The Holy Guardian Angels

King Herod had Saint James, the brother of Saint John, killed with the sword. Saint Peter was held in Herod's prison, and the night before Herod meant to bring him out, an angel of the Lord appeared in the cell and a light shone there. The angel woke St. Peter, told him to dress and follow, and led him out.

Once he was out in the street, St. Peter came to his senses and knew that the Lord had sent his angel to rescue him. He went to the house of Mary, where the disciples were gathered, and when Rhoda insisted he was at the gate they answered that it was his angel. Herod could not find him, questioned the sentries and ordered them put to death.

After Christ had spoken to Saint Margaret of Cortona, the angel set apart to watch over her came to her and made her great promises. He told her he was not her Lord but the ambassador of the Great King. She told him that his words did not gladden her as the words of Christ had, and he answered that her Creator had sent him to prepare her to be a dwelling place for the Eternal King.

From then on the angel taught her and helped her root out her faults and set her soul in order, until she was filled with virtue. Once, when the Lord had withdrawn himself from her, the angel came to her instead, sent by Christ, her heavenly Spouse. He promised her great things, which she would not repeat even to her confessor, Fra Giunta.

Saint Lydwine of Schiedam fell on the ice at about fourteen, and from 1400 AD she never left her bed. Through the long illness that followed she very often saw an angel of light, who comforted her. In October 1425 AD, soldiers from Picardy in the Duke of Burgundy's service forced their way into her room, abused her and wounded her.

One of them held the light and mocked her: she was a beast, he said, that her guardian angel often carried off to Paradise. Afterwards the angel appeared to her and called her sister. He told her that the shameful violence done to her had set her in the footsteps of the Saviour, as she had once begged to be.

Saint Frances of Rome, who founded a house of Oblates in 1425 AD, had an angel at her side for twenty-four years. When her community elected her its superior, that angel left her, and a brighter angel took his place.

Her last illness lasted seven days, as she had said it would, and the brighter angel, an archangel, stayed at his post beside her throughout. When her confessor asked what she saw, she told him the archangel had finished his task and was beckoning her to follow. St. Frances died on March 9, 1440 AD, at fifty-five.

On November 8, 1803 AD Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton was at sea on the way to Italy with her gravely ill husband, William Magee Seton. At Pisa in December, on the night before he died, she fell asleep while praying for him.

In her sleep a little angel held out a sheet of white paper and wrote on it, in large letters, the name JESUS. She told her husband the dream. A few hours before he died, William Magee Seton repeated that the angel wrote Jesus.

Saint Catherine Labouré was a novice of the Daughters of Charity at the Rue du Bac in Paris. At half-past eleven on the night of July 18, 1830 AD, she heard herself called three times. She drew back her bed curtain and saw a child of four or five, dressed in white, who told her the Blessed Virgin was waiting for her in the chapel.

She dressed and went with him, and he kept at her left side; wherever they passed, the lamps were already lit. In the chapel the Blessed Virgin spoke with her, and afterwards the child walked her back to bed along the same lighted way. Twenty-six years later, writing under obedience to her confessor, St. Catherine said she believed the child was her guardian angel.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux went on pilgrimage to Rome in 1887 AD. At Naples her party made the trip up to the monastery of San Martino, on a high hill above the city. On the way back, the horses bolted.

The party reached its hotel safely. In her autobiography St. Thérèse gave the credit to their guardian angels alone.

About the end of 1895 AD, at home in Lucca, the guardian angel of Saint Gemma Galgani appeared to her and rebuked her for wearing a gold watch and chain. On June 8, 1899 AD, after Communion, Our Lord told St. Gemma he would give her a great grace that evening.

That Thursday evening, the vigil of the feast of the Sacred Heart, Our Lady appeared with Jesus and with St. Gemma's guardian angel, and St. Gemma received the stigmata. When the ecstasy ended her hands were bleeding, and she covered them as well as she could before her angel helped her into bed. The pain lasted until three o'clock on the Friday, the feast of the Sacred Heart.