Today, 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.
Our reading
from the book of Revelation today depicts the Archangel Michael defeating Satan
and the powers of evil. With the defeat of Satan, salvation and power have
come, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed – Jesus the
Christ. Michael and the other angels are messengers of God’s loving and merciful
relationship with us. They
are bearers of Good News to Us and they help us conquer evil and sin in our
lives. We
respond to this message of Good News by reach back to God in faith and trust
and surrender. Yes,
indeed, sometimes our lives may seem like we are in the middle of a war that is
fought by the angels who are on the side of God as they battle the demons and
the evil spirits who seem intent on getting us. Michael is seen as the Archangel leading us in battle against those evil
forces, so he is the patron saint of police officers, soldiers, paratroopers,
and fighter pilots.
Once a second grader in our first communion
class asked me about angels and archangels and the difference between them –
quite an intelligent question. Pope
Gregory the Great clarified that the word “angel” denoted a function rather than
a nature. He
asserted 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 a 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.
The
belief in angels has gone beyond Christianity, as it is popular in our secular
world today to believe in angels, to have a belief in the divine messages that
they deliver to us. May
we give thanks for the angels and archangels 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. May
we truly feel the praise that we proclaim to the Lord in connection with these
heavenly spirits.
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