Change, Patience, and St. Michael the Archangel

Change is inevitable. As Fr Ryan begins his time here at St. Luke the Evangelist parish and school, I want to ask for your patience. He is going to need to get used to the schedule and how we do things here. While I know that it is difficult to adapt to a new priest, it is also difficult as a priest to adapt to different practices in a different parish. Change is something that, while we may not like it, it is something that we all need to do and as we continually change, we have two choices in direction, the first is toward God and the second is away from Him. I pray that all of us strive to move toward God and see the blessings that God wants to give us.

One of the things that can help us, is the Angels and saints. Often times I talk about the named Saints, because the saints are ones who may not have been perfect and most of them had a conversion in some way that brought them back on the path to God. However, there are a few interesting saints that we call saints, even though they really are not in the traditional sense, because they were not even human, and those are the Archangels. The basic definition of a saint is someone who is in heaven. We know of three Archangels from Scripture, Raphael in the book of Tobit, Gabriel was the messenger of God who delivers the greatest message of all time, announcing to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she was going to conceive through the Holy Spirit, the Savior of the World, and finally, Michael, who is mentioned in the book of Revelation.

Michael is the one who will lead the army of Heaven against the devil in the end, he is one that we often are reminded to pray to for strength. The Archangel Michael is also one who is a defender of the Church. He is most often portrayed with a flaming sword standing on top of the devil and pushing him back into hell. In the speech that Pope Francis gave while dedicating Vatican City to both St. Joseph and St. Michael the Archangel a few years ago, he says “Michael struggles to restore divine justice and defends the People of God from his enemies, above all by the enemy par excellence, the devil. And St. Michael wins because in him, there is He, God, who acts. This sculpture reminds us then that evil is overcome, the accuser is unmasked, his head crushed, because salvation was accomplished once and for all in the blood of Christ.” And “We are not alone on the journey or in the trials of life, we are accompanied and supported by the Angels of God, who offer, so to speak, their wings to help us overcome so many dangers, in order to fly high compared to those realities that can weigh down our lives or drag us down. In consecrating Vatican City State to St. Michael, the Archangel, I ask him to defend us from the evil one and banish him.”

We are constantly reminded that there is constant change as well as, there is evil in this world and we need God’s help even through His angels and saints.

God bless,
Fr. Ken