When I was younger and more filled with fire and maybe a bracing touch of brimstone, I remember preaching (perhaps I did it here - my memory is fading a bit) about, and against, a sentimentalized view of Angels in one sermon, and equally pointlessly about what I considered a sweet and sanitized view of St. Francis.

Softened by the years, and mellowed by the grace (and challenges) of aging, I take a gentler, softer approach with myself, and it is only fair to choose that route with you as well.

Still, it is important to the fullness of our faith, and to the fidelity of our devotion, to know and accept the teaching of the Church over the ages, and not be drawn aside by recent and silly ideas of New Age religion. The Bible and the Church take angels very seriously, and our Prayer Book, according to a computer word-count, refers to angels 67 times. But sometimes we fiddle with the Church's received wisdom, often (usually) to our detriment. For instance, we or our children do not turn into angels at death, or ever. We hope by Grace to become one of the Saints in light, but angels themselves are a different order of Creation, created by God before us, well before us - and existing with him in heaven before there was even an earth, much less creatures on it. They are immortal and from before time began. Similarly, simple truth and honesty and genuine reverence for the saints requires that we see St. Francis in all his awesome and exemplary reality. He was not much beloved originally by the Medieval Church, which was horrified by how seriously he took the Gospel, and how austere his life, and how strict and demanding his intentions for his Community and his own life. It was all very intimidating, and revolutionary and not totally welcome to a fairly comfortable Church and a contented clergy. And he did receive the Stigmata, the crucifixion-wounds of Christ, with its consequent and constant physical pain.

But like so much else, I can overdo it, and probably did back then when. Actually, and of course, the angels and St. Francis are also there for our comfort and to delight and reassure us, and to make us feel good - about them and maybe even a little better about ourselves. For all his austerity and personal suffering, St. Francis did, really and undeniably, love and cherish and reverence animals, he regarded them as wise and intelligent beings, with feelings and needs. Only recently is modern science catching up with his compassion and finding from involved studies just how much animals know and feel, and what emotions and pain and hurt and sorrow they can feel, not just in our imaginations or solely in our sentimentalized view of them. And the modern world, for all its shortcomings, and bad choices, does seem increasingly to be more aware of our responsibilities to all the animals of the earth. It may, I suppose, be trendy, but it is a good and godly trend I think, to think and speak more of our pets at home as companion animals, as our charge and in our care, rather than our possessions to use or misuse as we might be tempted to do. We can overdo it, of course, as some more militant groups do, and impose our views on others in an unyielding and finally unchristian way. I approve of the instinct and compassion of groups like PETA or other animal activists, but sometimes they have so little regard for the feelings of human beings, or so meager a respect for their difference in opinion, so little regard, among the most extremist elements, for other people's safety, property, and even lives, that they seem to overdo it even worse. But still, to feel and show and advocate greater compassion and consideration for animals is a good thing, and one of the great and enduring gifts of St. Francis to us, and not a sentimental or silly thing. Certainly, for childless men and women, and those whose children are long grown and gone, the devotion and companionship of our animals can evoke a similar love and concern for them, that brings great grief when we are separated by loss or death. This too is commendable, and not sentimental. It is great-hearted, not silly.

As we can belittle St. Francis by a too, too sweet assumption about his life and message, so we can also get downright silly about angels and over compensation in the direction of too little feeling for them. The Holy Guardian Angels, whose Feast we would fully observe if it did not fall on a Sunday, which takes Precedence, do care for our children and for us, they do watch over us. There are several somewhat frivolous paintings showing a floating, fluttering, flowing-robed, and quite feminine angel watching over little children as they cross flimsy and terrifying bridges in some vague European countryside, flying close over them lest anything happen. Good angels, real angels are probably a little more like good, real, mothers - watching, guarding, guiding, intervening, and keeping as safe as they can those whom they love, but not able to keep all tragedy, all suffering, all danger fully at bay. I believe, and largely because the Church believes, and Lord taught unmistakably, that there is an angel, a Guardian Angel, appointed to watch over us, our very own, who watches night and day, and plays a beneficial and good and helpful and even rescuing role in our lives. But not a salvific role. They do not save us, only Christ on the Cross does that. They do not prevent all bad things from ever happening. Surely there is not one of us, over two years old, who assumes nothing bad ever happens except to very wicked people who have only devils watching them. Good people, good children, suffer and sometimes sicken and even die, as all humans die. But angels are there, like mothers, making it better, not worse, real and helpful and dependable sources of help and comfort and strength and safety.

Sometimes we get so used to the beauty and the flow and cadence of our liturgy and our Prayer Book and its beautiful wording, that we lose sight of some of its more amazing assertions. Angels are not peripheral, invisibly there, but often not much considered. In every single mass, one of the few unalterable, unchanging, absolutely constant phrases - no matter the Season or the Feast or the ceremonial or the variations in every mass - a flat-out declaration, as we begin the holiest, best part of the Mass, the Consecration of Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood, begin that, every single time, with the belief, the knowledge, and the forceful assertion that we do this "joining our voices with angels and archangels..." They are always in our lives, as they are always an appointed and necessary part of our Mass. They are there, and we join them.

Later today we will, as a Community of Faith, offer to bless those pets, those companion animals, those trusting creatures committed to our care, and commend them directly to the interest and intercession of St. Francis. This is not to sentimentalize him, but to remind us that, just as we have angels watching over us, so they have St. Francis always praying for them and concerned with their safety and well-being, and reminding us by his mute testimony over the many centuries since he lived and preached to the animals that God loves all Creation, and upon finishing it - angels, humans, animals, all - that it "was good, very good", so good, that God could then rest from all his labors.