Today, on the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, we read one of the two passages in the Bible that mentions St. Michael and some angels. He is in heaven, at war with the dragon, and he fights with his angels. But this isn’t the feast of St. Michael and Some Angels, or St. Michael and His Angels. It is the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. The dragon has his angels too. Are we celebrating those as well?
Come, enjoy rewards and crowns I have prepared for you. Ἐλέησον, ἐλέησον, ἐλέησον.
How busy was the tomb?
This vast space falls silent sometimes; I’ve seen it.
Silent with the hum of the hearts and prayers of a thousand warm, living bodies, and silent as the grave, all quiet and dark when only I make my pilgrimage through this great nothingness, this naked vacuum clad in a sandstone veil.
God is totally different to us. God’s thoughts are not ours, and God’s ways are not ours.
Throughout this time, I’ve found it easier and easier to think about God as my mother. Early on, when I could hardly hear God speak, Charlie prayed for me and received the prophetic image of me as a tiny point of righteous anger curled in on itself, as a baby kicking and screaming too hard and not staying still enough to feel loved, and of God around me: holding and enclosing me, and encouraging me to unravel so that I could feel her holding me, so that I could feel anything other than the white hot rage that I had curled in on.