In a 2012 homily on the feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, Sept. 29, Bishop Anthony B. Taylor spoke to the religious men and women of Arkansas about angels.
“Yet as exalted as the angels seem, the New Testament points out three ways in which we humans — including, of course, you vowed religious — are superior to the angels: 1) the angels are inferior to Jesus (Hebrews 1) and so inferior in principle to all who are united to Christ as members of his body, the Church and all the more so you who are more intimately united to Jesus through vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, 2) human love takes precedence over the eloquence of angels (1 Corinthians 13:1), and 3) the angels envy us who have the unmerited good fortune of being followers of Christ (1 Peter 1:12) — and all of this simply because through the incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus, God took on our human condition, thereby not only redeeming us from the power of sin and death, but also exalting us above the sinless and deathless angels by bringing us into intimate union with God himself.
“We celebrate this feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael in part to remind us that like St. Michael, we too must struggle against evil; like St. Gabriel, we too must proclaim the Good News of Salvation, and like St. Raphael, we too must protect the weak and vulnerable.”
