We All Have Secret Service Protection

I don’t wish to be trite about a near catastrophe of epic proportions, but the Secret Service’s failure to protect President Trump from an assassin’s bullet on July 13th was an utterly inexcusable failure and caused a stir in our nation’s soul that we haven’t seen in years.

No matter one’s political persuasion, all decent Americans should be disgusted at this abject dereliction of duty to protect. It was primarily the fault of the head of the Secret Service but not only her. A whole host of people saw the security lapses and said nothing. Others saw the shooter and did nothing. Those who followed irrational or even immoral orders were equally negligent in their duty.

Only time will tell whether this outrageous miscarriage of responsibility will be addressed properly and resolved (but don’t hold your breath).

Unanswered Questions

Apart from what most recognize as God’s miraculous action in saving our former President from the killer that day, the incident raised a good number of questions that apply both to our public officials as well as to ourselves and our families:

What happens when law enforcement and even professional security forces fail to protect us?
Could the current services, so dominated by ideologues, have been in on the conspiracy, even if indirectly by deliberately withdrawing their protective shield?
Are the leaders of these protective organizations just incompetent? And if so, how did they get to be in these positions?

Most importantly, and beneficially, I think many Americans got a huge wake-up call about the nature of evil. The existence and too-close-for-comfort approach of a predator like the one who shot at President Trump made it clear that evil men are always out there scheming and planning our demise, waiting to pounce on us like vampires.

We call them criminals and terrorists. In the spiritual realm we call them demons.

Spiritual Secret Service

These are important questions our government is slowly attempting to address along with at least a thousand other unanswered questions about the shooter, the security lapses, the faulty communications, etc.

But keep in mind that these are questions that can only be asked of a human organization. Human works imply the possibility of failure, the existence of gaps in responsibility and coverage, with the negligence, laziness, and sometimes malice that leads to such failures.

But these are not questions we could ever ask of our holy guardian angels because we would have no reason to ask them:

They never fail in their duty to provide security for us.
They never engage in stealth operations with the enemy or participate in cover-ups.
They’re never incompetent or negligent.

That’s because they’ve already endured the extreme test of their moral fiber. When they chose to remain faithful to God over against the satanic rebellion in heaven (see Revelation 12), they solidified their capacity as battle-tested warriors who were “perfected” by grace in that very act of fidelity.

In other words, as good as they were before the Fall of the rebel angels, the holy angels’ fidelity to God made them a thousand times more charitable and virtuous than in the previous state. The same holds true for their spiritual power. As competent as they were in their God-given assignments before the Fall, they became a thousand times more powerful after they ejected the apostate angels from heaven.

There are rewards for fidelity, and the holy angels reaped them all before the beginning of time. That is why they are the best spiritual secret service agents of God’s children. Remember: When the apostate angels were vanquished, they entered our realm: “But woe to you, earth and sea, for the Devil has come down to you in great fury” (Rev 12:12).

Secret Means Hidden

One of the most beautiful theological traditions that has coursed through the Church’s bloodstream for centuries is the theology of the Nine Choirs of Angels. So much has been written of this tradition and the arrangement of the choirs that I will only direct you to one good summary article on this platform if you are not already familiar with the teaching.

The Guardian Angels are the “lowest” choir of the hierarchy. This doesn’t mean they are low-born, low-ly, low-quality, or low-IQ spiritual beings! It simply means they are closest to human beings, that is, “lower” than God and the other angels in the order of being.

We can call them secret service agents in the analogous sense of the word “secret,” which simply means hidden. We can’t see them unless they are sent by God to appear to us. When they do show themselves, there is usually a good reason: our safety or our salvation.

And they don’t always appear in human form. It is believed that St. John Bosco’s guardian angel appeared to him in the form of a large grey dog who showed up the first time when Don Bosco was walking through a tough neighborhood and in danger of being robbed. A menacing-looking dog was a pretty clever disguise to keep the robbers away, if you ask me!

Yet, the vast majority of human beings will never see their guardian angel dressed in human (or canine) form, so, like all things spiritual, we have to take on faith their presence in our lives and their ongoing assistance against the predatory powers of evil.

Guardians of Body and Soul

The guardian angels are like the peaceful red candle that burns silently but continuously beside the tabernacle in the church when the Blessed Sacrament is present. Whether or not any human being is there in the church watching the flame, the candle continues burning, a silent witness to Christ’s divine Presence.

The angel who is entrusted to a child of God with a spiritual soul is like that candle, vigilant, attentive, ever at our side burning silently to safeguard our welfare. We can’t see him, but he is there, every hour of the day and night. He is entrusted with getting us to heaven (with our cooperation of course).

But some people mistake their guardian angel’s ministry as primarily one of keeping them safe from worldly dangers and accidents. But if that were the angels’ primary ministry, then they can be considered total failures! Given all the hospitals full of accident victims and sickness, it’s hard to imagine that our worldly safety is their primary ministry.

Yet, sometimes they do rescue us from danger, as in the case of Don Bosco or in the testimonies of countless people who have experienced the protective work of a spiritual being. (At last count, there were six different titles in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series just related to angels.) So saving us from physical danger is something angels do sometimes.

Why do they protect us from car accidents sometimes and not others? Or, to the point of our national saga, why do angels keep some people safe from assassination attempts and not others?

Spiritual Strengthening

I think it has to do with the interplay of the material world with the human will. In the end, we all have to choose salvation, and we need to be firm in that choice. I can think of several good reasons why they might save us from physical danger and violence, all of which relate to our spiritual strengthening:

To turn us away from sin by allowing some physical danger to give us a wake-up call
To show us that we are literally nothing without God’s protective grace
To teach us that the spiritual life is real and it makes demands on us
To give us another chance to repent before death
To show us that spiritual death is much more heinous and serious than even a violent physical death.
To make us holier through direct contact with a holy spiritual being (when they intercede directly for us)

Only God truly knows the state of a person’s soul at any given time. Only God knows how His grace operates on that soul for salvation. When God sends an angel to guard us, the tangible presence of the angel in that person’s life will have an effect on his soul which will help that person on his way to heaven.

We are not privy to God’s Providence, but we are accompanied silently every hour of every day by a spiritual secret service agent who is.

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.

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Want to learn more about angels? Please check out Peter Darcy’s book Natures of Fire: God’s Magnificent Angels, available on Amazon.