Commemoration of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Colossae
which the Church also calls Chonae
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Before you begin
Today's Vigil is for your family, not the other way around. If anything feels like too much, that's okay. Do the parts your family loves, and work your way up to the whole Vigil in one sitting.
Movement One
Light the Lamp
Do together: Light your lamp or a candle. Then say: "Today the Church remembers the Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Colossae, which is also called Chonae, and Saint Archippus who kept that church."
We begin the way the Church begins any new work
“O Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of the eternal Father, Thou hast said, 'Without me you can do nothing.' In faith I embrace Thy words, O Lord, and bow before Thy goodness. Help me to complete the work I am about to begin for Thine own glory: in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
Then all together:
“Through the prayers of our holy fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us.”
The Orthodox prayer before beginning any work, offered for our family and for yours, each time we begin again.
Movement Two
Read the Icon
Before we hear today's story, let's look at how the Church has always shown this mercy, and learn to read what this icon is telling us.
The Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Chonae (Colossae) · Byzantine icon, first half of the twelfth century · Monastery of Saint Catherine, Sinai
What are we looking at?
An icon isn't a photograph, and it isn't a painting to admire. It's a window. Everything in it is there to teach us something true.
The gold behind them. It is worn and cracked with age. Not a sky over Phrygia. Not a storm-cloud. Heaven's own light. The Archangel stands where God's light fills everything.
Michael, on our left. He is the large figure. He has a young face and a gold halo. His wings are dark on the outside and a warm red-pink within. Over a blue inner robe he wears a pale cloak that moves as he moves. On his feet are simple sandals. In his hands he holds a long, slender staff, and he points it down toward a break in the earth. He is not swinging a sword. He is doing what a servant does: he is obeying.
The water down the middle. Look for the pale stream, white and blue-gray, falling between the two sides of the panel. It is not a quiet brook. It is water that was sent to ruin a church. On this icon it is already being turned.
Archippus, on our right. He is smaller. That is not because he did not matter. It is because the Church wants your eyes to know who acted from heaven. He is an old man, with a short white beard and a gold halo. He wears dark monastic clothes. He stands in the doorway of a little church, and his hands are raised. He is not running. He is praying.
The little church. A narrow pale building, with a dome and a small cross, and a few arched openings. This is the house built over the spring. The icon keeps it standing.
The name. Faded Greek letters still sit in the gold above Michael. Time has taken most of the words. We will not invent them. Every icon means to name what it shows. Even when the paint is thin, the face and the mercy belong together.
The people who meant to flood the church are not on this panel. The painter left them out. What remains is the servant of God, the man who would not leave, and the water going where it was told.
Anonymous icon painter, probably of Constantinople, The Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Chonae, first half of the twelfth century, tempera on wood, about 37.5 × 31 cm; Monastery of Saint Catherine, Sinai. Public domain. Image via Wikimedia Commons, from a photograph published in Kurt Weitzmann, Die Ikone. The seventeenth-century TsAK September Menaion was inspected as a same-museum series and is not used. The 985 Menologion of Basil II and later traditional panels were inspected as controls. Modern OCA files were not used.
The ReadingsMovement Three
The Scripture the Church appoints for this day. Open your Bible at home and read the passages aloud together, then listen for these words echoing through the saint's story and the rest of your day.
A Psalm to begin · Psalm 90 (91) : 11
“For he shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”
The Septuagint (Brenton, 1851), the Old Testament of the Orthodox Church. In ordinary English Bibles this is Psalm 91:11. This verse is chosen for prayer today; it is not a separate lectionary appointment.
The Epistle · 2 Corinthians 1 : 21–2 : 4
“Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.”
Open your Bible and read the full passage together. Text: King James Version (public domain).
The Gospel · Matthew 22 : 1–14
“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding.”
Open your Bible and read the full passage together. Text: King James Version (public domain).
These are the Sunday readings appointed by the Orthodox Church in America for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 6, 2026. The OCA daily page and the September monthly lectionary list no separate (Saint) or (Archangel) pair for the Miracle at Colossae; this edition therefore uses the appointed Sunday pair. The 3rd Matins Gospel (Mark 16:9–20) belongs to the Sunday cycle and is not printed as the family pair.
Michael at Colossae · Read aloud
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Movement Four
The Story
The Church remembers more than one name on the sixth of September.
She remembers martyrs, and a bishop far away, and a robber who became a monk. Those are true days. We will not tell those whole lives this morning.
Today she asks us to hear a miracle.
Not a birthday. Not a death-day. A mercy God did through His unseen servant, the Archangel Michael, at a place the old books call Colossae, and Cheretopos, and at last Chonae.
This Michael is the same Chief Commander the Church loves in November, when she keeps the Synaxis of the Bodiless Powers. Today is not that November day. Today she keeps one particular help — the day the water was told where to go.
Long ago, in Phrygia, not far from the city of Hieropolis, there was a spring.
People drank, and they were healed. The place was called Cheretopos. Over that water there would be a church named for the Archangel Michael.
A man from the city of Laodicea had a daughter who could not speak.
The holy Chief Commander Michael appeared to that father in a dream, and revealed to him that his daughter would receive the gift of speech after she drank from the water of the spring.
The father took her there.
The girl drank.
And she began to speak.
The mute girl drinks from the spring at Cheretopos and begins to speak; her father is near, without invented speech
After that mercy, the father and his daughter and all their family were baptized. In fervent gratitude the father built a church over the spring, in honor of the holy Chief Commander Michael.
Then the road to that little church grew crowded.
Christians came to drink and to pray. Pagans came too — people who still bowed to idols. Many of them turned from those idols and were converted to the faith in Christ. The spring did not only wash sick bodies. It pointed people toward worship.
At that church there served a pious man named Archippus.
This is not the Apostle Archippus of the Seventy, the companion of Saint Paul whose name is in the letter to Philemon. That Archippus has other days. Today the Church remembers the caretaker of this church.
He was the son of devout Christians from Hieropolis. When he was ten years old he went to pray in the church of the holy Chief Commander Michael — and he remained. He became the church's caretaker. He stayed.
The Church says he led a strict and ascetic life, constantly at fasting and prayer. We are not asked to copy the measure of his meals. We are asked to hear what the staying was for.
By his preaching, and by the example of his saintly life, he brought many pagans to faith in Christ. He persuaded those who came to the holy spring to accept holy Baptism, to forsake pagan impiety, and to turn to the One True God and Savior Jesus Christ.
He served there sixty years.
Archippus remaining at the church of the Archangel as caretaker, hands raised in the doorway; no extra action invented
There was a general malice in those days toward Christians, and especially toward Archippus. Priests of the idols, and the people who followed them, tried more than once to kill him. Each time, the Church says, the Lord delivered him out of their hands.
At last they thought of a worse plan. They would destroy the church, so that no one would come anymore to that holy place of healing — and they would kill Archippus at the same time.
Near the church ran two rivers. The old books name them: the Lykokaperos and the Kufos. The pagans made a confluence of those two waters. They directed the combined flow against the church.
Archippus saw the preparations.
He firmly resolved not to abandon the holy place.
He prayed — to God, and to the Chief Commander Michael — to ward off the danger, and to preserve the church and the spring.
Archippus staying to pray as the two rivers are turned toward the church; no invented speech, and no extra wonder
Through his prayer the Archangel Michael appeared at the temple.
Those are the Church's words. We will not add another wonder.
With a blow of his staff, the Archangel opened a wide fissure in a rock. He commanded the rushing torrents of water to flow into it.
The waters went where they were told.
The temple remained unharmed.
Seeing such an awesome miracle, the pagans fled in terror. Archippus and the Christians gathered in the church. They glorified God. They gave thanks to the holy Archangel Michael for the help.
The place where the rivers plunged into the fissure received a new name: Chonae. The word means plunging.
The Archangel Michael striking the rock with his staff so the waters plunge into the fissure; the church unharmed; no extra wonder and no invented speech
That is the whole of the wonder as the Church tells it. A servant of God came, a staff struck stone, the water obeyed, and the house of prayer stood.
Archippus, miraculously delivered from death, lived at that church into his old age. He died peacefully at the age of seventy. Christians buried him at Colossae, at the place of his deeds.
Long afterward, far from Phrygia, a monastery in Moscow took its name from this feast. The Church still calls it the Chudov monastery — the monastery "of the Miracle."
The word we heard this morning is a Sunday word, not an Archangel's own pair. A king made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden. Some would not come. The servants went on calling. And the psalm we opened with is older still: "For he shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."
Michael is one of those servants. He does not ask to be worshiped in the place of God. He points toward worship. He keeps what God has given. He obeys.
Archippus learned the same three things in a doorway, year after year, while the spring kept offering its water: stay, pray, and let God send the help you cannot make.
And today, so many hundreds of years later, we say the Archangel's name once more, out loud, together — and Saint Archippus with him — and they are serving God for us still.
Movement Five
The Prayer
Troparion · Tone 4
Michael, commander of the heavenly hosts, we who are unworthy beseech you, by your prayers encompass us beneath the wings of your immaterial glory, and faithfully preserve us who fall down and cry out to you: "Deliver us from all harm, for you are the commander of the powers on high!"
Troparion · Tone 5
(Podoben: "Come, let us worship the Word...") O Chief Commander Michael, you were seen overshadowing your church like a cloud raining waters of immortality. You preserved it like another ark, and turned aside the flow of the rivers with your staff, for the glory of the Faith, and to the delight of our souls.
Kontakion · Tone 2
Michael, commander of God's armies and minister of the divine glory, prince of the bodiless angels and guide of mankind, ask for what is good for us, and for great mercy, as supreme commander of the Bodiless Hosts.
The troparia and kontakion appointed by the Orthodox Church in America for the Commemoration of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Colossae, September 6. Slash marks were converted to line breaks only. Production editions use a public-domain or project-approved liturgical translation.
Movement Six
Let's Talk About It Together
Talk about it:
Archippus saw the water coming and would not leave the church. What is one thing our family will not walk away from — one prayer, one person, one promise?
Michael is unseen most days. The psalm says God gives His angels charge to keep us in all our ways. Where do we need that keeping this week — and how will we ask for it without turning the angels into a story we made up?
Today the Gospel says the king sent his servants to call people to the wedding. Some would not come. How is God still sending servants to call our family toward worship — and what would it look like to say yes?
Movement Seven
Do This Together
Do this togetherAny time of day
The Stay
Make a little church on the table: two books stood on end, or your own two hands, with the lamp nearby. Set a small cup of water beside it — not to play at flooding, only to remember the spring.
One child stays beside that little church and says, slowly, the psalm we heard: "For he shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."
While that child remains, everyone else is quiet. Count slowly to ten. The hard part is not the words. The hard part is staying.
Then step back, and do one small, real good work right away: clear a plate, help a little brother, say something kind. Archippus stayed so the church would not be empty. We stay, and then we serve the people in the room.
Take turns. When everyone has had a turn, sit together and each name one person, or one place, you want God to keep this week the way He kept that church. Write the names on a scrap of paper and keep the papers under the lamp until next Sunday.
Little ones (2–4): help them stand still by the cup and say "keep us, Lord" while you count to five. · Make it stick: say the psalm together each night this week — "For he shall give his angels charge concerning thee."
“Holy Archangel Michael, and Holy Archippus, pray to God for us.”
And close, as the Church always closes, with the Lord's Prayer:
Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Amen.
Do together: Put out the lamp, or leave it burning a while. The lamp keeps watch until tomorrow. "Glory to God for all things. Amen."
A note on our storytellingEvery edition of The Vigil Lamp is an original retelling. The miracle is the Church's own tradition, and the names, places, events, and directly quoted words in this edition are drawn from the Orthodox Church in America's accounts of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Colossae and of Saint Archippus of Hieropolis, and from the Church's own appointed hymns and Sunday readings. The spring and the flood are told as the Church tells them, without invented extra wonders or speeches. No invented historical dialogue is presented as fact. The words of narration are our own, written to make a true story vivid and a joy for families to read aloud together.
