Saint Michael
At every single Holy Mass, the Church unites herself with the choirs of angels in singing the eternal Sanctus: Holy, holy, holy, Lord, that the prophet Isaiah heard in his glorious vision of Heaven (Isaiah 6). Every Holy Mass takes us to Heaven and gives us a share in the heavenly liturgy, the eternal adoration of the Most Blessed Trinity.
It is good for us, however, to stop every now and then and turn our attention to these extraordinary creatures, the angels. That is why the Church gives us this feast of St Michael, the prince of all the heavenly choirs, the one who, as the book of the Apocalypse tells us, led the good angels in defeating Lucifer and the other demons and casting them out of Heaven into Hell. Because of this, St Michael, along with all the angels under his command – and in particular our guardian angels whom we honour on 2 October – is the protector of Holy Church in her ongoing battle with the evil spirits. It is comforting to know that, in our fight with the forces of evil, we are not alone. St Michael has already conquered Satan and he is in the process of doing so again in the lead up to the end of times.
The liturgy of this beautiful feast teaches us many things, but I will insist on two. The first is that the angels are our models in the adoration of God. Their entire existence is total gift of themselves in acknowledging the infinite grandeur of God and in glorifying Him. That is what is meant by the “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty”. In those few words that we say or sing at every Mass we profess that God is the entirely Other, the One who in Himself is the self-subsistent Being on whom we depend for our existence and in whom alone we can find peace and salvation. By those words, we prostrate ourselves – which is why the priest in the Roman liturgy bows profoundly while reciting them – before God and tell Him how great and wonderful He is and how happy we are to be here. All the hours of the divine office are, as it were, the rays which flow from that central act of adoration in the Mass, and which permeate and suffuse the entire day with adoration. This why St Benedict reminds the monks that whenever we come to celebrate the divine office we must be conscious that we are privileged to do so in company with the angels. If only God were to give us a glimpse of the angels here present each time we gather, of their profound love and adoration of God, I think all our distractions and lack of attentiveness would vanish in an instant. Let us ask them to inspire us and even to wake us up when we drift, either physically or mentally, from the divine task at hand every time we are privileged to be here.
The second aspect of this feast is the protection and inspiration we get from the angels in the great cosmic battle that is going on until the end of time, and in which, whether we like it or not, we are implicated. We are the prize of this great war, for both God and Lucifer want our immortal souls. God wants to beatify us, to make us eternally happy with Him in Heaven, by introducing us into His own eternal life and love. Satan wants to destroy us by inspiring us to follow in his footsteps of self-adulation and rejection of God, which leads to eternal despair, hatred and damnation in unending hellfire. The battle goes on, and the worst thing that could happen to any human is to not be conscious of what is at stake. That is why Satan does everything to convince us that he does not exist, that this life is all there is and so we should take advantage of everyone and everything while we can.
And here we return to our reflections of the past couple weeks. One of Satan’s most powerful weapons against souls is Modernism. And the reason the holy angels and St Michael are of such a great help to us in warding of this pernicious error, is that Modernism is essentially a great illusion which denies reality, while the good angels are constantly in adoration of the great reality which is God and His revelation to us. While for the Modernist, inspired by Satan himself, religious dogma is nothing more than the human intellect giving form to the nice feeling we have about a supreme reality, and which therefore changes and evolves as humans change and evolve, turning God Himself into a fruit of our gut feeling who changes with the food we eat, the truth held by the holy angels is that God eternal is THE reality. He alone is of Himself real and true. As the self-subsistent being from whom all things draw their very existence and in whom alone they find rest, God-Trinity is above and beyond, the one who draws us out of ourselves, and into Himself, delivering us from the deep recesses of our inherent egoism and seeking to beatify us in the total gift of ourselves. This is why Our Blessed Lord wanted to die on a cross and why He wants us to contemplate the crucifix frequently, for it is only by letting go of ourselves, getting out of ourselves, leaving behind our feelings, that we can find fulfilment.
If Modernism is the sewer that collects all heresies, it is precisely because it is the most diabolical of Satan’s inventions, and the one which imitates his own perversity the best. While God says: Leave yourself and come to me and you will find beatitude, Modernism says: embrace yourself, adulate yourself, and you will be happy. It is a lie, for in the end you suffocate in your own wretched nothingness like Satan does.
Let’s take a current example of how Modernism infects the minds of Christians. Our Blessed Lord came to teach us the path to salvation and He made it clear that He alone is that path, which led the Church to solemnly define at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215: “There is one universal church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved”. And at the Council of Florence in 1442: “The Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church, …, cannot share in eternal life… unless they are joined to the Catholic Church before the end of their lives.” We have now reversed the proposition to say that all religions are paths to God and that God actually inspires different religions that contradict each other, but will all arrive at the same goal.
Such absurdity was made possible for one very simple reason. In the mind of the man who professes such heresy, dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed, adapted to the faith of the one who believes. This is why St Pius X wrote: “Blind they are, and leaders of the blind, … they have reached that pitch of folly at which they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true meaning of religion; in introducing a new system in which they are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other and vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, unapproved by the Church, on which, in the height of their vanity, they think they can base and maintain truth itself” (PDG 12, 13).
And this actually brings us to a third important aspect of this feast, which is presented in the holy Gospel, namely that our faith must be that of a child, which is to say, that we receive the truths of faith from holy Church as they are without trying to twist them into something else. The Modernist is so full of himself that he can say he professes the fullness of Catholic dogma, and then turn around and say that all religions lead to God. The simplicity of the child has been lost. The modernist thinks he is smart, intuitive, subtle. In reality, he is crooked, blind, and a leader of the blind.
The holy angels are there to bring us back to mental sanity, to give us peace of heart, to encourage us in the battle by turning our minds to those great figures of our faith who were faithful in a dark age. This past week the holy liturgy put before our minds the example of Judith who, in a time of crisis for the holy people, stood up to save the situation. When the princes of the people had senselessly consented to hand over the city of Bethulia if no help arrived within five days, Judith severely reprimanded them: Who are you that tempt the Lord? This is not a word that may draw down mercy, but rather that may stir up wrath, and enkindle indignation. You have set a time for the mercy of the Lord, and you have appointed him a day, according to your pleasure. But forasmuch as the Lord is patient, let us be penitent for this same thing, and with many tears let us beg his pardon: For God will not threaten like man, nor be inflamed to anger like the son of man. And therefore let us humble our souls before him, and continuing in an humble spirit, in his service: Let us ask the Lord with tears, that according to his will so he would shew his mercy to us: that as our heart is troubled by their pride, so also we may glorify in our humility. … We know no other God but him. Let us humbly wait for his consolation” (Jud 8:11-20).
Indeed, in times such as these when those who are meant to be our shepherds are leading the sheep astray, one of the great temptations is to go off and make a church of our own, but if we do that we are just following another temptation, that of taking things into our own hands, which is just another a form of satanic egotism, albeit disguised. The real attitude of the faithful soul, supported by the holy angels, is to wait patiently for God to save us. He will. He has promised. Let us be patient, let us adore, let us be faithful to what has been handed down to us by holy Tradition. Strive for justice for thy soul, and even unto death fight for justice, and God will overthrow thy enemies for thee (Eccli 4:33).
