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St. Michael the Archangel defend us in battle…
Saint Michael, although venerated as a saint, isn’t really a saint; he is an angel. Not only that, but he is honored as the leader of the heavenly hosts and given the title of “Archangel” alongside Sts. Gabriel and Raphael.
The little we know of St. Michael comes from Scriptures, where he is mentioned by name four times: twice in the book of Daniel where he is described as a “great prince” and God’s helper who will stand for the children of God; once in the epistle of St. Jude which alludes to an ancient Jewish tradition of a dispute between Michael and Satan over the body of Moses, and once in the Book of Revelation which speaks of his casting the dragon out of heaven.
There are also a few passages which many scholars believe reference St. Michael but do not use his name—for example, in the Book of Joshua when a sword-wielding angel appears to Joshua before the fall of Jericho identifying himself as commander of the army of the Lord.
From these passages, Christian tradition assigns four roles to St. Michael:
- He fights against Satan
- He rescues faithful souls from the power of the enemy, particularly at the hour of their death
- He is the champion of God’s people and the patron of the Church
- He is present at every deathbed to escorts the souls to the judgment
Although the devotion to St. Michael is ancient, the prayer of St. Michael is actually fairly new in Church history. Pope Leo XIII wrote the prayer after having a mystical experience during mass and had it included in the 1886 “Prayers After Mass,” requiring it to be prayed after all Low Masses in the Latin rite.
The exact details of the vision aren’t known for certain and a few versions of the event have circulated during its retelling. Some say he collapsed, while others said he stood looking fearful at an unseen terror.
Some stories say that he overheard a conversation between God and Satan, in which Satan boasted that he could destroy the Church in 75-100 years and God gave him permission to try.
The version with the most evidence is written about in Pope Leo XIII and the Prayer to St. Michael by Kevin Symonds says that the Pope saw a vision of “…the ages to come, the seductive powers and ravings of the devils against the Church in every land. But St. Michael appeared in the moment of greatest distress and cast Satan and his cohorts back into the abyss of hell.”
Whatever the true story behind the prayer is, the heart of it remains the same: God granted St. Michael the power to protect the Church from the forces that seek to destroy her, and that we should look to him as our protector.
Pray the novena to Saint Michael the Archangel and ask for his intercession and protection for both your soul and for the whole Church. Although St. Michael’s feast day is celebrated on September 29 (a feast also known as Michaelmas), you can pray this novena at any time.
