Enough already about the demons. I think you've given the devil his due. What about the good guys, namely the angels? I'm wondering if you can give me the Reader's Digest version. What I know couldn't fill a thimble (i.e. Cherubim, Seraphim, Michael, Gabriel and Clarence)

Sincerely, 

Anita Gardien

There is a reason you don't know much about angels. No one does. We're not supposed to know much about angels. 

The word "angel" is a Greek word, angellos, that simply means messenger. Angels are not only invisible, they try to be transparent in every sense. Their only interest to serve, not to be known. They protect us and bring messages from the Almighty. The Bible says very little about them. It names only three angels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.

It is commonly believed that there are nine choirs of angels 1) seraphim 2) cherubim 3) thrones 4) dominions 5) virtues 6) principalities 7) powers 8) archangels and 9) angels.  St. Paul mentions five of these orders and cherubim and seraphim, in addition to archangels and angels, are mentioned elsewhere in Scripture. 

Don't worry about any of this. It's not really important. What is important is that the angels that we deal with regularly are our guardian angels. (see Matt 18:10)  People can get really weird about angels and the whole point of it is they don't need to be known. They don't want to be known. They just want to glorify God by their service. 

Devils, on the other hand, are fallen angels. They love notoriety but are best ignored. We don't really know why they fell, but there is a long standing, non-biblical tradition that they refused to accept that God would become human in the incarnation of Jesus. Who knows?

C. S.Lewis in his Screwtape Letters makes the point that we human beings are, in a certain sense, amphibians, like frogs who live at the edge of the pond, inhabiting land and water. We live in two worlds, the visible and the invisible, the world that can be seen and the world that can't be seen. Both are real and we live at their intersection. Angels, both the good and the fallen, are pure spirits. We are incarnate spirits. This unseen world is very real and we live in it though we don't see it. Sometimes it seems that, at God's command, angels become  visible for our sake.

I have an amazing story about just such an intervention.

When I was a young priest, I was called down to the front office and there sat one of my parishioners, well known to me, a regular church-goer from a good family. (I'm mentioning all this  to make the point politely that she wasn't some unknown loon from off the street.) She was sobbing. She looked up at me and asked, "Does God ever appear as an animal?" I said that I didn't think so.

She told me a wonderful story. It seems that the day before, she had been on her way home from work. A man stepped out of the alley and approached her.  She was terrified and started to pray. From out of nowhere a big white dog appeared and stood growling between her and her assailant who then ran off. The dog walked ahead of her and led her home. A few times her attacker ran down the alley behind the street and tried to come at her again but the dog was always there to defend her. She finally made it home and locked the dog in the fenced yard while she ran up to her apartment to get a little bit of ground beef as a way of rewarding the dog. 

When she got back down to the yard, her sister had just opened the gate and the dog was gone. She asked her sister why she had let the dog who had saved her life out of the yard. She had wanted to reward  it. Her sister replied that there had been no dog in the yard. "Look in the snow. There are no foot prints."

I looked at this young woman in my office and her grateful tears and said, "No, that wasn't God. It was an angel, now go over to church and say a prayer of thanksgiving."

True story.

The letter to the Hebrews says that we "have entertained angels unawares." (Heb.13: 2) 

Angels are mentioned in just the New Testament at least 150 times.  We live in a borderland populated by angels whose sworn goal is to help and protect us. They don't care to be noticed and they refuse to be worshiped, but it never hurts to thank them and ask for their help. 

Modern materialists certainly don't believe in them but I suppose it doesn't matter. They believe in us and perhaps we'll get the chance to make it up to them some day.

Yours,

Rev. Know-It-All