The Holy Archangel Michael

Michael is named four times in the canonical Scriptures, three times in Daniel (10:13, 10:21, and 12:1), once in the Epistle of Jude, and once in the Apocalypse (12:7), and each time he is the one whom God appoints to stand. In Daniel he is the great prince "that stands over the children of thy people"¹; in Jude he is the one who, contending with the devil over the body of Moses, dares not bring against him a railing accusation, but says "the Lord rebuke thee"²; in Revelation he is the captain who fights the dragon and casts him out of heaven with his angels.

His name in Hebrew is a question, מִיכָאֵל, Mi-ka-El, "who is like God?", the standing rebuke to every creaturely claim to divinity, beginning with the fallen one whose pride filled heaven and was cast out. The Fathers read the angelic war of Revelation 12 back into the first hour of creation: when Lucifer rose, it was Michael who answered "who is like God?", and the host that followed him became the holy angels who serve the Lord without falling.

He is, in the language of the Eastern Liturgy, the Archistratigos, the chief commander, the first of the bodiless hosts. The Synaxis of November 8 commemorates Michael together with Gabriel and the whole heavenly host, set on the ninth month from March (the month of the Annunciation) and on the eighth day to recall the eighth day of the Resurrection and the age to come.

The September 6 feast commemorates the Miracle at Chonae, where the Archangel rescued a small church dedicated to his name in Asia Minor: pagans, seeking to destroy the church and the sacristan Archippus, diverted two rivers to flood the site, and Michael appeared with his staff and split the rock to swallow the waters, leaving the church standing. The chasm, called the "Khoni" (funnel), gave the place its name.

Michael appears in nearly every order of the Church's prayer: at the head of the deisis after Christ and the Theotokos, at the Anaphora as one of the powers that surround the throne, at the deathbed as the one who escorts the soul, at the parish patronage of countless monasteries and cathedrals. The faithful pray him as the defender of the Faith against heresy, the defender of Christian peoples in war, and the personal guardian against the demonic.