Translation of the Epistle for the Feast of the Dedication of St. Michael
In those days God made known the things which must shortly come to pass: and signified, sending by his angel to his servant John, Who hath given testimony to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, what things soever he hath seen. Blessed is he that readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy: and keepeth those things which are written in it. For the time is at hand. John to the seven churches which are in Asia. Grace be unto you and peace, from him that is and that was and that is to come: and from the seven spirits which are before his throne: And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth, who hath loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.
Continuation of the Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew
At that time, the disciples came to Jesus, saying: “Who, thinkest thou, is the greater in the kingdom of heaven?” And Jesus, calling unto him a little child, set him in the midst of them. And said: “Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the kingdom of heaven. And he that shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me. But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh. And if thy hand, or thy foot, scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee having one eye to enter into life, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”
The Saving Words of the Gospel.
Their angels in heaven always see the face of My Father.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Transcription of Sermon
Today is the Feast of the Dedication of St. Michael; and the dedication of what? Well, it’s the dedication of the great basilica in Rome of St. Michael, because there was a great plague in the sixth century and Pope Gregory the Great did a penitential procession around the precincts of Rome imploring St. Michael’s help. And at the end, when he came back to, close to St. Peter, he saw… he had a vision of St. Michael on top of Hadrian’s tomb, sheathing his sword. And so, with that, he understood that the plague had been arrested through St. Michael’s intercession. And so, this is a feast day ever since the 6th century.
Miguel Cabrera, 1760
And Michael is one of the greats. His name is from Hebrew, מִיכָאֵל (Mîkhā’ēl). In Latin, we say, Quis ut Deus?, and it’s a question. “Who is like unto God?” And the reason he’s given that name is because that was his response in the first moment of the celestial battle when Lucifer wiped away a third of the stars and brought those demons to hell with him; those angels to hell with him to become demons. Well, it was Michael who stood up for God’s dignity and challenged Lucifer who said, “I will not serve,” and said, “Who is like unto God? You make yourself equal to Him that you think you can disobey Him.” And so, his remonstration of Lucifer actually became his identity and his vehemence with which he reacted made him, after that, the prince of all of the heavenly hosts.
Was Michael from the seraphim or was he from the second lowest choir of the nine choirs, the archangels? The Fathers of the Church aren’t of accord. Thomas thinks that he was from the penultimate choir and after that quick battle… the battle in heaven didn’t last a long time. Remember all spiritual combat is on the level of concepts; concepts. And so, this name was his identity. And it happened, all of this battle, these decisions that the angels made for God and obedience to his will, and therefore the entry into heaven, the other angels who decided to be apostates and rebel, all of this happened very quickly.
And there are what Thomas Aquinas calls the three instances, the three instances of angelic existence. So, the first instance was their existence. So, in the first instance that God creates them, they’re all created at the same time.
The second instance is very quick. They’re not like we are, right? They don’t have, you don’t have fetus angels, and then toddler angels, and then adolescent angels, and then angels with midlife crisis. No, they were created complete, fully developed, all complete in the first instance. So, the first instance was their existence. The second instance was their self-knowledge. In knowing themselves, they also knew God’s plan for them. And in knowing God’s plan, they had to make a choice. “Will I serve the plan of God?”
And the Fathers, many of the Fathers, talk about the revelation of the Word Made Flesh to the angels, and that they would serve this mystery of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity becoming man, who hadn’t been created yet, becoming man in order to save man. And Lucifer, and the angels who followed him, each one made their own decision, for whatever reason they made it, but they chose not to obey, and there’s no forgiveness for angels.
They know not only what they’re doing with absolute clarity, but they also know all of the consequences. So, they chose not only their rebelliousness, but they also chose the consequences. Imagine the damned angels have this self-inflicted father wound, and they blame God for their woes, even though they know with their mind that it’s their own fault. And so, the third instance then was the test. They knew themselves in the second instance and their vocation. The third instance was the test. “This is your mission. Will you accept?” “Yes.” Immediate entry into the beatific vision. “No.” Immediate entry into hell. And this all happened very quickly. And if you read Revelation Chapter 12, you’ll see something of that. It takes longer to read it than the whole test took.
Nonetheless, we see our great patron of the day, Michael, mentioned four times in Scripture, twice in Revelation. He’s identified as the Guardian Angel of the People of God. So, he was the Guardian Angel of Israel, and then he passed over to be the Guardian Angel of the Church. And as a guardian angel, he has multiple tasks.
He is one who is called to guide us to heaven, and this takes upon itself, you know, different, shall we say, different expressions. He is called to guide us by enlightening our minds by doing spiritual combat with the demons that would attack us. He is also the one who is present at our particular judgment. And then he is going to have a protagonistic role in the final judgment. Now, some of these roles of Michael, and Raphael, and Gabriel, and our own personal guardian angels can seem to overlap, but they have very particular aspects in each one of their tasks.
If you read Gregory of Nyssa’s beautiful commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, – it’s my favorite book of the Old Testament; also called The Song of Songs – he has a beautiful commentary on every word of that. You know, it’s not written like a modern book, so it can be a little trying, a little taxing, if you are not used to reading ancient texts, even in its translation. Well, he speaks about the three stages of the spiritual life and the role of our guardian angels in each one of those stages.
Now the three stages of the interior life are the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive. The purgative stage is where beginners are in the spiritual life, and these are people they’re called beginners, not necessarily because they’ve just started their spiritual life, but because the nature of their struggles regard the struggles of the passions. And so, what the angels do, our guardian angels, they present to us situations that will try our passions. He quotes the Song of Songs, Gregory of Nyssa, he quotes the Song of Songs, and he says that line in the Song of Songs where it says, The guardians of the city struck me. He says that’s the guardian angel bringing about some suffering, some pain on the soul, in the purgative stage because our passions have too much of a say in our decision-making. We follow our passions. If we’re following our passions, then who is the god we serve? You can’t serve two masters. So the… proper to the prerogative stage is the struggle to bring the passions into order. And it’s the guardian angel who will help us to recognize that our passions are not absolutes. They’re not things to be obeyed, they’re not things to be followed, they’re certainly not gods that we serve. At the same time, our passions are not evil, they’re just disordered, and so we have to take charge of them and orient them towards the Heart of Our Savior.
We do that most efficaciously through our penance, through our recognizing that these feelings or passions, or whatever they may be, are not that important. I have to channel them towards the Heart of Christ and turn towards Him. Once the passions have been brought into control, we’ll still always have some disorder. But whether I control the disorder or the disorder controls me, that’s really the question. So, once that’s been brought into control, then the nature of the guardian angel’s task evolves to work on our mind.
So, the passions have been brought into control and now he’s going to work on illumination of our mind. This illumination of the mind reveals to us the passing nature of created things. Reveals to us, says St. Gregory of Nyssa, right?, the importance of eternal and everlasting things. And so, now there’s going to be a primacy of the intellect and the angel’s work on the intellect in revealing to us things – I’m not talking about voices or visions but promptings, inspirations, to show us “do this, don’t do that.” We start to see with more clarity according to the mind of God. And that’s proper to the illuminative phase.
Well, in the third and ultimate phase, the unitive phase, then the guardian angel is going to work above all on our desires, our longing for Christ. Now imagine, I always wondered if our guardian angels have a degree of jealousy of us, not in a sinful way obviously, but certain envy that we can desire God, we can long for God because we don’t see Him. They see Him, as we heard in the Scripture today “The angels in heaven always see the Face of My Father, who is in heaven.” So, they see the One for whom which they exist, the One who gave them existence, the One, the only One, they should love and serve, and we don’t; and that’s proper to this dark valley. That’s proper to the life of faith, and that’s fine, and that’s why we have to exercise desire.
We have to exercise longing, and our hearts were made for Our Lord. As Augustine says, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” Well, we tend to share our heart with all sorts of objects of affection. When Christ, when the Blessed Trinity, becomes my sole object of affection, then these other created loves, these less lesser loves, come into their own, they find their proper place, and it’s our guardian angel who will help us in the purification of our hearts so that they exist for Christ and Christ alone.
We ought not dismiss the role of our guardian angels. Their feast day is coming up very soon, and I find that the more intimately we speak with them, the more often we speak with our guardian angels as a friend to a friend, the more easily do we discern their promptings in our conscience.
Giovanni Gasppero, 2018
So, the guardian angel’s task is not solely to protect our bodies, but above all to protect our souls. They can’t stop us from sinning, and if we should sin, they don’t give up on us, but we do bring them tremendous sorrow. On the other hand, they’re the ones who are fostering all sorts of inspirations, promptings, lights, to “do this, don’t do that.” “Do this, don’t do that.” The more we speak to them, the more we entrust ourselves to them, the more we prepare our inner ear to hear their promptings, understand how they work on us. And when they tell us to do something, and we do it, it brings about peace, not necessarily ease, but certainly peace of soul. And so, it’s a relationship, it’s a friendship that we ought to never tire of fostering.
And we should be very grateful to Our Lord for having given us such great friends as St. Michael and the archangels who are so close to us, and yet we can so easily forget about them. So, we renew, on feast days like this, we renew our thankfulness. We renew our dedication to them, and we thank Our Lord for them. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, the Holy Ghost. Amen.
— Fr. Ermatinger