Messengers of Divine Mercy

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n September 29 we celebrate the liturgical Feast of the three great messengers of the world’s most welcome glad tidings, the Archangels Michael, Gabriel & Raphael. Their names signify their evangelical mission. That of the first means “Who is like unto God;” the second’s, “God’s strength;” and the third’s, “God heals.” In celebrating their Feast, we with the whole Church praise and thank God for his wise design ever fulfilling his providence of mercy. The entire existence of these heaven-sent powerful envoys, who herald our hope in God’s reconciling mercy that restores harmony throughout creation, consists in nothing other than to proclaim what God’s Word-made-flesh reveals: “the glory of God, humankind fully alive; the life of man is the vision of God” (in St Irenaeus’ beautiful words summing up the purpose of the mystery of the Incarnation).

The Archangel Michael is the primordial champion of God's unsurpassed, unsurpassable, incomparable and sublime Holiness of Being, while at the same time he supports us in striving to be holy. For, as St Paul reminded the people of Athens gathered in the marketplace of the words of one of their writers and poets (Epimenides; Aratus, Phaenomena, 5): “In him we live and move and have our being... For we are indeed his offspring” (Acts 17:28). In order to be sustained in this perspective, although the prayer to St Michael introduced by Pope Leo XIII in 1866 is no longer said at the end of every low Mass, it is certainly worth reciting this prayer in our private devotions, as I do daily:

Holy Michael the Archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict,

be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil;

may God restrain him, we humbly pray;

and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,

by the power of God, cast down to hell

Satan and all the wicked spirits

who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.

In Book XI of his great epic Paradise Lost, the poet John Milton introduces the Archangel Michael as having the divinely entrusted role of driving out of Paradise “the sinful Pair”, proclaiming “to their Progenie from thence /Perpetual banishment,” while guarding with “Cherubim / Thy choice of flaming Warriors” Eden’s vacated domain of delights against invasion by “the Fiend” or re-entry by the expelled human creatures. However, the entire compass of God’s ordinance to this “Prince above Princes” does not end there, as Milton magnificently continues:

Yet least they faint
At the sad Sentence rigorously urg'd,
For I behold them softn'd and with tears
Bewailing thir excess, all terror hide.
If patiently thy bidding they obey,
Dismiss them not disconsolate; reveale
To Adam what shall come in future dayes,
As I shall thee enlighten, intermix
My Cov'nant in the womans seed renewd;
So send them forth, though sorrowing, yet in peace [Bk XI, lines 108-117].

Michael was thus to present to fallen Adam and Eve (representing all humankind) that all is not lost, but that God in his mercy would send a Saviour whose coming will show the divine providential design that could never be thwarted: rather, that good would triumph one day over evil. Michael is the herald of true hope eternal, thus being, as Milton points out in keeping with traditional Christian faith, the bringer of the first ray of light to the human sin-darkened intelligence, which was allured by the false promise of Satan, whose obdurate pride deprived him of his privileged state as the once-brightest spirit of heaven – Lucifer, whom Milton poignantly calls “darkness visible” (Book I). While depicting Michael as heralding hope in the mystery of the Incarnation, Milton presents this archangel as wisely counselling the progenitors of the human race to wait in patience, to persevere and to entrust themselves utterly to God’s unrelenting saving outreach of wisdom, rather than to despair through merely letting themselves be deceived by the woeful apparent consequences of their sin. No advice could have been more sound to the depressed condition of those two and all deceived human beings; it was about not allowing oneself to be taken in and seduced again by the immediacy of attractive appearances, which was how they fell into error and would have continued to blunder more seriously if they were to abandon hope in the almighty hidden ways of God’s wisdom. Their descendants had to learn this hope and grow gradually in trust through patience and persevering waiting for the unfolding of the divine Mystery of Love in successive stages through the history of salvation until the coming into the world of Christ Jesus, the Redeemer of humankind. He uniquely, as the “true Light of the world” and “the Image of the Invisible God,” is the unique paradigm of “the New Man.”

This, in brief, is the important place and role of the Archangel Michael in regard to the spiritual wellbeing of humankind, a wellbeing that is realised not without struggle and endurance, which are achieved by the above mentioned virtues of patience and perseverance, that themselves bespeak and are the outflow of a longing, that unquenchable yearning or thirst etched into the heart of humanity which resembles though faintly the divine desire (eros) of eternal Love Itself.

It is this longing for and of God that becomes freshly awakened, stirred and quickened into a soul-thrilling delight in the heart of the Virgin Mary, the Second Eve, who hears and responds to the announcement to her by her mysterious visitor, the Archangel Gabriel, who proclaims that the Fruit of her womb is Emmanuel – “God-with-us” – Jesus, “the joy of man’ desiring.” Gabriel, whose name means “God’s strength,” thus fortifies us by revealing at the Annunciation that our hope in God is strongly, indomitably unshakable and real in the Mystery of the Incarnation.

This Mystery is continued in the Eucharistic “mystery of faith” whereby the WORD BECOMES EUCHARIST. In a following blog the theme of the healing and reconciling power of the Eucharistic Word will be developed, in accordance with the significance of the name of the third great archangel, Raphael – “God heals.”

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