![]() where the doctrine of guardian angels is suggested, it may suffice to mention the angel who succoured Christ in the garden, and the angel who delivered St. Without dwelling on the various passages in the N. A twofold aspect of the doctrine is here put before us: even little children have guardian angels, and these same angels lose not the vision of God by the fact that they have a mission to fulfil on earth. Angels are everywhere the intermediaries between God and man and Christ set a seal upon the Old Testament teaching: “See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt., x iii, 10). But in the New Testament the doctrine is stated with greater precision. There is no special teaching the doctrine is rather taken for granted than expressly laid down cf. This sums up the Old Testament doctrine on the point it is clear that the Old Testament conceived of God‘s angels as His ministers who carried out His behests, and who were at times given special commissions, regarding men and mundane affairs. Deut., xxxii, 8 (Sept.) and Ecclus., xvii, 17 (Sept.). Ps., xxxiii, 8 and xxxiv, 5.) Lastly, in Dan., x, angels are entrusted with the care of particular districts one is called “prince of the kingdom of the Persians”, and Michael is termed “one of the chief princes” cf. In Gen., xviii-xix, angels not only act as the executors of God‘s wrath against the cities of the plain, but they deliver Lot from danger in Ex., xii-xiii, an angel is the appointed leader of the host of Israel, and in xxxii, 34, God says to Moses: “my angel shall go before thee.”Īt a much later period we have the story of Tobias, which might serve as a commentary on the words of Ps., xc, 11: “For he hath given his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways.” (Cf. It was also the belief of the Babylonians and Assyrians, as their monuments testify, for a figure of a guardian angel now in the British Museum once decorated an Assyrian palace, and might well serve for a modern representation while Nabopolassar, father of Nebuchadnezzar the Great, says: “He (Marduk) sent a tutelary deity (cherub) of grace to go at my side in everything that I did, he made my work to succeed.” In the Bible this doctrine is clearly discernible and its development is well marked. ![]() Evang.”, xii), and Neo-Platonists, like Plotinus, held it. This belief in guardian angels can be traced throughout all antiquity pagans, like Menander and Plutarch (cf. Jerome expressed it: “how great the dignity of the soul, since each one has from his birth an angel commissioned to guard it”. That every individual soul has a guardian angel has never been defined by the Church, and is, consequently, not an article of faith but it is the “mind of the Church“, as St. ![]()
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