St. Michael's Sunday - Rector's Rambling for October 3, 2021

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Michael and all Angels, one of my favorite church celebrations.  The feast day is actually September 29, but the church also celebrates it on the Sunday that falls within the octave (eight days) following.

St. Michael is the patron saint of our Conference for Youth, held every summer.  He is a strong example of valor and virtue in glorifying and serving God.  During the course of the week at the Conference we sing our opening hymn, Christ the fair glory of the holy angels, at least four times.  It is a wonderful hymn because it extols the work of the Archangels (along with a nod to Our Lady as well), and it also creates quite the “earworm”.  I will be singing this hymn all afternoon and into the week.

The world loves the idea of angels, usually depicted as cute little cherubs or saccharin-sweet figures content to grant wishes like some sort of magic fairy or genie.

There are various tasks that these other creatures (created by God) do, ranging from worship, to messenger, to personal guardian.  But in St. Michael we focus on angels as warriors.  As we hear in today’s lesson from The Book of Revelation, St. Michael leads the army of God’s angels in battle against those selfish creatures who reject the service of God, and instead join in Satan’s rejection of God’s love and mercy.  For this reason, Michael is also the patron saint of police officers and soldiers in their fight against evil.

For me personally, this feast isn’t only special because of the Conference, but because two years ago, on this feast day, I was flown off a cruise ship and life-flighted to Turku, Finland, were I had emergency intestinal surgery the next morning.  I remember being lifted in the gurney from the ship into the air, praying the St. Michael prayer for protection.  And once again, evil was held at bay.