22 November 2024 Angels
- quietspacesplymout
- Jan 25
- 10 min read
Updated: Feb 3
Welcome, and opening prayer
Prayer of Thy Healing Angels that is carried from God by Micheal Thy Archangel. Pour out Thy Healing Angels, Thy Heavenly Host upon me and upon those that I love.
Let me feel the beam of Thy Healing Angels upon me, the light of Your Healing Hand.
I will let Thy Healing begin Whatever way God grants it. Amen.
Byrne, Lorna. The Year With Angels: A guide to living lovingly through the seasons . Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition.
Readings and Reflections
Today our theme is Angels and with Christmas coming up, we will be seeing lots on TV, in shops and perhaps in our homes. However, today will be taking more of a spiritual approach to Angels.
Famous theologian Thomas Aquinas states
‘Angels transcend every religion, every philosophy, every creed. In fact Angels have no religion as we know it... Their existence precedes every religious system that has ever existed on Earth.’
Thomas Aquinas
Angels are Biblical and also a new age phenomenon. To me they represent an in between place between heaven and earth – in the ‘thin place’ – the veil between heaven and earth. Let’s look at the story of Jacob and his stairway
Genesis 28:10-13 ‘Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it[a] stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying’.
Angels of God ascending and descending on the stairway perhaps we could think of this as a thin place. John O’Donogue describes a thin place as a ‘place or time where heaven and earth meet and we have access to ‘light’ or the beyond in a different way. It is a threshold experience where time and eternity embrace.’
We will now read some writings by Jan Richardson and Richard Rohr
‘On any other day I might tell you how much it captivates my imagination, the way that Jesus tells Nathanel, that fig-tree-sitter-under, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” I could say how cool this is, how Jesus evokes the story of Jacob, who dreamed in the wilderness of a ladder of angels between heaven and earth, and woke to a larger world than he had ever known, and recognized that God had been in that place.
I could say all this, and more. But what I come to ask you …. is this: What do you imagine the God of heaven and earth, the God who bridges heaven and earth and causes them to meet—what do you imagine this God is capable of? Can you imagine something beyond that? And beyond that? How might this God be inviting you to imagine and participate in something bigger still? What is the fig tree you will need to leave in order to see the more amazing things God has in store?
May we have imaginations that stretch between, dream between, dwell between heaven and earth. Blessings.’
© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.
“An angel, Wink (20c theologian) believed, is the inner spirit or soul of a thing. When we honor the “angel” or soul of a thing, we respect its inner spirit. And if we learn how to pay attention to the soul of things—to see the “angels” of elements, animals, the earth, water, and skies—then we can naturally work our way back through the Great Chain of Being to the final link, whom many call God. Don’t waste your time deconstructing your primitive belief about pretty, winged creatures in flowing pastel dresses. If you do so, you are seriously missing out on what they are pointing to. We need to reconstruct, and not just continue to deconstruct. Then you will see angels everywhere”
Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe
Stillness and Quiet
Sharing
Blessing
A BLESSING OF ANGELS
May the Angels in their beauty bless you.
May they turn toward you streams of blessing.
May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart
To come alive to the eternal within you,
To all the invitations that quietly surround you.
May the Angel of Healing turn your wounds
Into sources of refreshment.
May the Angel of the Imagination enable you
To stand on the true thresholds,
At ease with your ambivalence
And drawn in new direction
Through the glow of your contradictions.
May the Angel of Compassion open your eyes
To the unseen suffering around you.
May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places
Where your life is domesticated and safe,
Take you to the territories of true otherness
Where all that is awkward in you
Can fall into its own rhythm.
May the Angel of Eros introduce you
To the beauty of your senses
To celebrate your inheritance
As a temple of the holy spirit.
May the Angel of Justice disturb you
To take the side of the poor and the wronged.
May the Angel of Encouragement confirm you
In worth and self-respect,
That you may live with the dignity
That presides in your soul.
May the Angel of Death arrive only
When your life is complete
And you have brought every given gift
To the threshold where its infinity can shine.
May all the Angels be your sheltering
And joyful guardians.
John O’Donohue Benedictus- A Book of Blessings, Random House, Transworld, Kindle p47-48
Thoughts To Ponder
BIBLE VERSES
Hebrews 1:14 Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?
Psalms 91:11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;
Hebrews 12:22 When we come to worship, we come into the presence of “innumerable angels”
Luke 15:10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Hebrews 13:2 2 Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.
Hebrews 12:22 But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly,
Matthew 18:10 See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.
Matthew 1:20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”
Genesis 18:1-2 The Three Visitors The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. 2 Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.
Job 38:1-7 Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone--
while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?
Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene
11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
If something comes toward you with grace and can pass through you and toward others with grace, you can trust it as the voice of God. One holy man who recently came to visit me put it this way: “We must listen to what is supporting us. We must listen to what is encouraging us. We must listen to what is urging us. We must listen to what is alive in us.” I personally was so trained not to trust those voices that I often did not hear the voice of God speaking to me, or what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature.”
Yes, a narcissistic person can misuse such advice, but someone genuinely living in love will flourish inside such a dialogue. That is the risk that God takes—and we must take—for the sake of a fruitful relationship with God. It takes so much courage and humility to trust the voice of God within. Mary personifies such trust in her momentous and free “Let it be” to the Archangel Gabriel (Luke 1:38). Don’t you suppose that Gabriel sounded just like her own mind? She never talks about such an angel again.
Celebration belongs to God’s Kingdom. God not only offers forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing, but wants to lift up these gifts as a source of joy for all who witness them. In all three of the parables that Jesus tells to explain why he eats with sinners, God rejoices and invites others to rejoice with him. “Rejoice with me,” the shepherd says, “I have found my sheep that was lost.” “Rejoice with me,” the woman says, “I have found the drachma I lost.” “Rejoice with me,” the father says, “this son of mine was lost and is found.”
All these voices are the voices of God. God does not want to keep his joy to himself. He wants everyone to share in it. God’s joy is the joy of his angels and his saints; it is the joy of all who belong to the Kingdom.
Henri Nouwen, https://henrinouwen.org/meditations/gods-joy/
How will we see the angels if we don’t go into the wilderness? How will we recognize the help that God sends if we don’t seek out the places beyond what is comfortable to us, if we don’t press into terrain that challenges our habitual perspective? How will we find the delights that God provides even—and especially—in the desert places?
Blessing that Meets You
in the Wilderness
After the
desert stillness.
After the
wrestling.
After the
hours
and days
and weeks
of emptying.
After the
hungering
and the
thirsting.
After the
opening
and seeing
and knowing.
Let this blessing be
the first sweetness
that touches
your lips,
the bread
that falls into
your arms,
the cup
that welcoming hands
press into
yours.
Let this blessing be
the road that
returns you.
Let it be
the strength to carry
the wilderness
home.
© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.
Gabriel’s Annunciation
For a moment
I hesitated
on the threshold.
For the space
of a breath
I paused,
unwilling to disturb
her last ordinary moment,
knowing that the next step
would cleave her life:
that this day
would slice her story
in two,
dividing all the days before
from all the ones
to come.
The artists would later
depict the scene:
Mary dazzled
by the archangel,
her head bowed
in humble assent,
awed by the messenger
who condescended
to leave paradise
to bestow such an honor
upon a woman, and mortal
Yet I tell you
it was I who was dazzled,
I who found myself agape
when I came upon her--
reading, at the loom, in the kitchen,
I cannot now recall;
only that the woman before me--
blessed and full of grace
long before I called her so--
shimmered with how completely
she inhabited herself,
inhabited the space around her,
inhabited the moment
that hung between us.
I wanted to save her
from what I had been sent
to say.
Yet when the time came,
when I had stammered
the invitation
(history would not record
the sweat on my brow
the pounding of my heart;
would not note
that I said
Do not be afraid
to myself as much as
to her)
it was she
who saved me--
her first deliverance--
her Let it be
not just declaration
to the Divine
but a word of solace,
of soothing,
of benediction
for the angel
in the doorway
who would hesitate
one last time--
just for the space
of a breath
torn from his chest--
before wrenching himself away
from her radiant consent,
her beautiful and
awful yes.
© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.
We are like children, who stand in need of masters to enlighten us and direct us; God has provided for this, by appointing his angels to be our teachers and guides.
Thomas Aquinas
When angels visit us, we do not hear the rustle of wings, nor feel the feathery touch of the breast of a dove; but we know their presence by the love they create in our hearts.
Mary Baker Eddy
We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.
Luciano De Crescenzo
Kind words are the music of the world. They have a power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel's song which had lost its way and come to earth.
Frederick William Faber
Outside the open window the morning air is all awash with angels.
Richard Wilbur
When a smile touches our hearts. When the forest stills us to peace. When music moves us to rapture. When we really love, laugh or dance with joy. We are at one with the Angels.
Dorothy Maclean
Don’t Melt the Angel
THERE’S A LOT OF ANGER AROUND RIGHT NOW. IN fact I feel as though I’m inwardly boiling. Mainly around hurtful attitudes and events in the church. A friend, who can’t possibly know what’s churning around inside me, gives me a little angel made of beeswax. It calms me down a bit, and eventually my angel has a word in my ear: “Take care that the heat of your anger doesn’t melt me.” It makes me stop and think. There is a heat that heals—the heat of passion for justice and truth. And there is a heat that hurts, because it is so intense and unyielding. The one refines my experience into gold. The other melts my angels. I pray to learn to distinguish between the two.
Silf, Margaret. Compass Points: Meeting God Every Day at Every Turn (p. 118). Loyola Press. Kindle Edition.
No matter how lonely you may feel – you are never alone. Your guardian angel never leaves you, not for a minute; it is with you from before you are conceived and stays with you until after you are dead. It never leaves you, so no matter how alone you may feel you are never alone. It is the gatekeeper of your soul. Regardless of your religion or lack of any belief, regardless of whether you believe in angels or not, your guardian angel is there beside you waiting for you to ask for its help. You’re precious to it, you’re its number one. It will do everything it can for you. All you have to do is ask.
Byrne, Lorna. The Year With Angels: A guide to living lovingly through the seasons . Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition.
Links
Byrne, Lorna. The Year With Angels: A guide to living lovingly through the seasons . Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition
Comments