Every year on September 29, we celebrate
the feast day of the three Archangels – Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael. We’ve been celebrating the feast day of these
three archangels together since 1970, when their feast days were combined
together in the revised Roman calendar after the Second Vatican Council.
In a homily he gave, Pope Gregory the
Great clarified that the word “angel” denoted a function rather than a
nature. Gregory noted that the holy
spirits of heaven have always been spirits, but they are called angels when
they serve the function as messengers of God, when they deliver some sort of
message for him. Angels are those who
deliver message of lesser importance, while Archangels are those spirits who
proclaim messages of supreme importance, such as when the Archangel Gabriel
visited the Blessed Virgin Mary, to tell her that she was with child, that she
would deliver the Son of God.
Back in the 1980s, there seemed to be a
lot of interest in angels, so much so that many in popular culture who were not
even professed Christians believed in angels and believed in the divine
messages that they brought to our human world. Apart from those popular
beliefs, we celebrate the Archangels in our Catholic faith today. In our preface before starting the Eucharistic
prayer in the mass, we proclaim that we join the angels and archangels in their
song of praise to the Lord. Let us join
in their song of praise.
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