Guardian angel
Many Orthodox Christians will confirm that with faith in God a person never feels alone. Of course, there are difficult moments and days of doubt in the life of every person, but the invisible presence of an angel nearby gives people the strength to pass life's trials. In popular culture, angels are sometimes attributed to roles that are unusual for them. We will try to understand who the Guardian Angel is in Christianity.
When God gives a Guardian Angel to a person
A guardian angel appears in a person at Baptism. At least, this is how we can judge from quotations from the New Testament. Jesus Christ says: See, do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always see the face of My Father in heaven”(Matthew 18:10).
This means that in Heaven, every person who has been Baptized has a guardian angel who looks after him, helps him cope with the power of sin and protects him.
It is interesting that in icon painting the Guardian Angel does not always appear in the image we are accustomed to. For example, in the Roman catacombs, you can find a Guardian Angel without wings. Although even in the pre-antique era, some winged entities were depicted, it is almost impossible to find images of the Guardian Angel in early Christian painting.
The angel is usually depicted in a tunic or white tunic.
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The word Guardian angel (namely, “guardian”) is not found in the Bible, but we can conclude that there are angels called specifically to help a person for his salvation.
How a Guardian Angel participates in the life of an Orthodox Christian
An angel appears next to a person in order to snatch him from the power of evil spirits and protect him from evil. If a person fails to cope with sinful thoughts and actions, this does not mean that the angel is moving away from him. God never leaves man; man himself can alienate himself at his own will. It would be wrong to attribute the role to an angel:
- Bodyguard;
- Psychologist;
- Doctor.
You should not wait for visible advice and guidance or healing from all diseases. But the angel was really given to man so that we could turn for help.
In our soul, there is a constant struggle of evil, we ourselves become a battlefield, therefore the Lord gave us a Guardian Angel as our allies.
Of course, angels do not have the same power and knowledge as the Lord God, but you can definitely turn to them with prayer in difficult times. They pray to the guardian angel:
- About help in any business;
- About support in the fight against sinful thoughts and actions;
- About protection from temptation;
- About guidance on the true path.
As in any prayer, one cannot pin all our hopes on the angel or the saint to whom we pray, because without a person's will to change something in his life, his efforts, nothing can work out, and “faith without works is dead”.
It is believed that at the Last Judgment we will meet with the Guardian Angel, who will pray for the forgiveness of the person he is protecting and will remain with him in eternal life if the person is forgiven.
Many people mistakenly think that the Guardian Angel is a saint whose name is given to a person at Baptism, but this is a delusion. What confirms the morning prayer rule - there is a separate prayer for the Guardian Angel.
Prayer to the Guardian Angel
From the morning prayer rule
The Bible about Guardian Angels
The Bible contains many testimonies that Guardian Angels are called to help people:
- “For he will command his angels about you - to guard you in all your ways: they will carry you in their hands, so that you do not stumble on a stone with your foot; you will step on the asp and the basilisk; you will trample the lion and the dragon "(Ps. 90: 11-13)
- "Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to minister for those who have to inherit salvation?" (Heb. 1:14)
- “When the divine tongues from above, as if scattering the sons of Adam, set the limits of tongues according to the number of the angel of God” (Deut. 32: 8) - Human race was numbered according to the Guardian Angels whom the Lord sent to protect man.
- “When Peter knocked at the gate, a servant named Rod came out to listen, and recognizing Peter's voice, she did not open the gate for joy, but ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the gate. And they said to her: are you in your mind? But she asserted her own. But they said: This is his Angel. Meanwhile, Peter continued to knock. When they opened it, they saw him and were amazed. " (Acts 12: 13-16)
Excerpt from the book of Archimandrite John (Krestyankin) "Angel of Prayer"
Guardian Angels are ministers of our salvation, so we are not alone in our earthly life, in our labors for the salvation of our immortal soul. We firmly know that our helpers are with us, protecting us from all kinds of troubles encountered on the path of life, and from the wrath of God deserved by each of us. Our Guardian Angel is a being infinitely loving us. He loves us with all his love. And his love is great, and its action is strong, because, contemplating God, he sees eternal Love, which desires our salvation.
Our Guardian Angel is like our second mother. He has the same concern for us, and more. The mother takes special care of us while we are in infancy and childhood. Our Guardian Angel, from the moment of our baptism to the last days of our life, is our caring teacher. And, if we ourselves do not push him away from us during our earthly life, he will lead our souls to worship God when the time comes to separate the soul from the body.
Our Guardian Angels are powerful and by their personal valor, powerful and by the power they received from God, they are also powerful by the prayers that they send for us to the Most High God.
Everything that is good, pure, light in us: every good thought, every good movement of the heart, our prayer, repentance, good deeds - all this is born in us and is accomplished by the inspiration of our invisible Guardian Angel. Acting through our conscience and our heart, it is he, our Angel, who keeps us from sin and temptation, it is he who helps us to fight temptations, it is he who instills in us fear of a grave fall.
The Guardian Angel given to us is, as it were, our expanded and open conscience. He is striving with all his might to save us, and we have no right to interfere with him in this. We must help him in his efforts to save us. We should ask him to enrich our mind with an abundance of holy thoughts, to strengthen in us the skill for pious reflections. We are obliged to love him as our elder and strong brother. But in fact, we so often forget about him, do not pray to him, with our sins we offend his shrine, and he again and again shows his concern for us. He intercedes for us before the mercy of God, he pleads with God for our needs, and the Heavenly Father will never deny him his requests.
But why do the Angels of God show such concern for people?
Firstly, because they are servants of God and received from God the command to protect and save people. Secondly, they themselves are the creations of God, and the words apply to them, just as to people: Be merciful, as your Father is merciful (Luke 6:36). They understand this and try, imitating their Creator and God, to show both their mercy and their longsuffering towards people..
What joy it gives them to save the souls which Christ redeemed with His Blood and who (with their help) will share with them their glory and their bliss!
If we were even a little more sensitive, we would notice how lovingly our Guardian Angel helps us return through repentance to the path of salvation. He not only encourages us to repentance, but he promises to remind us of all our sins, all life mistakes and oversights.
Our Guardian Angels, messengers to us from God, freely and quickly make the path from God to us and from us to God (if only our deeds do not interfere with this). They come from God to us to bring us His grace; they also ascend from us to God in order to convey to Him our prayers and thanksgiving.
How close our Guardian Angel should be to each of us! What trust we must have in him! During our lifetime we can tell him the most intimate secrets of our soul. Those secrets that we would not trust the closest people. And this is because in the Guardian Angel we see the wisest in advice, the most disinterested in love and help, tender in affection to us, caring for our needs.
