Guardian Angels
5 documented wonders in the chamber of Guardian Angels — each with its place, its period and the sources behind it.
Guardian Angels · c. AD 44, during the reign of Herod Agrippa I
Peter Freed by the Angel
As Herod Agrippa I prepared to execute Peter, the Church prayed without ceasing, and an angel of the Lord entered the guarded prison by night, loosed his chains, and led him past two sets of guards and through an iron gate that opened of itself. Peter walked free into the city, certain only afterward that it had not been a vision.
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Guardian Angels · Narrative set during the Assyrian exile, eighth-seventh century BC; the book itself likely composed later, around the third-second century BC
Tobias and the Angel
In the Book of Tobit, the archangel Raphael travels in human disguise as the kinsman Azariah to guide young Tobias from Nineveh to Media, where he secures a debt, delivers Sarah from the demon Asmodeus, and returns to heal the elder Tobit's blindness with the gall of a fish, before revealing himself as one of seven angels who stand before the throne of God.
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Guardian Angels · A war preceding human history, in the Church's reading of Revelation 12; Daniel's visions of Michael are set during the Babylonian and Persian periods, sixth century BC
Michael and the Dragon
Revelation 12:7-9 depicts a war in heaven in which the archangel Michael and his angels cast down the dragon, identified as Satan, while the Book of Daniel names him prince and protector of God's people and the Letter of Jude records his contest with the devil over the body of Moses; the Church venerates him as defender of the Church and guardian of the dying.
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Guardian Angels · The night before the Crucifixion, traditionally dated to c. AD 30 or AD 33
The Angel of Gethsemane
According to Luke 22:43-44, as Jesus prayed in agony at Gethsemane the night before His crucifixion, an angel appeared from heaven to strengthen Him, and His sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood; the verses are missing from some of the oldest manuscripts, yet were quoted by Christian writers as early as the second century, and the Church retains them in her canonical and liturgical text.
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Guardian Angels · Third year of Cyrus, king of Persia — c. 536 BC by the book's own dating; the Book of Daniel is generally held to have reached its final form c. 167–164 BC
Daniel and the Prince of Persia
Daniel 10 records the vision given to Daniel in the third year of Cyrus, by the river Tigris, after three weeks of mourning and fasting. A messenger clothed in linen tells him his words were heard on the very first day he prayed them, and that the answer was withstood for twenty-one days by the prince of the kingdom of Persia until Michael, named there as Israel's own prince, came to his aid. It is Scripture's fullest account of conflict among unseen powers, and its plainest statement that a prayer may be answered long before its answer arrives.
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