Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael: the three names

Today, 29 September, the Church keeps the Holy Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. They are the only three angels Scripture calls by name — and not one of those names is ornament. Each is a whole sentence in Hebrew, and says what that angel does.

In the Church’s calendar today is not a simple memorial: it is a feast, one rank higher. The Mass has the Gloria, its own readings and its own prayers, and those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours read in the Office of Readings a homily by Saint Gregory the Great written precisely to explain who these three are.

Three names, three sentences

• Michael — Mi-ka-El, “Who is like God?” Notice that it is a question, not a title. It is the cry that undoes all pride, and it is the whole weapon of the story: the archangel does not win by being stronger, he wins by asking who God is and knowing the answer. He appears in Daniel, in the Letter of Jude and in Revelation 12:7.
• Gabriel — Gabri-El, “strength of God”. He is the messenger. He explains the vision to Daniel, announces to Zechariah the birth of John, and carries to Nazareth the question on which everything depends (Lk 1:26-38).
• Raphael — Rafa-El, “God heals”. He is the road companion of the book of Tobit: he walks with the boy, arranges his marriage, cures the father’s blindness, and only at the end says who he is.

What the Church teaches about angels

The existence of angels is not an optional devotion or a poetic image. The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls it a truth of faith (no. 328): the witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of Tradition. As early as 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council professed that God created out of nothing, from the beginning of time, both orders of creatures, “the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly”.

• Pure spirits. “As purely spiritual creatures angels have intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures” (CCC 330).
• The name of an office. The Catechism (no. 329) quotes Saint Augustine: “‘Angel’ is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is ‘spirit’; if you seek the name of their office, it is ‘angel’.”
• Christ’s own. “Christ is the centre of the angelic world” (CCC 331). The angels were created through him and for him (Col 1:16), and they are present throughout his life: at the Annunciation, in the song over Bethlehem, in the desert, in the agony of the Garden, at the empty tomb and at the Ascension.
• With us. “From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. ‘Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life’” (CCC 336, quoting Saint Basil).

Angel and archangel: today’s homily

The word archangel appears only twice in the Bible: in the Letter of Jude (“the archangel Michael”, v. 9) and in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, in “the archangel’s call” that will announce the Lord’s return. The one who explains the difference is Saint Gregory the Great, pope from 590 to 604, in the homily the Church reads today in the Office of Readings. He starts from Saint Augustine’s distinction — angel is the name of a mission — and goes on:

Those who deliver messages of lesser importance are called angels; and those who proclaim messages of supreme importance are called archangels. And so it was that not merely an angel but the archangel Gabriel was sent to the Virgin Mary. It was only fitting that the highest angel should come to announce the greatest of all messages.

Names, Gregory says, are given to some “to denote their ministry when they came among us”. Whenever some act of wondrous power must be performed, Michael is sent, so that his action and his name may make it clear that no one can do what God does. Gabriel, God’s strength, announced the One who came to quell the powers of evil. And Raphael is God’s remedy, because when he touched Tobit’s eyes he banished the darkness of his blindness.

It is a key to the whole feast: each of the three appears in Scripture on a mission — to fight, to announce, to heal. And the three missions go on.

One feast that was three

Until 1969 the dates were separate. 29 September belonged to Saint Michael — and not because of the victory over the dragon, but because of the dedication of a basilica in his honour on the Via Salaria near Rome in the fifth century. Gabriel was kept on 24 March, the eve of the Annunciation, and Raphael on 24 October.

The reform of the calendar gathered all three onto the 29th and left 2 October to the Holy Guardian Angels, who keep their own memorial. The Church first keeps the three who have names and, three days later, the nameless angel each of us has at our side.

Today’s Mass readings are chosen with care. The first is Daniel 7, with “thousands upon thousands” serving before the Ancient of Days, or Revelation 12, with Michael against the dragon. The psalm is Psalm 138(137), which sings to God “in the presence of the angels”. And the Gospel is the call of Nathanael (Jn 1:47-51), where Jesus promises: “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” It is the ladder Jacob saw in his dream (Gen 28:12) — and now the ladder is Christ.

In English the day keeps its old name, Michaelmas, which for centuries marked the end of harvest, the paying of rents and the start of the academic year at Oxford and Cambridge — still called Michaelmas term today.

The prayer of today’s Mass

The collect of this feast is very old: it is already in the Roman sacramentaries of the first millennium, when the 29th still belonged to Saint Michael alone. In one sentence it says everything the Church asks today — that those who serve God in heaven may guard our life on earth.

Saint Michael: the prayer of Leo XIII

In 1886 Pope Leo XIII ordered this prayer said at the end of every low Mass, together with the Hail Marys and the Salve Regina. It ceased to be obligatory with the liturgical reform, but it never left the Church’s lips. In 1994 Saint John Paul II asked that no one forget it. And on 29 September 2018 — on this same feast — Pope Francis asked all the faithful to end the Rosary every day during October with the Sub tuum praesidium and with this prayer. Since the feast falls on the threshold of October, the month of the Rosary, the invitation still stands.

For centuries the Church has also entrusted to him the hour of death. In the Requiem Mass, the offertory asks that “the standard-bearer Saint Michael” lead the souls “into the holy light” — signifer sanctus Michael repraesentet eas in lucem sanctam. And this is the name entire, which is the shortest prayer there is:

A prayer to Saint Gabriel

Until 1969 Saint Gabriel had his own Mass on 24 March, the eve of the Annunciation. The collect of that Mass is a small, perfect prayer for today: it asks the protection of the one who carried to Nazareth the news on which our whole salvation hung. In 1951 Pope Pius XII declared him patron of telecommunications — of those who work with radio, telephone, television and, today, with everything that carries news from one place to another. He is also the one to turn to before a hard conversation, or a word that needs to be said.

A prayer to Saint Raphael

Saint Raphael’s feast was on 24 October. He is the archangel of those on the road: patron of travellers, of the sick and of those who care for them, and, through the story of Tobias and Sarah, of those who ask God for the right husband or wife. He sums up his own mission at the end of the book: “When you and Sarah prayed, I brought a reminder of your prayer before the glory of the Lord” (Tob 12:12). The collect of his old Mass asks exactly this: that Tobias’s companion be ours too.

Sancti Angeli custodes nostri, defendite nos in prælio. Holy Angels, our guardians, defend us in battle.