Touched By an Angel

One e-newsletter I look at every day is a news update called “The Morning” from The New York Times. This newsletter ends with a “pangram” puzzle (word jumble), and yesterday the seven letters provided were a, g, e, c, I, n, and i. The following words can be formed from these letters: allegiance, angelic, angelica, canceling, cancelling, cleaning, enlacing, and inelegance. Guess which word I came up with: Cleaning!

I’m rather chagrined that my mind seems to prioritize cleaning over an angelic encounter. This incident reminded me of a poem called In the Kitchen by Kilian McDonnell, OSB, in which the Virgin Mary is recalling her visit from the angel Gabriel. It includes these lines:

Actually I had just
come back from the well, 
pitcher in my hand. 
As I placed it on the table 
I spilled some on the floor. 

Bending to wipe 

it up, there was a light 

against the kitchen wall 

as though someone had 

opened the door to the sun.

Rag in hand,

hair across my face,

I turned to see

who was coming in, 

unannounced, unasked.

Mary didn’t let her daily chores get in the way of a visitation from an angel. Can we say the same? Do we recognize angelic visitors who arrive unannounced and unasked, or are we too busy to recognize them and thus miss the tidings they bring?

They say cleanliness is next to godliness, but I’d still rather not miss a visit from an angel because I’m engrossed in wiping up some spilled water on the floor!