Feast of Sts. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels
The tour we receive this week through the Gospel of Luke is interrupted by this beautiful feast of the Archangels. Conception Abbey celebrates this day as a full Solemnity, the highest feast in the Catholic liturgical calendar. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. They are the most beautiful of angels! They serve before God and constantly carry out His Divine will. It is they who lead us and guide us on our spiritual journey.
Michael cast Satan out of Heaven and thrust him into his eternal punishment. Gabriel is God’s favored messenger. He announced Jesus’ birth to Mary and proclaimed the message of the Heavenly Kingdom. Raphael is the Heavenly healer. He helped Tobit to be healed from his blindness and he can do so for us, to pray to God for us to lose our spiritual blindness. How blessed we are to have such Heavenly friends? How blessed we are to walk with such blessed principalities and powers? They walk with us as we dine at the Heavenly banquet where we are blessed to eat the bread of angels, Panis angeli, and what nourishment we receive. How could we not rejoice with the Angels who show us the way back to God when we fall? The Eucharist is the bread that nourishes us and the angels long to taste.
Challenge: “To adore is to lose oneself in the inexhaustible, to fall into the incomprehensible,” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divin Milieu. The Archangels call us to come deeper into the mystery of God’s salvific plan and the Beatific Vision. This challenge is simple. Take time to pray in adoration this week. If you already go to Eucharistic Adoration, double your time in the chapel. If you don’t go to weekly Adoration, seriously consider starting this beautiful and spiritually necessary practice. Amen.
Reflection by Br. Matthew Marie, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections