The name comes from Michael + Mass: the Mass/feast of Michael. Although Michael is the focus, the feast isn't really about one supernatural figure. It celebrates Michael and all the angels, the whole biblical vision of God's creation being larger than what human beings can see.
Michael appears particularly in Daniel, Jude, and Revelation. In Revelation 12, Michael and his angels battle the dragon. In Daniel, Michael is described as a protector of God's people. The biblical Michael is therefore associated especially with courage, protection, justice, and the defeat of forces that oppose God's purposes.
But the feast has another side that is just as important: angels are messengers.
The Greek word angelos means "messenger." Angels frequently appear in Scripture at moments when the boundary between ordinary human life and God's presence seems especially thin.
Michaelmas therefore invites a question: Where might God's messengers be appearing in our ordinary lives?
Michael's name in Hebrew is מִיכָאֵל (Mikha'el), traditionally translated:
"Who is like God?"
That isn't really a request for an answer. It challenges human arrogance.
Who is like God? Michael's very name becomes a theological statement: God is God, and the powers that terrify us are not.
That makes Michaelmas surprisingly relevant to the biblical story of the Exodus.
Pharaoh looks enormously powerful in Exodus 14. His army is pursuing a vulnerable people who appear trapped between the Egyptian military and the sea.
And Moses says:
"The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to keep still."
Michaelmas carries something of that same spiritual imagination: there are powers at work in God's creation that are larger than the powers immediately visible to us. But Michaelmas is not solely about dramatic supernatural intervention.
One of the most beautiful things about angels in Scripture is that people sometimes don't recognize what they have encountered until afterward.
Hebrews says:
"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it."
That gives Michaelmas a wonderfully earthy meaning. We don't necessarily have to decide that these people are literally angels. The biblical metaphor allows something more beautiful: God's care can arrive through ordinary human beings.
And that connects beautifully with the Teresa of Ávila words we heard Pastor Jan quote:
"Christ has no body now on earth but yours."
Michaelmas extends that thought: God's messengers don't always look like angels. Sometimes they look like us.
September 29 also has a fascinating place in the calendar. Michaelmas falls close to the autumnal equinox, when daylight and darkness are roughly balanced. Historically, it became an important marker in the agricultural and civic year in Europe: a time for harvest, hiring, rents, school terms, and changing seasons.
So Michaelmas carries a sense of threshold. Summer is giving way to autumn. Light is beginning to diminish. The harvest is being gathered. One season is ending and another beginning. And that makes the feast particularly poignant as a spiritual observance.
There is something almost startling about Michaelmas arriving as I approach the anticipated end of my weeks of radiation treatments. It reminds me I have not been traveling alone.
See this Sunday's blog entry. Candidates who have become, in the language of Michaelmas, messengers of God's presence.
And perhaps that is one reason the feast is called Michael and All the Angels rather than simply Michael. The Christian imagination isn't only about the great archangel battling the dragon. It is also about the "all."
All those unseen and seen ways that love keeps arriving. All those people who become bearers of grace.All those moments when, like Jacob waking from his dream, we discover that the ordinary place where we thought we were simply passing through was somehow holy.
A Michaelmas prayer
God of Michael and all the angels,
As one season turns toward another,
remind us that we are never as alone
as we sometimes imagine.Give us Michael's courage
when fear seems larger than hope.
Give us the angels' attentiveness
to your messages hidden in ordinary things.Open our eyes to the messengers
you place along our roads—
the friend, the stranger,
the caregiver, the driver,
the person who brings food,
the person who sends a card,
the person who simply stays.And make us messengers too.
Give us eyes that notice,
hands that help,
feet that carry compassion,
and hearts willing to say yes
when love asks something of us.As darkness gathers earlier around us,
teach us not to mistake darkness for abandonment.Who is like God?
The question is enough.
We do not need to see the whole road.
We only need to take the next step,
trusting that we do not take it alone.Amen.
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