EWTN Bookmark - 2018-06-17 - His Angels At Our Side: Understanding Their Power In Our Souls And The

[Music] come check your host our special guest author's father Don Morgan his book is angels at our side understanding their power in our souls and the world published by our own EWTN publishing great to see you again father always a great friend of EWTN over the years especially a friend of ours up in Canada yes support of our Canadian efforts so it's always great to have you here and your wonderful full mellifluous tones there which are heard on the network on some of our spots that we air is yes yes I'm the psalmist that's right you are the psalmist you know this time you also did a series his angels at our side that Mother Angelica asked you to do rights right that's right that's almost 1518 years ago now that I did the TV series and I've expanded it for this book because I think that at the present time we have more need of the angels and their presence than ever why do you think that is well I think that we've lost our sense of the supernatural for many Catholics good people as they are and faithful they are hungry for that presence of God manifest in his servants who act as his messengers and guides and protectors for us and they help us to come that much closer to the majesty and beauty of God you say the preface one of the most beautiful and comforting elements of Catholic belief is the existence and Ministry of angels what we say to people say well see that's an example you know you believe this stuff because it's comforting not because it's true I believe in it because it's a matter of Revelation the Scriptures speak to us of the Angels in unmistakable ways there are over 300 mentions of the Angels in Scripture but also even pagan philosophers men who prided themselves on reason rather than revelation speak of the existence of spiritual beings as part of the order of nature you say angels work wonders in the lives of saints and prepare the way I thought this was interesting for the mother of God and apparitions to st. Catherine Laboure and the children of Fatima and you talk about later on the the angel appearing the angel Portugal etc yeah I really thought about that that they kind of paved the way sometimes they lead us into the presence of the Blessed Mother and bring us to her son so their role as mission as messengers and adores is very clear in the lives of the saints yes an interesting taking you refer to our guardian angels as our personal patron saint's yes we oftentimes look for patron saint's because of their similarities to US national origin profession illnesses and so on and so forth but our guardian angel has been chosen by God to be our companion from our birth and to complement us so to speak to supplement our personality and to guide us to salvation and holiness you say if we are fortunate we're taught that they are invisible friends whom we never outgrow the inseparable companions whose unfailing love and loyalty to the saving mission of Jesus never allows them to desert us even when we have deserted him they call us back if we've not grown completely deaf to their voice is that a problem we have today a lot of people are deaf to their voice I think so I think a lot of people have become deafened by the noise of the world and also by the deceits of the devil there are so many misunderstandings about angels and demons that there's need once again for the church's message to be clearly understood you say this book is meant not to be a treatise on the theology of angels angelology yes but an introduction to a unique friendship a marvelous relationship that is available to each person you talk about the true spiritual elder brother and friend spiritual friendships are remarkable things how does one have a spiritual friendship well a spiritual friendship with the angel is lived by opening ourselves to God's providence and giving us this companion by being aware of his presence in our life by thanking God that he's created the angels and trusted us to them and asking them to help us to illuminate us to guard us to protect us from harm and to direct us to the holiness and the majesty of God the angels are always looking at God face to face they are always at prayer and so they can help us to be at prayer to not look away from God towards other things that are evil and also to make our actions works of praise that give glory to God and also advance us on the way of holiness okay now you talk about a series of small books written in the 1920s called our changeless friend had an impact yes father Francis LeBouf was an American Jesuit who wrote these small books that were printed with red leather covers as little 15-minute meditations so what I wanted to do with this book was to give something to people so that they could read and then pause think pray go into adoration of the Blessed Sacrament so it's in that spirit that you can pick up this book and put it down again now the format of this book you talk about the format of the book in the sense is this something you need to read from the beginning to end and cover order or did you design it in a different way I designed it in a different way certainly there's an introduction to the angels but then I pass into speaking about the angels in the life of Jesus and marrying going through the Scriptures the life of the early church tradition liturgy spiritual formation and the friendships of individual saints with the angels so it's something that you can pick up and open at any place and profit from you don't have to begin to read from cover to cover now right in the first chapter it's actually who are the angels you say while individual angels serve as messengers of God or accomplish particular tasks whenever the angels are described as group it is as warriors host of angels or choirs of singers and musicians it is not so much that angels do these things but that these actions are the deepest expression of their being what's that point supposed to be if if you look at the early fathers of the church and the great scholars of our tradition and faith they tell us that angels are totally praise they praise God with their entire being so if we want to understand what adoration is we can look to the angels we can look to their example and we can seek their help they show us how not only to adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament but how to adore God in all of his beauties and perfections and truths so we refer to them in Scripture as choirs because they are constantly praising God but they are also doing his will in opposition to the devil in opposition to evil they're always showing us what is right and true and good and leading us in that path so they act as warriors in behalf of God's truth and also for our protection you also make this point we can love God the Father and accomplish his will in obedience and in sacrifice yes despite their community with God the Angels cannot participate in his life in this way in fact you go to say there is something even grander about the human experience the Angels would envy if they were capable of such a vice the ability to receive Holy Communion yes there are two essential differences that are important for us to note about the Angels and our own human nature we relate to Jesus in his humanity we relate to him bodily so although we refer to the Eucharist as the bread of angels in fact they can adore him in that way but they don't receive him because they're not human and they are not physical but also as the little flower has pointed out and Saint Faustina the other capacity that we have that the angels do not have is that of suffering mm-hmm and it's quite amazing to see what the saints say about our ability to love Christ in our sufferings and through our sufferings so that we are united to Jesus and his passion and also can merit that's something that causes the angels if you will a certain amount of amazement because that's not their experience that's not how they've been designed by God I was reading this part in the book here and I was thinking about our Chapel here at EWTN and also the shrine up enhanced a long after we've left the church and gone on with the business of our day however the angels remain adoring him and surrounding us with their praise their adoration and their Thanksgiving and that's such a wonderful image yes yes a very beautiful one and a very Franciscan one mother of course chose the name of the monastery because it was the name of the church beloved of Saint Francis where he died Our Lady of the Angels right exactly now you may note that from Genesis to Revelation angels are mentioned more than 230 times you also mention though that the Old Testament does not however speak of the creation angels we only read that it exists but then you say that st. Paul fills the gap st. Paul speaks of the angels and their battles and so does st. John and the apocalypse and of that that primal choice that they made to obey and to love God freely with all of their hearts minds and Will's so to speak I'm using human language here but that was the separation of Lucifer and the Fallen Angels from those who remain faithful to God well it says here that the passed the passage in Colossians led st. Augustine to suggest the angels were included under the term heaven yes in terms of creation right and so when we say in the Creed well that we believe in God the Father Almighty Creator of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible the Angels figure in that phrase heaven and things invisible you also point out that the Three's Company has cubed but if you say the Angels themselves seem to manifest the threefold reflection of the Trinity in their very organization and he talked about the nine names giving to the groupings obviously broke it up into three mm-hmm you know when I was when I was a little boy like most Catholics of my age we were taught about the guardian angels and their importance and so on but when I went on to study theology what what really amazed me and delighted me was that when you look at the angels they bring you to see the Trinity more and more clearly because they are the first created of God and the Trinity is reflected in them the nine choirs have a relationship to the three persons of the Trinity and to the life of the church in the world it's a magnificent gift that we've been given to understand and to adorn with such clarity through what we know about the angels right you say what a marvelous help it is to remember that the holy angels are commissioned to draw us always closer to the Trinity they are the first created by God in the first creatures to bear in themselves a reflection of the beauties and perfections of the all-holy right right and the Angels Cardinal Newman of the great English convert and favorite of pope benedict xvi delighted in the angels ability to show us the majesty of god and he said you know that we actually know more about the angels than we do above the animal kingdom really in terms of essence and purpose and God's providence now in the nine choirs of angels that chapter you talk about the gellick hierarchy in the fourth and fifth centuries begin to see an increasing interest in the role of angels obviously the canard is always how many angels can dance on the head of a pin was what the church was worried about well then should have been worried about science and things which have obviously was untrue now you mentioned it st. Thomas Aquinas took up this understanding and brought it to a new level the hierarchy said he made intelligence to the basis of the clarification the angels were themselves purely intellectual beings the angels do not all have the same degree of likeness to the Lord I thought that was interesting yes however some participate in or reflected divine perfection more than others therefore according to the saint known as the angelic doctor angels belong to different choirs according to their intelligence and their place in God's plants was not just a naming thing there's no functional and in some ways just add in a difference yes a difference in how they perceive God just as two people might go to the same baseball game and because one of them has better eyesight than the other he can describe what he's seeing in greater detail and greater depth and with with greater passion and enjoyment so to speak so among the Angels there are differences in the way in which they perceive God and how they received that knowledge that's what we find in st. Thomas Aquinas and the other great theologians let's run through the nine choirs because people hear about it but you know and we hear their names parrot it out quickly sometime but Seraphin Nana Serafina considered the closest to God as such they reflect most immediately the highest attribute of God manifest in creation his love they were on fire with the love of God the vorenii means incandescent ones are burning the burning ones okay and so we would associate the Seraphim particularly with the Holy Spirit who manifests himself in fire and flame on Pentecost and we see that reflected in saints like saint francis francis of assisi is called the seraphic father because of a burning love for jesus and for the world that god created then there's the cherubim we hear about them we think a little cherub and stuff but actually you say the chairmen have a deep intellectual knowledge of divine secrets and of the ultimate causes of things their name means all-knowing one not exactly the cherub like image we get some know our image of cherubs is really Cupid's right and they have nothing to do with the Caribbean Scripture the cherubim were were frightening because they they possessed and manifest the majesty of God they're usually associated with God the Son the word the all-knowing one and in their dynamism they they are beyond our Ken beyond our ability to imagine the Thrones this was always an interesting one can be thought of as beings raised up to form the seat of God's Authority and mercy so the Thrones would would reflect the stability of God his his immovability his firmness when you look at the pages of the scripture you see descriptions that the prophets visions of the throne of God they could not see beyond the staircase leading up to God so the thrones present to us the majesty of God the difference of God but also his stability his power his might in that way it's interesting st. Teresa of Avila has a vision of the throne of God which I also described in the book and she speaks about seeing these angelic beings but not being able really to describe them they were so others so different and yet so attractive because they drew her to the person of God himself right he also point that out as a reason to understand when people are trending to put human anthropomorphic terms to what they see how this vary and be different that's right that's right so and when we read mystical writings or accounts of visions the church always has to take that into account because how do you express in words what is ineffable what's beyond speech some of the Mystics knew that and they actually put those caveats and warnings into their words now that's the end of the first that's the top three then the next three starts with dominations domination and concern with the government of the universe they are the first of the three choirs in the second ring which is the ring of the cosmos yes the way that the 5th century writer who calls himself dia Nicias the Areopagus speaks about the angels he conceives the the nine choirs if you will in three groups of three so the uppermost tier is to the adoration of God in the heavens the middle ring the three requires that you're speaking of now is devoted to the cosmos so to the stewardship of the universe and creation and the lowermost ring is the one which is closest to us and that ring has to do with the work of Christ the salvation of mankind the life of the church so it is the the group that the three groups that we find most understandable now the second one in the in a second who is virtues but you point out the name in some ways a mistranslation or at least a false cognate right when we think of virtues of course we think of habits of goodness but in this case the Greek word really means power dynamism so there are arguments back and forth among different scholars over how to arrange the choirs st. Gregory the Great had one listing delicious and other and so on what we really see in this ordering which we won't understand completely and so we're face to face with God in heaven is that God has pre has presented to us these marvelous beings in order structure and hierarchy in order that we might ascend through them to himself and and you kind of alluded to powers which is the lowest one next one in the right and then in the final lowest ring which is then closer to us for instance or principalities are described as having members who have fallen away and others who have remained faithful so when we look at the scriptures we see in the book of Revelation and in other places the mention of the tale of the SIRT of the demon dragging a third of the stars from the heavens that's thought to describe the number of angels that fell with Lucifer and that would have included members of every choir right they also point out that this leads into where we have the Archangels and Tobit at least based there is only seven Archangels at least that's what he lose to we only know several names as it is we have three names from Scripture Michael Gabriel and Raphael and those are the three that the church invokes in the liturgy the church doesn't does not use other names reported by saints or mystics in the liturgical prayers faith life of the church but rather those three names have been given to us and are clear it is believed there are seven Archangels in all the other four if you will work in in hiddenness in the life of the church we mentioned the seminar angels have been regarded for the very beginning as having a special place in God's plan their numbers often associated with seven days of the week and the seven sacraments thought that the our games were outstanding in their fidelity god no obviously there's st. Michael the Archangel yes he's very dear to Mother Angelica yes indeed yes indeed special protector and Saint Gabriel who brings the message of salvation to the Blessed Mother the word of the Incarnation and Rayfield the healer and one of the wonderful things about about these Archangels is that despite their their greatness and their role in God's plan their very immediate to us Raphael's says to Tobias when you prayed with tears when you left your dinner to get cold - so that you could go and bury the dead I was with you I saw you and I lifted up your prayers to God so the angels are our present to us and see the least things that we do for the love of God and neighbor and then strengthen the good that we're doing with their prayer and with their inspiration so that we can continue in our own mission in God's plan right and then in the the ninth and final choir is evil composed or involved in the doings of mankind that would include our guardian angel that's right that's right now in the fallen angels which you alluded to earlier I thought this was interesting when the angels were first created they did not see God in the way the blessing in heaven see him now in what is called the beatific vision the sight that fills us with endless joints then the angels knew God in a very similar way to our knowing him in faith right in other words when we see God face-to-face in heaven because every veil will be taken away and we will perceive him directly and immediately the absolute goodness and absolute truth and absolute beauty of God is such that we can never turn away mm-hmm but so when the angels were created they were created in faith just as we live in faith on earth and so they had a trial a test so that they might use their free will to love God come with freedom and to be part of his plan it was that trial that determined whether they would be faithful or not well it helps explain the idea of people saying well how could they any of them decide to turn away from God it makes it more understandable why absolutely and and here again there's the need for us to to go back to what has our faith taught so many people today get their misinformation from television and and so many other things you know there are so many films that talk about the supernatural but they're not basing what they do on Revelation they're basing it on box-office profits right and so we have to offer to our show we went through a lot of new agey angelic stuff yes now you don't hear about as much pride we used to hear about that a lot you say if God revealed to his angels that his son the Eternal Word would one day unite himself in being to a human nature and nature lower than the Angels that would mean that they would have to adore God in a form of lower lowly err than their own and that's where you you roll into the whole idea of pride and Lucifer and the front-right many theologians have believed that the trial of the Angels was about the incarnation of the word that God's son would unite himself to a creature lower than the angelic nature and that this was what Lucifer's pride would not accept now the church hasn't given an authoritative solemn declaration to that interpretation but it has been held by fathers of the church and by many theologians says in a section in the fall of the Angels under devil's advocates you make the point but what about the Fallen Angels why did they not repent and you say angelic malice is of a different order yes we repent because we don't understand fully the implications of what we've done we grow in time and knowledge and experience but the angelic way of perceiving is completely different from ours and this is very difficult for us to to really comprehend that angels perceive a truth in a holistic way that we do not so when Lucifer fell when he turned away from God he knew all the consequences of his actions and he had the freedom of choice in that moment but then his will became fixed he would not change would not repent so it is to this day now I'm growing with your angel in that chapter you talk about respect for the truth and this is important for people who say well I won't have a relationship with my guardian angel my angel my life the most basic first step the growing relationship with God and His angels is to cultivate a great respect and love for all the truth of our faith yes yes the angels see God and they see his truth in all of its beauty so they want us to know our faith to understand it and to cherish it and I also talked about and growing with the angel the spirit of obedience this is when you're here along with him as we grow in the practice of ability and magnanimity we realized that there is no room for pride or for envy pride and envy would be foolishness mm-hmm now when we when we've realized the goodness of God that his will is for our best and greatest happiness there's there's no turning away we become more angelic in our understanding so to speak but to do that we have to cultivate interior silence and that's one of the big themes of the book I talked about silence in the life of st. Joseph exactly and silence in our own souls so that we can contemplate the truth and then be ready to enter into mission right your other chapters the angels in Scripture the angels in the church and the angels and you one of the ones you also mention obviously the Gabriel showed up earlier before before showing up with our lady but the point you make about Our Lady is her response was different yes it's important to see to enunciations there in the Gospel of st. Luke the Annunciation to Zechariah and the temple and then the Annunciation to Mary and it's one of those English teacher perceptions compare and contrast so whereas Zechariah's response to the angel is one of disbelief Mary's is a humble request for information for understanding so her question to the angel is spoken in humility and the angel response to her clarifying God's will and making clear that her call to virginity and her called motherhood are both possible according to this magnificent plan of God now let me ask you who is father Francois who you dedicated father Francois trousers was a young seminarian with me in Rome who died as a member of the Institute of Christ the king and he and I were great friends during my last year my the year of my ordination and in in dedicating it the book to him I really wanted to to think of all of the friends and we have in life for a short time who enter our lives do good and then may move on and sometimes the influence of the Angels may seem the same way we come under their influence for a time they have a mission and then the Lord expects us to go forth and do our own mission so how did you go about taking the series and turning it into a book well I wanted especially to bring people to prayer so in the book I paused to write prayers so that people attending Mass going to adoration reading the Scriptures can then phrase their own praise of God because as I say what the Angels teach us to do most beautifully is to adore and to praise so throughout the book I had that as an inspiration as I looked over the the manuscripts from the TV series and continued my research there have been so many wonderful Saints since that time named by john paul ii benedict and now pope francis who provide us with inspiration and anecdotes and you put those in the book something we didn't get around to those thoughts thank you so much for always opposed to see your father thank you Father John Horgan his book his angels at our side understanding their power in our souls and the world published proudly by EWTN publishing available through our EWTN religious catalogue EWTN our c-calm is the place you can get it join us next time right here on EWTN bookmark thanks for joining [Music]

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Length: 27min 10sec (1630 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 17 2018