Someone to watch over me

There was a recent series of television commercials that featured a sloppy-looking guy with feathery wings who was supposed to be a guardian angel, but whose habitual inattention frequently resulted in disaster for the person he had been assigned to protect.

Today's first reading (Job 1:6-22) begins a series of readings from the book of Job with the angels of God presenting themselves before the Lord. Coincidentally, it also happens to be the memorial of the Guardian Angels.

Given what happens to Job in this reading, one might think that his guardian angel was the guy from the television commercial.

In truth, Guardian Angels are instruments of God's protective love, not free-lancing celestial bodyguards.

This protective love, however, does not protect us from all tragedy: terrible things can happen, as they did to Job and his family, to holy men and women throughout history, and most obviously to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Yet the protective love of God - the Almighty who watches over us - can and does and will safely bear God's children through all of the griefs and hurts of this world, as we continue in faith within this world and most wonderfully in the eternal, unbreakable joys of the world to come.