Michaelmas

Today is the feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Rafael, and I have some thoughts to post, mostly drawn from a homily of St. Gregory the Great.

First is that "angel" does not actually designate a type of being, but rather a function performed by some heavenly spirits. As messengers of God the angels have had a profound impact on the history of salvation. The archangels are those who bear the most important of these messages and, according to the Books of Tobit and Revelation, are "the seven who stand before the Lord."

It was Rafael ("God heals") who instructed Tobias how to heal his father's blindness and defeat the demon Asmodeus. He is not mentioned in the New Testament, but because of his connection to healing he is associated with the pool of Bethesda where "an angel of the Lord descended at times into the pool, and the waters were moved" and the first person in the pool was healed of infirmity.

Gabriel ("God is my strength") is held by St. Gregory to be the highest of the archangels because it was he who delivered the greatest message of all time; that God the Son was to be incarnated. The very nature of this greatest message was also unique because it was essentially a request rather than instruction. He also foretold the birth of John the Baptist to Zechariah and explained Daniel's heavenly visions. 

Michael ("who is like God?") is mentioned in the Book of Daniel three times as a "prince who stands up for the children" of Israel, and in Revelation as leading in the defeat of Satan. Interestingly, the earliest Christian invocations of St. Michael was as healer rather than warrior and it was for this reason that St. Basil the Great considered him to be the greatest of the angels, although in latter times the second sense of protection has come to predominate and replaced devotion to early martyrs such as St. George, St. Theodore, and St. Sebastian as military patrons. 

St. Michael, patron of Kiev

There are some differences in tradition between the West, where St. Michael is associated with death and the transport of souls, and the East, where the same role is assigned to St. Gabriel. Both are very highly regarded in Eastern Churches, where there are even akathist hymns devoted to St. Michael who is referred to as the Archestrategos ("supreme commander (of heavenly hosts)").