Wednesday, September 29, 2004

The Feast of Sts. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels
is today. There is information on them here, here, and here. A blessed feast day to all who have these mighty beings as patrons, especially Fr. Michael of the Pittsburgh Oratory, Michael who is discerning a vocation to the Pittsburgh Oratory, and Michael who is a member of the Pittsburgh Secular Oratory !
Last year, I posted a verse from the Venerable on St. Michael.

On today's Festival it well becomes us to direct our minds to the thought of those Blessed Servants of God, who have never tasted of sin; who are among us, though unseen, ever serving God joyfully on earth as well as in heaven; who minister, through their Maker's condescending will, to the redeemed in Christ, the heirs of salvation.

There have been ages of the world, in which men have thought too much of Angels, and paid them excessive honour; honoured them so perversely as to forget the supreme worship due to Almighty God. This is the sin of a dark age. But the sin of what is called an educated age, such as our own, is just the reverse: to account slightly of them, or not at all; to ascribe all we see around us, not to their agency, but to certain assumed laws of nature. This, I say, is likely to be our sin, in proportion as we are initiated into the learning of this world;—and this is the danger of many (so called) philosophical pursuits, now in fashion, and recommended zealously to the notice of large portions of the community, hitherto strangers to them,—chemistry, geology, and the like; the danger, that is, of resting in things seen, and forgetting unseen things, and our ignorance about them.

Venerable John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons

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