An angel is a pure spirit, with nothing material about him at all. To think about him as he is, we must forget the symbols and the figures, the wings and the trailing robes, and reorientate our whole thought. We normally think of beings as limited by matter, having a certain size and shape and weight, moving about from one place to another and moving at so many miles per hour; that is, their material component binds them to getting around within a definite space-time framework. A pure spirit has none of these limitations imposed by a material body, nor has he any of the powers that belong to material bodies. Sense knowledge, touch and taste, hearing, seeing; the passions that are part of the physical structure of the human body; the breakdowns it can suffer, sickness, accident, death - none of these things can belong to a pure spirit.

By means of the will, an angel is able to love. He loves himself, in that all creatures desire their own good and happiness; and he loves other angels. St. Thomas raises the interesting point of whether an angel, by its natural powers, loves God more than itself. He reasons that an angel does naturally love God more than himself, and that this also applies to man, for God being the universal good, all things belong to Him, and thus they all tend toward Him, and with a greater love than for themselves. "Otherwise, if either of them (man or angel) loved self more than God, it would follow that natural love would be perverse, and that it would not be perfected but destroyed by charity." That we and the angels have this innate craving and desire for God as part of our nature is vital to our understanding of the pattern of the world and of the interplay of good and evil motives in it. We all desire what is good, and from that we must desire above everything else goodness itself, God. In fact, when we go after evil, it is because it appears to be good and desirable in some way or other to us; it is something we want and think we will like.

From an Irish source, late-eleventh-century sermon on St. Michael contained in a famous Irish compilation called the "Speckled Book," Leabhar Breac. It describes the angels into classes.

For the angeli stantes are they who remain before the face of God in their holiness and righteousness without every moving, but who are always meditating on the Lord, as the Holy Scripture says, that it is on the Lord that these desire ever to gaze; but the ministrantes are they who go on service between God and man. At one time they go to strengthen the holy and righteous; at another, to inflict vengeance on kings and nations and cities that are living perverse lives in their manifold sins; or other times, again, they go to perform miracles and wonders among the holy and righteous.

This old Irish sermon then goes on to divide the angels up further into the traditional nine choirs. The names of the nine choirs are all derived from Scripture. Angels, seraphim, and cherubim are all mentioned in the Old Testament; Archangels play an important part in the New. St.Paul gave a whole series of names for different groups of spiritual beings, but without arranging them in a definite order or distinguishing their special functions. His point was, in fact, to show how far Christ was above all angelic being to prevent his readers from falling into angel worship. So then, he writes that Christ is "above every Principality, Power, Virtue and Dominion - in short, every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come." Again he writes, "For in him (Christ) were all things created in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible whether Thrones or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers. All things were created through and unto him. . . ." These names were taken to refer to heavenly as well as earthly powers, and Christian writers soon began to apply to the different groups of angels and eventually to arrange them in a series of nine "choirs." The upper end of this series was fixed by the Old Testament witness to the immediate service on God of the seraphim and cheruim, the lower end by the Old and New Testament witness to angels and archangels coming to inform or assist mankind.

The nine choirs had been divided into three groups:

seraphim - cherubim - thrones
dominations - virtues - powers
principalities - archangels - angels

One can consider the threefold division of the angel choirs according to the government of the universe: the highest group waits upon God, the middle one is concerned with the universal government of the world, and the last is occupied with particular ministrations and missions.

The way in which angel guardianship works depends both on the angels' power to act both on bodies and on the human intellect. The angels can influence us through our senses either by appearing externally with some assumed visible shape or by acting on the physiological make-up of man. The latter activity depends on the power of a pure spirit to influence material things - a difficult concept, to the contemporary mind, but that does not make it impossible. By touching the human senses, they can affect our minds and imaginations through them, or yet again the angelic intellect can act directly on the human one, strengthening, enlightening, guiding it. St. Thomas compares this last activity to that of a preacher who presents truth and what should be done about it but cannot compel his hearers' wills. In this way they may well have an important part to play in bringing about the conversion of an adult to the faith, by strengthening the intellect and helping it to grasp and understand the new concepts proposed to it.

The approach of the angels to the human mind is very different from that of the demons. The demons can affect the human imagination by their own natural powers and can suggest all manner of temptations to the human intellect. Temptations of this sort are violent, disturbing, and exhausting. The angelic approach is quiet, a sudden surge of power, but often presented so gently that we are not aware of it. "It comes so quietly and gently that instantly joy and gladness and courage arise in the soul. For with them (the angels) is our Lord who is our joy, and the power of God the Father." So St. Antony, the first hermit, described visions and inspirations of the good spirits, distinguishing them from those of the devils, whose "attack and appearance . . . is full of confusion, accompanied by crashing, roaring and shouting," which results in fear, depression and confushion in the soul.

St. Antony pointed out that in the angel appearances described in the New Testament, the angel immediately said, "Fear not." He said that it was a criterion of a vision of a good spirit if an initial fear was almost at once dispelled. If it lasted, the devil was around. Something rather similar applies to ordinary day-to-day angelic help and inspiration; it does not produce fear or any violent reaction or depression as the devil's approach does.

Various titles have been given to the angels who guard and assist us, according to their functions. One guardian angel can carry out all of them, of course, but we can classify his functions by different names. From very early times, Christian writers have spoken of the angel of peace, the angel of penance, and the angel of prayer. The angel of prayer assists with both liturgical and private prayer. The angel of penance incites us to penance and helps us to free ourselves from attachment to sin. The angel of peace's name goes back to a story in Jewisw apocalyptic writings in which an angel so titled accompanies Enoch and explains the visions he sees. The angel of peace brings both interior and eternal peace - he is concerned with attacks of demons and with the protection of travelers. The Secret of the votive Mass for wayfarers in the Dominican missal is a prayer to the three magi in which the angel of peace is mentioned: "O God, who are the glory of the saints and makes straight the road of the just; at the intercession of the Three Magi, send the angel of peace with your servants to lead them to and from the places they seek without hindrance to soul or body; and may the Holy Spirit be their companion." But in the prayers to be said on a journey it is the archangel Raphael who is invoked to be our companion on the road, and indeed the idyllic story of old Tobias and his son of the same name not only sets out a vast panorama of the ideal of Christian living but also indicates the angels' role in our journey through life.

St. Michael is the special guardian and patron of the Church. The Jews regarded him as their guardian angel. In the Book of Daniel (10) Michael appears as the "prince" of Jews, while the "prince" of he Persians and of the Greeks has been interpreted as these nations' angels. With the coming of the Church, the New Israel, Michael's patronage naturally passed on to her.

On the other hand, it would seem more likely that the "angels" of the churches at the beginning of the Apocalypse (chapters 2 and 3) are the bishops of the particular churches, not guardian spirits.

Traditional Catholic Greeting Cards for your needs.

Greeting Card #1
Greeting Card #2
Greeting Card #3

Why buy Catholic Christmas postcards instead of a Christmas card?
Think of all the handlers that will read your religious Christian message before it gets to the receiver.
You will also save a little on postage.
Here is one postcard Christmas design you can purchase online, that I have designed
The picture is a print from my watercolor, a familiar image to Traditional Catholic.
I just received my order today and the quality of printing is beautiful.
Zazzle the company that prints these postcards offers bulk rate based on how many postcards you order.