St. Azariah, continuing with his explanations of the Guardian Angels (the other lesson was on July 16, 1947), says:
“Another action by the Guardian Angel is to be constantly and wonderfully active in relation to God - whose orders he listens to and to whom he offers the good actions of the person being protected, presenting and supporting his entreaties and interceding in his afflictions - and in relation to the human being, for whom he acts as a teacher guiding along the straight path, without pause, through inspirations, lights, and attraction towards God.
“Oh, our fires, which are the fires of Charity, which created us and assails us with its burning, are channeled by us upon those protected, just as the sun does upon the earth enclosing a seed, to warm it and make it sprout, and then on the stem, to fortify it and make it become a stalk and a robust plant. With our fires we console, warm, strengthen, enlighten, teach, and attract you to the Lord. If, then, the stubborn ice in the soul and its obstinate hardness do not allow it to be penetrated and overcome by us and the charitable harmony of our teachings is not received, but rather fled from, to follow the deafening hellish music which stuns and maddens, we are not to blame. We are pained by the failure of our loving action upon the soul we love, with all our capacities, after God.
“We are, then, always alongside those we protect, whether they are saints or sinners. From the infusion of the soul into the flesh to the separation of the soul from the flesh, we are close to the human creature whom the Most High Lord has entrusted to us. And this thought - that every man has an angel at his side - ought to help you to love your neighbors, endure them, and receive them with love and respect, if not for their own sake, for the sake of the invisible Azariah, who is with them and, as an angel, always deserves respect and love.
“If you considered that over every one of your actions towards your neighbors, in addition to the all-present Eye of God, there preside and observe two angelic spirits, who rejoice or suffer over what you do, how much better you would always be to your neighbor! Consider: you welcome and honor persons or you mortify them; you help them or reject them; you sin against them or pull them out of sin; you are instructed by them and instruct them; you benefit them or are benefited by them.... And two angels, yours and theirs, are present and see not only your manifest actions, but the truth of your actions - that is, if you perform them with true love or pretended love, or with resentment or calculation, and so on.
“Do you give alms? The two angels see how you give them. Do you fail to give them? The two angels see the real reason why you do not. Do you provide hospitality for pilgrims or turn them away? The two angels see the way you do so; they see what is spiritually true in your action. Do you visit the sick? Do you counsel the doubting? Do you comfort the afflicted? Do you honor the dead? Do you call those straying back to justice? Do you provide help for those needing it? Two angels are witnesses to all the works of mercy: yours and the angel of the one who receives or is refused your mercy.
“Does someone come to see, or bother, you? Always consider that you are not receiving him alone, but his angel along with him. And always show charity, then. For even a scoundrel has his angel, and the angel does not become a delinquent even if the one he protects is. Receive anyone with love, therefore, even if it is prudently reserved love, on the defensive, even if it is a severe love to bring your neighbor, when he visits you, to grasp that his conduct is reprehensible and causes you pain and must be changed, not so much to please you as to please God. Welcome people with love. For if you turn away the man who is a nuisance to you, or undesirable, bothersome at that time, or someone known to be wicked, you are also turning away the invisible, but holy guest who is with him and who ought to make every visitor pleasing for you, for every neighbor coming to you bears into your home or to your side the angel who is his guardian.
“Do you have to live with someone you don’t like? First of all, don’t judge. You are unable to judge. Man only very rarely judges with justice. But even when judging with justice, on the basis of positive elements examined without preconceptions and human acrimony, do not be at fault in charity, for in addition to your neighbor, you would be committing a fault towards his guardian angel. If you were able to think this way, how much easier it would be for you to overcome dislike and resentment and to love - love, performing the works which will lead Jesus, the Lord and Judge, to say to you, ‘Come and sit at my right, blessed one.’
“Come on, a little effort, an ongoing reflection at all times - this one: to see, with the eyes of faith, the guardian angel who is at the side of every man and always act as if every action by you were being done to the angel of God, who will bear witness before God. He, the guardian angel of every man, I assure you, will say to the Lord, in union with yours, ‘Most High, he was always faithful to charity, loving You in man, loving the supernatural world in creatures, and because of this spiritual love he endured offenses, forgave, and was merciful towards every man, in imitation of your beloved Son, whose human eyes, though gazing at his enemies, saw the angels - their afflicted angels - at their side, with the help of his most holy spirit, and honored them, helping them in the attempt to convert men, to glorify You, Most High, with them, by saving as many creatures as possible from Evil.’
“I want you - that rejoice because the Lord, on coming here, finds an additional angel to worship Him316 - in the same way as you believe in the presence of the angel of the child in the womb, to believe in my words and act towards all who come to you or with whom you have contacts of any kind as I told you to, thinking of their guardian angels to overcome weariness and anger, loving every creature with justice to do something pleasing to God and serving to honor the guardian angel.
“Soul of mine, meditate on the way the Lord honors you and the way we angels honor you and give you a chance to help us - Him, the Divine One, and us, his spiritual ministers - with appropriate words to get your fellows back on the right track and, above all, with the example of conduct which is unvarying in Goodness. Unvarying, in the sense of not bending to indulgence and compromise so as not to lose human friendship, eager only not to lose that of God and his angels. It will sometimes be painful to have to show severity so that God’s glory and desires will not be trampled upon by man. It will perhaps provoke gestures of discourtesy and coldness. Don’t worry. Help your neighbor’s angel and you will find him, too, in Heaven.”
316 See note 312