 September 29th
Angels - messengers from God - appear frequently in Scripture, but only Michael, Gabriel and Raphael are named.
St. Michael is one of the principal angels; his name was the war-cry of the good angels in the battle fought in heaven against the enemy and his followers. Four times his name is recorded in Scripture. Following these Scriptural passages, Christian tradition gives to St. Michael four offices:
- To fight against Satan.
- To rescue the souls of the faithful from the power of the enemy, especially at the hour of death.
- To be the champion of God’s people, the Jews in the Old Law, the Christians in the New Testament; therefore he was the patron of the Church, and of the orders of knights during the Middle Ages.
- To call away from earth and bring men’s souls to judgment
St. Michael is mentioned in the Apocalypse as the leader of the heavenly host. He is a patron of soldiers.
St. Gabriel is one of the three archangels mentioned in the Bible. Only four appearances of Gabriel are recorded in Scripture. He is the angel of the Incarnation and of Consolation, and so in Christian tradition Gabriel is ever the angel of mercy while Michael is rather the angel of judgment. At the same time, even in the Bible, Gabriel is, in accordance with his name, the angel of the Power of God, and it is worth while noting the frequency with which such words as “great”, “might”, “power”, and “strength” occur in the Scripture passages referring to him.
Gabriel is mentioned only twice in the New Testament, but it is not unreasonable to suppose with Christian tradition that it is he who appeared to St. Joseph and to the shepherds, and also that it was he who “strengthened” Our Lord in the garden. Gabriel is generally termed only an archangel, but the expression used by St. Raphael, “I am the angel Raphael, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord” (Tobit 12:15) and St. Gabriel’s own words, “I am Gabriel, who stand before God” (Luke 1:19), have led some to think that these angels must belong to the highest rank; but this is generally explained as referring to their rank as the highest of God’s messengers, and not as placing them among the Seraphim and Cherubim.
The name of this archangel (Raphael -”God has healed”) appears only in the Book of Tobias. Here he first appears disguised in human form as the traveling companion of the younger Tobias, calling himself “Azarias the son of the great Ananias”. The story of the adventurous journey during which the protective influence of the angel is shown in many ways including the binding “in the desert of upper Egypt” of the demon who had previously slain seven husbands of Sara, daughter of Raguel, is picturesquely related in Tobit 5-11, to which the reader is referred. After the return and the healing of the blindness of the elder Tobias, Azarias makes himself known as “the angel Raphael, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord”. Of these seven “archangels” which appear in the angelology of post-Exilic Judaism, only three, Gabriel, Michael and Raphael, are mentioned in the canonical Scriptures.
Regarding the functions attributed to Raphael we have little more than his declaration to Tobias (Tobit 12) that when the latter was occupied in his works of mercy and charity, he (Raphael) offered his prayer to the Lord, that he was sent by the Lord to heal him of his blindness and to deliver Sara, his son’s wife, from the devil.
Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel
St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.
And do you O Prince of the Heavenly Host
By the power of God
cast into hell satan and all the other evil spirits,
who prowl about this world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.
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