Reflection
Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels
In her classic 1937 novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston describes her characters’ encounter with God during a hurricane:
“They sat in company with the fellows in other shanties that believed in some cracks, but there were those who had no cracks in shanties and no shanties at all and to whom the houses were lookouts in the smoke. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”
Janie, the main character, becomes more confident and strong after this divine encounter.
We are more likely to look to God when we are facing the storms of life. Job lost everything: his family, his home, and his livelihood. In his misery, he prays, asking questions about suffering. In today’s first reading, God appears directly to Job and asks Job questions in return:
“Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place? Have you entered into the sources of the sea, or walked about on the bottom of the deep?”
-Job 38:12, 18
After these questions and others like it, Job responds, stating:
Behold, I am of little account; what can I answer you?
Job 40:3
I put my hand over my mouth.
After experiencing the majesty of the Creator, Job realizes his relatively small place in the mysteries of Creation, including the mystery of suffering. But he knows that he is part of it all and God is with him because God spoke to him directly.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that there are beings whose eyes are always watching God: angels. Jesus is holding a child and speaking of the child’s guardian angel when he says:
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones,
-Matthew 18:10
for I say to you that their angels in heaven
always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”
In a homily for the Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels, Pope Fancis said:
“ the angel helps me to go forward because he looks upon the Father, and he knows the way.”
We humans need help to find the way through confusing and mysterious times. Like Janie in the hurricane; like Job amidst the storm of grief; and like our guardian angels, we can go forward, and help others to go forward, if we keep our eyes fixed on God.
