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Topic of the Week –
The Presence of Angels in Our Lives

“…Angels are figures of the church…and about whom I feel we haven’t paid the necessary attention. When I became aware of this… I realized that we made a huge mistake and these beings that God created before man… are not fictional but realities of heaven who have a continuous relationship with the earth and with people and they are our dependable helpers during our life… and in the other one meaning the eternal life.

Therefore, is there anything more beneficial than having a good relationship with our angels?…

I believe the greatest gift of Christ after His Body and His Blood, which He offers to us in every Holy Liturgy, after His Mother, our Most Holy Theotokos, the Mother of Light, after the saints, are the angels….

St. Paisios… used to say: “You haven’t seen your holy angel yet?” He considered it one of the simplest things. But, not only do we not see him, we have forgotten about him.  Even people that come to church….”

Excerpted from Metropolitan Neofytos of Morfou: “The Presence of Angels in Our Lives” – YouTube

Adult/Family:

“…the older people knew to drive away their children’s fears and phobias. Now we are full of psychologists and psychiatrists and the phobias have increased, not lessened, because what is absent is the faith of the parents. The unfortunate parents now are expecting to do everything by themselves. What can a father and mother do when they cannot inspire faith in the holy angels, who are our first protectors….”

To learn more about the presence of angels in our lives and how we may instill this faith in the lives of our children, listen to the entire talk Metropolitan Neofytos of Morfou: “The Presence of Angels in Our Lives” – YouTube  or read the transcript

Preschool:

During the time of confession, does the angel take our sins away?

The angel beside us, erases [them]. Likewise, you know, your priest when you give him names to commemorate during the liturgy in the prothesis he has an angel beside him, and he continuously erases during the time that he commemorates the fallen asleep or the living he erases at the time also. There are many moments when our angel is beside us like an eraser. Let me put it this way: what we haven’t confessed we will either repeat it or God will allow, if we are not truly repentant, to do it again, so that we can repent.

Does God create our angel at the time of our baptism?

No. All the angels have been created before the planets, before the stars, before plants, before the light. They are infinitely large in number, countless. God is not short of angels. Praise be to God! Therefore, there are angels, and an angel, who is not looking after a soul anymore because the man has died, he takes over the newborn more correctly the newly illumined. Like so!

How do the angels look like? A holy woman who lives in Crete told me… this holy woman who is now close to her end loves very-very-very-very much the Archangel Michael. So much, and all the angels! She sees the angels, and she describes the Archangel Michael to me. She told me that he is tall, and how tall he is; I won’t say it (he is taller than I am). She told me that he is dark-skinned, in contrast with the Archangel Gabriel who is fair. You see, God embraces all colors. Therefore, the angels are able, because they are incorporeal spirits that do not have a body as we do, to take various forms….

Do angels have a gender?

Angels do not have a gender. There is no female and male. Female and male is something that is present only in people. Angels have no gender; however, their form, when they appear is never feminine.

 

Does the guardian angel protect only one person? 

We said that there are angels that guard people who received Orthodox baptism; these have one angel. But there are angels, especially the Archangels or the Taxiarhes, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel and the Archangels as an order. These protect the nations. For instance, the Greek nation, has a special angel, for that nation to illumine its president to illumine the powers of the nation, the French nation has another angel, the Turkish nation has an angel: every nation has its angel.

Therefore these angels have many people to protect. When someone is talking with his angel can the people beside him hear this conversation as well?If God deems it so. Most times, though, people cannot hear.

Excerpted from Metropolitan Neofytos of Morfou: “The Presence of Angels in Our Lives” – YouTube

 

Elementary:

“…From the time that a baby will get baptized, he receives a guardian angel. From that moment! Every Orthodox has a guardian angel.  And in the same easy manner with which an angel will come to us to watch over us and to inspire us, and to guide us, and to give us good thoughts, good thinking, good desires in our heart he can leave just as easily when he sees that we cultivate the opposite: bad thoughts, profane desires, malice towards our fellow men then the angel stays away.  He waits for us to repent, to go to confession, so that he can return.

And, something that we are not aware of: angels are not corporeal beings. They are incorporeal. So, they are able with great ease to enter inside of us. This is something we have to grasp. They can get inside our heart and to place there good desires with great ease, to get inside of our brain to place good thoughts there, to enter into our body to heal sicknesses, which many times are not apparent meaning that they are hidden, we haven’t become aware of them yet. So long as we call them….”

Read the story below for Middle School for a real-life example of calling on guardian angels.

Middle School:

“…Once somebody called me from Astromeriti. He tells me: “You know we are from the same village, from Zodia. My daughter is applying to the Ministry of Finance and she is about to take some exams and she has the credentials needed to get hired. You are a bishop. Do you know a minister so that we can use somebody we know to get my daughter hired?”

I told him “I know a minister but I also know your daughter’s guardian angel.” He couldn’t understand. He wasn’t aware of these things. I said, “Do you want me to ask her angel for them to hire her or do you prefer for me to speak to the minister that I know the regular minister, the man?”

“Do you mean,” he tells me “that if you speak with the angel you are certain that my daughter will get hired?”

“Why don’t you think about it?” I said. “Who has more power? The minister that was appointed by the President Klirides or the minister of God, the angel?”

He tells me, “Speak to whoever you want to speak so long as you speak to someone.”

“Smart man.” I went and lit up my Geron Iakovos’ tall candle where I have it for lighting, I said the girl’s name, the father’s name, I crossed myself, and added: ‘Geronta and my angel, do not let me down.”

After some days, we met with the man at a fresh fruit market. He tells me “She got a job! I don’t know who you talked to, but they hired my daughter – another ministry hired her!”

Listen to this!

“You see?” I said. “The angel knew that she wouldn’t have a good time at the ministry that you wanted her to get hired, and they hired her at another.”

Therefore, we have this guardian, who reinforces our faith because he is not there just to satisfy our wishes. This is wrong. He is there to help us become truly faithful people. That is to say, our worry should not be: My guardian angel, protect me so that we don’t fall off the bridge or at another day to ask the Archangel help us so that we can go hiking tomorrow.

This could be also what we say. But rather, if you notice that you harbor some ill feeling towards another person tell him “My guardian angel, remove from me that ill feeling that I have towards Roula, who I cannot tolerate even the sight of her. I cannot heal this ill feeling inside of me. You take it from me” and persist in that prayer.

If I am jealous of someone… to tell him: “Please, my guardian angel, remove that jealousy from me; give the father good thoughts and give me good thoughts also.” 

And some saints of God used to tell me that the following thing happens: when we ask our guardian angel about other people, not about us, about other people; you have an angel, the other one, Marianna, what’s her name she has an angel, the other young lady has an angel, you have an angel. Imagine that I am praying about all four of you girls. You have four angels. Your angels, when I am praying using your names, they love me, they pray for me. Do you understand? So it is to our advantage a hundredfold to pray for our fellow men.

Let’s say that we have a bad relationship. Today most married people have problems with their marriage. What if someone said to his angel ‘My guardian angel, please go illuminate my wife because I cannot speak to her.”  What if the wife said to her angel “Please, my angel, go illuminate my husband?” How much different would the life of people be, how much finer if we involved our angels in our lives….”

Listen to the entire talk Metropolitan Neofytos of Morfou: “The Presence of Angels in Our Lives” – YouTube  or read the transcript

High School:

“…Young children up to five or six years old see angels; they see their guardian angels. I remember as well as I can remember now, when I was young, I remember my mother and I was very, very young, and my mother was a holy woman and I remember one evening, father, that I saw a curly haired, tall man with his hair down and he was dark-skinned (this is how Archangel Michael appears) and he was talking with my mother. I was a very young child and I would stick my head out of my head, look at him and I would go hide under the bed. It made me happy to look at him. Then he would leave, and I would ask my mother: ‘How long have you been talking with this handsome dark-skinned man?’

“You saw him too, my son?” asked my mother.

But after that I got older, I forgot. See what life and sins can do? When I started repenting for my mistakes, to weep, to go to confession to continuously ask God, the Most Holy Theotokos, our angels, my guardian angel for forgiveness then I started to remember specific things that happened before I was five.

Whereas a man is not on the road to repentance, is not careful, does not weep for his past, his past is dark, he doesn’t remember it, and the evil one takes advantage of this and he brings lethe, which means oblivion, which is where alitheia (truth) comes from. What is truth? Where there is no lethe, there is alitheia: The negating ‘a’ and ‘lethe’ (forgetfulness).

This is why angels are not just important because we have a protector to guard us; he also helps us in our relationships, so that they can improve and most importantly, our guardian angel helps us little by little to gain knowledge of ourselves to gradually get to know myself, so that I can truly repent for my mistakes, and on the other hand… to get to know my God.

The angel has this reflective property: his light to descend from the ranks up above, to the lower ranks, to the even lower ones, and then to reach us. His light to be knowledgeable, containing awareness, cohesiveness, creative, cleansing, illuminating, and in the end sanctifying.

I told you many, and great, and heavy things. However, let everybody retain what he can according to [the size of] his soul’s vessel. The most important thing that I want you to keep my good children is this: to learn how to open your heart and to speak to your closest friend, to your closest relative, who is your guardian angel.

Let’s understand, my children, that you will grow up and I will grow older one day and become an old man and you will grow up and I hope that you become older people. We don’t know when we will die. The time will come, though, and we will die. Our soul will be separated from the body. Our body will abandon us; our angel will not abandon us. He will be together with our soul. Our soul will not die. Nobody’s soul will die: the soul is immortal, meaning it doesn’t die. Therefore, it is very important, since our soul will not die and I will continue to feel and experience even after the eyes of my body will close then it is to my greatest advantage during my last hour and moments likely days, to have my guardian angel beside me and for him to have the courage to come to my defense because the soul when it exits the body it goes and passes through demonic powers and everything we haven’t confessed, everything for which we haven’t repented the demons shout about it and they lay claim on the soul, to take it with them in hell. The only one that the soul has beside her is her guardian angel.

That’s why I ask you to please form a relationship with your angel now. Our body leaves, is lost, is erased, it turns into dust but the angel doesn’t leave. He will appear before Christ after we pass through the light of the Theotokos, of the Mother of Light and before Christ, there is where our angel will deliver us to the One who fashioned us, to the One who brought us into life the Lord of life, the Lord of Resurrection, Jesus Christ.

Do you see? Our angel is by our side from the time of baptism until our soul appears before God. So, should we not have such a being, such a friendship? 

 

Talk to him starting now: ‘My guardian angel, please I am asking you to teach me how to love, to teach me how to believe.’ It’s likely that some of you may not believe the things that I told you. I don’t demand that you have my faith. Tell him: ‘My guardian angel, give this faith that the bishop is describing.’ And he will give it to you. He will give it to you.

 

And this way you will have on this earth and in heaven in our temporary existence, and in the eternal life a shining angel, faithful guide, guardian of our souls and bodies. And in church, pay attention. The deacon (or priest) says this that we talked about just now [faithful guide, guardian of our souls and bodies] at every Holy Liturgy. We are talking about our angel. This isn’t by accident. May God strengthen you…”

Listen to the entire talk Metropolitan Neofytos of Morfou: “The Presence of Angels in Our Lives” – YouTube  or read the transcript