Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, archangels
Today is the feast of the archangel’s Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. When it was our saint's day in the second grade, Sr. Stephan gave a chocolate bar, except if was during lent, then you got your chocolate bar after easter. Today, I would get my chocolate bar. Although my reminisces turn to chocolate, they also turn to the idea of angels as the image used in salvation history as the vehicle by which God’s presence and power became known to mortals. Do angels exist? Of course they do. If they did not, Thomas Aquinas would not have spent so much time writing about them. So much so that he is referred to as the Angelic Doctor. The question about angels is really a question about God’s action in the world. How exactly God operates in the world is a mystery. The viability of that mystery separates the world into two groups, those that hold that the world turns on the laws of material nature and that humanity is simply a sophisticated slug pulling itself through the grime of existence. Or there are those who hold that God is present and active in the world, mimicking the action of the Holy Spirit described by Gerald Manely Hopkins:
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
As Christians, we believe that God does hover over our bent world by means of angels, saints, and even our cooperation, moving us closer to our fullest redemption at the end of time.