A few weeks after I was transferred to a new parish in January of this year, I found myself downtown. I had received a couple of book tokens for Christmas and I thought I would cash them in. Given the nature of my job I usually find myself in most book shops at the religion section first! What is on offer? What’s new? What ought I to be reading? My eyes came across a whole section on angels and I even spied a few books on archangels. Sure enough there was a chapter on Michael, my new parish patron. Yet a few minutes browsing left me uneasy. I skimmed through the rest of the book and even looked at the index. How can a book of two hundred pages talk about angels and not mention Christ once?
I thought of the words of the first century martyr Ignatius on his way to death in the Colosseum about the year 108 AD. In one of the seven letters written on the journey he says ‘if anyone comes to you preaching without speaking about Christ, shut your ears’ (Letter to the Trallians, 8). There is a lot of New age stuff out there masquerading as doctrine. Scripture tells us that Satan can clothe himself as ‘an angel of light.’
The feast of Michael, the archangel is at the end of this month but right at the start of October is the feast of the Guardian Angels. The Church gives us these two great feasts to remind us of the one Church in heaven and on earth, and to remind us of the breathtaking size of creation, seen and unseen. The feasts speak to us of an understanding that there are aspects of reality beyond our senses. Angels and archangels, like human beings, are children of the infinite and wonderful imagination of God. They are a higher order of being whose service of God is nonetheless joined with ours. The ‘Holy Holy Holy’ of the Mass at the start of the Eucharistic prayer joins our temporal songs with the continual praise offered by the angelic choirs in heaven. We catch a similar glimpse at Christmas when the Gospel reminds us of the angels praising God at the birth of the baby Jesus.
St. Michael is mentioned in the books of Daniel, Jude and Revelation in the Bible as well as some of the apocryphal literature. Daniel calls Michael the ‘great prince who stands for the people of God’ and in these references he is seen as the great support during the seventy years of exile in Babylon. God had not forgotten His people even in their trial. Scripture tells us that God entrusted Michael with the awesome task of expelling Lucifer from heaven (Rev.12). Michael leads the faithful angels in a titanic struggle against Satan and drives him out of Heaven. In this role he has been painted by many artists. It is because of this victory that in the Catholic tradition Michael is revered as the protector of the Church just as once he was the protector of the Israelites. It is interesting too that his very title ‘who is like God’ is the very opposite of what might be thought. Satan had rebelled – tradition has it – because he saw God’s plan to create man ‘in His own image and likeness’. Michael, on the other hand, is so akin to God, about whom St. Augustine once wrote ‘nothing exceeds the humility of God.’ When Michael saw God’s plan, it is said, he bowed down before man.
Many of us are familiar with the prayer to St. Michael which used to be said at the end of Mass before the liturgical renewal of Vatican II. The story is that Pope Leo XIII had a vision in which he saw the horrors of the twentieth century - he was Pope from 1878 to 1903 - and he immediately went and wrote the prayer we know so well. Though no longer part of the liturgy many Catholics still like to say that prayer for protection.
I will end with a personal story of God’s protection. I am sure that many readers will have similar stories. Some years ago I had my elderly mother in a large department store. She had advancing dementia. I left her – briefly – in the soaps and perfumes aisle and moved around to another area of the store to purchase something for myself. I know! I was silly to leave her but I thought it was only for a few ‘seconds’. Anyway I returned to the aisle to find her not there. No sweat! I wandered over the huge downstairs floor but still no sign. After twenty minutes I was panicking. After thirty I went to the security man at the door. Now it is okay at six but different at fifty-six years of age to say ‘excuse me, sir, but I have lost my mammy’. A description was put out over the PA, but an hour later still no sign. I silently prayed a prayer to her angel guardian.
Eventually I rang the police for a missing person’s bulletin. And after two hours – with embarrassment – I rang my brother thirteen miles away in his village home – ‘I don’t know how to say this but I have lost Mum’. ‘It’s OK, she’s here’. A knock ten minutes before had come to the door and there she was. ‘How did you get here?’ He asked. ‘The two men left me here,’ she said, and he looked behind her to see no one.
‘For he will command His angels to guard you in all your ways.’ The words of Psalm 91 are so true.