Our night nursery was lit by the dawn, and I saw a group of angels standing, as if chatting, around my young brother’s bed. I was aware of this, although I could not hear their voices… I then became aware that at the foot of my own bed stood a similar celestial creature… I was but a child when I saw my guardian angel. As time passed I still sporadically remembered and acknowledged his presence, but mostly, I ignored him. Paradoxically, it was evil and distress that brought me up short and cleared my vision…

One day, in looking through a collection of old icons, I came across one done in three panels representing the guardian angel; in the middle panel, he is defending his sleeping charge from bad dreams. Later, when plagued once more by one of my most fearsome of nightmares, upon waking I suddenly remembered the icon, and with overpowering clarity I recollected that as a child I had seen my guardian angel. (pp. 293-294)

This recollection forms the core of the epilogue of Mother Alexandra’s book The Holy Angels, recently re-released, after nearly 40 years being out of print, by Ancient Faith Publishing. As Mother Alexandra states, this recollection, while at the end of her work, is in its way also the beginning, for it was also her own personal beginning of understanding. The Holy Angels sets forth what our understandings of angelic beings are as revealed through scripture, and through the writings of the early Christians, with a short concluding discussion of how angels have been depicted in art throughout time. Though Mother Alexandra was an Orthodox scholar and nun, her work is aimed at the entirety of Christendom.