Archangels – the guardians of presence in the age of God’s silence
They are the answer to the question of whether God abandoned us.
Introduction – God’s silence and the dark night of faith
God’s silence is the deepest paradox of contemporary spirituality. At a time when humanity has already proclaimed all its slogans, established all its ideologies and even created electronic idols in the form of algorithms to determine truth and falsehood, God remains silent. This silence, however, is not emptiness, but a burden that weighs on the heart like a starless night.
Holy mystics call it the “dark night of faith,” but we, the children of the post-truth and post-Christian era, experience it more acutely because we have deprived ourselves of the language to describe it. Edith Stein reminded us that the night of faith is not only an experience of absence, but also participation in Christ’s abandonment — and it is precisely in this deepest silence that space opens up for encounter.
This experience is not unique to the Western world: the echo of God’s silence also resounds in the temples of Asia, in the mosques of the Middle East, and in African communities, where the question of meaning and presence returns just as suddenly and painfully. Silence is the common language of all humanity. This silence is like a stone submerged in water: it seems soundless, yet it spreads in circular rings that reach further than our words.
And it is in this deep silence, where every person trembles with fear, wondering if they are talking to themselves, that a subtle presence appears: angels. They are the answer to the question that haunts us in moments of darkness: Has God abandoned us, or has He hidden Himself too deeply for us to hear Him?
Angels are not a “cheerful metaphor” for children or a baroque ornament of piety. Rather, they are a sign that in the most radical abandonment, there is someone who still watches over us. Their presence is like a whisper in the darkness—inaudible to those who expect a roar, but salvific to those who know how to be silent with the silent God.
Modern man has learned to treat the night as a space for entertainment, illuminated by city lights, but the spiritual night cannot be fooled so easily. It is a night when all the spotlights go out and only the echo of one’s own fears remains.
It is then that the archangels become a bridge: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael—not as cultural figures, but as a living response that God’s silence is not absence, but a test. Angels are comfort in the deepest sense: a reminder that even silence is inhabited.
The beginnings of the cult of the Archangels
The beginnings of the cult of the archangels are like the first lights glowing in the dark cave of history. In Judaism, their presence is not a poetic ornament, but a dramatic sign: in the Book of Daniel, Michael appears as the defender of the Nation, a guardian in times when kingdoms fall and empires roll over Israel like a steamroller.
This is not a fairy tale about winged guardians, but a reminder that even in the shadow of empires there is a force that does not succumb to the logic of power. In the Book of Tobit, Raphael guides the young man on a journey – seemingly familial and practical, yet full of metaphysical consequences: the journey in the company of an angel is an image of life itself, which always takes place “with a guide.”
Christianity adopts this tradition and immediately gives it new intensity. Gabriel becomes the herald of the Incarnation – not only the bearer of a message, but the medium of the very logic of God, who decided to enter into human frailty.
Michael, depicted in Eastern iconography and in Western shrines, is not just a warrior with a sword – he is the embodiment of the struggle for meaning when an entire civilization seems to be on the brink of collapse. Raphael, although less present in Western liturgy, still reminds us that religion is not only the theology of abstraction, but also the care of the body and soul—of the wounds that life constantly inflicts.
Early Christian communities understood this better than we do: archangels were not only theological figures for them, but a practical experience. Michael – as the patron saint of those who must defend their faith in the face of persecution. Gabriel – as a guarantee that every annunciation, though it begins with fear, ends with a promise.
Raphael – as a reminder that community cannot exist without healing each other’s wounds. The symbolic role of the archangels was therefore to organize the spiritual DNA of Christianity: struggle, truth, and healing. These are the three pillars that allowed the nascent Church to survive storms and empires, while remaining a place where man is not alone in the silence of God.
Today’s pop culture masquerades as the sacred: the word icon, which meant a window to eternity, now means a celebrity or a pictogram. Similarly, angels have been reduced to decorations, whereas in tradition they have always been a real presence.
Michael – defender during the fall
Archangel Michael is not only a figure of spiritual combat – he is the patron saint of human agency itself, when it does not stop at the material realm, but opens up to transcendence. He is not the patron of abstract struggle, but the guardian of the boundary where man decides whether his creative abilities will be cooperation with the Creator or betrayal of Him. Aristotelian techne – art, skill, the power to shape reality – was given to man as a gift of participation in the work of creation.
But the gift can be distorted. The same fire that warms the house can turn it to ashes. The same hammer that shapes a bell for a cathedral can forge chains for a camp. At this moment, techne trembles like a taut string: it can sound a hymn, but it can also snap with a crack that leaves only silence.
That is why the civilization of the world after Christ needed a guardian from the very beginning. The genius of reason and the power of hands were not enough. A sword was needed, one that stood at the border in every era and reminded us: this is where creativity ends and pride begins; this is where techne ends and idolatry begins. Michael was precisely that sword. That is why his sanctuaries – Monte Gargano, Mont Saint-Michel, Skellig Michael – are arranged in a line like a luminous axis, like a geometric sign inscribed in the body of Europe.
This is no coincidence: the West was drawn with its blade.
Without this blade, techne becomes cunning. With it, it becomes co-creation. Michael reminds us that man can possess all the machines in the world, but if he does not know the limits, he will become the manager of emptiness. However, if they trust the guardian, every creative act—from cathedrals to scriptoria, from hymns to universities—will be proof that reason and faith, matter and the sacred, can still coexist.
And perhaps this is why Western civilization emerged at the point where these two orders were intertwined: techne – the Greek belief in the power of human reason and hands – with the Christian certainty that there is angelic protection, symbolized by Michael. Reason shaped matter, but angels ensured that man did not succumb to pride and consider himself God. The West grew up in cathedrals, universities, and monastic scriptoria, not in pyramids or tyrants’ palaces, because knowledge was always protected by the sacred, by liturgy, by the awareness that even the most precise instrument is nothing compared to the angelic sword.
Michael thus stands at the source of civilization not only as a warrior in heaven, but as a guardian of balance on earth: he reminds us that human development—our ability to subdue matter—only makes sense if we do not lose sight of the source of all existence. Without faith, techne degenerates into technocracy, into a cold machine that does not defend man but manipulates him. We see this today in the age of algorithms, where reason detached from transcendence has become a tool of enslavement rather than freedom.
Therefore, Michael’s shrines, which form a straight line like a heavenly loxodrome, can be read as a sign of spiritual geometry: Western civilization was “drawn” with his sword. It was he who set the course so that Aristotle’s techne would not turn into a trap, but would become a collaboration with the God’s plan. Michael reminds us that man can possess all skills, all inventions, all the power of engineering, but without faith he will only become the manager of emptiness. With faith, however, he will become a builder of a world that makes sense.
We see this particularly today, when techne—detached from the sacrum—becomes an autonomous weapon that decides life and death without the involvement of conscience, genetic engineering that attempts to create life according to its own standards, or algorithms that control public opinion like herds of passive individuals. This is no longer neutral progress: it is the degeneration of techne into a mechanism of power, which Michael confronts with his sword, reminding us that without being rooted in God, human reason becomes a tool of darkness.
Michael is the archetype of the Warrior – from Mesopotamian tales of the battle against chaos, through the Norse Thor, to Christian sanctuaries. In every culture, there is an image of a being who defends the border of the world. In Christianity, this archetype was given a name and a face.
Gabriel – the herald of meaning in an age of appearances
Gabriel is the voice that enters into the very heart of human fear and chaos, not to deliver yet another message among thousands, but to remind us that there is one Word—and that this Word became flesh. The Annunciation of Mary marks the beginning of a revolution that the world cannot comprehend: here is the divine Logos, the foundation of the cosmos, no longer speaking through thunder on Sinai or through philosophical systems, but through a modest fiat uttered in a house in Nazareth.
Gabriel is therefore not a messenger of information – he is a messenger of meaning. Here we can recall Edmund Husserl’s intuition: consciousness is always directed toward meaning (Sinngebung). Gabriel makes this present—he does not add data, but reveals the horizon of meaning in which man finds direction.
This is the opposite of the present day. Our world is drowning in words, messages, notifications. Gabriel does not come with another batch of news, but with one word that cuts through the chaos like lightning. Imagine a person sitting in front of a screen at night, endlessly scrolling through a stream of images and headlines. There is noise all around, but emptiness inside.
And suddenly, one sentence appears – quiet, unlike the others: “Do not be afraid.” This is not an advertising slogan, nor is it a political slogan. It is the Word that restores direction to the heart. This is how Gabriel works: among billions of messages, he points to one Word that does not perish and that gives meaning to everything.
This is where the theme of techne returns. Aristotle believed that through techne, man gains agency over the world – and this is true. But techne itself will never say “why.” It is Gabriel – the herald – who gives the answer that no system can generate: he gives meaning.
The West arose because techne was attuned to faith – to the belief that every creative act has its telos, its ultimate goal, which cannot be contained within the logic of consumption or the mathematics of profitability. Michael protected techne from turning into pride; Gabriel showed where this path leads.
So we can say that Western civilization was the child of this dual protection: Michael’s guard and Gabriel’s word. Techne needed meaning, and meaning needed agency. Only in their union could man build something that transcended mere utility – cathedrals, universities, the entire architecture of the world, in which the sacrum and the ratio intertwined like body and soul.
Today, when techne is once again adrift without an anchor, when algorithms pretend to have meaning but in fact produce only appearances, the need for Gabriel becomes dramatically urgent. For only he can interrupt the noise of information with a single word: Fear not. And that means: do not believe that you are alone in a world of appearances. True meaning still exists, although you need to have the courage to hear it.
Therefore, in an age of appearances, the most important thing is not to multiply messages, but to be able to pause on a single word. Gabriel’s silence is not emptiness—it is a pause in which a person hears something that comes neither from the market nor from an algorithm. It is in this pause, shorter than a breath, that the space of meaning opens up. And then Mary’s fiat does not remain a memory from centuries ago, but becomes a call today as well: in a world of information overload, to dare to hear the one word that gives everything direction.
Gabriel is the archetype of the Messenger – from Hermes and Thoth to the prophets who repeated in every age that the true word is not lost. In Christianity, this archetype received its final content: the annunciation that turned the cosmos into a home.
Raphael – healer of human wounds
Raphael is an angel who comes not with a sword or with thunderous words, but with balm. His name, God heals, expresses the quietest and at the same time most radical mission. For is this not where the truth about modern man is revealed – that he is not so much a warrior or a builder as a wounded man? Europe, which wanted to be a continent of reason, ends up as a continent of depression, loneliness, and crumbling bonds. Man has mastered the art of subjugating matter (techne), but he no longer knows how to heal his own heart.
In the Book of Tobit, Raphael appears in everyday gestures – he guides a young man, heals his father, protects a marriage from a demonic force. These are not “great events,” they are the essence of human life: the journey, family, illness, fear. Raphael shows that God does not heal man through abstract systems, but through presence, through accompaniment. In a world where medicine can transplant organs but cannot respond to the loneliness of the patient, Raphael remains a figure of integral healing – of body and soul, memory and relationships.
Here again we touch on the foundation of Western civilization. If Michael was the guardian and Gabriel the herald of meaning, then Raphael is the one who brings people together when they fall apart. The development of the West was not only the work of technical genius or a system of ideas – it was also the fruit of care. Monastic infirmaries, hospitals founded by religious orders, the entire tradition of caring for the sick and the poor – this was the embodiment of Raphael’s care in the fabric of society. Reason and faith found their human synthesis here: the techne of medicine combined with faith in the dignity of every person.
Today, human suffering is even deeper: it is a wound to our identity. People no longer know who they are, torn between body and soul, between consciousness and technology. Algorithms can predict our choices, but they cannot cure loneliness; pharmaceuticals can suppress pain, but they cannot restore meaning. That is why Raphael is the angel that the modern world needs most – because he does not bring new technology, but reminds us that God heals.
This is not a slogan – it is the hard truth: without healing that comes from above, man cannot heal himself, even if he knows all the procedures and has all the means. Viktor Frankl, who survived the concentration camps, repeated that a person can only be saved if they find meaning even in suffering. Raphael embodies this truth in a supernatural dimension: he heals not through technology, but by restoring the meaning of existence.
The image of Raphael was best understood by those who established the first Christian hospitals. In the dark corridors of monasteries, amid the smell of herbs and candles, not only the wounds of the body but also those of the soul were treated. Each dressing was a prayer, each cup of water a gesture of faith that God also heals through human hands. These places were more than just medicine: they were a visible sign that no pain is abandoned. Right where the world saw only sickness and death, Raphael stood by – quietly but tangibly.
Rafał is an angel who places his hand on the heart of civilization and says: your wound is not incurable, but it will not disappear on its own. You can numb it with technology, you can cover it with ideology, you can turn it into a “new identity” – but it will still bleed until you recognize that you need a doctor greater than yourself. In this sense, Raphael is an angel of the future: without him, our civilization will fall apart like a sick organism that has refused to take its medicine.
Raphael’s face can be recognized in simple stories: in the gaze of a patient who waits for test results in a hospital corridor at night and silently asks if anyone still remembers him; in a child locked in a room, scrolling through images on a screen, looking for at least one message that his life has meaning; in a refugee who, on the border between the world and human indifference, holds a sick child in his arms. In these places, no one expects theology or ideology—they expect touch, presence, healing. And it is precisely where people feel most abandoned that Raphael lays his hands: quietly but tangibly, reminding us that God heals not with abstraction but with presence.
Raphael is the archetype of a doctor – from Asclepius in Greece, through Amazonian shamans, to Christian hospitals. Wherever people recognized their wounds, the image of a healing hand appeared. In the biblical tradition, this archetype was given a name, and in Christianity, it was given full meaning.
Angels and the dark night of faith
In 1972, Pope Paul VI uttered words that went down in history as an echo of prophetic lament: “Through some crack, the stench of Satan has entered the Church.” This was not a metaphor—it was a diagnosis. It was not barbarian armies, but invisible smoke permeating the interior of the Church, blurring its liturgy, decomposing its language and faith. Benedict XVI returned to this vision, speaking of the “stench of sulfur” that can be seen in relativism, in the trivialization of the Gospel, in a liturgy that turns worship into spectacle. Both popes saw the same thing: an internal decay that suffocates man more than external persecution.
And that is precisely why God did not leave man to his own devices. Angels are not a product of worship that the faithful invented to comfort themselves in the darkness. They are a gift from God—messengers who were given to us so that we would know that we are not defenseless in the night. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are therefore not “symbols” but real participants in the history of salvation. They exist because God knew that a time of smoke would come and that in that smoke man would need a guide, a warrior, and a doctor.
Therefore, the remedy for the “smoke of Satan” is not psychology or crisis management strategy. The remedy is faith in angels – not childish, not fragile, not reduced to sentimental images. Exorcistic faith: the awareness that in a moment of crisis, one can call on the name of Michael to stand against the dragon; that one can hear the voice of Gabriel, who in the chaos reminds us that the Word has meaning; that one can experience the touch of Raphael, who heals what human medicine cannot heal.
Angels are not a fairy tale, but an answer to the night. They were given by God so that we would not mistake darkness for the end of everything. By rejecting them, man is left alone, and the smoke does not ask if anyone will accept it—it suffocates without asking. By accepting them, the night is no longer an abyss, but a path.
This is where the difference between porcelain faith and exorcistic faith is revealed. Porcelain faith gives rise to images, sentimental figurines, and words that shatter at the first blow of suffering. Exorcistic faith needs no ornamentation – it manifests itself when a man in the ruins of his home grabs a rosary, when a mother at her child’s grave calls on Michael to stand by her side, when a prayer resounds in a prisoner’s cell, a prayer that is not aesthetic but a struggle. It is a faith that does not pretend that the dark night does not exist – on the contrary, it enters into it completely and discovers that an angel truly watches over the darkness. Without it, there remains porcelain that crumbles in our hands. With it, there is a path that leads through the night to the morning.
Historical and political perspective – Archangels in an era of collapse
We live in a time when all the threads of history and technology have come together in a dark knot. Geopolitics is creaking, economies are cracking like fragile shells, and the cognitive shift – caused by artificial intelligence and algorithms – is changing not only the way we work, but the very definition of what it means to be human. Traditional professions, which for centuries gave meaning and rhythm to existence, are disappearing like old crafts in the shadow of factories. People, deprived of their roots in work and community, slip into depression and a sense of uselessness. The violence of pop culture, which instead of educating degrades, and instead of beauty produces filth, completes this picture. The world seems not only to be in crisis, but in disintegration.
All this resembles a vision of the Apocalypse – and indeed, the Book leaves no illusions: dragons and beasts will come to the surface. But the paradox is that man is not helpless in the face of these events. God did not leave him naked in the face of cosmic catastrophes. He gave him Archangels. Not as “figures of faith” to be worshipped like museum exhibits, but as real companions who help him survive. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are present not in the hagiographic past, but in our crisis—and it is now, in the age of algorithms and geopolitical tectonics, that their presence becomes decisive.
Michael is a warrior in a time of collapse – he reminds us that the spiritual struggle has not been canceled, even if the demons’ costumes have changed. Today, the dragon does not stand with a sword, but hides in code, in narratives, in manipulation. Michael stands against this new totalitarianism and empowers people not to capitulate. Gabriel – the herald – breaks through the chaos of messages in which meaning is lost. In an era in which truth has been shattered into billions of “opinions,” Gabriel is the voice that says: one Word still exists and has power.
The truth exists and cannot be silenced. Raphael, on the other hand, a doctor, is indispensable where the fall takes the form of mental wounds: mass depression, loneliness, a culture of suicide. He cannot cure everything with a pill, but he reminds us that “God heals” – even when medicine and psychology have reached the limits of their capabilities.
The historical perspective shows clearly: where angels and the sacred were removed, smoke came. The totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, which tried to build a world without God and without angels, ended in camps and mass murder. Today, the same thing is returning in a soft, technocratic form – not with a whip and a rifle, but with an algorithm and media narrative. But the mechanism is identical: take away a person’s defenders, take away their heralds of meaning, take away their healers – and they will become easy prey.
Angels are not an addition to piety or a decoration of theology. They are a means of survival. In times of collapse, God did not leave man to his own devices. He gave him a guardian, a messenger, and a doctor—companions who stand by our side in the midst of the Apocalypse. Abraham Joshua Heschel reminded us that man does not live in empty space, but in a time marked by the presence of God. The archangels are the guardians of this time: they testify that history is not heading toward nothingness, but toward a decision in which meaning will be revealed.
History is not moving toward the future. History is moving toward a decision. This decision is not abstract; it is akin to choosing whether to look up at the light or stare at the smoke. One gesture, one glance, and the entire axis of history depends on it. History is moving toward the moment when we will either open the door to the angels or be left alone with merciless smoke.
The Apocalypse is therefore not a distant vision, but a choice that takes place here and now — in the heart of every era and every human being. Whether we dare call to Michael, hear Gabriel and accept Raphael’s touch will determine if the time of trial becomes the beginning of a new creation or a descent into a dark abyss from which there is no return.
The author
Founder of Reduta Dobrego Imienia (Good Name Redoubt) – Polish League Against Defamation (http://reduta-dobrego-imienia.pl), blogger at Szczurbiurowy,Vice President of the Polish Press Agency from 2006 to 2009.
The text was originally posted in Polish here: https://wpolityce.pl/media/741812-archaniolowie-straznicy-obecnosci-w-epoce-milczenia-boga
Translation / Tłumaczenie: Jan Czarniecki
This English language text was first published here: https://republikapolonia.pl/2025/10/03/archangels-the-guardians-of-presence-in-the-age-of-gods-silence/
