Icon of the Holy Taxiarches

Celebration 8 November

The archangels Michael and Gabriel are also called “brigadier generals”. “Taxiarch” is the “head of the order”, the “leader of a coordinated body”.

The term is synonymous with “brigadier general”. According to Orthodox Christian teaching, a “holy brigadier” is an archangel who has been placed at the head of a “class of angels”, i.e. a coordinated body of angels. The archangels Michael and Gabriel, then, are holy brigadiers because they are at the head of a “class of angels”.

They also bear the name “Pammegistoi” because they are the most famous and illustrious of the archangels. Their names, which are preserved in the Hebrew language, mean respectively “who like God?” and “my strength is God”.

According to the teaching of the philosopher and saint of the Orthodox Christian Church, John of Damascus, angels are God’s creatures, incorporeal natures, noetic substances, air-moving and self-governing, who by grace have received immortality from the Creator.

Only God knows exactly what kind of substance they are. We, judging from ourselves, call them “incorporeal” or “immaterial”, but only God is indeed incorporeal and immaterial. The angel is a rational nature; he can advance in good, but he can also succumb to evil, as happened with the Devil and his followers.

To worthy men the angels do not appear as they really are, because they would not be perceived, but transformed in such a way that they become visible. They are not all equal to each other. They are ranked.

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