Dragonsbane

Propers: St Michael and all Angels (Michaelmas), A.D. 2016 C

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

This, according to St Augustine, is the Bible’s account of how God created the angels.

Angelic beings, in Christian tradition, are creatures of pure light. Not physical light, mind you, as though they were made up of photons, but spiritual light: the light of knowledge, the light of wisdom. Angels are pure minds, without bodies, without physical limitations. God produced them in astounding variety, from the mightiest seraph to the humblest guardian angel. Some were tasked with holding reality itself together; some with caring for the smallest of God’s creatures; and some were so cosmically vast in their understanding and brobdingnagian in power that they dwelt directly in the unspeakable fires of God’s immediate presence.

They were deathless creatures, able to flit from place to place or even time to time with a thought—for time as we know it is a physical thing, and angels easily transcend it. Unencumbered with physical senses, they could know reality directly, and thus rejoice in the glorious complexities and elegant simplicities of Creation. Most importantly, the angels were made by God purely out of grace, purely out of love. They were not necessary, any more than any part of contingent reality is necessary. God created them out of the superabundant joy and self-giving sacrifice eternally overflowing from the dance of the Trinity.

But the thing about love is that, in order to truly be love, it requires an element of freedom. Love cannot tyrannize, only welcome. Love cannot force, only seduce. And so the angels were graced with free will, the ability to choose, the ability willingly to cooperate in the mysterious and awesome work of their Creator. And the mightiest and most beautiful of all was Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, crown of God’s Creation. Nothing that God had made matched this spirit, this pure mind that God had fashioned from His own omnipotent thoughts. Yet something happened to Lucifer. Something twisted him.

The book of Revelation implies that God revealed to the angels a vision of His plan for the fullness of Creation: that He would make Man from mud and clay; that Man would rebel against his Creator; and that this rebellion would be healed by God Himself becoming Man through a human Mother; the Creator entering Creation, as one Latin hymn has it, “through the guts of a girl.” And this drove Lucifer mad.

Perhaps he was jealous that our mutual Creator would predestine the Blessed Virgin Mary to bear God into the world, rather than pick the mightiest of His angels. Perhaps he could not bear to see God’s justice fulfilled by mercy rather than through punishment. Or perhaps the whole notion of the Incarnation simply disgusted him. It’s hard to say, given that by nature the thoughts of the highest of angels stretch far beyond our capacity to understand. Regardless, he raged against God. He tried to assert his own justice, his own understanding of good and evil. He tried to become his own god, which in the realm of pure thought is nothing less than war against the Holy Trinity.

But a voice opposed Lucifer’s rebellion: a lesser angel, a lesser mind, tiny compared to the raging might of the Light-Bearer. “Who is like God?” demanded this lesser being, who must surely have seemed like Creation’s afterthought in comparison. “Who is ever like God?” And the angels rallied around this battle-cry—“Who is like God? Who is like God?”—and drove Lucifer out of Heaven, out of the presence of the Almighty, casting him down to the earth he so despised, grinding him into the dirt from which his prophesied Conqueror would one day arise.

And there he rages to this day, fallen and fettered, cast out by his brother angels and conquered by the Risen Christ, knowing his time is short, knowing his rebellion has failed. Yet still he rebels. Still he writhes, until the end of the age, no longer Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, but now only Satan, the Adversary, the ancient serpent. And that lesser angel, who stood so bravely and so faithfully against the might of the dragon, is known to us now by the battle-cry that has become his name: for in Hebrew, “Who is like God?” is Michael: Michael the Archangel, guardian of the guardians, protector of God’s people Israel, who snatches repentant souls from the hungry claws of the devil; the original David who stood firm in faith against the original Goliath.

There are many lessons to be taken from this story, from the truth of this foundational Creation myth. For tonight I think it will suffice to remember that there are powers far older, far greater, and far more intelligent than the mind of Man. Sometimes wicked thoughts arise from within us, sometimes from without. The war between the angels is a war of thoughts, a war of minds. Yes, it is all in your head—but that doesn’t make it any less real. Evil is out there. It hungers, it hunts.

But evil is only the twisted wreckage of something that once was good; it has no substance in and of itself. Far greater are the powers of goodness and truth and beauty, the unseen guardians sent to protect and guide us, the holy angels of God who are our brothers in Creation and our shepherds on the earth. For they trust not in their own powers, their own spirits, their own wills—but in the Holy Spirit of God and in the mysterious, awesome, and eternally merciful will of the Father Who is even now, through His Son, bringing Creation to its fullness and fruition.

St Michael, Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the snares and wickedness of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all wicked spirits that prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. For who is like unto God?

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.