What has enthralled you lately? Have you maintained your childlike wonder? - Daily Reflections October 2,2014

ENTHRALLED AND INVOLVED

 

I am always in awe when I watch great musicals. I was rapt in attention watching The Phantom of the Opera in all of the three times I saw it. The same was true for Les Miserables, the Broadway version of which I saw four times before the latest movie version regaled us last year.

       Ordinarily, I have little patience to sit through a lengthy movie, unless it is a guaranteed blockbuster. But both musicals, in real time or in reel, placed me in some kind of altered state of consciousness. I did not notice the minutes ticking by, nor the hours, even if both lasted much longer than ordinary movies. In both, I experienced a case of what the positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi called “being in a state of flow.” Roughly, it means being fully engaged and being absolutely enthralled by

whatever one is doing at the moment.

       Our feast today reminds us of a seldom thought-of but integral element of our Catholic faith: the Guardian Angels. The Lord Himself tells us that “angels in heaven always look upon the face of My heavenly Father.” They, too, are engaged and enthralled by God, pushed to the nth power, we might say. Called in Catholic tradition as the “beatific vision,” it is knowing and seeing God minus the mediation of the senses that we mortals are only familiar with — at least as of now. They see and know God — intimately, directly, immediately.

       It might boost our sense of Christian hope if we remind ourselves today that such bliss, such happiness known to no man on earth is something that we all can look forward to in heaven. Si, amigo mio! What the angels now enjoy will be ours, too, when we see God face to face in the afterlife.

       But today’s feast tells us more. The angels are not only engaged in and enthralled by God. They are also involved — with children, with people who are humble and lowly, and who, being childlike, are called greatest in the Kingdom.

       It pays to be humble, doesn’t it? Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS: What has enthralled you lately? Have you maintained your childlike wonder?

 

Thank You, dear Lord, for sending me Your guardian angel to protect me and guide me each day.