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Commemorations and feast days are part of the Book of Common Prayer calendar throughout the year. Prior to the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, the calendar on Tuesday, September 29th marks

The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

Michael the Archangel, 13th-century Byzantine icon from the Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Michael is an Archangel who was known in Judaism centuries before the birth of Christ. He is one of only four angels called by name out of the many we read about in the Bible. In the Book of Revelation, the vision of Michael is that of a commander of good angels who battle with Satan and his fallen angels, hurling them to earth. Artistic images of winged figures are misleading because angels are purely spiritual beings. Jesus attested to their existence and Gregory the Great spoke about them in his homilies:

“You should be aware that the word ‘angel’ denotes a function rather than a nature. Those holy spirits of heaven have indeed always been spirits. They can only be called angels when they deliver some message. Moreover, those who deliver messages of lesser importance are called angels; and those who proclaim messages of supreme importance are called archangels…Michael means ‘Who is like God?’…Whenever some act of wondrous power must be performed, Michael is sent, so that his action and his name make it clear that no one can do what God does by his superior power.”

On Wednesday, September 30th, we commemorate Jerome, Doctor, Presbyter in Rome and Bethlehem, Translator of the Scriptures, 420. He is perhaps best known today for taking earlier translations of the Bible and producing the Latin translation known as the Vulgate. His commentaries on Scripture became standard reference works in the Western Church for over a thousand years. Jerome was a complex and interesting man who inspired devotion in some and thorough dislike in others. Despite his flaws, he is one of the great Latin doctors of the Church. A surprisingly modern-sounding excerpt from one of his sermons reads:

“No one should think that I mean to explain the entire subject matter of this great book of Scripture in one brief sermon, since it contains all the mysteries of the Lord. It prophesies that Emmanuel is to be born of a virgin and accomplish marvellous works and signs. It predicts his death, burial, and resurrection from the dead as the Saviour of all human beings. I need say nothing about the natural sciences, ethics and logic. Whatever is proper to holy Scripture, whatever can be expressed in human language and understood by the human mind, is contained in the book of Isaiah.”

The calendar on Thursday, October 1st, lists Remigius, Bishop of Rheims, France, c. 530. Known as Remi to his contemporaries, Remigius was only twenty-two years old when he was appointed bishop. His baptism of Clovis I, king of the Franks, was “an event of great importance in French history” and followed a battle where the king ruthlessly eliminated his enemies. With his new-found allegiance to Catholic Christianity, Clovis brought stability to the province of Gaul. He also turned the Church decisively away from the Arian heresy which denied that Jesus was coeternal with God the Father.

On October 4th, the calendar includes Francis of Assisi, 1226, but this year that date falls on a Sunday.