Do Some Angeling

As we prepare to bring in the new year, it’s a good time for “angeling.” Not that there is a bad time for serving as an angel, but the holidays represent a season designed to reach out to others, including strangers, with a message of peace and hope, and with deeds of good will. When have we needed good will, hope and peace more than today?

Angels have been popular in many cultures for millennia. They are viewed across different religious traditions as heavenly beings, beings from a higher, better place. The word “angel” itself comes from the Greek, “angelos”, meaning “messenger.” An angel in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is a messenger from God, sent by God to a particular person or people at a particular time with a particular comforting message, or needed deed of saving service.

The most popular Christmas movie ever made is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. It is the poignant story of a man’s coming to realize how wonderful his life was at the point of almost losing it. An angel figures prominently in the story, a deceased human named Clarence. He is working on earning his angel’s wings through helping this man, George Bailey, realize how good his life is, not the life he had wanted and hoped and planned to live, but the life he ended up living, which he wrongly disparaged, believing it was all in vain, that he was a failure.

The angel succeeds at helping George see how important he is to his wife and children, how much he means to his town, and how much worse things would have been if he had never lived. At the joyous end of the movie, Clarence gets his wings, presumably to fly to some other needy person.

Angeling is good work, and you can start now, this season, to be a messenger of good will and doer of good deeds. Three suggestions on being an angel to others:

Decide on your basic approach, then stay with it. Embody caring. Remember that “the medium is the message.” St. Francis reportedly told his monks going out to evangelize, that they should “preach the Gospel always, and when you have to, use words.”

Daily look for someone to do something for. People everywhere are in need of a good word or deed, or simply of a kind and caring presence. But they usually do not announce they are in need, so you must develop a selfless sensitivity to others through active listening. Each day, seek to make a difference to another in whatever way opens to you. Neither overrate nor underrate your impact on someone’s life; just be thankful for an opportunity to be of service.

When a situation addresses you, do something about it. You might feel a nudge in your heart to do something about some situation, but for whatever reason you do nothing. Yet what you will later regret is not what you did, but what you could have done but did not. Angeling is all about doing. So say it; so do it.

If you are ready to do some angeling, put a telepathic word out to the cosmic powers that you are available. Then go about your daily life, and see what might show up, where you can do a little angeling. In my years serving as a parish pastor, the need for angeling just showed up, with real regularity. And time and again, I was most thankful that I showed up as well.