I am pleased to be among you in the shadow of this Shrine of St. Michael the Archangel, which for fifteen centuries has been a place of pilgrimage and a point of reference for all those who seek God and wish to follow Christ, through whom “all things were created, in Heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Authorities” (Col 1:16). […]
I, too, have come to this place – as have so many of my predecessors on the Chair of Peter – to enjoy for a moment the special atmosphere of this shrine, made up of silence, prayer and penance; I have come to venerate and to invoke the Archangel St. Michael, that he may protect and defend the Holy Church, at a time when it is difficult to give an authentic Christian witness, without concessions and without compromises.
A sacred and privileged place
Ever since Pope Gelasius I authorized the dedication of the grotto where St. Michael the Archangel appeared as a place of worship in 493 and made his first visit to it, granting the indulgence of “angelic pardon,” several Roman Pontiffs have followed in his footsteps to venerate this sacred place.
Among them are Agapetus I, Leo IX, Urban II, Innocent II, Celestine III, Urban VI, Gregory IX, St. Peter Celestine, and Benedict IX. Numerous saints have also come here in search of strength and consolation. I recall St. Bernard, St. William of Vercelli, founder of the Abbey of Montevergine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Catherine of Siena. Among these visits, that of St. Francis of Assisi, who came here in preparation for Lent in 1221, remains justly renowned and memorable to this day. It is said that, considering himself unworthy to enter the sacred grotto, he stopped at the entrance and engraved the sign of the Cross on a stone.
The lively and uninterrupted influx of pilgrims both illustrious and humble who, from the beginning of the Middle Ages to the present, have made this sanctuary a place of gathering, prayer and reaffirmation of the Christian Faith, demonstrates how the Archangel Michael – the protagonist of so many pages of the Old and New Testaments – is perceived and invoked by the people, and how the Church needs the heavenly protection of him who is presented in the Bible as the great combatant against the Dragon, the head of the demons.
Defender of the divine rights and Patron of the Church
We read in the Book of Revelation: “Now war arose in Heaven, Michael and his Angels fighting against the Dragon; and the Dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in Heaven. And the great Dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Rv 12:7-9).
In this dramatic description, the sacred author presents us with the episode of the fall of the first angel, seduced by the ambition to be “like God”. Hence the reaction of the Archangel Michael, whose Hebrew name Who is like God? defends the uniqueness and inviolability of God.
The influx of pilgrims to the Sanctuary of St. Michael, from the Middle Ages to the present, shows how the Church needs his protection in her battles
Other accounts from Revelation of the personality and role of St. Michael are eloquent, albeit fragmentary. The Archangel (cf. Jude 1:9) who vindicates God’s inalienable rights. He is one of the princes of Heaven, chosen to guard the people of God (cf. Dn 12:1), from whom the Saviour was to come.
The new people of God is the Church. This is why she considers him to be her incomparable protector and champion in the fight to defend and spread the Kingdom of God on earth. It is true that “the powers of death shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18), as the Lord assures us, but this does not mean that we will be exempt from trials and battles against the snares of the evil one.
A multi-millennial and ever-current battle
In this struggle, the Archangel Michael stands by the Church to defend her against the iniquity of the world, to help the faithful resist the devil who “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour” (1 Pt 5:8).
This combat against the devil, which emphasizes the role of Michael the Archangel, is also relevant today, because the devil remains alive and active in the world. In fact, the evil that exists, the disorder prevalent in society, the inconsistency of man, the interior rupture of which he is a victim are not only consequences of original sin, but are also the effect of the infesting and sinister action of Satan, that insidious enemy of man’s moral equilibrium, whom St. Paul does not hesitate to call “the god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4), since he manifests himself as a cunning seducer who knows how to insinuate himself into the ambit of our actions, suggesting deviations that are as harmful as they apparently conform to our instinctive aspirations.
Hence, in his exhortation to the Ephesians, the Apostle of the Gentiles alerts Christians to the snares of the devil and his many satellites:
“Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:11-12).
We are convoked to this struggle by the image of the Archangel St. Michael, to whom the Church, both in the East and in the West, has never ceased to pay special veneration. ◊
Excerpts from: ST. JOHN PAUL II.
Speech to the population of Monte Sant’Angelo,
24/5/1987 – Translation: Heralds of the Gospel
