Angels Make Due With Emissary Role and No Sizable IRA or 401K

To my delight I had a brush with death today.  I'd had a rough night and ended up at 2:30 PM on my knees saying my prayers.  The bad thoughts dispersed and I was able to fall into a deep sleep, only  awakened by my cellphone alarm at 5 AM.

    I was leaving early from rural Osceola, Wisconsin, so as to make it home to St. Paul and Sunday morning services at Fairmount Avenue United Methodist Church with adult education at the 9 o'clock hour.   The topic was going to be angels with angels in art collection to follow.

   But before that class, I had to travel down 35E into St. Paul.  I was about to veer right onto the St. Clair Avenue exit when all of a sudden a police car was bearing down on me at high speed lights flashing and siren wailing.  I hoped it was headed south down the freeway, but I was wrong.  My thought was illogical as the police sedan was right behind me.  I do not remember veering further right on the exit lane but the squad car screamed by on a single lane exit with me nudged right.  It occurred to me that I had not time to steer right to make room for him, but there was room for him to race by my vehicle.

   At the top and on St. Clair I had to pull to the right and let other squad cars speed by to stop just two blocks past the city park and recreation center.  I turned north on Victoria to avoid the blockade I could see ahead of me on St. Clair.

   Later at adult education when the program had finished I had a friend approach me to say she had not really figured out angels yet.  I told her there was nothing to figure out.  You only had to accept the presence of angels and there was no other way of experiencing the angel beings.

   I had told another friend already about the nudge that sent me to the side of the single lane exit to save my life.   I feel like I knew of what I spoke when it came to angels, especially guardian angels.

   I was especially glad of the art show that followed the Bible lesson about angels because it reminded me of the horned moon which shows up in Christian art in three modes: first as the wings of angels, second as the horns of the fallen angel Satan with the horns protruding from his head, and finally with the Mary, Mother of the Messiah, as she stands atop the horned moon with her slippered foot atop the slithering snake.   For example, I think of the image of our Our Lady of Guadaloupe (which is central to the Mexican celebration of the Immaculate Conception).  In the cape of Juan who saw the apparition the image of Our Lady stands atop the horned moon.

   The symbolism of the horned moon can be understood by the position of the horns to being depicted.  With Satan who placed himself equal of God the horns protrude from his head for his thinking so.  The other angels the wings set them apart as immortals and spiritual essences.  No human has wings.  The human can be like the angels through salvation.  The prime example of this is Our Lady who by her humble acceptance of her role is raised higher than the angels as indicated by her standing on the horned moon.

   Angels of course bespeak of the glory of a God who interacts in our lives and in our history through his intermediaries who not being mortal are not to worry but be like the birds of the air who fret not over their lot or next meal, or God forbid 401ks or IRAs.

   I know too that the moon is quite a screen for apparitions.  I recall December 1995 traveling down from Fargo to Pelican Rapids to visit with my typically oppositional father who was dealing yet with the loneliness of life without his now deceased wife (my mother had died that Autumn).  A full moon glistened above the eastern horizon across the snow and the clouds draped over it as it moved in and out of the broken cloudscape.  Ground fog and vapors above the horizon also help distort the moon into an image that to me was Our Lady of Guadaloupe.  It happened to be the feast of Our Lady of Guadaloupe, a fact I would have occasion to dwell on later that evening.  I thereafter dwelt on how my mother and I now shared something that prior to this only she of the two of us had personally experienced.  She had grown wary and weary of my father's oppositional conduct before she had left him the last month of her life to die in peace in Fargo, that after fifty-five years of marriage plus.

   In Pelican Rapids, I went to Saturday evening mass which turned out to be for the Spanish congregants.  The congregants invited me down to the parish hall and an evening supper.  I do not speak Spanish but the children spoke some English so I did okay.  I helped with wiping tables and helped washing dishes.  It was a special evening what with the apparition and all.
    The following day, my father and I had a pleasant Sunday and attended St. Leonard's together.  He told me he was ready to give up his car.  He'd had a scare traveling on the highway and had taken the ditch.  I had expected him to be especially oppositional about giving up his car and his independence, but he really did it on his own.  He had me follow him in my car as he drove over to Vergas, Minnesota, and a used car lot where the owner he knew took the car on consignment.

   Someone was moving my father behind the scenes as he himself was not capable of this grace and lucidity, at least not prospectively, just ask any of my siblings.  I should mention my mother never lived with any doubt of the wherewithall of the angels and Our Lady in doing the will of our Father in heaven.