Feast of The Holy Archangels – Orthodox Homily on the Angels

Blessings of the Feast of the Holy Archangels and all the Bodiless Powers of Heaven! This is the day we thank God for His work through this church, which God has founded to His glory and our deification and salvation. The Canons of the Church remind us that a church’s Patronal Feast, as it is referred to, is second only to Pascha. And this makes sense. Every week of the church year, it is here that we venerate the icons of the holy angels and Archangels. We who are members and regular worshipers of God at Holy Archangels, are given these powerful protectors and intercessors before the throne of Christ God.
The word, “angel,” means, “messenger.” This is one of the roles they play in our salvation, acting as those sent by God as His messengers and as our protectors. While we venerate and honor the holy angels, in thanksgiving to God, it is to God the Holy Trinity that they direct us to worship—and Him alone.
Interestingly, according to a recent poll, more Americans believe in angels that in God who created the angels. Not surprisingly then, there’s also a lot of confusion in our world today regarding the role of the angels: some attribute too much to the holy angels, almost worshipping them in the place of God; others live as if the angels are part of the relics of an ancient mythological past along with fairies and gnomes. Both errors are, of course, false.
So who are the angels? They are, first and foremost, the heralds of God’s plans, ministers of His divine glory and will, as the meaning of the name in Greek, angelos, conveys. Their power comes not from themselves but from God, who created them and all things visible and invisible. Their presence and help as servants of the Most High God is seen throughout salvation history. According to Church Tradition, there are nine ranks of angels: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, Angels.

The leader of these nine ranks is the Archangel Michael. His name means, “Who is like unto God,” the name he earned challenging and then casting out Lucifer, Satan, from heaven when he sought to challenge and be equal with God. Our Lord Jesus Christ refers to this event in today’s Gospel: “I saw Satan fall like lighting from heaven” (Lk. 10:18) and the Prophet Isaiah proclaims in the Old Testament readings for the Feast: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations!” (Is. 14:12).

God sent the Archangel Michael to lead the Israelites as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night as a sign of God’s protection and presence in the Exodus. He appeared to Joshua before the battle of Jericho (Josh. 5), and he transported the Prophet Habakkuk to feed Daniel in the lion’s den (Dan. 12). St. Michael bears a flaming sword, symbol of God’s victory over evil.
Satan, attempted to make himself equal with God, to challenge God, his Creator. He divided the angelic powers, as sin always divides, bringing a third of the angelic host with him (the demons that tempt and serve the evil one). Hence, Satan’s temptation to Adam and Eve in the same vein: tempting them through deception to disobedience and, therefore, departure from life with God, promising them that they would “…be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5).
The Archangel Michael is the faithful, courageous, and humble angelic response to such insufferable pride. But not only is he an answer to Satan, but to modern man as well, who in his ideal of humanistic independence and autonomy sets himself up to know more than God, to make God subjective to his or her own ideals or whims, to believe he can make his own path to God instead of following the Way God has revealed that leads to life. In his pride, modern man seeks to make God subject to and the product of the limitations of human reason.
Since pride caused our departure from sharing in the divine life and continues to be our chief temptation from which so many other sins and vices emanate, St. Michael, is, then, a reminder of the central place of humility necessary for true enlightenment and illumination for those who wish to share in God’s Kingdom. God Himself is humble. In the beginning, God spoke creation into being by His Word. He became flesh to enter into human nature and redeem it, entering death to defeat it. The Incarnation is the supreme example of God’s condescension and humility.
This revelation of the Incarnation, God calling us back to paradise, life with Him, is the particular province of the Archangel Gabriel, who reveals the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophesy that a virgin will be with child and that His name will be Emmanuel, “God with us” (Is. 7:14).
Appropriately, Gabriel, whose name means “Might of God,” is often depicted in the holy icons holding a branch from paradise His revelation to the Virgin Mary proclaims the return to paradise, the return to grace that Christ’s Incarnation and defeat of death accomplish. He announces the invitation to return to God’s presence through participation in His divine life. Sometimes, he is iconographically also shown bearing an orb with Christ’s image in it, symbolic of his role as the revealer of God’s divine presence and will as it pertains to our salvation.
St. Raphael’s name means, “God heals,” reminds us of God’s miraculous healing and salvation, both temporal and eternal, in this life and, ultimately, in the life to come with God in heaven.
The angels and Archangels, the holy protectors of this mission church, are stunning in their power, their other-worldliness, reflective of the Kingdom of Heaven, which we see in the holy icons here. But all of this immaterial glory is but a reflection of the uncreated glory of God, the light that illumes them and all the Saints, the glory which God in His mercy and love for us as Holy Trinity, invites us to share in and grow us in as we become partakers of His divine nature.
The Archangels are an ever-present reminder to us that God calls all to salvation, to new life in Him. This is His great love for us, as we read in today’s Epistle, “What is man that You are mindful of him, Or the son of man that You take care of him. You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor and set him over the works of Your hands.” Every divine service, we join our voices with these our holy patrons, the angels and archangels, to proclaim God’s salvation and commune with Him and all the heavenly host.
The holy angels are also our guides and protectors; they continuously direct us to Christ, the Author of all life, Life and Reality Itself, for “Who is like unto God”? In their obedience they remind us of our divine calling to come outside ourselves and our self-focus, our egos, to love and to serve, glorifying God the Holy Trinity in all things, to become like the angels in our desire to see God’s will accomplished in us and the world around us.
The question, then, that we ask ourselves today on their synaxis is the same question asked in St. Michael’s name: “Who is like unto God?” Do we live out this humble question in our daily lives? Do we acknowledge in our actions that there is no other God but He who has revealed Himself to the world as Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, through the Incarnation of His Word, Jesus Christ? Do we strive to reflect in our daily lives this truth: that no one is God’s equal, that He is the One “who was, and is, and is to come,” the One who saves, the only Lover of mankind? Do we live out this truth by prioritizing our life in Christ and His Church? Those who live out this truth are those who consciously strive, beseeching God, to live to His glory and do His will, to become possessors of angelic courage and humility as witnesses of Christ and His truth in our world today.
The angels are here to help us, to guard us from the evil one and his minions, and to guide us in the way of truth and life that is Christ God. He has given us at Holy Archangels such powerful protectors and intercessors that we may have boldness and faith to vanquish sin and the passions from our lives and join the angelic chorus in proclaiming, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.” Holy Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and all the angelic hosts, intercede for us before the merciful God, to save our souls!

Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Feast of the Holy Archangels 2018

Epistle: Hebrews 2:2-10 (Holy Archangels)
Gospel: Luke 10:16-21 (Holy Archangels)