On Guardian Angels (or, The Word Of The Day Is Theologoumenon)

An architect once gave Pope John XXIII (now St. John XXIII) his plans for a new building on the Vatican grounds. The Pope returned them with the words Non sumus angeli, "We are not angels," written in the margin. It seems the good architect had forgotten to include bathrooms.

I love that story. Partly because it's a Papal poop joke, and we just don't have enough of those for my money. But also because it puts a pontifical finger on the core divide between us and our winged kin. Angel and Man are both God's kids, and we're both spiritual beings—but you and I are animals as well. Souls in bodies, fire in dust. And if the Ascension and the Assumption teach us anything, it's that we'll always be corporeal creatures. We'll never be angels, and there are starry mansions worth of wisdom that we'll have to apprehend before we can even speak with them as peers.

Which is fine. God didn't stuff our spirits into flesh because He misread the directions on the box. Clearly, He wanted there to be different types of intelligence operating in the universe: one Church, many parts. (Or as Morgan Freeman put it in Robin Hood, "Allah loves wondrous variety.") I expect there are positively scads of angels out there working on stuff that has precious little to do with Earth and human beings; but just as we have a common Father, so too we all have a common Enemy. "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities, against the rulers of this world of darkness and the spirits of the world above" (Eph. 6:12).

That being the case, I am deeply heartened to know that Our Lord has already assigned one of His angels to tend my unborn child. When Sonya Mags asks me about the powerful immortal that smolders watchfully at her side, I think I'll tell her about the vision that came to Tolkien as he prayed before the Blessed Sacrament. He reported to his son Christopher that he saw the love of God descending upon the children of men and taking shape as persons of pure Charity, just as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the love between Father and Son. And the person who proceeds from, or rather is, His love for each human being, is each human being's guardian angel.

Now, my understanding is that this belief is what's called a theologoumenon: a belief that does not contravene Church teaching but that also has not (yet) been doctrinally approved. It's certainly possible that there's simply a class of angels that specialize in guarding humans, and they have a sort of duty roster that rotates them to a newborn person when their previous guardee dies—but Tolkien's vision has an elegance which, to me, rings of truth.

Ha! Rings. I didn't even do that on purpose.