Supreme Commanders of the Heavenly Hosts,
We your unworthy ones implore you,
That by your supplications ye will encircle us
With the shelter of the wings of your immaterial glory, and guard us who fall down before you and fervently cry, Deliver us from danger, since ye are the marshals of the hosts on high
- Apolytikion of the Holy Angels
On Tuesday, 8/21 November, we will celebrate the Feast of the Holy Archangel Michael and all the Bodiless Powers of Heaven. The veneration of the holy angels is a very great aid to us, for two reasons: One, it calls down their help upon us in our spiritual struggles, and two, it reminds us that our warfare is indeed not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, as St. Paul writes, against the devil and his fallen angels.
To properly understand the meaning of current events, we must always keep this in mind: that all of human history, including our own time, is an arena in which God's will is being worked out, and this working out takes the form of a warfare between God and the devil. God will win, of course, in the end, and indeed has already conquered through the death and resurrection of Christ. But man can lose this battle, through cooperating with the devil. The Lord aids us in our struggle by means of His grace, which is all-powerful, but He calls upon us to exert ourselves with all our strength daily to choose Him and the doing of His holy will.
To avoid falling into the devil's snares, we must stir up in ourselves holy zeal for God's glory, the fervent desire to do the will of God in every circumstance of our lives. In our times of universal lukewarmness and indifference to truth and to holiness, this virtue of zeal is very rare. One who shows it in any way is regarded as a narrow-minded fanatic or lunatic of some kind. Every kind of idiotic attachment and fanatical devotion to things of this world is accepted - one can be a pro football devotee, a Hollywood film buff, a health nut; one can devote thousands of dollars and every spare hour to playing tennis, taking eco-tours to see the whales, or going to rock concerts - and no one says anything, except, "Hey, that's cool." But dare to breathe one word of zeal for God's glory, one word of objection to blasphemy or worldliness, and one is instantly branded a "fundamentalist" or a "cultist." One's faith is the one thing one is not allowed to take seriously.
St. Michael the Archangel is the original zealot for the glory of the true God. When Lucifer rebelled against God before time began and set himself up as "god," then the great Archangel said Who is like God? (in Hebrew "Mi - cha - el"), and led the other good angels in casting Satan and his allies out of heaven. We must pray to him frequently to come to our aid in the daily circumstances of our lives, to enlighten our minds and help us acquire a pure and strict way of thinking about our daily choices and actions, so that we can avoid offending God by our worldliness, lukewarmness, spiritual carelessness, and lack of piety. We must beg for the angelic protection against all the snares and seductions of the present world, which are growing stronger every day, and which threaten to snuff out entirely the flame of love for God and His glory, which are the true purpose of our life on earth and our way to Paradise.
On Holy Zeal
THE CHIEF THING in Christianity, according to the clear teaching of the Word of God, is the fire of Divine zeal, zeal for God and His glory—the holy zeal which alone is able to inspire man in labors and struggles pleasing to God, and without which there is no authentic spiritual life and there is not and cannot be any true Christianity. Without this holy zeal Christians are "Christians" in name only: they only "have a name that they live," but in reality "they are dead," as was said to the holy Seer of Mysteries John (Apoc. 3 :1) . True spiritual zeal is expressed, first of all, in zeal for God's glory, which is taught us in the words of the Lord's Prayer which stand at its very beginning: Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Those who are zealous for God's glory themselves glorify God with their whole heart—both in thought and feeling, both by words and deeds and with their whole life—and naturally desire that all other people should glorify God also in the same way, and therefore they cannot, of course, endure with indifference when in their presence, in some way or other, the name of God is blasphemed or holy things are mocked. Being zealous for God, they sincerely strive to please God themselves and serve Him alone with all the power of their being, and they are ready to forget themselves all the way to sacrificing their very life in order to bring all men to the pleasing and the service of God. They cannot calmly listen to blasphemy, and therefore they cannot support communion with and have friendship with blasphemers and mockers of the Name of God and despisers of holy things.
- Archbishop Averky of Holy Trinity Monastery