Guardian Angels exist! The phenomenon of angelic apparitions
"Angels exist!
Stars hanging in the sky that gravitate around the sun. High mountains of creation that border on the eternal mountains. Angels exist!
Torches lit in the original light. Scented gardens full of joys. Taciturn wells that listen in depth and draw from depth "(Hophan," Die Engel ", p. 18).
Angels have always been at the center of controversies. In their time, the Sadducees already denied the existence of angels, and their rationalism has been preserved up to our time and today is experiencing a new golden age.
By now, faith in angels is granted only to children and madmen, because most men share the opinion of the German author Gnther Grass, who in his "Local Anesthesia" writes: "I hate dogmas and eternal truths! ". In the age of technology, only things that can be described technically have real value; instead, what goes beyond the horizon of human knowledge - that is, everything that must be believed and cannot be proved by rational means - does not exist at all. This dogma creates many difficulties for believing Christians, who must not be confused. The existence of angels is proven in the New and Old Testaments, the Christ himself is the guarantor; the holy tradition teaches it to us, many mystics affirm it to us and the Church confirms it in various doctrinal definitions; he has taught it to this day and will teach it until the end of the world. “We believe in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Creator of visible things, like this world, where our fugitive life takes place; He is also the creator of invi-sible things such as pure spirits, who are called `angels' ..." (Pope Paul VI, "Creed of the People of God")
1. Angels in the Bible
In the Bible, angels appear from the first to the last book and are discussed in more than three hundred passages.
In Holy Scripture they are mentioned so frequently that Pope Gregory the Great did not exaggerate when he said: "The presence of angels is proven on almost every page of the Holy Bible." While angels are rarely named in the old biblical books, they gradually become a prominent presence in the more recent biblical writings, in the prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, in the book of Job and in that of Tobia. “They leave their role of background in the sky to act in the foreground on the terrestrial stage: they are the servants of the Most High in the management of the world, the mysterious guides of the peoples, the supernatural forces in decisive struggles, the good and even humble custodians of the men. The three greatest angels are described to the point that we are able to know their names and nature: Michele the powerful, Gabriele the sublime and Raffaele the merciful-god. "
Probably, the gradual development and enrichment of revelations about angels has various reasons. According to the theories of Thomas Aquinas, the ancient Jews would certainly have deified the angels if they had fully grasped their power and their radiant beauty. At that time, however, monotheism - which was however unique in all antiquity - was not rooted enough in the Jewish people to rule out the danger of polytheism. For this reason, the complete angelic revelation could not take place until later.
Furthermore, during the captivity under the Assyrians and the Babylonians, the Jews had probably known the religion of Zoroaster, in which the doctrine of benign and evil spirits was highly developed. This doctrine seems to have greatly stimulated the imagination of angels in the Jewish people and, given that divine revelation can develop even under the influence of natural causes, it is also probable that extra-biblical influences were the premises of the revelations deeper deeds on angels. Of course, it is wrong to find the origins of the angelic doctrine of the Bible simply in the Assyrian-Babylonian spiritual beliefs, just as it is wrong to trace the extra-biblical images of angels to fantasy without hesitation.
With his book "The Angels", Otto Hophan, a contemporary theologian, contributed much to the better knowledge of the angels. “The belief in the presence of benign and evil spirits, of an intermediate being between the supreme divinity and men, is so widespread in almost all religions and philosophies that there must be a common origin, that is, an original revelation. In paganism, belief in angels was transformed into belief in the gods; but it is precisely "that polytheism which in large part is only the misrepresentation of belief in angels (Scheeben: Dogmatik, volume 2, p. 51)."
A famous proof of the existence of this original revelation is found in the work of the pagan philosopher-Plato, who with his declarations on the angles comes close enough to the biblical belief in the angels: “The spirits act as interpre - and report to the gods what comes from men; and they communicate to men what comes from the gods. To the former they bring prayers and sacrifices, to the latter the orders and rewards for sacrifices. They fill the space between the two in order to create a connection. " So remember: revelation and the Bible testify in various ways the existence of angels. But who are the angels?
2. Angels are spirits
In many passages of Sacred Scripture angels are called 'pure spirits'. By definition, spirits have neither body nor are they made of matter, and therefore do not undergo temporal changes. The notion 'spirit' does not only mean incorporeality, being a definition of what a spirit is not. "In reality, the spirit represents the densest concentrate of reality, the greatest accumulation of being, the core from which the works are born, the point that exceeds all body-reality ... The spirits - in a limited way the human spirit, stronger the angelic and infinite spirit of God - they are ardent, self-confident individuals who belong and know each other, are people and not personifications, more authentic than any corporeality that many consider the only existing reality you.
When in the Gospel the Lord addresses the spirits, he asks for their names; because a spirit is 'someone' and not 'something', it has a personality and is not a shadow or a nuanced universe. Who has to do with a spirit, has to do with a person. "
3. The phenomenon of angelic apparitions
Whenever angels appear in the Bible, they do not do so in the form of a spirit, but with a body: a man, a teenager, etc. ... They do it to remedy the mental limitation of us men, whom we cannot see beyond what we can perceive with the senses, that is, pure spirituality. The body shape adopted by angels is commonly referred to as the 'fake' body. The fake body is a kind of materialization in the form of a body; it is not tied to earthly laws, but it still seems real to the viewer.
Angelic apparitions can be distinguished in inner and outer visions. The first can manifest itself in sleep, as happened to Joseph: "Behold an Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream ..." (Mt 1,20; 2, 13, 19). However, it can also happen in a waking state, as many mixed-ups demonstrate. The appearance of the archangel Raphael to the young Tobias was an external vision; the angel accompanied the young man on his long journey and guided all his affairs with a sure hand.
However, there are also apparitions in which the angel is visible only to one person and is not perceptible to other people present. The angel who freed Peter from prison was not visible to the guards: “Peter, going out, followed him, not knowing if what the angel was doing was reality; he believed he had a vision ”(Acts 12, 9). The blows to the ribs received by the angel, the chains that fell and the doors that opened, gradually convinced Pietro that he was not in the grip of a joke of his imagination. As soon as he woke up on the deserted road in the middle of the night he said: "Now I truly understand that the Lord has sent his Angel, he has freed me from the hands of Herod ..." (Acts 12, 11). Although they seem real, the angels of the apparitions do not `` speak '' like men, but with the strength of the mind they produce sound waves similar to the human voice. When they 'eat' they do not take food or drinks, as Raffaele explained to Tobia's family before leaving her: "You thought you saw me eat, but in reality I did not eat anything, it was only an image" (Tb 12,19).
In some cases, however, the human body is not enough to grasp the nature of angels, especially when it comes to angels from the upper choirs.