Meditation on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels
“Michael and his angels fought against the dragon;
and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not.”
Angels. What are they? Angels are messengers. A good messenger is an evangelist –angel is in the word. Evangelist is the Greek word for the Gospel – the good news, the good message. There is, then, an inescapable connection between Angels and the Gospel.
Angels are a feature of many religions. They are certainly a big part of the biblical landscape. They are a feature of the spiritual landscape of the Jewish or Hebrew Scriptures, what Christians know as the Old Testament, as well as being an integral part of the spiritual landscape of the Christian New Testament. They are also an important feature of the Islamic Qu’ran.
Whether or not one believes in Angels exactly, they are undeniably part of the religious world of Jews, Christians and Muslims. While not a matter of creedal doctrine for Christians, belief in angels is a defining feature of Islam. More importantly, though, is the role and place of angels intellectually or theologically speaking in the three monotheistic faiths. To put it simply, angels belong to the thought-world of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; in short, to the thinking that belongs to these revealed religions. There is a branch of theology that is devoted to angels – angelology. To put it in another way, angels are about our thinking God’s thoughts, the thoughts which come to us from God and our Godward thoughts which are carried on angels’ wings to God.
