Michaelmas Eve

There is an "even-tide" in the year - a season when the sun withdraws his propitious light - when the winds arise, and the leaves fall, and nature around us seems to sink into decay ... A few days ago, and the summer of the year was grateful, and every element was filled with life, and the sun of heaven seemed to glory in his ascendant. He is now enfeebled in his power; the desert no more "blossoms like the rose;" the song of joy is no more heard among the branches; and the earth is strewed with that foliage which once bespoke the magnificence of summer. Whatever may be the passions which society has awakened, we pause amid this apparent desolation of nature. We sit down in the lodge "of the wayfaring man in the wilderness," and we feel that all we witness is the emblem of our own fate. Such, in a few years, will be our own condition - from the Guardian archive, 11th November 1840, 'The gentle melancholy of autumn'.

Tomorrow is Michaelmas, the first of the high festivals of Autumn.  As the days shorten and the leaves fall, as the year enters into its 'even-tide', Michaelmas transfigures the melancholy of Autumn because God "hast ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order". Summer departs, leaves fall and disintegrate, colder days come but while we who are flesh and blood share in such decline and passing, we are also more than this: "Are ye not much better than they?".

We, with angels and archangels, are a part of that "wonderful order" called to behold the One who is Goodness, Truth, and Beauty "face to face", to know even as we are also known, sharing with the angelic host in "the life everlasting". That "old serpent, called the Devil and Satan" (from the Epistle in the Prayer Book provision for the feast), whose dominion has brought the darkness of death, is undone:

Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ.

Angels and archangels are the heralds of this salvation in the Gospels of Christmas Day, Easter Day, and Ascension Day, proclaiming our salvation in and through the Incarnate, Risen, and Ascended Lord.  The presence of the holy angels is sign of and witness to these redemptive events: "and that without spot of sin, to make us clean from all sin" (Christmas Day proper preface); "who by his death hath destroyed death, and by his rising to life again hath restored to us everlasting life" (Easter Day); "that where he is, thither we might also ascend" (Ascension Day). 

The Church's popular hymnody likewise points to and celebrates this: "Hark! The herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn King!"; "The winged squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wond'ring eyes to see th'approaching sacrifice"; "Now above the sky he's king, Alleluia! Where the angels ever sing. Alleluia!". 

To celebrate Michaelmas is to rejoice in the angelic ministry as sign of and witness to our redemption.  And to do so as the leaves fall, the days shorten, and intimations of our mortality surround us, is to be assured of our participation in "the life everlasting", that as the holy angels witnessed the mystery of our redemption, so they now "succour and defend us" that we may "continue in that holy fellowship".  

It is not only that Michaelmas answers the melancholy of Autumn.  It also gathers up the riches of Autumn - its colours, its sunsets, its fruits - as anticipations of "the hope of glory", of our sharing with the angelic host in the riches of the vision glorious.  As the Gospel of the feast proclaims, "their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven": this is "the life everlasting" into which we are called in our Lord Jesus Christ.

May the joy and light of Michaelmas bless this season and all our autumnal experiences, that we might behold afresh and be encouraged by "the hope of glory".