Homily – Feast of the Holy Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael
27/09/2026
Dear brothers and sister,
may the Lord give you peace!
In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes a beautiful promise to Nathanael: “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Heaven opened. Perhaps this is the image that can accompany us today. So often we have the opposite impression: heaven seems closed, distant, silent. Especially when we go through difficulttimes, when evil seems stronger than good, when we struggle to understand what is happening around us.
The feast of the Archangels reminds us instead that heaven is open. God is not far from our history. He continues to enter it, to accompany it, to watch over it.
And the names of the three Archangels tell us something about the way God draws near to us.
Gabriel reminds us that God speaks. He enters history with a word, with an announcement, as he did in the home of Mary. We too need constantly to learn how to listen again, because our ownwords, worries and plans often make too much noise for us to hear the voice of God.
Raphael, “God’s healing,” reminds us that God heals. There are wounds that no medicine can reach: wounds of the heart, of relationships, of memory. Raphael tells us that God does not abandon the wounded person, but walks beside him.
And finally, Michael: “Who is like God?” It is not simply a name; it is a question that puts everything back in its proper place. Who is like God? No one. No power, no violence, no fear, no evil can take the place of God. The Book of Revelation presents Michael fighting against the dragon and gives us a certainty: evil fights, but evil does not have the last word.
Saint Francis had a particular devotion to Saint Michael. It was precisely during the Lent which he observed each year in his honour that, on Mount La Verna, he received the Stigmata. This issignificant: Francis sought God in prayer and received in his own body the marks of Christ. For him, contemplating heaven did not mean escaping from the earth; it meant becoming ever more conformed to the Crucified Christ, so that he could remain within human history as a lesser brother.
Perhaps this is what the Holy Archangels can teach us today: to keep heaven and earth together. To listen like Gabriel, to care for wounds like Raphael, to fight against evil like Michael. But alwaysknowing that our strength does not come from ourselves.
Because heaven is open. And between heaven and our poor earth, the grace of God continues to flow.
So, with Saint Francis, let us ask that we may never close this passage through our pride, our fearsor our self-sufficiency. And let us entrust ourselves with confidence to the protection of the Archangels, that they may help us also to become messengers of God’s presence, instruments of healing, and servants of his peace.
