As the week comes to a close, this Sunday we’re graced by the day of the Holy Archangel Gabriel. March 24 is the day dedicated to the world’s most prolific messenger, and it is on this day that we receive his blessings most profoundly.
Time and time again in scripture, we see Gabriel descend to us with messages of hope and strength. He heralds the coming of pious men with his gentle voice, and he heralds the destruction of the corrupt material world with his blaring trumpet.
When we listen to the mundane world, though, we hear very different messages from the world around us. It seems that no matter where you go, the story we hear is the same now as it was years, decades, or even centuries ago. People are still dying of preventable diseases, and dying of hunger while surrounded by food. We still see children dying in wars they know nothing about, and young men and women marching off to kill their brothers and sisters for the pride of men who think themselves above all others.
However, that’s the message of the material world – the message of a flawed reality, designed to be harsh and unforgiving, and to reward unjust behaviors. That’s the message of injustice, but Gabriel has always brought with him a different message.
He brought with him to Mary a message of happiness and love, to announce the coming of the savior, and he came to Zechariah to announce the birth of the wise Saint John. When Gabriel speaks, his powerful words always carry a message of hope.
I’d like to share a reading from On the Origins of the World, wherein we learn about when the Archon of Light, Sabaoth, saw Sophia and rejected the evil of the Fabricator:
“And because of his light, all the authorities of chaos were jealous of him. And when they had become disturbed, they made a great war in the seven heavens. Then when Pistis Sophia had seen the war, she dispatched seven archangels to Sabaoth from her light. They snatched him up to the seventh heaven. They stood before him as attendants.”
This has always stood out to me. We think of Angels like Gabriel as being above us – beings of perfection, that can do no wrong, who are fundamentally better than us. But here we see that they attend Sabaoth, who is called Lucifer, the Light-Bearer. Lucifer was born of shadow, chaos, and hatred – the son of the prime evil that plagues us still today. Yet, He shines with such a glorious light that His brothers couldn’t help but start a war against their own kind – and for what reason does He shine? Purely because He rejected the Cosmic Injustice.
I’d argue that if an Archon born of injustice can be so virtuous, what we see in the world around us must be a case of the exact opposite.
Reading from the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, Chapter 4, Verses 34-38, the savior speaks to his disciples about the nature of salvation:
“Beware that no one lead you astray saying Lo here or Lo there! For the Son of Man is within you. Follow after Him! Those who seek Him will find Him. Go then and preach the gospel of the Kingdom. Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it.”
The Son of Man – the Christos, one of the Aeons – is within us. Each of us that holds within us the Divine Spark is fundamentally of a divine nature. All we have to do in order to embody that divine nature is to seek it inwardly. But we are warned by the savior not to lord over others, not to oppress others. We are warned that by holding others back, we hold ourselves back. That sounds like a vicious cycle, to me.
When we look at the world, ultimately, we see that it is better now than it was 100 years ago, and better still than it was 1,000 years ago.
Disease kills less people now than ever before, because we have used our intellect to combat it. Less people starve now than ever before, because we have mastered the production of food and tamed the wilds. However, our tremendous progress is still held back by the conscious choices of the world’s leaders. And still, war becomes more and more deadly, and more and more destructive as time goes on. War 1,000 years ago was the worst it had ever been by that point – but by 1940, war had become unrecognizable in its carnage. Now, war is backed by weapons of such grandeur that if used, death would longer be a tragedy, but merely a number – a statistic.
In the face of such amazing improvements caused by human ingenuity and the desire to help our fellow man, these terrors can only be the result of men who have made the conscious choice not to look inward – but instead to look outward, to the world around them, and to embrace savagery. I would argue that the primary threat facing mankind is no longer crafted by the hands of the Archons, but is planted by their whispers into our ears.
Every day we wake up, we are faced with a harsh world that demands from us cruelty and apathy, lest we be taken over by someone more powerful. “Survival of the fittest”, where fitness is determined by malice.
When we hear those whispers, we must look back and remember the outstanding power that has come from love, kindness, and care for one another. All the terrible designs of this flawed world were, are, and can only ever be overcome by wisdom and understanding, not ignorance.
Indeed, it’s the acts of regular people like you and me that outweigh the misdeeds of the unjust. We can practice this in our daily life by remembering to help those around us when they are in need, meditate on the divinity within us, and study the scripture to help guide our thoughts back to the sacred memory.
By doing so, we become part of a better humanity. It may seem like a hopeless, gloomy world – but it gets better day by day, due to the slow and steady work of wise people. If we take our place amongst the wise, who could look us in the eye and tell us we have lived a bad life?
I’d like everyone to consider, going forward, taking some time every now and then to listen past the messengers of the Archons, and listen instead for the message of Holy Gabriel. Listen for the message of love and hope, for the coming of new wise men who will join us to make this world better. Do you think we were lucky enough for him to whisper our names before we arrived?
Listen too for his horn of battle, as he calls on us to struggle against injustice and the misery of the material. For when the savior came down to us cloaked in light, he came in the form of Gabriel.
And as he said in the Gospel of Thomas, Verse 10:
“Yeshua Said,
I have thrown fire upon the world,
and look, I am watching till it blazes.”
– Presbyter Victoria, Via Sacerdotum
Ordo Divini Aeonis 