Undercover Angel

Psalm 91:1-16

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• he will shelter you with his pinions, and under his wings you may take refuge
• for he commands his angels with regard to you, to guard you wherever you go
• he will call upon me and I will answer; I will be with him in distress

Applying the Word to My Life:
I can't imagine that Tobit found it easy to send his son away.

Tobias was young, and the journey ahead of him was long enough that his father wanted someone trustworthy to travel with him. They found a man who introduced himself as Azariah, agreed to accompany Tobias, and off they went. Tobit had no idea who he'd just hired.

Neither did Tobias.

The trip didn't exactly go smoothly. A huge fish tried to bite Tobias when he went into the river. His companion told him what to do and somehow turned the attack into something useful. Later Tobias married Sarah, a woman whose previous seven husbands had all died on their wedding nights because of a demon. His traveling companion guided him through that too. Tobias eventually made it home safely and even carried with him what was needed to restore his father's sight.

Only after the journey was over did his companion finally tell them who he was.

Raphael.

An angel had been walking beside Tobias the whole time.

I love that story because Tobias was never protected by being kept away from everything dangerous. He still had the river, the fish, the demon, the uncertainty, and a frightened father waiting at home. God's care looked like making sure Tobias didn't face any of it alone.

That helps me hear Psalm 91 differently. The psalm doesn't promise a life where nothing frightening ever happens. It names the terror, the arrow, the darkness and danger, and then tells us that God commands His angels to guard us along the way.

That's the heart of today's feast. God has entrusted each of us to the care of an angel who sees God and accompanies us toward Him. Most of the time we have no idea what that angel is doing. We don't know what dangers were avoided, what temptations were interrupted, what quiet promptings we almost missed, or how often help came without our recognizing its source.

That doesn't mean we should go looking for danger to see whether God will catch us. Satan tried exactly that with Jesus, using this very psalm to tempt Him into throwing Himself from the Temple. Jesus refused. Trust doesn't manufacture a crisis and demand proof.

Trust keeps walking.

The promise isn't that nothing difficult will happen. The promise is that we never have to walk through it alone.

There may even be something wonderfully childlike about that. Yesterday Jesus asked us to become like children. A child can fall asleep in the car without understanding the road, because someone else is driving. We'll never see everything God sees or understand everything He protects us from. We're simply asked to keep going, trusting that heaven is much closer to our ordinary lives than we usually imagine.

Tobias didn't know Raphael was an angel until the journey was almost over.

I wonder how much of our own journey will make more sense when ours is over too.

My Response for Today:
Today I'll thank my guardian angel for walking with me, especially when I didn't notice.

ABOUT THE GUARDIAN ANGELS
Who: not named individuals (apart from the three archangels) — each person's own angel, assigned by God from birth
Role: represents each person before God, watches over them, aids their prayer, and presents their soul to God at death
Feast Day: October 2
Established: devotion given its clearest shape by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (12th century); added to the Roman calendar by Pope Paul V in 1615
Scriptural basis: Matthew 18:10; Psalm 91:11-12; the Archangel Raphael's journey with Tobias (Tobit 5-12)
Read more: Franciscan Media · New Advent