Thought for the Week – 29^th September 2020

By Morag Bushell.

St. Michael and All Angels

We probably all have our own ideas about what angels are like, or what they mean. These ideas probably involve strange beings with wings, wearing dazzling white robes and playing harps while sitting on clouds in heaven. Much of this imagery comes from medieval pictures and popular films, and it is not surprising. How can any vision of heaven or of a heavenly being ever be described? 

The Bible is certainly not very clear. Angels crop up every so often, usually to bring messages from God or to impart an important piece of news. Perhaps the best known being the Angel Gabriel who tells Mary that God has chosen her to give birth to Jesus. There are countless images of this event and there is a fine example in stained glass in one of the windows in St. Albright’s Church. However, there are plenty of examples in the scriptures of angels   popping up to intervene in our world as messengers. Indeed, that is what the word actually means – an angel is a messenger – so we can be pretty sure that if one of them appears then something important is about to be told.  In the book of Genesis Jacob has a dream in which the angels of God are ascending and descending a ladder set up between heaven and earth (Genesis 28. 10-17). This seems to suggest that they are frequent visitors, and there are many people who have had visions of angels. Jesus himself refers to this, for example in John 1. 51, where he is talking of spectacular events that will occur with his coming. 

Angels appear in some other contexts too, most notably in the book of Revelation – the last book of the Bible and which is full of extraordinary and colourful poetic images of heaven and the end of time. It is here that we encounter Michael who is a warrior who slays the dragon (the Devil) after war breaks out in heaven Revelation 12.7-12). Michael is often depicted as a soldier in armour, and there is an example of this in another stained glass window in St. Albright’s. In Christian tradition he has come to be known as the guardian or protector of heaven and is the patron saint of soldiers and has been venerated by the church since a basilica was founded in his honour in Rome in the fifth century on 30^th September. The celebrations for that event began on the evening before so the 29^th has become the day when he, and all other saints, are celebrated.

There is one other named angel - Raphael about whom we read in the book of Tobit and who is assumed to be the angel who troubled the water in John 5. 2-4. His name simply means “God heals”.

All of this is rather strange and mysterious and it is hardly surprising that down the centuries all sorts of traditions, legends and amazing depictions of angels have been developed. That is as it should be. The presence of angels reminds us of the spiritual realm – of things about our faith which we cannot fully understand or explain but which connect with our world at times. We cannot see or comprehend God, but he can and does communicate with us and intervenes in our world. One of those ways seems to be via angels, whatever they may be. They serve to enforce the idea that this world and our earthly experience is not the end or the only thing – there is much more, and we do well to remind ourselves of it as we go about our daily lives.