Fellow Servants

Today is the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. The readings for the Mass of the feast can be found by clicking this link here.

Americans seem to be obsessed with angels. Popular culture is awash with angel everything, ranging from folk belief to literature to cheesy merchandise. Oh yes, it's cheesy. And sentimental, even saccharine. And probably a wee bit (or a lot?) heretical. The fact is, we seem to take comfort in belief in a class of supernatural beings ready to step in and help in our hour of need, and that gets commemorated on fridge magnets and bumper stickers.

I'm imagining right now some of the angels rolling their eyes...all thousand of those eyes...

The fact of the matter is that while angels pepper the Bible quite liberally, we don't really know a heck of a lot about them. Isaiah and Ezekiel have visions of angelic beings around the throne that are quite, well, freaky to behold. Throughout the whole of Scripture angels (which term comes from the Greek word for messenger), when they arrive to tell someone a message from God usually have to start out saying, "Be not afraid," likely because the message recipient is screaming their head off. We do know from the Scriptural witness that they are sentient, they are not avatars (although the Visitors to Abraham may be an exception), they do a lot of messenger work (Gabriel gets a lot of that, plus multiple other angels who don't get named), and even provide some muscle (for example, the cherubim guarding Paradise in Genesis, scaring the wits out of Balaam's donkey in Numbers, or Michael casting Satan out of heaven in Revelation), some are good, and some are bad (again, Satan and his angels). One thing that the good angels are quick to point out that they are not objects of worship:

"Then I fell down at this feet to worship him, but he said to me, "You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus. Worship God." (Rev 19.10)

What can we take from this? First, angels are sentient like us. Second, they otherwise are nothing like us to the point of being scary. Third, those who stayed loyal to God constantly work out His will throughout the cosmos and often bring us messages when required. Fourth, those who stayed loyal to God see themselves as fellow servants with us humans who are loyal to God (even if we are imperfect and sometimes try their patience...Scripture has plenty of that too). They really don't want our worship, they just want to help us work out God's will when called out by God to do so. So we commemorate their work and ministry today as fellow servants in the Kingdom of God.

[Image is a mosaic of Christ Ruler of All (Pantokrator) and Angels Attending Him.]