To praise the angels is our duty.
Singing of the Creator, they reveal His mercy and goodwill towards people.
St. John Chrysostom
We often pray to saints, but very rarely to our guardian angels. However, our guardian angels accompany us all our lives starting from Baptism, protecting us from all misfortunes. Below we offer the story of a Christian woman about how her guardian angel has been protecting her.
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I was born healthy, but then I got very sick. My mother stayed with me in one hospital, then in another. However, I was not getting better, despite all the efforts of the doctors. Then my grandmother decided to have me baptized secretly. Together with my aunt they took me to church and had me christened. There was a terrible row at home. Learning about this, my communist grandfather, a construction site manager in Rustavi,1 swore awfully. But, amazingly, after the Baptism my illnesses disappeared instantly. I recovered and grew up a healthy child.
There were many children in our family, and every day my mother accompanied me to the house of my cousin, who lived nearby and took me to kindergarten. One winter morning my mother, as always, saw me—a five-year-old girl—off as far as the gate, and, making sure that I was there, turned back for home. Beside the house I saw large deep pits, dug for the construction of a new building, filled with water and already covered with a thin layer of ice. I loved to slide on the ice and imagined how I would now have a good slide. After making sure that my mother no longer saw me, I tried to slide. But once I stood on the ice it broke, and I ended up in the water. I remember trying to come to the surface, but the thin ice would break, and each time I went deeper into the water. I remember my horror and the feeling that help was nowhere near. Suddenly I heard a cry: Two girls who were carrying milk and passing by at that moment noticed me. They pulled me out. The Lord sent them our neighbor, who knew where I lived and took me home. I remember being so frightened that I didn’t even feel the cold, but was more worried that I would be given a talking-to for the soaking wet new fur coat. And, most surprisingly, I didn’t even get sick after that incident!
I, a small child, did not think about Who had sent me salvation.
Later, when I was a fifth-grader at school, during a break some naughty boys were kicking the blackboard. After another blow the massive blackboard fell off its hinges onto me (I was standing next to it), but, sliding over my head, only cut my lip.
When I became an adult, I had many moments in my life when I was within a hair’s breadth of death, but my guardian angel rescued me—because I serve in the police, which presupposes different situations.
Once a car exploded near me, and bits flew at high speed just a few millimeters from me.
On another occasion, the driver of a car I was riding in on work matters lost control and the car fell into a ravine, overturning several times. I just screamed: “Lord, save us!” And He heard me: none of the three people in the car were injured. It was so striking that it seemed impossible!
As long as I served as a divisional police inspector, I had to deal with armed people many times, but my guardian angel always protected me.
Once I went with my spiritual sister and her mother to the Bodbe Convent, to St. Nino’s relics. Leaving the convent and waiting for return transport, we stopped at a cafe at the bus stop and then saw a fight break out between two taxi drivers on duty by the convent. They were fighting about customers. One of them, an elderly man, drew a knife. There was virtually no one around them at that moment, and there was no one to pull them apart. I went up to him and, showing my police badge, said, “Come to your senses! What are you doing? Put the knife away!” But in the heat of the moment he did not react right away, and I thought: “Will he stab me or not?...” Several seconds passed, which seemed to me like an eternity. Finally he hid the knife and walked away swearing.
My guardian angel saved me in an absolutely critical situation, too. Once I had a toothache and went to a dentist. A young doctor began to extract the nerve from my back tooth and accidentally dropped the needle into my throat. He tried to extract it, but didn’t succeed and the needle went deeper. All the clinic staff came running—everyone was very scared, and all this time I prayed to the Lord to help me. The doctors tried to hook the needle but failed, and it went into the trachea. I was x-rayed every day, and on the fifth day they found that the needle had dropped lower and stuck into my stomach’s back wall. There was danger of peritonitis. All those days I prayed continuously to the Lord, the Most Holy Theotokos and my guardian angel for help. My whole life from very childhood passed before me. Seeing how many times my guardian angel had saved me in the hardest situations, I tried to hold on and not lose heart.
They inserted a probe with a thread on it and tried to extract the needle. Abeit not immediately, they succeeded. Then I was told that this was the second such case in Georgia, the first one had been in the 1960s.
A few years ago I was poisoned by mushrooms. I was at home alone. I was getting weaker and weaker very quickly. I wanted to lie down and fall asleep, but some voice inside me (I am sure it was my guardian angel’s voice) said: “Don’t stay at home, don’t go to bed! You must go to doctors as soon as possible.” I managed to go out, stop a taxi and tell the driver to go to the nearest hospital… And then I lost consciousness. I was unconscious for eleven long hours. When I came to, the doctors told me that they had been afraid of the worst and had not believed that I would survive.
But again my guardian angel was with me and did not allow the worst to happen.
I recently went to a store. And no sooner had I entered than a huge pot of earth and flowers fell down from the second story just behind me. If I had gone a second later, it would have crashed onto my head. I escaped with only a fright, as it were. An elderly woman ran up to me and said: “Lady, who prays for you so hard!? How powerful your guardian angel is!”
O guardian angel, thank you for my whole life, and do not leave me in the future!
I feel that you frown when I do or say something wrong, and when I do what is pleasing to God you rejoice. It is you who put all good thoughts to me, and you guide me on the path of salvation!
I often think how merciful the Lord is that at Baptism He gives each one of us a guardian angel who does not leave a person even after his death! Do not leave me for my sins, my guardian angel. Have mercy on me and keep me.
