ms the same truth when he says that the angels of
children constantly behold the face of the celestial Father.[27] At
the last judgment, the good angels will separate the just,[28] and
lead them to the kingdom of heaven, while they will precipitate the
wicked into eternal fire.

At the agony of Jesus Christ in the garden of Olives, an angel
descended from heaven to console him.[29] After his resurrection,
angels appeared to the holy women who had come to his tomb to embalm
him.[30] In the Acts of the Apostles, they appeared to the apostles as
soon as Jesus had ascended into heaven; and the angel of the Lord came
and opened the doors of the prison where the apostles were confined,
and set them at liberty.[31] In the same book, St. Stephen tells us
that the law was given to Moses by the ministration of angels;[32]
consequently, those were angels who appeared on Sinai and Horeb, and
who spoke to him in the name of God, as his ambassadors, and as
invested with his authority; also, the same Moses, speaking of the
angel of the Lord, who was to introduce Israel into the Promised Land,
says that "the name of God is in him."[33] St. Peter, being in prison,
is delivered from thence by an angel,[34] who conducted him the length
of a street, and disappeared. St. Peter, knocking at the door of the
house in which his brethren were, they could not believe that it was
he; they thought that it was his angel who knocked and spoke. St.
Paul, instructed in the school of the Pharisees, thought as they did
on the subject of angels; he believed in their existence, in
opposition to the Sadducees,[35] and supposed that they could appear.
When this apostle, having been arrested by the Romans, related to the
people how he had been overthrown at Damascus, the Pharisees, who were
present, replied to those who exclaimed against him--"How do we know,
if an angel or a spirit hath not spoken to him?" St. Luke says that a
Macedonian (apparently the angel of Macedonia) appeared to St. Paul,
and begged him to come and announce the Gospel in that country.

St. John, in the Apocalypse, speaks of the seven angels who presided
over the churches in Asia. I know that these seven angels are the
bishops of these churches, but the ecclesiastical tradition will have
it that every church has its tutelary angel. In the same book, the
Apocalypse, are related divers appearances of angels. All Christian
antiquity has recognized them; the synagogue also has recognized t