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In their modern incarnation, these mighty messengers and fearless soldiers have been reduced to bite-size beings, easily digested. The terrifying cherubim have become Kewpie-doll cherubs. For those who choke too easily on God and his rules, theologians observe, angels are the handy compromise, all fluff and meringue, kind, nonjudgmental. And they are available to everyone, like aspirin. "Each of us has a guardian angel," declares Eileen Freeman, who publishes a bimonthly newsletter called AngelWatch from her home in Mountainside, New Jersey. "They're nonthreatening, wise and loving beings. They offer help whether we ask for it or not. But mostly we ignore them."
Only in the New Age would it be possible to invent an angel so mellow that it can be ignored. According to the rest of history, anyone who invites an encounter with an angel should be prepared to be changed by it. By scriptural tradition, angels pull back the curtain, however briefly, on the realm of the spirit. In offering a glimpse of a larger universe, they issue a challenge to priorities and settled ways. One need only remember the modest girl from a poor family whose life was forever transformed by the message Gabriel brought -- that she would bear a son and name him Jesus.
ANGELS ACROSS THE AGES. If there is such a thing as a universal idea, common across cultures and through the centuries, the belief in angels comes close to it. Jews, Christians and Muslims have postulated endlessly about angels' nature and roles, but all three religions affirm their existence. There are angels in Buddhism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism; winged figures appear in ancient Sumerian carvings, Egyptian tombs and Assyrian reliefs. Visible or invisible, in disguise or in full glory, angels appear in more than half the books of the Bible: it was an angel who told Abraham to spare his son from sacrifice, who saved Daniel from the lion's den, who rolled the stone away from Christ's tomb. Muslims believe that angels are present in mosques to record the prayers of the faithful and to testify for or against people on the Day of Judgment.
Medieval theologians believed that angels had to exist to fill the gap between God and humankind. In ancient civilizations, whose multiplicity of deities socialized freely with mortals, there was little need for divine intermediaries. But a faith in one just and awesome God invited the comforting intercession of angels to bridge the vast divide. Fear of death and of eternal damnation inspired a belief in winged spirits who could move easily between the layers of the universe. Angels were said to move the stars, spin the planets, make plants grow and help creatures reproduce. They were there to do God's bidding, but also to ease man's arduous journey from corporeal to spiritual life.