The Ringing of the Angels

In my childhood, I had the good fortune of growing up across the street from a park -- a park with the rather humdrum name of "City Park."

I spent many hours at City Park -- hours filled with playing, fighting, running, football games, teasing and being teased, juvenile lewdness, playground politics, and the first pingings of boyhood crushes. Childhood.

The park was my second home, my respite from my parents and older sisters. Throughout my childhood, from my earliest memories until the age of 15 when my parents separated and we left the neighborhood, the park was there for me.

At 6:00 each evening, as I would be running across the grassy field or climbing on the monkey bars, I would hear them. The clear cooling sounds of bells. There was something about them that would always make me pause, something that would alter my awareness somehow. It was always a calming feeling. Always. Afterwards, my activity would resume for a time, but never with the same fervor as before. And then it would soon be dusk and time to go in.

Eventually someone explained to me that those were the bells from the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church in our town (there was only one) was named Holy Rosary Church.

It was at some point during my last years in the neighborhood -- the sad years of my early adolescence, when my world began its spin into uncertainty -- when I was sitting with my friend Mark on a wooden picnic table, under a large oak, and the bells came ringing across the air from the steeple of Holy Rosary.

"The ringing of the angels," said Mark.

"What?"

"The ringing of the angels, from the Catholic Church," Mark asserted.

"Oh, I didn't know it was called that."

"Yeah, every evening at 6:00 they ring the angels."

I didn't pursue the matter beyond that. I figured, since Mark was a Methodist, he probably didn't know much about it anyway. But I was left with a wonderful image in my mind of angels responding the ringing of the bells, being called down from the heavens into our community -- coming down, circling the bell tower and then dispersing into the evening light, to minister, or to hold vigil wherever the need may be. To protect all those good Catholics out there in the city of Woodland against the coming night.

Whether Mark's information was wrong, or whether I just heard it wrong, I do not know. However, I've since learned that "the ringing of the angels" is actually the ringing of the angelus bell, which dates back to the middle ages when a special bell (other than the main church bell) was used to call people to prayer, specifically the Angelus devotion to the Virgin Mary.

Angelus Domini nuntiavit Marie, Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto.

(The Angel of the Lord brought tidings unto Mary, and she conceived by the Holy Ghost.)

My notion of angels swooping down into our town, like Capser and his ghost friends, though perhaps cute, was just the imagining of a thirteen year-old boy.

There was something good and other worldly that came to me through those sounds of my childhood. But since there was no one to instruct me, I had to make sense of it on my own. However, despite my ignorance, I think the bells still had something of their intended effect.

I think within us there is a susceptibility to daily rhythms, even a desire for such. When those bells rang at 6:00 every night, something inside me responded and turned to them. There was a change in my day at that point. And even though I may have returned to my play or conversation, I knew the day, now evening, was heading in a different direction. Home -- to dinner, to bed.

And I think the prayer itself, The Angelus, being prayed by the faithful across town, was a part of this. Penetrating my spirit, turning me even then towards truth.

We beseech thee, O Lord, pour thy grace into our hearts, that as we have known the Incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by His Cross and Passion we may be brought unto the glory of His Resurrection; through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.