Meditation for Michaelmas

admin | 29 September 2021

“And they overcome him by the blood of the Lamb”

The serpent of the Genesis story has become “the dragon,” “that old serpent, called the devil and Satan which deceiveth the whole world.” These are key images that reach back to the serpent’s cunning question, “Did God say?” The question seeks to undermine the truth that is known. Sin and evil is about that contradiction and division within ourselves between what we know and what we do, between our reason and our will. We are made in the image of God and are called to act accordingly. But what happens if we don’t? We are rational creatures to whom God gives a commandment. But what happens if we disobey?

Both Genesis at the beginning of the Scriptures for both Jew and Christian and Revelation at the end of the Christian Scriptures show us that all evil is a negation and privative of the Good. It has no power in itself; it is always a distortion, a deception. The various terms for what opposes the truth of God reveal this contradiction either in terms of Satan as the tempter, trying to insinuate and undermine the order and truth of things, or the deceiver, trying to trick us, or Lucifer, the light-bearer who denies his very being, turning away from the light of God to be the Prince of Darkness. Evil arises from the turning away of rational creatures from God, the source of all being and knowing.

The lesson from Revelation is especially powerful because it makes it abundantly clear that “there was war in heaven,” not there is, and that evil has been radically overcome “by the blood of the Lamb,” a reference to Christ in his sacrifice and love for us. The strong reminder is that the Good is greater than all and every evil. What that means for us is to will that Good in our own lives as the counter to the sins and follies that so easily beset us. Michaelmas signals the victory of Good over evil and reminds us of the company we keep, “the angels moving the imagination and strengthening the understanding,” as Aquinas puts it.

To think is to think with the angels who are the thoughts of God in creation. They are the invisible reasons for the visible things of the created order. Paradoxically this reminder to us of the larger spiritual community of which we are a part “with Angels and Archangels and all the Company of heaven” is not a denial or a flight from the concrete world of our embodied existence. To think with the angels is to affirm our creation, our bodies, and our world, and not to be alienated from nature or our bodies through some sort of illusion. The Genesis point is emphatic; creation is good in its parts and as a whole. Evil comes from us when we put ourselves at the centre and try to will a lie, a deceit.

The Angels belong to our Godward thinking and living; they above stairs and we below stairs, to use a quaint seventeenth century image, but dwellers all in the same house of prayer and praise. The things of the spirit embrace, redeem, and perfect the things of matter, the things of the body; not the other way around. Here then is another corrective to the false dichotomies of our current world.

It is in the company of Angels, too, that we are strengthened to be able to contemplate the nature of evil. The overcoming of evil by the blood of the Lamb is an apt image for the struggles of our age. Why? Because these teachings are about the desire for reconciliation and unity. They serve to concentrate our thinking about truth and reconciliation for the indigenous people of Canada. For these Scriptural and philosophic teachings are very much about truth and reconciliation, about our being called to account both in terms of ourselves and with respect to the sad legacy of how the indigenous people have been mistreated. To be reminded of the blood of the Lamb requires our commitment to the difficult and essential process of reconciliation which can only begin when we are open to the truth. All this is testament to our being as spiritual creatures and members of a spiritual community.