Angels are created, spiritual beings with intelligence and free will who worship God and serve His purposes in creation. They’re not cute cherubs or metaphors. They’re real.
The Church teaches that angels are incorporeal, they don’t have physical bodies like we do. But they’re not impersonal forces either. They have minds, they make choices, they know things. St. John of Damascus described them as “intelligent essence, in perpetual motion, with free will, incorporeal, ministering to God.” They were created before humanity, and they’ve been part of God’s plan from the beginning.
What Angels Do
Their primary job is worship. The angels stand before God’s throne singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” without ceasing. When we celebrate the Divine Liturgy at St. Michael’s, we’re joining that heavenly chorus. The liturgy isn’t just something we do here in Beaumont while the angels do their thing somewhere else. We’re participating together in the same worship before the same throne.
But angels also serve as God’s messengers and helpers to humanity. The word “angel” itself means messenger. Throughout Scripture they appear at crucial moments, announcing Christ’s birth to Mary, rolling away the stone at the resurrection, releasing Peter from prison. They’re active in salvation history because God chooses to work through them.
And yes, we each have a guardian angel. This isn’t folklore or superstition. It’s consistent Orthodox teaching going back to the Fathers and rooted in Scripture. Your guardian angel prays for you, defends you from demonic attack, and guides you toward salvation. He’s been with you since your birth and will be with you at your death. That’s a sobering thought when you’re sitting in traffic on I-10 thinking no one can see what you’re doing.
The Angelic Ranks
Orthodox tradition recognizes nine orders of angels, often grouped in three triads. You’ll hear about seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, powers, principalities, archangels, and angels. The higher orders stand closest to God in unceasing worship. The lower orders are more directly involved with the created world and human affairs.
We know the names of only a few angels from Scripture: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are the most prominent. Michael is the great defender, the commander of the heavenly hosts. Gabriel is the herald who brought the Annunciation to Mary. Raphael appears in the Book of Tobit as a guide and healer.
The Church celebrates the Synaxis of the Archangels on November 8, honoring Michael, Gabriel, and the other bodiless powers. We also commemorate guardian angels and invoke angelic intercession throughout the liturgical year.
How We Relate to Angels
We venerate angels, but we don’t worship them. That’s an important distinction. Worship, what we call latria, belongs to God alone. But we honor the angels as God’s servants and ask them to pray for us, just as we ask the saints to pray for us. They’re part of the Church, the communion of saints that includes both the living and the departed.
You’ll see icons of angels in Orthodox churches. We’re not worshiping the image. We’re honoring the person depicted and asking for their intercession. When you see St. Michael with his sword or Gabriel with a staff, you’re looking through a window into the heavenly reality where these beings actually exist and serve God.
This is different from how popular culture treats angels. Hollywood gives us angels who earn their wings, angels who are really dead people, angels who exist mainly to make us feel good about our choices. That’s not what we believe. Angels aren’t former humans. They’re a different order of creation entirely. And they’re not here primarily to boost our self-esteem. They’re here to serve God’s will and help us toward salvation, which sometimes means challenging us rather than comforting us.
Why This Matters
If you’re coming from a Protestant background, you might not be used to thinking much about angels beyond Christmas pageants. If you’re coming from a Catholic background, some of this will sound familiar, though we don’t speculate as much about angelic details as medieval scholasticism sometimes did.
What matters is that Orthodox Christianity takes the spiritual realm seriously. We believe in a creation that’s bigger than what we can see and measure. Angels are part of that reality. They’re worshiping right now. They’re serving right now. Your guardian angel is with you right now, whether you’re aware of him or not.
When you come to liturgy and hear us sing “Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim,” we mean it. We’re joining the angelic worship. That’s not poetry. It’s what’s actually happening.
Fr. Lawrence Farley at the OCA has written some helpful reflections on angels that go deeper into the patristic sources if you want to read more. But the basics are these: angels are real, they serve God, they help us, and they’re part of the Church’s life. We honor them, ask their prayers, and remember that we’re never alone in this journey toward God.
