FR. FRANCIS ONGKINGCO
Angel’s Sunday is assigned to the fourth Sunday of Advent. It is that moment when the angels appeared to the shepherds to announce “tidings of great joy!” It was an event that the angels’ sorrowful tears in Eden were converted into Joy.
Sorrowful tears? Do angels even cry?
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God created the angels before man. He gave them powers that surpassed what he awarded man. But for some mysterious reason, he made angels the servants of men and to help each one attain his heavenly destiny.
It is not known how angels could feel. They must have some sort of feelings, but they are not the same as ours. Do they laugh, tell jokes, tease each other and other fun things we men do? We cannot really say.
When Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, God noticed something in their guardian angels. They were wearing a different expression as tears streamed from their faces.
“Why are you crying?” God in His fatherly love asked.
“Lord, we cannot help it. Seeing Adam and Eve weep for the first time, also makes us weep with them,” they replied.
“But it is not as you perceive it to be,” God said.
“What do you mean, Lord,” the angels clarified.
“It is actually the other way around,” God revealed.
“But Adam and Eve were the ones to cry first,” one of the angels said.
“Indeed,” God agreed. “But you were the ones to first experience how their sin had separated them from my love.”
“You have first wept within because you saw the grave consequences of their disorderly choice made them slaves of the devil, the flesh and the world.”
“You mean, man cries because of what we feel?” The angels asked.
“Man may cry when he is hurt or pained in his body. But when he is spiritually overjoyed or sorrowful, he is sharing what you experience because as their guardians, you are intimately bonded with them and their destiny,” God said.
In this, God was moved with how each guardian angel truly loved and identified with the men and women they were charged to care for. He assured them that one day, they will not weep tears of sadness but of joy.
The angels did not fully understand these words, but left the garden to accompany Adam and Eve into the world.
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To this day, the ancients would explain that when a man cries due to joy or sadness it is because he mysteriously feels what his angel feels.
Likewise, when he chooses to do something against God’s will, then his soul is filled with sadness and guilt. Although some men may not weep for their sins, their angels sorrowfully cry on their behalf and hope that man will repent and convert to God’s love.
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With the birth of Christ, the angels then understood that the salvation of man was at hand. What he had lost by his own choice is now regained because God has chosen to become man so that man could become God.
As they announced the good news to the shepherds, the angels were filled with wonder and joy. They began to shed tears, because now man’s path to heaven is reassured.
Although their joy has been fulfilled at the birth of the God-Child, it is somehow still suspended until each of the souls they were destined to lead to heaven will truly find their way back to worship God in Heaven’s manger.
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In this Christmas season and onwards, may we always give great joy to our angels as we strive choose to obey God’s commandments and please him –as children do with their fathers– in everything we do.
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