Gabriel’s visit

Always, when I have been sent to humans with a message, I have had to begin by saying “Do not be afraid”.

This is logical. A human mind cannot make sense of what it perceives when an angel manifests. I am told the carbon-based brain says, “Wheels within wheels. Fire. Wings. Too many faces. Everywhere, eyes” and then simply shuts down. In the presence of the Holy, the Other, there is holy fear.

The girl was no exception. She was afraid. Not just afraid of me, but afraid of the message. For that, too, was beyond the human capacity to understand.

But this time I was afraid too.

The girl was just like other humans I had visited. A carefully calibrated matrix of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms - barely distinct from apes, insects, or bacterium in her physical makeup. She smelled of sweat and fear as the others had. The pupils of her eyes were wide, the lungs increasing the rate of respiration, the cardiac muscle pumping more forcefully, the neural synapses firing rapidly in a vain attempt to grasp infinity with finite tools.

But this one was going to be the first to hold HIM.

Who was I, a mere messenger, to stand in the presence of one who would carry HIM, feed HIM, comfort HIM, be needed by HIM? Who was I to stand before one who would meet HIM as a fellow being?

I, who have spent all eternity in the unveiled Presence, had never before been so utterly humbled. So I did what is meet and right in the presence of the Holy. I bowed.

There we were, each of us terrified, prostrate, unable to raise our eyes to look at the other.

And then something even more terrifying happened to me.

There is a thing that humans do when they are overwhelmed, a thing no angel had done or understood until that moment, that you call “weeping”. It appears that this thing can happen when sorrow or joy, pain or awe, has become too great for the mind to contain, and so the body releases the overflow. The girl was weeping, and I found that I was too. Without physical eyes I wept, without lungs I sobbed, without nerves I felt the same harsh buzz and tingle.

Then the girl did something remarkable. She stood. She accepted what was asked of her. She looked at me, and was no longer afraid.

And she sang.

She sang of thrones falling, of the poor being raised up, of kingship and servanthood being returned to their rightful places, of a broken universe being healed. She sang as no angel ever had, and I wept all the more to hear it.

Then she held out a hand to me.

O most highly favored! Until then I had not truly understood why HE lavished such attention on beings that were so seldom grateful, so seldom even aware. But here was a mortal whose finite brain had room for compassion towards an immortal’s fear. Here I saw what HE was turning them into – beings like HIM, beings who could love the Other, beings who could both reign and serve. And her Son would show them how.

For a moment – the universe could only sustain such a thing for one moment – we grasped hands, and smiled upon each other. For that moment, there was no mystery or fear, only understanding between fellow children of the same Father.

Then the laws of physics caught up and I was returned to my own plane of existence.

But I look forward to renewing the friendship when the Day comes.

© John M. Munzer