"Succour and defend us on earth": why we need Michaelmas
It is during Autumn that the Third Collect at Evensong has a particular resonance. The days are shortening, the evenings are darker. Evensong during these weeks is often said or sung as the sun is setting, the mellow beauty of Autumnal sunset the background to our evening prayer.
As Autumn progresses, as the leaves fall, the days become colder and shorter, as the year declines, intimations of our vulnerability present themselves in a way that is not the case during the exuberance of Spring or the glory of Summer. Cooler days and darker evenings, falling leaves and the approach of the year's end. They remind us of our vulnerabilities and frailties.
It has been a year when we have been confronted with our vulnerabilities and frailties in an unexpected and disconcerting fashion, as a virus spread across the globe. We face the possibility of further restrictions on the normal, good activities of life: family gatherings and friends socialising, business and labour, recreation and worship. That this may occur over Christmas - when the years as its darkest, when we need the warmth of shared hearth and the joy of carol services - casts a particularly grim pall of the Winter that lies before us.
Another feature of this Autumn is the United States presidential election, coverage of which determines headlines and shapes political debate in many other countries. The apocalyptic claims associated with and paranoid style evident in the politics of this presidential election pollute civic discourse outside the United States.
Let me add a personal note regarding this Autumn. As I write this, one of my children is preparing to leave home for the first time, to attend university elsewhere in the United Kingdom. As a parent I cannot but help to be concerned, to think about the challenges and pressures, the risks and dangers.
Which brings me to today's feast of Saint Michael and all Angels. We need Michaelmas each Autumn, as the change of seasons reminds us of our vulnerabilities and frailties. We need Michaelmas this Autumn, with the particular shadows and fears that it brings. Michaelmas opens our eyes to behold how God answers that daily prayer to "Lighten our darkness". The darkness is lightened by - in the words of the Michaelmas collect - "thy holy Angels" who, by God's appointment, "succour and defend us on earth".
We know how the invisible world, what we cannot see in our lives and the lives of others, profoundly shapes and influences thought, word, and action. There reside our anxieties and fears over vulnerabilities and frailties. We know too that darkness often casts a shadow in that unseen world, in the recesses of heart, mind, and memory that we cannot see, of which we are often barely aware, but where darkness can manipulate, mislead, and disorder. There, in that invisible world, we need our darkness lightened. We need those unseen ministers of light to be present, those "spirits immaterial and intellectual, the glorious inhabitants of those sacred places" (LEP I.IV.1), that the unseen world which shapes the material may be delivered from the dark shadows.
In the words of Calvin:
angels are the ministers and dispensers of the divine bounty towards us. Accordingly, we are told how they watch for our safety, how they undertake our defence, direct our path, and take heed that no evil befall us ... they will hasten to our aid with incredible swiftness, winging their way to us with the speed of lightning (Institutes I.14.6).
Michaelmas, the first of the high festivals of Autumn, allows us to glimpse with Elisha's servant that "they that be with us are more than they that be with them" - them, the dark forces, casting their shadows of fear within us, darkening us in heart and soul. "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord" we pray each day at Evensong. On Michaelmas, as days begin to grow darker and colder, as vulnerabilities and fears can become more evident, as we perhaps become more aware of dark shadows within, we glimpse the beauty and glory of God's answer to our prayer.
O Everlasting God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order: Mercifully grant that, as thy holy Angels alway do thee service in heaven, so by thy appointment they may succour and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(The photograph is of the Angel of the North.)
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After a short break, laudable Practice will return on Monday.
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