Word XI. On the Day of the Holy Archangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Heavenly Hosts

November 8, 1907.

Unceasingly we glorify You, O Christ, who has wisely united heaven with earth, and formed one Church out of angels and men (Stichera at Small Vespers).

We celebrate, dear brethren, the bright feast of the lightning-like Archangel Michael and the other bodiless heavenly Hosts.

The history of the Church’s establishment of this feast is long, and we will not relate it here; those who wish to know it may read of it in the church book called the «Great Menaion»; let us now speak instead of the countless spiritual world of the angels, of their qualities, their order of ranks, and of the boundless goodness of God, who has numbered us, Orthodox Christians, among this angelic company, and formed one Church out of angels and men—and then of our own duty to honor them as they deserve and to imitate them as far as we are able, as our future fellow citizens in our heavenly fatherland, for which we earnestly pray the Lord God, our common Creator.

St. Cyril of Alexandria says (see Macarius’s Theology, on the angels): if our earth, itself but a single point, as it were, among the worlds, bears upon it so countless a multitude of people and of every kind of creature, how many times more inhabitants must the immaterial heaven have within it—great and beyond the grasp of any mind?

The angels have a spiritual, immaterial, subtle, immortal nature, free from all corruption, yet finite—not as the Lord Himself is, the Spirit who is everywhere and one, beginningless and filling all things. He brought the angels from non-being into being, sanctified them by His word, and, for their unbending resistance to evil, established them unfallably by the Holy Spirit (that is, they can no longer fall into sin); their nature is full of wondrous, unwaning light, holiness, goodness, beauty, wisdom, power, immortality, and burning love for the Creator, for one another, and for men, in whose salvation they rejoice, desiring to have them as their eternal fellow-citizens in the land of unending light and incorruption, peace and joy. St. Dionysius the Areopagite, disciple of the Apostle Paul, who was caught up by the Holy Spirit to the third heaven, heard from him the mysterious teaching about the angelic world, wrote it down, and handed it on to the Church (Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy).

The angelic world is divided into nine orders, and these, each into three ranks. The first and most luminous angels (Michael and Gabriel), like the bright dawn of the Beginningless Trinity, stand immediately before the flaming throne of God, are illumined by His unapproachable light, and impart illumination and knowledge of the mysteries of God to the ranks that follow them, and the lower ranks are governed in a heavenly manner by the higher. Such heavenly citizenship, such a heavenly, holy, most radiant, gracious company of the dwellers in heaven is called the heavenly hierarchy, corresponding to the earthly hierarchy, or the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church.

Let us marvel at God’s all-good and all-wise providence, at His boundless goodness, which has foreordained us to endless dwelling together and blessedness with the angels in our future fatherland, and has formed one Church out of the most radiant and incorruptible angels and chosen and worthy men. What blessedness, indescribable by any tongue, awaits Christians faithful to God, if they remain faithful to their Christian calling to the end! To be found worthy of eternal dwelling together and a blessed life with the angels in heaven, we must strive to honor them, to imitate their holiness, humility, love, and total devotion to God, their loftiness of thought, through self-restraint, prayer and fasting, mercy and compassion for one another, and fervent mutual love.

The sacred, God-inspired beholders of the mysteries of God and of angelic visions, the prophets and evangelists, saw the angels in mystical vision, turning their faces to one another in friendship and singing the praises of the Holy Trinity in harmony. This teaches us too to treat one another with fervent love and to live in oneness of mind, serving with zeal the common Creator of all.

Glory to the boundless goodness of God, who has prepared for us an eternal kingdom, a kingdom of unwaning light, of peace and unshakeable blessedness, together with the countless companies of angels.

Let us use this brief time here to make progress in Christian virtue, that we may inherit this endless blessedness, of which may the Lord grant us all to be found worthy, by His grace, His bounty, and His love for mankind, through the intercession of the Most Pure Mother of God and the advocacy of the venerable, bodiless heavenly hosts, especially the radiant, lightning-like Michael and Gabriel, and the holy Angels, our guardians. Amen.