Never Alone: Living with Angels

In 2006, a fisherman off the coast of Palawan freed his anchor from a giant clam and pulled up something extraordinary: a pearl 67 centimeters long and weighing 34 kilograms, the largest natural giant clam pearl ever recorded. For ten years, he kept it tucked under his bed, using it as a good luck charm. He had no idea it was sitting a few feet from where he slept every night, worth an estimated 100 million dollars. It took a house fire in 2016, forcing him to move his belongings, before the world finally saw what had been there all along.

It's a strange story, but it says something true about angels. They are real, they are close, and most of us go years, sometimes a lifetime, without really noticing them.

What Is an Angel?

The word "angel" comes from the Greek angelos, meaning messenger. In Christian teaching, an angel is a spiritual being created by God to serve as His messenger and minister, carrying out His will, delivering His messages, and offering guidance and protection to His people.

Scripture is full of them. In Genesis, an angel speaks to Hagar in the desert and later visits Lot in Sodom. In Exodus, God promises to send an angel ahead of the Israelites: "Pay attention to him and listen to what he says." In the New Testament, the angel Gabriel announces the birth of Jesus to Mary, an angel reassures Joseph in a dream, and at the tomb on Easter morning, an angel rolls back the stone and tells the women, "Do not be afraid... He is not here; he has risen, just as he said."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that angels are pure spiritual beings, directly created by God, not products of evolution or natural processes. They have intellect and free will, and the Church describes a hierarchy of nine choirs arranged in three groups: those closest to God (Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones), those involved in creation and governance (Dominions, Virtues, Powers), and those closest to humanity (Principalities, Archangels, and the guardian angels assigned to each one of us.)

Why We Forget Them

St. Leo the Great once gave this advice to every Christian: make friends with the angels. It sounds simple, and he insisted nothing is easier, yet so many of us never do it. We know little about them, pray to them rarely, and barely notice their presence in our daily lives. As a result, we miss out on countless blessings that could otherwise be ours for the asking.

Part of the problem is that we simply don't think about them the way we think about the saints. We hang pictures of saints in our homes and carry their stories with us, but angels rarely get the same attention, even though Scripture shows them walking alongside ordinary people like Abraham, Jacob, Daniel, Peter, and Paul.

A Friendship Worth Building

Our guardian angel's understanding of the world is far beyond ours. He can help us in ways both physical and spiritual, though he cannot force our mind or our will. Only God can reach that deeply into the soul. But like any friendship, the relationship grows the more we turn toward it. The spiritual writer George Huber compared it to looking through a telescope for the first time: suddenly you see horizons you never knew were there. The more we deal with our angel, the more we come to share in his way of seeing things, until he becomes, in a real sense, our closest friend and ally.

And communicating with him doesn't require anything complicated. Angels operate through intellect and will. We simply have to will it, to turn toward him in the ordinary moments of the day, in traffic, at the office, wherever we are.

Psalm 91 puts it beautifully:

"He will protect you with his shoulders, and under his wings you shall trust. His truth shall compass you with a shield; you shall not be afraid of the terror of the night, of the arrow that flies in the day... For he has given his angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways."

We are never alone. We just need to be convinced of it.

Is It a Dog, or a Guardian Angel?

One of the more remarkable stories connected to this comes from the life of St. John Bosco. In nineteenth century Turin, Don Bosco made many enemies while working to protect abandoned youth. Again and again, a massive gray dog appeared out of nowhere whenever he was in danger, a dog he came to call Grigio, "the Gray One." Grigio would chase off would be attackers, walk him safely home through the dark, and once even refused to let him leave the house before a planned ambush.

Don Bosco never claimed outright that Grigio was an angel. But he did say it would be nonsense to call him an ordinary dog.

As Don Bosco himself believed, we need our angels, but they want to help us even more than we want their help.

Saint Michael, Defender in Battle

Among all the angels, Michael holds a singular place. His name means "Who is like God," a name and mission that together declare that only God can do what he does. Scripture recounts how, when a portion of the angels fell from grace out of pride, Michael led the faithful angels in casting Satan and his followers out of heaven. The Church has long turned to him as her defender, invoking him especially in sickness and at the hour of death, when the tradition holds that the soul faces its final and fiercest spiritual battle.

We can honor him in small, steady ways: praying to him often, asking his help against temptation, keeping a small image of him where we'll see it, and praying the Rosary of St. Michael. And we can pray, in the words the Church has prayed for generations:

"Saint Michael Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And you, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen."