These angels who fascinate us

At the beginning of each autumn, the guardian angels remind those who have forgotten them of their existence. On October 2, the Church indeed celebrates the guardian angels, attached to men to watch over them permanently and protect them from evil. As for the saints Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, the only three “named in the Bible”, their celebration takes place a few days earlier, on September 29. L’ Catholic Church , in his catechism, defines angels as purely spiritual beings, endowed with intelligence and will, created free by God. This explains why some have remained faithful to him, and that others have broken with him.

But angels have slipped into the lives of many of our contemporaries, including some who are far from the Christian tradition. They nurture a strong, sometimes complex relationship with them. Like Charlotte, an engineer in risk prevention. From a very young age, this 40-year-old felt protected in a singular way by the Archangel Saint Michael. “Driven by a call”, she left in 2015 on a pilgrimage from the vertiginous rock of Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe (Haute-Loire), dedicated to the archangel. She traced alone, on foot, a “Michaelic” route to another sanctuary in Italy, the Sacra di San Michele.

A reassuring relationship

“Every morning before leaving, I addressed a small prayer to Saint Michael, evokes this mother of three children. I really experienced along the way that there was a place prepared for me every evening by Saint Michael: I never found myself homeless. Charlotte says she “reinforced” her bond with the archangel during these twenty-four days of walking. “As a child, I was baptized Catholic, but my parents didn’t want to enroll me in catechism,” she says. The only link to angels, in particular to guardian angels, is through my maternal grandmother that I received it…” At 18, she became interested in the Bible, then “expanded” her spirituality over the his encounters, especially with Buddhist friends.

Shepherdess for twelve years, Anne-Laure, 39, says for her part that she finds peace in the solitude of the peaks, in particular by speaking to the angels. “I stay in the mountains despite the harshness of the summer pastures because I find there a privileged place to establish a dialogue with the invisible world. The shepherdess manifests a spiritual thirst that her Christian education was not enough to quench. “Here, I feel at the place where I am most listened to,” she says. No human relationship allows me this quality of dialogue. »

>>> Also read on lepelerin.com: What is an angel?

Recently very marked by the suicide of a loved one, she testifies to the support of the angels. “I was afraid for her, because of all the religious beliefs that reprove this act, so I asked them: “Welcome her to heaven, and even if there are rules, too bad, we abandon the rules! On a high ridge between Spain and France, above the lakes, I repeated “Peace to his soul”. This litany kept coming back to me, I addressed it as a request to the angels. »

Travel companions

At other times, the shepherdess says she dialogues internally with them, obtains answers, and sometimes even dreams. This is also the feeling of Charlotte, who indicates receiving “messages” from Saint Michael. In the Christian tradition, the victorious archangel of Satan is a protector and a guide, but he takes a much larger place in her. “Sometimes Saint Michael pushes me to act in this or that direction, by calls that I feel in the form of intuition. I do not hear voices, but I feel that it does not come from me. »

If each man is assisted by an angel who helps him to reach safe harbor, according to the Church, it reminds us that the safe harbor is God… “The angel helps us to direct our hearts towards God , to live in grace”, emphasizes Father Thierry-Dominique Humbrecht, Dominican and theologian. He believes that they make good traveling companions but that this companionship must remain adjusted. “The good intentions of a large number of our contemporaries are not in question, but be careful: we do not launch into the spiritual life with the ‘fragments’ of Christianity, or else we rebuild ourselves apart”, warns- he. The risk would be to manufacture one’s own religion, drawing for example from New Age spirituality.

“It is good to live by praying to the angels, continues Father Hombrecht, but to develop with them a relationship equivalent to that of a friend, a shrink or a spiritual father is an illusion. It can even represent a danger if it is apart from Christ. So, angels, true or false friends? “It is Christ who saves us and gives us an angel to lead us to heaven,” summarizes the Dominican. And not the reverse.

>>> Also read on lepelerin.com: Pray to Saint Michael

By Marilyn Chaumont