Prologue in Sermons: April 20

By Our Sins We Drive Away From Ourselves our Guardian Angel

April 20

(A Word from Saint Anastasios the Abbot of Sinai)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

The Lord is so merciful to us, brethren, that to each one of us, at Holy Baptism, He gives for our whole life an invisible defender, an instructor in all that is good and right, and a guide to the heavenly fatherland — the Guardian Angel.

“Those who are in the Christian faith, to every person there is given from God an Angel for preservation during his whole life,” says Saint Anastasios the abbot (Prologue, April 20). And again: “To every faithful one from God, to each one an Angel was given, and he writes down all his good deeds” (ibid., fol. 37).

But if each one of us has a Guardian Angel, why then does the Holy Church every day, in the church services, ask for him for us? “An angel of peace,” it cries, “a faithful guide, a guardian of our souls and bodies, we ask of the Lord.” And in the evening prayer the believer likewise entreats the Lord for a Guardian Angel: “Send Your Guardian Angel, covering and preserving me from every evil.” Why is this so? If once the Guardian Angel is given for our whole life, then why still ask for him?

Because, brethren, when we remain in hardness and without repentance, give ourselves over to passions and vices, repeat the same sins and do not repent of them, then the Guardian Angel, although he does not leave us entirely, yet, being constrained by the incompatibility of his pure nature with sin, withdraws from us in such a way that we are deprived of his angelic protection.

“Those who are in the Christian faith, to every person there is given from God an Angel, as you have heard,” says Saint Anastasios, but he adds to this: “if one does not drive him away by evil deeds.” And further he continues:

“For as smoke drives away bees, and foul stench drives away doves, so also our evil sins — drunkenness and fornication, holding onto anger and other evil deeds — drive away from us the Angel, the guardian of our life” (Prologue, April 20).

The same is said also by the Angel of God himself to the great elder Pachomios:

“He who through his evil life has become dead to God and to virtue, stinks a thousand times worse than a dead body, so that we can in no way either stand or pass near him.”

The same was once said also to the Venerable Nephon.

“Why do you stand here and weep?” he once asked a young man who stood at the gate of a certain house and was weeping.

“I,” answered the young man, “am an Angel, sent by the Lord to guard a man who has already for several days remained in this indecent house — I stand here because I cannot approach the sinner — I weep because I am losing hope of bringing him onto the path of repentance.”

Thus, this is why the Orthodox Church every day entreats the Lord that He would send us a Guardian Angel — because we often by our sins and lack of repentance drive him away from ourselves, and not only drive him away, but also cause him sorrow and grief.

And indeed, brethren, we cause him sorrow and grief.

“When a faithful man,” teaches the same Anastasios, “lives in righteousness, the Angel of God rejoices over him; but when he begins not to do the truth, but to lie and to steal, to become drunk and to envy, not to go to church, to become angry, to quarrel, to be miserly — then the Angel of God grieves over him” (Prologue, April 20).

And then what?

“The demons rejoice,” continues Anastasios, “bringing upon us in every way the most evil wickedness.”

That is, then there is opened the nearest access to man for the angel of darkness; for where there is no Guardian Angel, there is the enemy-destroyer, and where this enemy is, there is darkness upon darkness, impurity upon impurity, lack of repentance upon lack of repentance, until death puts an end to the sins of man.”

Hearing this, brethren, let us fear sin as a destructive wound! And if we recognize that until now we have more than once by our lawlessness driven away from ourselves the Heavenly instructor and guide, let us strive by true repentance and amendment of life again to draw him near to ourselves; and together let us ask him that he may more often strike in us the inner serpent and give us help for the accomplishing of good deeds — strength for the uprooting of evil habits and passions, and especiallythat he may not leave us with his protection in the fearful hour of death.

“Let us give no place in ourselves to the evil one,” according to the word of Anastasios, “but with the fear of God let us drive him away. And to the Guardian Angel let us open the heart to receive him, that he may guide us into truth and deliver us from the cunning of the devil and from his temptations” (Prologue, April 20). Amen.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.