The Bodiless Powers in the Calendar

The Church sets apart particular times to honor the angels: Monday in the weekly cycle is the day of the Bodiless Powers, and the yearly calendar keeps the great Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and all the Bodiless Powers on 8 November, the Miracle at Chonae on 6 September, the Synaxis of Gabriel on 26 March and 13 July, and the dedication feasts of the many churches given to the archangels. This file lays out the angels’ place in liturgical time and the meaning the tradition reads in these days.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Monday — the Angels’ Day

The Orthodox week has a fixed pattern of daily commemorations, carried by the Octoechos (the book of the eight tones), and in that pattern Monday is dedicated to the Bodiless Powers — the holy angels. Each day of the week has its theme: Sunday celebrates the Resurrection; Monday, the holy angels; Tuesday, St. John the Forerunner; Wednesday and Friday, the Cross; Thursday, the Apostles and St. Nicholas; Saturday, all the saints and the faithful departed (the weekly cycle of the Octoechos; see The Daily Cycle). On Mondays the hymns of the Octoechos — the stichera, the canon, the troparia — turn to the angels: they praise the ranks of the bodiless powers, invoke Michael and Gabriel and the whole host, and ask the angels’ protection and intercession. The placement is fitting: after Sunday, the day of the Resurrection and the “first day,” the angels — the first and highest of God’s creatures — are honored on the day that follows, standing nearest to the throne. For the ordinary faithful this means that every Monday, and not only the November feast, is colored by the memory of the angels; the person who prays the daily services or the Octoechos meets the bodiless powers weekly.

The Synaxis of 8 November

The chief feast of the angels is the Synaxis of the Chief Commander Michael and the other Bodiless Powers of Heaven, celebrated on 8 November. A synaxis is a “gathering” — a feast that assembles the whole company being honored — and this feast honors not Michael alone but, through their leader, the entire angelic host in its nine ranks: “the Chief Commander Michael and the other Bodiless Powers: Archangels Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Selaphiel, Jehudiel, Barachiel, and Jeremiel,” with all the ranks named by Dionysius (OCA synaxarion for 8 November, oca.org; on the ranks, see The Names and Their Scripture; on the archangels’ names and their sources, The Seven Archangels).

The traditional synaxarion reads the very date symbolically, and the reading is a small catechism in itself: the feast falls in November, the ninth month counted from March (with which the year anciently began), answering to the nine ranks of angels; and it is kept on the eighth day of the month with an eye to the “Eighth Day” — the Day of the Last Judgment and of the Age to come, which the Fathers call the eighth day — before which the assembled ranks of angels will stand (OCA synaxarion for 8 November, oca.org). The tradition also connects the establishment of a right honoring of the angels with the local Council of Laodicea (fourth century), whose canon 35 condemned a heretical cult that had turned the invocation of angels into idolatry — so that the Church’s ordered feast of the Bodiless Powers stands over against the disordered angel-worship the canon forbade, honoring the angels rightly rather than adoring them (on canon 35 and the boundary, see The Boundary of Veneration). [§3.5: The attribution of the feast's establishment to Laodicea is the traditional synaxarion's account; what is historically secure is that Laodicea's canon 35 condemns the *worship* of angels, and that the Synaxis of 8 November is the Church's established feast of right angelic honor. The two are held together in the received tradition.]

The Miracle at Chonae and the Feasts of Gabriel

The second great Michaeline feast is the Commemoration of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Colossae (Chonae) on 6 September, keeping the tradition of the Archangel’s saving of the shrine at Chonae by opening the rock to swallow the diverted rivers (the narrative is set out in Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael; OCA synaxarion for 6 September, oca.org). Gabriel has his own two commemorations: the Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel on 26 March, the day after the Annunciation — the Church, having kept the feast of the mystery, turns the next day to honor the archangel who bore it — and again on 13 July (OCA synaxarion for 26 March and 13 July, oca.org). Beyond these, local calendars keep commemorations of Raphael and of the other archangels, and the anagignoskomenon of Tobit, in which Raphael appears, is read in the Church.

Churches Dedicated to the Angels

The angels’ place in the calendar is matched by their place in the map of the Church: innumerable churches, monasteries, and chapels across the Orthodox world are dedicated to the Archangel Michael or to “the Holy Archangels” or “the Bodiless Powers,” and their patronal feasts fall on 8 November or 6 September. From great shrines — the many churches of Michael the Archistrategos throughout the Byzantine and Slavic worlds — to countless village chapels, the dedication to the archangels expresses the same conviction the daily and yearly cycles express: that the angels are the protectors of the Church’s communities (see Angels of Churches and Nations). The angelic schema of the monastic tonsure, and the naming of monastics after archangels, carry the same devotion into the monastic life (see The Angelic Life).

The Rhythm of Angelic Memory

Taken together, the weekly and yearly cycles give the Orthodox Christian a steady rhythm of angelic memory: every Monday the Octoechos turns to the bodiless powers; every 6 September and 8 November the great feasts of Michael and the host; every 26 March the archangel of the Annunciation; and, in every Liturgy, the unseen concelebration of the angels (see The Angelic Liturgy). The calendar thus keeps the angels from being an abstraction: they are honored on fixed days, invoked in fixed prayers, and set as the patrons of fixed places, so that the doctrine of the bodiless powers lives not only in dogmatic exposition but in the ordered time of the praying Church.

See Also

• The Angelic Liturgy — the angels in the Liturgy itself
• Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael — the feasts of the named archangels and the Chonae narrative
• The Seven Archangels — the names commemorated at the 8 November Synaxis
• The Boundary of Veneration — Laodicea 35 and right angelic honor
• The Daily Cycle — the weekly commemorations of the Octoechos
• The Church Calendar — the cycles of Orthodox liturgical time

References

• The Octoechos: the Monday commemoration of the Bodiless Powers in the weekly cycle. (Received liturgical books.)
• Orthodox Church in America, synaxarion, oca.org: “Synaxis of the Chief Commander Michael and the other Bodiless Powers” (8 November, with the symbolic reckoning of the date and the reference to Laodicea); “Commemoration of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Colossae (Chonae)” (6 September); “Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel” (26 March and 13 July).
• Council of Laodicea (4th c.), canon 35. Trans. NPNF II/14. (Against the worship of angels — the disorder over against which the ordered feast stands.)