descartes sparked a seismic shift from religious orthodoxy to the primacy of individual conscience.[4]

German sociologist Max Weber revealed this process of the demystification of the modern world. Nature was no longer inviting mystical contemplation. Instead, human reason and the scientific method studied material systems. Descartes warned that this shift from an enchanted world to the world of science requires rational control, a “buffered self” against felt sentiments.

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor writes,

“The buffered self is the agent who no longer fears demons, spirits, and magic forces. More radically, these no longer impinge; they don’t exist for him; whatever threat or other meaning they proffer doesn’t ‘get it’ from him.”

“This super buffered self….is not only not ‘got at’ by demons and spirits; he is also utterly unmoved by aura of desire. In a mechanistic universe, and in a field of functionally understood passion, there is no more room for such an aura. There is nothing it could correspond to. It is just a disturbing, supercharged feeling which somehow traps us until we can come to our senses and take on our full buffered identity.”[5]

In this skeptical, rational world, you would think that a discussion about angels would be quickly dismissed. Not so.

Anglican theologian Jane Williams reveals.

“In what we think about angels, it is as though we allow ourselves access to need that normally we would deny or suppress. Angels give us a way of expressing our longing for beings who are more powerful than ourselves, and who care for us.”[6]

Peter Stanford, in his excellent book, Angels: A History, shares

“In a 2016 poll of two thousand people, one in ten Britons (have said) they have experienced the presence of an angel, while one in three, like my mother, remain convinced that they have a guardian angel.”

“While belief in God is on the wane, belief in angels is flying high. One survey reports that 21 per cent of Britons who never participate as worshippers in religious services, as well as l7 per cent who describe themselves as atheists, say they believe in angels.”[7]

According to a Gallup poll, in 2004, 78% of Americans and 56% of Canadians believe in angels.[8]

Let’s step back then from our normally skeptical stance, anchored in doubt and ready to belittle the heritage of personal mystical experiences and encounters with angels and see what happens.

1990. I returned to my psychiatrist, Robert Phillips MD, in Orange, California, to help me with depression related to our son Erik’s many health crises. After several sessions, Dr. Bob concluded that my issues had a spiritual dimension. He sent me across the street to the Center for Spiritual Development of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Orange. Here is where I met spiritual director Sister Jeanne Fallon CSJ.

The adobe-colored cottage next to the Mother House of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Orange contained rooms for spiritual direction. I remember entering the first time feeling like I was carrying a medical prescription for a treatment, which was called “spiritual direction.” I anticipated something between private confession and theological interrogation. Sister Jeanne welcomed me in a formal, professional manner. She had just returned from ten years of missionary work in Papua New Guinea.

Sister Jeanne invited me to talk about my life with God. I unpacked the circuitous journey. After twenty years as a parish priest, you would think that I could have been more expressive and articulate. Whatever I said came out of my head rather than my heart. She invited me to work with her on the 19^th Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a 16^th century Spanish mystic and founder of the Jesuits. It would involve following Ignatius’ curriculum of meditating on a different scripture passage every day and meeting with Sister Jeanne once a week for reflection. We would do this for a year. It sounded like an organized spiritual work-out and since I had been doing my physical exercise routines for twenty years at the YMCA, I responded well to structured programs.

When one begins meditation for the first time or after a long absence, it starts out quiet and sedate. After a few minutes all that inner chatter begins to heat up. “Don’t forget to send a birthday card to your brother; the parish newsletter is due tomorrow; you need to call for a prescription refill.” Meditating on scripture was a new thing for me.

In seminary at Berkeley in the late 1960s, scripture studies were dominated by the rational, critical, scrutinizing mindset of the Enlightenment. I had a New Testament professor who was an atheist. The school said this was OK as he fostered critical thinking. Seminary fed the head with facts and a sense of doubt and skepticism about orthodox Christian doctrine. My life changed forever as I entered into these daily scripture mediations, which led me through the prophesies of Messiah and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Meditating for forty-five minutes each day became a welcome habit. Rather than analyzing the scripture from my seminary training, I asked the Lord to reveal to me what he wanted me to hear. Ignatius directed me to open my imagination to each Bible scene, to enter and to participate in what was going on. After each meditation, I did something mindless like washing the dinner dishes or mowing the lawn. Then I wrote down in a journal a reflection on the meditation, which I shared each week with Sister Jeanne.

The change I experienced was moving from head to heart and to be able to sense that Jesus was right there with me as a daily companion. I went to seminary to study Jesus. Now I was meeting Jesus again for the first time. No longer analyzing the scripture passage, I could commune with these words as if they were written across the centuries for me to hear today. Whenever I proclaim the Easter Gospel readings, this passage reminds me:

“…these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”[9]

During this year of immersion in scripture meditation on the life of Jesus, our family life continued. Erik was in and out of crises. Things could dramatically change in an instant. One minute we would be having dinner; the next minute we would be in the ER. Sister Jeanne recommended that I go on a retreat somewhere in the wilderness to be alone in silence and solitude and listen for the Lord’s presence.

Thus, I began thirty years of desert retreats every Advent and Lent in the Eastern Sierra of California. I calendared the retreats well ahead of time. My parish and Janice were supportive.

“Only after we have let the desert do its full work in us will angels finally come and minister to us.”[10]

Trevor Herriot, The Economy of Sparrows.

I arrived in Lone Pine, a desert village at the foot of Mount Whitney, settling into a room at the Dow Villa Motel. Every morning, I went to an open space outside of town to spend the day walking in contemplation. That damn busy mind interrupted contemplation as if some dark spirit was trying to throw me off track: faces of people I had disappointed or hurt in the past. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry” was my mantra, over and over. The Critic: “what are you doing out here? Erik needs you at home. Something horrible could be happening right now.” Looming deadlines of church work.

After about two days of this, I am hiking on a cattle trail or old Indian path west of the village of Olancha, heading slowly up hill toward the Sierra Nevada. Walking along bone dry Olancha Creek, the blurry, buzzed mind opened up in awareness of my surroundings. Black and white images changed to vivid Technicolor. A bent over ash tree shimmers with golden autumn leaves, as a jackrabbit leaps across the creek. A cluster of huge granite boulders reveals a rock shelter. Black obsidian chips scattered on the ground mark a place where Paiute Indians made arrowheads long ago. I crawl within the rock shelter, the ceiling blackened by ancient fires. My eyes close as I let go of fatigue. Desert wind carries the scent of wet sagebrush and juniper. Creation opens up like a ripening flower.  I hear a sound: bubbling water! Sierra snowmelt gushes over rocks within the creek, until it disappears into the gravely landscape. Within the cool shade of the rock shelter, I sip from a bottle of Crystal Geyser, produced from the creek that flows near me. Deep sigh. I feel the embrace of a Presence. Joy, peace, love, hope. All will be well. Goose bumps. Deep emotions of gratitude well up within me. Tears. Thank you, Lord. You are in this place. Thank you for bringing me here. You are always with me, even when I turn away from you.

I am remembering desert people from Biblical times.

“Elijah went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: it is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.”[11]

The Prophet Elijah fled into the wilderness to escape from Queen Jezebel, who wanted his head. He wants to give up his life to find relief from despair. A rescuing angel appears to feed his body and energize his spirit.

The prophet Jacob is on the run, frightened and thirsty, his faith in God’s promises fading. Exhaustion draws him into deep sleep, giving him a dream of a golden staircase leading to God’s holy presence. Angels busily ascend and descend from their earthly missions of grace to God’s people. As Jacob awakens, his heart sings this declaration:

“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”[12]

Hagar is an Egyptian slave and servant to Abram’s wife Sarai, who has not been able to have children. Hagar becomes pregnant as surrogate to Sarai and gives birth to Ishmael. When Sarai miraculously gives birth to Isaac, she orders Abram to get rid of Hagar. In a heartless decision, Abram sends Hagar out into the desert with her son. A certain death sentence.

“She went her way and wandered in the desert of Beersheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, ‘I cannot watch the boy die.’ And as she sat there, she began to sob. God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for God will him a great nation.’ Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. So, she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer.”[13] Ishmael was the ancestor of Mohammed the Prophet of God.

The gospel narratives reveal that the life of Jesus was filled with angelic visitations. From the annunciation to Mary, a visit to Joseph in a dream, a glorious appearance to the shepherds at Jesus’ birth, and warnings to Mary and Joseph to escape the murderous intentions of King Herod, the angels are holy messengers and protectors.

After his baptism, Jesus is propelled by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, facing the Satan’s temptations. After Jesus has resisted Satan, angels come to “look after him.”

In the Garden of Gethsemane, facing torture and crucifixion, Jesus prays to the Father for strength. The Angels come to spiritually fortify him for what is to come. On the day of Jesus’ resurrection, the gospels present various scenarios: angels appear after the empty tomb, angels come as messengers to announce what has happened, or there is no angel but only a young man in a white robe.

Throughout the gospel life of Jesus, angels come as messengers, and givers of strength and sustenance.

Desert is a place and also a metaphor of where we are in a time of personal challenge and discernment. You may have lived the desert during grief, loneliness, addiction, or mental illness. You may have lived the desert when you have experienced betrayal or alienation from someone or disconnection from God. Those desert times come at us when we least expect them, disrupting the foundations of our life.

Father Ron Rolheiser counsels, “(The desert) is the place where angels can come and minister to us and it’s a place that readies us for spiritual battle. When our own strength gives out, when the pain of duty seems too much, when we lie prostrate in weakness and cringe before what truth, justice and God seem to be asking of us and we can no longer face it alone, we’re finally at that place where angels can minister to us and we’ve finally worked up the spiritual lather that has readied our souls and bodies for the Good Fridays that await for all of us.”[14]

The feeling of being enfolded within God’s love and peace stayed with me through that desert retreat. Mystical encounters like this have several characteristics: they are ineffable; words cannot fully describe the experience. They can be a direct encounter with God that is passive and fades away. These can be life-changing. As I share this with you, I am reminding myself that remembrance is the key. As I remember with gratitude that experience of God’s grace in the rock shelter by Olancha Creek, it brings my imagination back there and awakens my awareness that the Lord has never left me. I am the one who must invite the Lord’s presence.

Sister Joan Chittister OSB, Benedictine nun, has written about angels as symbols of God’s presence and support in our lives. Angels give us the sense that God is with us, providing comfort and support. We are not alone. Sister Joan helps us see angels in the kindness of strangers and the unexpected help we receive in difficult times. She encourages people to look for the divine in everyday interactions. Angels can help us to navigate our spiritual journeys, giving us insight and encouragement when we need it most.

Another popular spiritual writer, Madeleine L’Engle has angels at the center of her Newberry Award winning novel, A Wrinkle in Time. This novel is about performing a “tesseract,” that is a transition from one part of space/time to another without a wormhole or physical motion. Physics actually coined this word. It is a concept. The three mentors in the book, Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which, are actually angels. Elsewhere L’Engle discusses the Seraphim as presented in Isaiah 6 as fierce beings with multiple wings, and that cherubim are derived from the “Kerubim” of Babylonian/Assyrian art, who are fierce warrior beings with wings. European art made angels soft and friendly. The Old Testament is a very different view.[15]

Years ago, Erik was in ICU at Children’s Hospital of Orange County. A friend contacted Rabbi Harold Kusher; author of the book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. His own son had died ten years before. Rabbi Kushner called me. We talked about what it feels like being a religious professional, and how God can seem far away when we are in crisis ourselves and our loved ones are suffering. Then Rabbi Kushner quoted from his recent book:

“One of my favorite aphorisms comes from a nineteenth-century Hasidic rabbi who once said, ‘Human beings are God’s language. When we call out to God in our distress, God answers us by sending us people.’”[16]

When we wonder where God is in the desert times of our lives, look around you. Notice the people who are there with you. People are God’s language (God’s angels).

Resources

Stanford, Peter. Angels: A History. London: Hodder and Stroughton, 2019.

Eliot, George. Scenes of a Clerical Life. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1975.

Catechism of the Catholic Church. New York: Double Day, 2003.

Kushner, Harold S. Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World. New York: Knopf, 2009.

Rolheiser, Ronald. The Agony in the Garden. March 14, 2004.

Rolheiser, Ronald. Do We Have Guardian Angels? October, 4, 2021.

Williams, Jane. Angels. Ada, Michigan: Baker Books, 2007.

Taylor, Charles. Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Karelius, Brad. Desert Spirituality for Men. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2022.

[1] Eliot, Scenes of a Clerical Life, 220.

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 87.

[3] Rolheiser OMI, Ron. “Do We Have Guardian Angels? October 4, 2021.

[4]Karelius, Brad. Desert Spirituality for Men, p 119.

[5] Taylor, Secular Age, 135.

[6] Williams, Jane. Angels, 6.

[7] Stanford, Angels, 6.

[8] Religion Facts, The wayback Machine.

[9][9] John 20: 31 NRSV

[10] Herriot, The Economy of Sparrows.

[11] 1 Kings 19:4-8

[12] Genesis 28:16-17

[13] Genisis 21:14-20.

[14] Rolheiser, The Agony in the Garden, March 14, 2004.

[15] Prothero, James. Personal conversation notes.

[16] Kushner, Conquering Fear, 172