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Monday, 9/29/14

Today we honor the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, but we are not sure just whom we are honoring. We only know that we are glimpsing God’s mysterious, wonderful beings. We like that line from Shakespeare where Hamlet tells Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and on earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”

With Archangel Michael we are in the presence of one whom Scripture describes as being the leader of God’s army.

The Archangel Raphael, whose name means “The healing of God,” came to us in the Book of Tobit where he reveals himself announcing, “I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who enter and serve before the Glory of the Lord.”

There is no scene in Scripture with which we are more familiar than the one introducing the third of the Archangels we honor today. “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, and the virgin’s name was Mary.”