Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Collect from the Daily Office
When you google the term „Saint Michael and All Angels”, you get a list of links containing a vast number of churches, chapels and schools scattered across the whole world. And nevertheless I can remember only one time when I had a chance to take part in an Anglican celebration of this feast here in Holland; it was already a few years ago and the church was almost empty. It’s hard to resist the impression that the traditional churches don’t know very well what to do with this feast and with angels in general, while the Liberal Catholic Church in Holland, for example, organizes a week’s celebration that ends with a festive Eucharist celebrated today.
We think it should be also said that the angels don’t play an exceptionally important role in our spirituality as well. And therefore a journey into Anthroposophy can be all the more inspiring. In this spiritual tradition today’s feast is celebrated as the feast of courage and strong will. In the Waldorf school my friends work in there are sport activities organized. Their aim is to shape these features – through play.
At a website created by a mother whose children attends such a school, we found the following text :
St Michael is an angel of good will, fighting darkness, reinforcing the inner courage. (…) He is often depicted
as having copper scales in his hand. Copper is a metal symbolizing warmth and coldness, while scales are used to weigh good and evil. The weighing points at reason and deliberate acting. The conscious approach to the reality nearby requires deliberation seeking balance. He is sometimes depicted as an angel, but often he looks like a knight on a horse with a sword in his hand. A sword used to fight, made of iron, the symbol of power. A sword used to cut the Gordian knots, making courageous decisions and choices.
In the time of St Michael the change of seasons takes place: from summer to autumn. It’s the time of the autumnal equinox. (…) The nature which gave us its power during the spring and summer time, is dying, but it leaves as with an element of new life – in the seeds and the fruits we use to live through the winter.
Also we humans turn to ourselves and become more depended upon ourselves. We have to become more spiritually active, for we have been placed between extremities: the sunrise and the sunset, darkness and light, life and death, good and evil; the dragon in ourselves. On this way to the inside we shouldn’t avoid difficult things, but what we should do is to confront and overcome them.
St Michael calles us to inner awakening, for only truly awake are you really able to see the power of the dragon and overcome it.
Perhaps today’s feast interpreted in this way will appeal also to us?
Anyway, we do encourage you to listen to the choral evensong for the day of St Michael and All Angels from the cathedral in Southwark.
