Spiritual traditions agree with experience - angels have remarkable powers.
These powers include deliverance, protection, guidance, healing, wisdom, insight, strength, but perhaps most of all they are associated with the power of love..
Their powers are invariably used in caring , unthreatening and non judgemental ways. We might say that they are the gentle giants of the spiritual realm.
Do you find echoes of a similarity to angels behind the comic book superheroes, the knights of the round table, or the mystical beings who oppose the forces of evil in modern fantasy writing such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings?
Where we
encounter these amazing abilities; outward power and inward virtue or purity
seem to be directly linked. Emanuel Swedenborg maintains it is the very qualities that
we find so reassuring and appealing in the angels that are the source of their
power. Yet this power of light (or heavenly wisdom), and love (or spiritual
flame) is not from the angels themselves.
“This is why angels take absolutely no credit to themselves and turn down any praise or admiration for anything they have done but attribute it all to God.” (Heaven and Hell)
The angel to him or herself is merely a ‘messenger’ which is what ‘angel’ means but to those to whom they minister they bring a power that can amaze us.
Think of light passing through the many panes in the stained glass in a great cathedral; from the same sunlight come many differing shades shapes and colours. Each pane is a small part of a greater whole revealing the power vitality and energy of the light; invisible until transmitted through the glass.
It is correspondingly the same with the Divine light passing through the medium of the angels lives attuned to transmit or some would say ‘channel’ this Divine energy. Filled with this light the angel has power . Yet it is the light that has the power not the angel.