As you know, the
official Christmas Season of the Church wrapped up on Sunday, with the Baptism
of Our Lord, although in the Vatican the decorations will remain until February
2, which is the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the temple. Our Churches
are now stripped of poinsettia plants and nativity sets, green vestments
replace the white or gold, and standard hymns replace Christmas Carols. Someone
asked me why we don’t sing Christmas Carols during the month of December. Good question
and the answer is simple: the Church doesn’t follow the secular calendar for
the season of Christmas. For the rest of the world, Christmas starts the day
after Thanksgiving, but for the Church, we spend December in the season of
Advent, which is a time of preparation and longing for Christ to come. We were
cleansing our hearts and souls of sin and pride and setting our minds on things
of God and not of man. It would make no sense to sing “The Lord has come” when
he had not yet been born, so to speak. So the Church sings “Happy Birthday to
Jesus", or Christmas Carols as they are popularly called, on His birthday and
for a few weeks after that. Remember the Twelve Days of Christmas are the days
from Christmas until the feast of the Three Wise Men!! Today we will take a
look back at a few Bible passages concerning the role of Angels in the Infancy
narratives of Jesus, and leave the season behind with a parting commentary from
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Luke 1:26-28: In the sixth month of
Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in
Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be
married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was
Mary. The angel
went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with
you.”
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.
Matthew 2:13: Now when they had
gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,
"Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there
until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him."
Luke 2:8-14: And there were shepherds living out in
the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the
Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they
were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good
news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a
Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you:
You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great
company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory
to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
Matthew
2:11-12: On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary,
and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and
presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they
returned to their country by another route.
Angels, by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Many people, having seen my "angel" clean my blackboard on television, will ask on meeting me, "How is your angel?" So, let us talk about angels and their role in our lives. However, here we use the word angel in a very restricted sense — not as a spiritual invisible messenger, not a special illumination or a winged creature bearing a summons, not even as a vision or anything preternatural. By an angel we mean here any person or event that has changed the whole course of our life, influenced our behavior, made us turn right when we were about to turn left, and in general made us better. What lifts such a concept out of the natural order is that eventually it is seen as being an act of God.
Take, for instance, in the book of Tobit, the story of young Tobias, who was sent by his father Tobit to the land of Media on a kind of economic mission. His mother was worried about sending the son on such a long journey, so she went out and found a guide, whose name was Raphael. Raphael not only protected Tobias from dangers and helped him to collect a debt, but even found a good wife for him. The Book of Tobit says, "Raphael was an angel, but he knew it not."
God sets many angels in our paths, but often we know them not; in fact, we may go through life never knowing that they were agents or messengers of God to lead us on to virtue, or to deter us from vice. However, they symbolize that constant and benign intervention of God in the history of men, which stops us on the path to destruction or leads us to success or happiness and virtue. God is generally operating behind secondary causes, like an anonymous benefactor. His direction of our lives is so hidden that most of us are unaware of how we were made an angel to help a neighbor, or how a neighbor was made an angel for us.
When I finished college, I took an examination for a national scholarship worth several thousand dollars. I was anxious to complete my education by working to a Ph.D., but at the same time, ever since my earliest recollection, I had wanted to be a priest. Accepting the university scholarship would have meant postponing my call to the priesthood and maybe endangering it. During the summer vacation after college graduation, I visited our professor of philosophy and told him with great glee that I had won the university scholarship. He grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "Do you believe in God?" I told him the question was silly. However, he challenged me, "But do you believe in God practically?" When I answered in the affirmative he said, "You know your duty. Go to the seminary now and begin studies for the priesthood. Tear up the scholarship." However, I protested, "Why cannot I work now for my Ph.D. and then go later to the seminary?" He retorted, "If you make that sacrifice, I promise you that after your ordination to the priesthood you will receive a far better university education than before."
I tore up the scholarship, followed my duty, and after ordination as a priest, I spent almost five years in graduate studies — most of them in some of the great universities of Europe.
The professor was my angel. I saw it then, but I see it more clearly now.
(Excerpt from "In Media Ecclesiae —
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: master preacher, pastor of the air waves," by
John Baptist Ku, O.P.)
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