Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels
Jn 1: 47-51
When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Angels Among Us
What is it about Jesus that inspires Nathanael’s immediate belief? The TV show The Chosen imagines that Nathanael had prayed under a fig tree, and these words are God’s response to his private prayer; whatever the case, Nathanael is open and ready to believe, and something about Jesus shows him immediately that God is among them.
The image of angels can give us that same message: God is with us. The Bible is full of the messages of angels, from Jacob’s ladder to heaven to Gabriel’s visit to Mary and beyond. The angels guide us, calm our fear, and remind us that God is with us. Today, we don’t always see angels as concretely, but the message remains: God is always here.
—Beth Franzosa is a Religious Studies teacher and the Director of Adult Formation at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis.
Prayer
Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts: that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son was made known by the message of an Angel, may by his Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of his Resurrection. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
—From the traditional Angelus prayer