Somehow I have gotten on the mailing list of a Catholic agency that’s run by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. I have considerable problems with the bishops and their leadership, but judging from the agency’s website, it looks as if it is doing a lot of good work in the U.S. and overseas. So I applaud them for that.
What strikes me funny is that as part of the fundraising appeals they send me, they include a little card with two things on it: the text of an old prayer to a guardian angel and a gold-colored quarter-sized coin with the image on both sides of a haloed long-robed angel with spreading wings. The prayer is essentially the one I learned as a child in parochial school. (I was raised Catholic, and while I no longer identify with any particular church or denomination, a lot of the church’s teachings, prayers, and rituals have stuck with me.) The prayer on the card goes like this:
Angel of God / my guardian dear, / to whom God’s love commits me here, / ever this day / be at my side / to light and guard, / to rule and guide. / Amen
That’s almost exactly the way I learned it, except for one word, a difference that strikes me as very significant. The version I learned, and prayed with my classmates in school, used the word “entrusts” instead of “commits.”
So I find the use of the word “commits” a bit jarring. Let’s reorder the words and see what we get: “God’s love commits me (here) to my guardian angel.” The commitment seems to be going from me to my guardian angel. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? I’m just a lowly human. Shouldn’t the angel be committed to protecting and guiding me?
That’s why I like the word “entrusts” better. To me, that says that my well-being and right living is entrusted to the angel, who is there to help me. Light, guard, rule, guide. I’m not sure I believe in angels, but I do like the idea of some protective spirit looking out for me.
On a related front, I recall a story the nuns used to tell in school about a pious God-fearing boy who is so good that he has the privilege of actually being able to *see* his guardian angel. (They told a lot of stories.) Whenever the kid goes through a door, he always holds the door open so the angel can go through it first. Eventually, when he grows up, the young man decides to dedicate his life to God, go the the seminary and become a priest. On the day he is ordained, while exiting the church, he holds the door open for his angel as usual. “No,” the angel says, reaching out for the door. “Now *you* go before me.”
I guess the nuns were telling us that story (in part) so that the boys in the class would think about the religious life. Become a priest! You’ll be better than everyone else! You’ll be more exalted than even the angels! For sure, the parish priest was an important guy, if not feared by then certainly kowtowed to by the nuns. When the priest came to the classroom, it was a big deal, and it was clear we’d better be on our best behavior.
Not sure what the moral of this post is. Maybe it’s that people (or angels) who have the job of leading, guiding, and protecting us should always cast themselves as “servant leaders” rather than as our betters.
Wordnado 