Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael

Three archangels are named in the Orthodox Scriptures: Michael and Gabriel in the protocanonical books, Raphael in the book of Tobit. This file treats each — Michael, “Who is like God?”, the Chief Commander of the heavenly hosts and worker of the miracle at Chonae; Gabriel, “the strength of God,” the messenger of the Annunciation; and Raphael, “God heals,” the companion of Tobias — with their scriptural warrant, the meaning of their names, and their feasts, noting the canonical standing of Tobit honestly.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Michael — “Who Is Like God?”

Michael (Hebrew mî-kā-’ēl) is the only angel Scripture calls “the great prince” (Daniel 12:1). His name is a question that is also a battle-cry — Who is like God? — traditionally understood as the word with which he opposed the pride of the fallen Lucifer, who had wished to be “like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14; the etymology and its reading in Daniélou, The Angels and Their Mission, 1957; and the OCA synaxarion, oca.org). He appears in Scripture always as a warrior and defender: in Daniel he is “one of the chief princes” who comes to help, and “the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people” (Daniel 10:13, 21; 12:1); in Jude “Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses,” yet did not himself rail against him but said “The Lord rebuke thee” (Jude 9); and in the Apocalypse it is Michael and his angels who war against the dragon and cast him down (Revelation 12:7–9).

From this scriptural portrait the Byzantine tradition names him the Archistrategos — the Chief Commander or supreme general of the heavenly hosts, the leader of the bodiless powers who remained faithful (the title is standard in the liturgical texts and the synaxarion, oca.org). His is the office of the Church militant against the powers of darkness, and he is invoked as the protector of the faithful, of armies, and of the dying.

The Miracle at Chonae

The most celebrated of Michael’s traditional wonders is the miracle at Chonae (Colossae) in Phrygia. [§3.5: The event is attested in Byzantine hagiography and fixed in the liturgical tradition, not in a contemporary document; it is reported here as the tradition the Church commemorates. The narrative: near Colossae was a spring and a church dedicated to the Archangel; a pious sacristan, St. Archippus, served there. Pagans, enraged, sought to destroy the shrine by diverting two rivers to flood it. At Archippus's prayer the Archangel Michael appeared and, striking the rock with his staff, opened a great fissure into which the rushing waters were swallowed, sparing the church. The place was thereafter called *Chonae*, "the funnels" (from Greek *chōnē*), from the chasm that drank the flood (OCA synaxarion for 6 September, oca.org; the narrative belongs to the developed Byzantine cult of the Archangel).] The miracle is commemorated on 6 September.

The Feasts of the Archangel

The chief feast of Michael and all the heavenly host is the Synaxis of the Chief Commander Michael and the other Bodiless Powers, kept on 8 November — a feast honoring not Michael alone but, through him, the whole angelic host arranged in its nine ranks (see The Bodiless Powers in the Calendar). The traditional synaxarion explains the date symbolically: November is the ninth month from March (with which the year anciently began), answering to the nine ranks of angels, and the eighth day is chosen with an eye to the “eighth day” of the Age to come and the Last Judgment (OCA synaxarion for 8 November, oca.org). The 6 September commemoration of the miracle at Chonae is his second principal feast.

Gabriel — “The Strength of God”

Gabriel (Hebrew gabrî-’ēl, “the strength of God” or “man of God”) is, in Scripture, the archangel of annunciation — the one sent to reveal and interpret God’s saving purposes. In Daniel he is sent to make the prophet “understand the vision” and to declare the prophecy of the seventy weeks (Daniel 8:16; 9:21–23). In the Gospel of Luke he stands at the center of the Incarnation’s opening: he is sent to the priest Zacharias in the temple to announce the birth of John the Forerunner, naming himself — “I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God” (Luke 1:19) — and then, in the sixth month, to Nazareth, to the Virgin Mary, with the greeting “Hail, thou that art highly favoured” and the message of the conception of the Lord (Luke 1:26–38). Gabriel is thus the angel of the Annunciation (25 March), the herald of the mystery “hidden from the ages” (see Angels in the New Testament; and, for the feast, The Twelve Great Feasts).

Because of his role at the Annunciation, Gabriel is honored with his own Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel on 26 March — the day after the feast of the Annunciation, a placement that lets the Church, having celebrated the mystery, turn to honor the messenger who bore it — and again on 13 July (OCA synaxarion for 26 March and 13 July, oca.org). He shares, with Michael, the great feast of 8 November.

Raphael — “God Heals”

Raphael (Hebrew rāphā-’ēl, “God heals”) is named only in the book of Tobit, where he is the divine companion who travels with young Tobias, binds the demon Asmodeus, and restores the sight of the elder Tobit. At the end he discloses himself: “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels, which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One” (Tobit 12:15). His name matches his work — the healer sent by God — and his self-revelation is the scriptural seed of the whole tradition of the “seven who stand before God” (see The Seven Archangels).

Raphael’s scriptural warrant requires an honest word about the standing of his book. Tobit is one of the anagignoskomena — the “readable” books that the Greek and Slavonic Orthodox tradition receives and reads in the Church, which the Latin West calls “deuterocanonical” and Protestants place in the “Apocrypha.” Orthodoxy uses Tobit liturgically and theologically as Scripture within the Church, but the exact status of the anagignoskomena is not defined with a single binding decree, and the tradition holds them with a somewhat different weight from the protocanonical books — a matter treated in full in The Orthodox Scriptures. The honest statement is this: Raphael is named in a book the Orthodox Church reads as Scripture, though a book of the wider canon rather than the protocanonical core; his veneration rests on genuinely ecclesiastical ground, firmer than the four further archangels whose names come from outside the received Scriptures altogether (see The Seven Archangels).

Raphael is honored among the archangels at the Synaxis of 8 November and, in some traditions, has local commemorations; but his fixed and universal place is within the “seven.”

The Three Together

Michael the defender, Gabriel the messenger, Raphael the healer: these three are the archangels whom the Orthodox Church can name from her own Scriptures — two from the protocanon, one from the anagignoskomena — and it is on this firm ground that the received veneration of the archangels stands. Everything the tradition adds beyond these three — the further names, the number seven filled out — is of another and slighter order of attestation, and is the subject of the next file (see The Seven Archangels).

See Also

References

  • Scripture: Daniel 8:16, 9:21–23, 10:13, 10:21, 12:1; Jude 9; Revelation 12:7–9; Luke 1:19, 1:26–38; Isaiah 14:14; Tobit 12:15.
  • Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints / synaxarion, oca.org: “Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Powers” (8 November); “Commemoration of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Colossae (Chonae)” (6 September); “Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel” (26 March and 13 July). (The titles Archistrategos/Chief Commander; the Chonae narrative; the symbolic reckoning of the 8 November date; the feast dates.)
  • Daniélou, Jean. The Angels and Their Mission According to the Fathers of the Church. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1957. (The names and offices of the archangels in the Fathers.)
  • On the canonical status of Tobit: see The Orthodox Scriptures: The Wider Old Testament and the Anagignoskomena, and Pentiuc, Eugen J. The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.