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The
Bishop's Journal
October 2002
Angel Letters
September 29 is the festival of St. Michael and All Angels. It's a feast day whose title-for obvious reasons-gives me a certain amount of pleasure! There's something quite nice about hearing your name used in such an exalted fashion. It's kind of like having your own vanity plate slapped onto the liturgical calendar!
At the same time, I need to acknowledge that this festival also makes me feel somewhat uncomfortable by reminding me of aspects of our faith that I am less sure of than others. It's a feast day that starts me thinking about angel choirs and fire tongued seraphim, of burning bushes and whale bellies. It presses me to seriously reflect on the many and multitudinous ways that God chooses to be made known in the natural-and yes, supernatural worlds-that we inhabit.
A few years ago a writer named Sophie Burnham began what has become a virtual angel craze with her simply titled Book of Angels. Within months of its publication, thousands of people had written to her, each detailing their particular angel stories; encounters that have been experienced by more people than we might first think.
Indeed, just as some insects can see further into the ultraviolet spectrum, seeing colours that we don't even know exist; just as your pet dog can hear sounds that are beyond our ability to hear, so also, it seems, can many people, at particular times in their lives, see into a world of spiritual beings and powers of which, for the most part, we are quite ignorant.
Not surprisingly, it seems that it is children-those whom Wordsworth described as "still trailing clouds of glory"-who have such experiences more than others. In fact, many of the follow-up angel letters provided accounts of childhood experiences.
One tells the story of a young couple who had a little girl, three or four years old and a newborn baby boy. The little girl kept asking to be left alone with the baby, but the parents were anxious. They had heard about sibling rivalry and were a little afraid. "What do you want to do with him." "Nothing." was the reply. "I just want to be alone with him."
She begged for days and was so insistent that the parents finally agreed. There was an intercom in the baby's room, so they decided that they could listen and if the baby cried then they could rush into the room and make sure everything was alright.
Finally, the little girl went in and approached the crib. Alone. She came up to the newborn baby, leaned into the crib and over the intercom the parents heard her whisper, "Tell me about God ... I'm forgetting."
To varying extents, like the little girl in the story, we've all forgotten. And that's why we need festivals like St. Michael and all Angels. A day to make us wonder if perhaps we didn't hear the flutter of an angel's wing; a day to wonder if perhaps we didn't hear the faint music of their song. A day to catch us up in the midst of all our good and righteous busyness. A day to contemplate the possibility of seeing "greater things than these."
The Rev. Michael J. Pryse,
Bishop
