Regarding St. Michael the Archangel, we have a brief note:
“St. Michael, Prince of the heavenly hosts, fought the rebellious angels in the war that arose in Heaven. It is his duty to continue this fight to free us from the devil. The Guardian Angels depend on him. He is the protector Angel of the Church and the one who presents the Eucharistic offering to the Eternal Father.”
I wish to draw attention to the fact that St. Michael led the fight against the devil and cast him into hell, and is the leader of the Guardian Angels of individuals and institutions. Furthermore, he is the Guardian Angel of the institution of institutions, the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.
We may ask ourselves what relationship there is between his mission to cast down into hell those who rose up against Our Lord God, and the protection he provides to the Church and to men in this vale of tears, in this arena that is life.
Loyal, strong, pure and victorious knight
These two missions are linked. St. Michael defended God, who chose to use him as His shield against the devil, and also wants him to be the shield of the Holy Church and of the human race against diabolical attacks. However, this is a shield that is, at the same time, a sword. Therefore, he does not limit himself to defending, but defeats and casts into hell. This is the Archangel’s double mission.
Therefore, in the Middle Ages he was considered the first among knights, the heavenly knight, ideal and perfectly loyal, strong, pure and victorious, as a knight should be, placing all his confidence in God and Our Lady.
St. Michael was in the Middle Ages considered to be the first of knights, the heavenly knight, ideal, strong, pure and victorious
This is the admirable figure of St. Michael, whom we must consider as our natural ally in our struggles, because we want nothing other than to be men who carry out his task on a human level, that is, to defend the honour of God, the glory of Our Lady, the Catholic Church, and Christian civilization, but on a counteroffensive level, in order to bring down the empire of the devil and establish the Reign of Mary on this earth.
There is, as a consequence, an enormous affinity between this heavenly prince and our mission, and we do well to take him as our special patron.
“Advance, do not lose heart, attack!”
In the Complete Visions and Revelations of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich,1 we find the following information:
“I saw St. Peter’s Church again with its great dome. Upon it shone the Archangel St. Michael, dressed in red, holding a large battle standard in his hands.
“The earth was an immense battlefield. The greens and blues were fighting against the whites. The latter, over whom a flaming sword shone, seemed almost to succumb.”
The white were, evidently, the good.
“Not everyone knew for what cause they were fighting. The church was as bloody in colour as the Archangel’s clothing.”
What is missing for it to be possible to say this of the Church?
“I heard voices say to me: ‘There will be a baptism of blood.’” The Church will be purified in the blood of martyrdom and persecution. “The longer the battle lasted, the more the bright red colour of the church faded and became more transparent.”
The purification was making her something diaphanous and pure.
“The Angel came down and approached the whites; I saw him in front of them. They gained great courage, not knowing where it came from. The Angel defeated their enemies, who fled in all directions. The flaming sword that was above the white disappeared.”
It was a kind of diabolical action, of evil that oppressed the white.
“In the midst of the combat, the number of the white increased. Groups from the adversaries passed over to them.”
These are crystallizations, panic and conversions.
“And all at once a great number of them passed over.”
What is this occasion when great numbers pass over? What will this event be? One day we will know, God willing.
“On the battlefield there were, in the air, legions of saints who made signs with their hands, different from each other, but animated by the same spirit.”
These are signs that exhort: “Forward, advance, do not lose heart, attack!” while the good fight below under this impetus. All of Heaven is open to the good, and they are overcoming the wicked, to establish the Reign of Mary.
Mediator of the Church’s liturgical prayer
We also have a citation from Dom Guéranger2 on the contemplative vocation of the Angels:
“Thus, the Church considers St. Michael as the mediator of her liturgical prayer. He stands between humanity and divinity. God, who arranges the invisible hierarchies in admirable order, employs bounteously, for the praise of his glory, the ministry of these celestial spirits, who unceasingly contemplate the adorable face of the Father and who know better than men how to adore and contemplate the beauty of His infinite perfections.”
A mediator between humanity and divinity, the Archangel who cried “Who is like unto God?” emerges as a model of perfect humility
St. Michael the Archangel is the one who presents the Eucharistic offering to the Eternal Father. And this is how he appeared in Fatima, to the little shepherds: with the chalice in his hand.
“Mi-kha-El: who is like unto God? This name alone expresses, in its brevity, the most complete praise, the most perfect adoration, the most complete recognition of divine transcendence and the most humble confession of the nothingness of the creature.”
Thus, he emerges as a model of humility. For whoever exclaims that no one is like unto God, affirms that he is nothing. And this is perfect humility. The form of humility proper to the knight in no way resembles that of “white heresy”:3 “Ah, you are more than I am…” No. It is the following: “God is everything and everyone is nothing. Now, starting from this point we can talk.”
Model of contemplation
“The Church on earth also invites the heavenly spirits to bless the Lord, to sing to Him, to praise Him and to bless Him without ceasing. This contemplative vocation of the Angels is the model for ours, as the beautiful preface of the Sacramentary of St. Leo reminds us: ‘It is truly right to give Thee thanks, who teaches us through Thy Apostle that our life is directed to Heaven; who with benevolence bids us to transport ourselves in spirit to the place where those whom we venerate serve, and to ascend to those heights most especially on the feast of Blessed Michael the Archangel.”
Here is a feature of the devotion to the Angels that must be noted. The Angels are inhabitants of the heavenly court, where they live in eternal contemplation of God face to face. And the visions of all the great mystics tell us that there are feasts in Heaven, and that they are true solemnities. They are not images or chimeras, but authentic celebrations in which God successively manifests His greatness and the Angels acclaim Him with new triumphs, which never end.
There is a happiness in Heaven – the homeland of our soul, the very order of things for which we were created – that fully corresponds to our aspirations. Something of this sense of heavenly bliss through the face-to-face contemplation of God, who is Absolute Perfection, can and must pass on to earth. In times of true faith, something of this happiness filters through; something of this piety is felt and communicated by the most notably pious souls, as a common treasure for the whole Church.
Desire for heavenly things
This is what is so lacking today, so that we have no idea of heavenly happiness. And without this idea, we have no desire for Heaven, and people wallow in the pure desire for earthly goods. But if they could understand for a moment what a consolation, what a grace from the Holy Spirit is, the kind of happiness that the consideration of heavenly goods conveys, then detachment from earthly goods would begin and they would come to understand how everything is transitory, how everything in unimportant, how there are values above earthly things, which make them look like a speck of dust.
The Angels are inundated with celestial happiness, and can obtain for us the grace to acquire a true appetency for Heaven
This is precisely what the Holy Angels can obtain for us, they who are inundated with this happiness, which from time to time is communicated to the saints. There is a type of mystical phenomenon that manifests itself as a very distant concert, of a marvellous and otherworldly harmony. St. Therese of the Child Jesus received this grace and she even mentions it in the Story of a Soul. It is something of the eternal song of the Angels that reaches, in this way, the ears of the just, to give them a desire for the things of Heaven.
In our time, this desire is sorely lacking. People are only interested and excited by earthly things; by money, by politics, by worldliness, by the trivialities of the daily news, but they are not enthusiastic about elevated, doctrinal matters and, even less so, by specifically heavenly realities.
Let us ask the Angels to communicate to us the desire for heavenly things with which they are inundated. This is an excellent intention to be presented on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, together with the request that he make us his imitators, perfect knights of Our Lady on this earth. ◊
Taken from: Conference.
São Paulo, 28/9/1966
The Bond between Angels and “Angelized” Men
When medieval people referred to Angels, they often spoke of the angelic chivalry. They said that the celestial spirits were the first knights, because they fought against the first evil ones, the rebellious angels.
It is not easy for us to understand what the Prœlium Magnum was like, this great battle fought in Heaven between the Angels and the demons. How does one pure spirit fight against another? What are the resources one spirit has to overcome another, to the point of casting it into hell? How does one spirit expel another from a given place?
Undoubtedly, this war took place in an intrinsically much nobler way than the crusades. Those angelic spirits, at the moment they set out to fight against the demons, were confirmed in grace and had conquered the eternal crown for all time.
The head of this heavenly chivalry is the Archangel St. Michael, who, as the Patron of knights, sums up in himself the entire spirit of the crusades, of chivalry and, consequently, the entire spirit of the Middle Ages.
We find it very noble for someone to shed his blood for a great cause. But the nobility of a spirit like St. Michael, deploying all his strength against the devil, is unimaginable! The beauty of the Prince of the Heavenly Host is such that the human intellect is incapable of grasping it, but it can somehow hypothesize and surmise, as a stepping stone towards imagining the infinite perfection of God.
Without a doubt, in this bloodless war in which we are engaged – a psychological war, of graces and charisms against the temptations and snares of the devil; of the spirit of innocence against that of all the complicity and indecency, crime and fraud of the Revolution – there is much greater nobility than in earthly chivalry itself.
Detail of “Last Judgement”, by Giotto di Bondone – Cappella degli Scrovegni, Padua (Italy)
However, we will not be able to counter the revolutionary offensive if we are not such that the Angels recognize themselves as related to us and our natural allies; without establishing with the angelic chivalry that consonance by which the celestial warriors come to fight with us and in us naturally, as if the abyss that separates us from them did not exist.
This bond between Angels and men, and of men who are, so to speak, “angelized”, influencing Public Opinion in a counterrevolutionary sense, in continuity with the celestial chivalry; this is what should characterize us. ◊
Taken, with minor adaptations, from:
Dr. Plinio. São Paulo. Year XXI.
N.246 (Sept. 2018); p.4
Notes
1 BLESSED ANNE CATHERINE EMMERICH. Visiones y revelaciones completas. 2.ed. Buenos Aires: Guadalupe, 1953, t I, p.607.
2 GUÉRANGER, OSB, Prosper. El Año Litúrgico. El Tiempo después de Pentecostés. Segunda parte. Burgos: Aldecoa, 1956, t V, p.490-491.
3 Expression coined by Dr. Plinio himself to describe the mentality, common in certain Catholic circles from the 18th century onwards, of those who consider Religion with systematic optimism, as if original sin and evil did not exist, a hypothesis whose formulation would constitute a true heresy and which brings as a consequence the lack of vigilance and combativeness in relation to their own and others’ moral defects.
