What’s Your Guardian Angel Story?
Here’s mine …
For almost all of my adult life, I have not used an alarm clock. Why? Because I have an amazing Guardian Angel! While on most mornings, I have no trouble waking up with plenty of time for my morning routine of prayer, coffee, checking the news, checking my emails, etc.., there are some mornings when I am in one of those deep sleeps (maybe something in the parish ran late the night before), and it looks like this will be the morning I fail to wake up on time. On those mornings, it never fails that my phone rings, and I spring up, thinking there must be some kind of emergency to tend to. By the time I reach the phone, it has stopped ringing after the first ring. Then I check the caller ID, and nothing is there … but there should be, if someone just tried to call. Then I look at the clock, and most times it says, 5:27 AM. 5/27 is my ordination anniversary date. Some mornings, when I do not have early Mass, it will ring at 6:24 AM. 6/24 is my birthday. It is then that I realize “Herm” called (this just happened again this morning, by the way).
“Herm” (short for Herman) was my mother’s term of endearment for me. It’s a long story as to why she started calling me that. I guess it had to do with an episode of the TV show, The Munsters, when Herman Munster ran into a wall or something. When I was a toddler, I would, excitedly, turn and take off running, without looking where I was going … and I would run into things. Thus the nickname, “Herm.” So, I decided to give that term of endearment to my Guardian Angel (N.B. Realize this is just a “pet name” – not an actual name – for purposes of intimate communication with my Guardian Angel. I do not know the actual name of my Guardian Angel. The Church actually discourages “assigning official” names to our Guardian Angels, because this would imply “power over” that heavenly being).
I have many other Guardian Angel stories I could tell, but because this just happened again this morning, I thought I would share this one with you. What’s your Guardian Angle story?
Guardian Angel Prayer
Angel of God, my guardian dear,
to whom God’s love commits me here,
ever this day be at my side,
to light and guard, to rule and guide.
Amen.
