Pope Francis has invited the whole Church to pray the rosary and the Saint Michael prayer everyday during the month of October as we turn our attention towards our Blessed Mother and Saint Michael that the Church may be protected from the devil who seeks to separate us from God. This is very fitting because today I desired to introduce the Saint Michael prayer and next week I desired to cover the importance of the rosary on what will be the Memorial of our Lady of the Rosary. I hope that each of us will take the Holy Father’s words to heart and pray these prayers. To think how the world would be snatched out of the hands of Satan if all the faithful would take to heart these prayers instead of pushing them off because they are too busy chasing after the ways of the world as Satan prowls about thrusting the world into sin.
On September 29th we celebrated the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. These three make up the Archangels who are mentioned throughout Sacred Scripture. There are nine choirs of angels and interestingly enough the Archangels are just about the lowest rank in this hierarchy. They only appear before the rank of angel. Those towards the bottom such as the Archangels or angels have many dealings with humanity. The archangels serve in a most special way as God’s messenger angels and have been given the most important of missions within scripture. So we have Saint Gabriel who goes to announce the great joy of Jesus to Mary. So we have Saint Raphael who was sent in order to heal Tobit of his blindness. And so we have Saint Michael who led the army of angels to cast Satan and the other fallen angels out of Heaven.
We cannot falsely be led to believe that angels are not important for us in this day and age. Spiritual warfare is something which is very real. The war for our soul is being waged all around us and yet we have divorced ourself from devotion to the angels. Rather, we must foster proper devotion to them especially to our guardian angel. Guardian angels are not something that is for children that we grow out of as we age. God has assigned a guardian angel to each of us who is to assist us in following after God and His commands.
Our Gospel makes it very clear that hell is real and that we should cut away everything that might lead us there. In this day and age it seems that we have bought into the greatest lie that the devil can tell and that lie is that Satan is not real and thus too hell does not exist. If we don’t believe angels then we can’t believe in fallen ones. Again may we be reminded that we are in the midst of great spiritual warfare as we speak.
Bishop Stika wishes that we resume praying the St. Michael prayer following the celebration of Mass. Some of you may remember this prayer as being offered among others following the Low Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Hopefully each of you already have this important prayer memorized and are already offering it daily, but do you know the origin of this prayer?
The St. Michael prayer is actually a very modern. It was written by Pope Leo XIII in 1884. The reason why it was written was because Pope Leo received an awful vision as he was offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In this vision he saw demons who were gathering upon the Eternal City of Rome. Some go as far to say that this vision related that Satan would attack the Church from within. It was in 1886 that what became known as the Leonine Prayers would be attached to the end of the Low Mass until they fell out of use in 1964.
I find it very fitting that the bishop of this diocese desires to restore this prayer to the end of the Mass. I find it very fitting that Pope Francis desires that the faithful pray this prayer as well as the rosary every day. We can see the many ways in which Satan has come to attack the Church as well as society. The horrors of the sexual abuse crisis are demonic in nature. The division that is found between bishops especially when it pertains to what is truth is demonic in nature. The war that is being waged against marriage, against the human person, against human sexuality, and against the family is demonic in nature. We can no longer believe the lies of the devil, but we must come to rebuke him solid in our faith.
