Statue of Archangel Michael with Spear, Helmet and Devil, Wooden Sculpture; Saint Michael the Archangel
Repetition: September 29
Protector of: Merchants, gilders, scale manufacturers, pharmacists, judges, fencing masters, parachutists, state police, radiologists.
In the past, at the end of each Mass, the priest used to pray like this: """"Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our help against wickedness and the snares of the devil. Command the Lord over him, and you, prince of the heavenly militia, with your divine power overthrow Satan and all other evil spirits that roam the world to the ruin of souls. This prayer, placed at a strategic moment in the liturgy, namely when the faithful are about to pass from the solemnity of the rite to its concrete implementation in the hustle and bustle of daily life, testifies to the ancient tradition of the cult of the Archangel Saint Michael, alive among Christians, but even earlier among the Jewish people, who had chosen him as their protector. A widespread and ancient devotion that has at least three important and evocative reference points, such as the church of San Michele del Gargano in Puglia, the famous sanctuary of Mont Saint Michel in France and the Sacra di San Michele in Piedmont, at the entrance of the Via di Susa.
Michael is the protector of the protectors, the warrior archangel, prince of the heavenly militia, adversary of Satan and of the angels who had rebelled against God and whom he had defeated with the war cry: Who is like God? which is also the meaning of his name in Hebrew. And so, in the act of piercing the defeated devil, he is often depicted in the most beautiful pictures.
Genesis (the first book of the Bible) does not mention the name of the angel who was appointed by God to guard the earthly paradise after Adam and Eve, guilty of eating the fateful forbidden apple, were expelled. Some wanted to see in the grim guard wielding a flaming sword, the Archangel Michael, in another episode of that unending struggle against the forces of evil which, as the Evangelist John predicted, will have its epilogue in the days of the Apocalypse, when Michael and his angels will finally plunge into the abyss the great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, that is, the Devil or Satan, thus irrevocably marking the defeat of evil.
In our lives, St. Michael is the angel who is close to us in the small and great daily struggles against the suggestions of evil, against those forces that want to make us slip into the whirlpool of perversion and sin, and that at the end of life (this is also a task that tradition attributes to him) he guides us at death and then is at our side as an advocate on the day of the Final Judgment. Thanks to his tenacity in the fight against evil, Michael is considered the protector from evil.
Repetition: September 29
Protector of: Merchants, gilders, scale manufacturers, pharmacists, judges, fencing masters, parachutists, state police, radiologists.
In the past, at the end of each Mass, the priest used to pray like this: """"Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our help against wickedness and the snares of the devil. Command the Lord over him, and you, prince of the heavenly militia, with your divine power overthrow Satan and all other evil spirits that roam the world to the ruin of souls. This prayer, placed at a strategic moment in the liturgy, namely when the faithful are about to pass from the solemnity of the rite to its concrete implementation in the hustle and bustle of daily life, testifies to the ancient tradition of the cult of the Archangel Saint Michael, alive among Christians, but even earlier among the Jewish people, who had chosen him as their protector. A widespread and ancient devotion that has at least three important and evocative reference points, such as the church of San Michele del Gargano in Puglia, the famous sanctuary of Mont Saint Michel in France and the Sacra di San Michele in Piedmont, at the entrance of the Via di Susa.
Michael is the protector of the protectors, the warrior archangel, prince of the heavenly militia, adversary of Satan and of the angels who had rebelled against God and whom he had defeated with the war cry: Who is like God? which is also the meaning of his name in Hebrew. And so, in the act of piercing the defeated devil, he is often depicted in the most beautiful pictures.
Genesis (the first book of the Bible) does not mention the name of the angel who was appointed by God to guard the earthly paradise after Adam and Eve, guilty of eating the fateful forbidden apple, were expelled. Some wanted to see in the grim guard wielding a flaming sword, the Archangel Michael, in another episode of that unending struggle against the forces of evil which, as the Evangelist John predicted, will have its epilogue in the days of the Apocalypse, when Michael and his angels will finally plunge into the abyss the great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, that is, the Devil or Satan, thus irrevocably marking the defeat of evil.
In our lives, St. Michael is the angel who is close to us in the small and great daily struggles against the suggestions of evil, against those forces that want to make us slip into the whirlpool of perversion and sin, and that at the end of life (this is also a task that tradition attributes to him) he guides us at death and then is at our side as an advocate on the day of the Final Judgment. Thanks to his tenacity in the fight against evil, Michael is considered the protector from evil.
