When did you last see an angel?

Thinking about angels

I love the idea of angels. My larder door is papered with postcards of them.

Postcards of angels on a door
Door full of angels

The peculiar metal light fitting in our kitchen is festooned with little angels, so that I have a chandelier full of them. They vary from paper to wood, to ceramic, to metal, to glass, to fabric; they are all completely different.

Small angel figures attached to a light fitting
Flying angels

 

Some have faces, some just a suggestion of features, some not even that.  Most have wings, but not all; some are male, some female. Some have musical instruments, a couple hold stars, some have music sheets, one has a fish and a bucket (possibly Tobias’ angel?).  They come from all over the place.  I have another large collection which goes on the Christmas tree, and we have extra angels on duty around the various family cribs.  The feasts of the Archangels (September 29th) and of the holy Guardian Angels (October 2nd) are just coming up and I’ve been looking at the psalms for them.

…and where we get them from

From our early years, when we hear about having a Guardian Angel, into later life listening to them crop up in Sunday readings, they are a mysterious but real presence, and a very comforting one. Our ideas about them are shaped partly by the pictures we see, just as I discussed in the blog on musical instruments. They range from the cuddly little cherubs (with or without bodies), through the strange six-winged seraphim, to the much more anthropomorphic named Archangels (Michael, Raphael etc) and the important but unnamed great angels in the Gospel narrative (the Angel of the Annunciation, the Angels in the garden of Gethsemane).

More complex figures than we might think

Apart from Guardian Angels and cuddly cherubs, angels can be quite intimidating.  In the Old Testament, they occur in slightly odd stories, like the visit to Abraham at Mamre in Genesis 18, where the number of people and the pronouns keep changing.  Here I think the angels are being a periphrasis for God himself, and the writer is trying to be hyper-respectful and cautious.  The angels are shadowy figures.  The information we think we have turns out to be traditional rather than scriptural.  Even the original angel who bars the gates of Paradise is not actually supported by the text in Genesis. King James Version :’he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way’. Jerusalem Bible : ‘in front of the garden he posted the cherubs, and the flame of a flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life ‘ (Genesis 3, v 24).

What angels are for

The basic meaning of the word angel is a messenger.  God sends them with a message or to do a specific task (or both).  The mechanism is left unclear.  The angel turns up, gives the message, and leaves.  It is usually described as ‘the’ angel, or ‘his’ [God’s] angel, ‘the angel of the Lord’, only occasionally ‘an’ angel and they are usually singular in the OT and plural, funnily enough, in the NT.

Angels in the Psalms

The Psalms are the exception here, as they talk about angels mainly in the plural, almost in the lump, and they don’t actually mention them very often at all.  I think this is because the relationship between the psalmist and God is so direct (I talked about this before in the yearning psalms).  Where angels occur elsewhere in the OT, they are an agency of God, whereas in the psalms, God simply does everything himself with his own hand (Ps 145/146, for example).  Angels do crop up a few times.  There are destroying angels (carrying out God’s will) in Psalm 77/78.  More usually the angels are there to protect and to rescue (Pss 33/34; 90/91), but their main purpose is to praise (Pss 102/103; 134/135; 148/149), and to be there to do God’s will (Pss 34/35; 102/103; 147/148).

Agents of God

The idea of the angels being God’s agents makes sense if you have a lively fear of the Lord (the beginning of wisdom, Ps 111/112, and also Proverbs 9,10), because God is too much for us to cope with. There are some fascinating references to this in modern films and even sci-fi.  In the story Hell is the absence of God by Ted Chiang, even the angels appearing causes death and destruction.  The same thing happens in the film Dogma, and in The Adjustment Bureau, the angels cause havoc (while wearing suits and hats), but this is clearly nothing compared to what might happen if the boss were to intervene.  There is a wonderful line in Psalm 38/39,v 14 : ‘Look away that I may breathe again before I depart to be no more’, where the psalmist cannot withstand even the look of the Lord to whom he prays.  I warmly recommend both these films because they accept a basic religious premise and take it seriously (that’s why I like Ghost, as well, but he’s not an angel).  Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life is a bit too cuddly for me, but he raises an interesting question.

Be an angel

If angels are simply one way in which God carries out his will, can we stand in for angels? Or to put it round the other way, have we come across angels and not realised that they were?  The confusion between angels and people isn’t only in the Old Testament.  Paul encourages the Hebrews to be hospitable to strangers ‘for thereby some have entertained angels unawares’ (Heb 13, v 2), which is the other way round, being nice to people because they might be angels, like Baucis and Philemon in the Greek myths.  I think I’ve met angels at least a couple of times, where I needed help and someone just appeared, contributed it and then went away.  Even if they were people, they were angels for me.  And once or twice when talking to someone who was upset about something, when I’ve been able to comfort, I’ve wondered afterwards whether that was getting a chance to be an angel for someone else.  We even say, ‘Be an angel and …’ when asking for help.

Sensible angels with their feet on the ground

NT angels tend to be less scary than OT ones.  They start by saying ‘Fear not’ (the angel at the Annunciation, the angel to the shepherds, Joseph’s angel).  They give sensible advice about avoiding Herod.  They come in a chorus, to sing (I like this version, and when the congregation seems scanty, remember they aren’t the only ones singing). They come to comfort Jesus, to minister to him.  They are practical, rescuing Peter from prison and reminding him to put his cloak on.  They talk in a friendly but firm way to the women after the Resurrection and to the apostles after the Ascension  –  more sensible advice.

Scary angels

There are frightening angels in the book of Revelation, which borrows a lot from Daniel, but in both books they are there to do God’s will and it is clear throughout that he lets them go only so far and no further.  And it’s the wicked who suffer.  Those of us who are trying to be good should be comforted by the idea of angels.  They are on our side, so long as we are on God’s side.

Musical angels

My favourite musical angels are the ones in Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, the Guardian Angel who exults over the saved soul she has cherished for so long, and the Angel of the Agony (in the Garden) who pleads for the soul before God.   Wonderful music, quite impossible to have on in the background, because it’s so gripping you have to stop what you are doing and just listen.  There are angels in Messiah, of course, solo and en masse, and I really like that they are the whole of the Chorus instead of being the rarefied version that Mendelssohn gives us in Elijah, with just three female voices (Elgar has a female-only chorus of ‘Angelicals’, but the main group nearer God is all the voices together).

One of my favourite hymns is Angel voices, which was written to celebrate the installation of a new organ in Lancashire in 1861.   I especially like the third and fourth verses, with their references to ‘craftsman’s art and music’s measure’ (verse 3 ) and ‘our choicest psalmody’ (verse 4), where I really feel that it’s written for me.   Sometimes we can be angels for each other, but maybe our most frequent angelic activity is joining in the singing!

© Kate Keefe and Music for Mass 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Keefe and Music for Mass, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Trying to understand the Scriptures : Emmaus

Events unroll very quickly in the last few chapters of the Gospels.  The Sunday readings are going backwards slightly, as the Emmaus story happens about a week before Jesus’ reappearance in the upper room and his discussion with Thomas, but it’s worth looking closely at this story.

Two men journeying to a village called Emmaus

We have two unnamed disciples (we learn later that one is called Cleopas, but he’s not someone we have come across before), heading out of Jerusalem. They are talking sadly about recent events.  It’s so easy to imagine this conversation, just going round and round in miserable circles, the sort of conversation you can’t seem to stop having after someone has died, especially if it has been traumatic.

Encounter with a stranger

Jesus, unrecognised, draws near and falls into step with them, and asks an open question: what are they talking about?  They are so startled that they stop walking and just stand there looking sad. Then they ask him how come he doesn’t know what the whole city has been buzzing with the last few days, and they give him a pretty good summary of events (including the women’s testimony, still being discounted). Then Jesus says,’O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe,’ but he must have said it very gently, because there are two of them and they don’t just push him over and walk off, they listen as he explains to them how it was foretold ‘in all the scriptures’.

Explaining the Scriptures

And here I have a confession to make. For years I thought this meant that he showed them, using something like the blue RSV New Testament that we used in RE classes at school, how it all made sense, and I was very envious of anyone who had the main character of the story there to explain it all. Then ‘the scales fell from my eyes’, and I realised that the New Testament had not been written at this point, not any of it.  Anyway, people didn’t walk around in those days carrying handy one-volume Bibles. Maybe this is totally obvious to everyone else, but it wasn’t to me. Jesus explains the relevant bits of the Scriptures to them, and he does it by talking about the passages which they are all familiar with (and much of it will have been out of the Psalms).  And it will all have been Old Testament.

Messiah libretto from the same Scriptures

The comparable experience for us is listening to Handel’s Messiah, I think.  It is exactly what Handel’s librettist did, but of course he also had the New Testament to choose from. Charles Jennens took different bits out of (both parts of) our sacred Scriptures, and put them together to shed light on the story of Jesus.  We Catholics tend not to be as well-versed in the OT as our Protestant friends, so we often don’t know where the bits come from, but their relevance is shocking and immediate.  They are so poignantly relevant  (‘All they that see him laugh him to scorn’‘He was despised’,Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows) that we assume that it is Jesus they were written about.  Of course, they were; but not directly, not while it was going on, although that is how it feels, like a live commentary on the Passion.  Any decent score of Messiah will give you the references, and Wikipedia helpfully also lists them.  What is striking is how much is out of only two books: Isaiah, and the Psalms.

Recognition at the breaking of the bread

To finish the story: they all reach the inn together and go in to have supper (after a seven-mile walk), and they recognise him ‘in the breaking of the bread’.  Then he vanishes.  Why did they not recognise him before?  There are various possible factors: they are part of a very loose group and may not have known him too well by sight, since they aren’t in the inner circle;  they are too tired and sad to be paying very much attention; they aren’t expecting him;  he must look totally different from the last time they saw him, if they were in Jerusalem until today; he chooses not to be recognised  — but none of these reasons is at all significant.  The point is that eventually they realise; and then, although the day is now even farther spent than it was when they used that as an excuse to keep him with them, they get up and walk all the way back to tell the apostles.

Enough witnesses, and a more informed group

Their testimony is added to that of others, the weight of evidence is growing and everyone begins to feel that it is true and they can perhaps let themselves believe it.  Then the Lord appears again and lets everyone touch him (this may or not be the same event as when Thomas meets the Lord), and now ‘they still disbelieved for joy’, but everything has changed and life is transformed.  The Lord explains the Scriptures all over again, and he actually refers specifically to the psalms (Luke 24, v44), which pleases me very much.  Just as we use the Psalms as a rich source of prayers and solace, so did he.  You are never the first person to find a psalm illuminating, apt, or comforting; and one of the people who has done so before you is Jesus himself.

©Kate Keefe and Music for Mass 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Keefe and Music for Mass, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.