 Good afternoon. Let's begin by going to our Lady, Queen of Angels, in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour. St. Joseph, the angelic man. Pray for us. St. Michael, the archangel, pray for us. In the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I have to say you pray thunderously. That sounded wonderful from up here. I'm sure it sounded wonderful from up there, too. I want to talk today about Sacred Scripture and the Guardians of the Holy. That's really the title I've been working with, Sacred Scripture and the Guardians of the Holy. The theme of our conference is holiness. And within that larger discussion, I've been asked to talk about the Holy Angels, the heavenly spirits who glorify God with their whole lives and serve him as messengers. But I'd like to begin this heavenly discussion with an earthly image. If you read the Bible from cover to cover, you'll conclude that no material object no thing on earth has been treated with greater reverence than the Ark of the Covenant. It was constructed by Moses according to the precise instructions of Almighty God. It was brought to Jerusalem in a solemn procession by King David. And in the last pages of Sacred Scripture, it makes a final appearance in heaven. Well, the Christians of Ethiopia believe that they have the Ark of the Covenant and they keep it in a chapel in the city of Oxim. It's hidden from view and only one person on earth is permitted to see the Ark. The man sees it all day and he sees it every day. For more than a thousand years, the Ark has been guarded by a single solitary monk, a man chosen because he has dedicated his whole life to God, a man known for his sexual purity. Once that monk is anointed for this unique office, he may never leave the church again. He doesn't get vacation time or sick leave. Only he can lay eyes on the Ark and live. The Ark has never been photographed. Not even the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church may enter that chapel. When the monk dies, he's replaced by a single solitary successor. There are rumors that the monk is heavily armed. Yolka books from 2200 years ago and they have illustrations that show him holding a sword or holding a rifle. I like to imagine him today as a 90-year-old guy with the beard that reaches to his knees and an Uzi submachine gun and more ammo belts than a body should be able to carry. Pay no attention to his appearances. He may be elderly and feeble. He may be dressed in the poor habit of a peaceable man, but he is a warrior assigned to be perpetual guardian of what he believes to be the most holy object on earth. He's a guardian of the holy. If he's carrying an Uzi, I promise you he's not afraid to use it. And I bring him up today because I want to talk about the holy angels as guardians of holiness. I want to invoke them as warriors of holiness. I want us to know them as our allies in the spiritual combat that defines our lives on this planet. They're like that monk in Ethiopia. They're proven in their purity. They're steadfast. They're fiercely dedicated to protecting and preserving God's holiness in its most important sanctuary on earth. And that sanctuary is not a chapel in northern Ethiopia. That sanctuary is your heart. That sanctuary is your heart and mine. When we see angels depicted in artwork, they're often depicted as chubby little babies with stubby wings, right? Or wispy feminine hornblowers with these diaphanous robes. And those images have their purposes and they have their message. But we mustn't fool ourselves into thinking that angels are timid or weak. Spiritually speaking, they have an Uzi and a lot of ammo and they're not afraid to use it. So what is an angel if it's not really a chubby baby with wings? We'll find the most concise definition in the catechism. There we learn that an angel is a spiritual, personal, and immortal creature with intelligence and free will who glorifies God without ceasing and who serves God as a messenger of his saving plan. Again, angels are spiritual beings. They have no material component. Sometimes for the benefit of us human beings, angels will take on human form or even monstrous form. Just read the books of Dandel or Ezekiel. But such appearances are temporary and they're not essential to the angels being. They assume these forms for a purpose. They want to get, they want to attract us or they want to scare us. And they put them aside when the purpose is fulfilled. Just like we might put a baseball cap on to go outside on a hot day but take it off when we walk into a church, into a chapel. Human beings are essentially different from angels. We don't become angels when we die. We're composed of a material body and a spiritual soul. But angels are pure spirits and only spirits. God made these purely spiritual beings as a superior expression of himself. Sacred Scripture offers abundant explicit evidence of this maximum closeness to God of the angels. Who are spoken of figuratively as the throne of God and his legions and his heavens. Now in ordinary everyday speech we tend to use the word angel as a generic term for all the pure spirits created by God. The Bible however uses many different terms for different spiritual beings including cherubim, seraphim, archangels, thrones, dominions, principalities. In this talk I'm using the word angel in its colloquial sense as a generic term for any pure spirit who is not God. Any pure spirit who is not God. It's important also for us to know that these spirits are essential to God's creation. The universe is made for them just as it's made for us. From the beginning God intended both matter and spirit to be integral components of his creation. To work together the very first line of the Bible tells us that he created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. Now the author here is not describing the creation of the sky above us and the ground below us. In fact it's not till the second day of creation that we see God differentiating matter in that way creating affirmament. What God is making in the beginning is the spiritual realm, the heavens and the material. Heaven is spiritual and earth is material. This is the position of St. Ambrose, St. Augustine and other church fathers. We read on in Genesis and we learn that God calls light into existence. Again we may ask what sort of light God created at the beginning. If matter was still formless and void then it was not the sort of physical light we know from the sun and from the street lamps outside. St. Augustine proposed that the light God created at the start was spiritual light. It was angelic. It was the angels. Augustine held that the angels were as exalted above the earthly firmament as the firmament was above the ground. God created the angels as he later created human beings in a state of goodness. Since angels are personal spiritual beings they were made with intellect and free will. God gave them as he later gave Adam and Eve the power to choose freely. And again like human beings the angels underwent a test, a trial of some sort in which they chose to act either for God or against him. We don't know the nature of their trial. We do know that it was definitive. Why is that? Why don't angels get a second chance when we get so many chances to start over? Well angels don't gain knowledge piecemeal the way we do. When they know something they comprehend it all together. They cannot plead ignorance. When they do something they do it with all their mind and all their will. So they bear full responsibility for their decision to separate themselves from God. And they did this individually one by one. When Adam and Eve were tested they stood as representatives for our entire species. They left us in inheritance as surely as we will leave one for the generation after us. That's the way life works in a family. Even when we have no money or property to pass along we bequeath our morals and our wisdom to those who come after us. But angels, angels don't live the way we do. They don't reproduce and they don't have species as animals and plants do. Biological life is categorized according to physical differences. Since angels have no material characteristics each angel is itself a unique species because angels don't relate to one another the way humans do in families and because they do not share a single species they could not be tested through the choice of a single representative as we were through Adam and Eve. When historians write about history's great battles they include physical details to make the scenes dramatically compelling. They describe flashes of fire, the cries of the dying, the outpouring of blood, the smell of gunpowder, thunder of explosives, smoke all over. But sacred authors of Genesis and Revelation had no such luxury as they described what happened at the beginning of time. Spiritual events cannot be communicated dramatically apart from metaphors drawn from the material world, drawn from our world. So in Genesis we read of God separating the light from the darkness even before he created physical light in the moon and sun. In the book of Revelation Saint John speaks of the heavenly spirits as stars and he says that a third of the stars of heaven were expelled when they chose against God. Their light became darkness and was cast out. The angelic will is powerful. Once it's turned away from God it's a mighty force of destruction, negation, corruption. The angelic intellect is vast. When it's turned away from truth it perpetrates the most gigantic lies, but always with the striking resemblance to the truth. The fallen angels are the declared enemies of all that is good and holy and innocent in the world. The devil is at war with God and will take down as many of God's free creatures as he can. And that's scary because it means you and me. It means my kids. It means my grandkids. That they're all wearing targets. That he wants them down. If we think about that partial truth, if we think about the devil's strength and our own vulnerability and the vulnerability of these children, it's enough to paralyze us with fear and it causes some people to surrender to give up the fight. But the whole truth sets us free from such fear because God has provided for us. He's equipped us to do battle in this spiritual warfare. He's given us spiritual weapons and spiritual allies, allies that are unbeatable. If we work with them, we put these weapons to use and God wants us to use them. That's why he revealed them to us in the pages of Sacred Scripture. That's why tradition has developed these things for us. Jesus revealed that each individual human being has an angel guide and guardian. We know also that human societies are given over to the angelic care. In the book of Daniel, we meet angels who are assigned to be guardians of nations. They're described as princes of their respective territories. They wield greater power than the earthly princes. Israel, Persia and Greece were all under the sway of angelic guardians. In Revelation, such angels are identified with specific churches. So the churches we attend are dioceses. These have guardian angels watching out for them, watching out for us. The scriptures show us consistently that God created the spiritual and material worlds to be mutually beneficial components of his one integrated creation. We were made to share our home with angels and angels were made to share a home with us. The biblical authors in the Old and New Testaments take the doctrine of guardian angels for granted. They don't have to explain it. They assume that everybody already knows what they're talking about. That's the way Jesus approaches the subject, the one and only time he did. He said, see that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that in heaven, their angels always behold the face of my father who is in heaven. Their angels is a loaded term. It presumes that each human child has one or more. And it speaks of their relationship in terms of possession. And it's not the mighty angels who have ownership over these weak humans. It's the weak humans who possess the angels, their angels, powerful, brilliant angels of light somehow belong to mere humans. They're ours. We find the same basic assumptions underlying the story of St. Peter in the Acts of the Apostles. He doesn't seem surprised that an angel has appeared to set him free in the middle of the night. He follows instructions rather calmly. And then when he goes to the house church and he knocks at the door, the doorkeeper rushes inside to let the others know that Peter's outside. She leaves him standing on the porch. The members of the congregation think that this rhoda has lost her mind. They say it can't be Peter. They say it must be his angel. It can't be Peter. They wouldn't have been surprised to see Peter's angels show up at the door. But Peter showing up was just too much to believe. In the Old Testament, the prophet Zechariah is given the grace to see the guardian angels as they carry out their duty. He asks his guide, what are they doing? And the angel responds, these are they whom the Lord has sent to patrol the earth. And we find similar language in the Psalms. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them. These angels light and guard. These angels rule and guide. God places powerful angels at our disposal. And why? So that we'll have whatever spiritual resources we need in order to make it to the end, the goal, the destination, so that we make it to heaven. Everything else is secondary to that final purpose. In the letter to the Hebrews, we read, are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation? That's what it's all about. And they're here for that ministry. They're here for that service. Now sometimes our angels may protect us from harm. Sometimes they may find us a parking space. He hasn't let me down so far. In fact, they do these things fairly often, but they do them not because that's their primary job. They do us favors in order to gain our trust so that they have our trust for the times that matter most, the times of temptation, the hour of death. That's when we need them. And we need to have the habit of going to them regularly. So if the price of that is a parking space, they're willing to give it. Hey, they're building a relationship. Our angels want to get us to heaven. It's a great conspiracy they share with God and they want to share with us. So we should conspire with them as actively as possible. That's why the church has always encouraged devotion to the guardian angels. Heaven will not compel our will. Heaven will never force our hand. Heaven loves our freedom. And the angels are here to enable and empower our freedom. They want our free consent. They want our free cooperation. They want to work with us. But in order for that to happen, they need to know us. They need to talk with us. That's what the devotion, the traditional devotion to the guardian angels does. And to all the angels. We use the traditional prayers like angel of God, my guardian deer, or we can address the angels more conversationally in our own words. Here I go again. Help. That kind of prayer. We can address not only our own angel, but also the guardian angels of our loved ones, especially when we're having disagreements or other difficulties in communication. One of the great saints of the last century said that whenever anybody walked into the room before he greeted that person, he greeted that person's guardian angel. So that we're all working together. Remember, angels are messengers. They're masters of communication. They want to bring peace, concord, and healthy consensus to our homes, our workplaces, our schools, our neighborhoods, our towns, and all the way up. The holy angels know that you and I have holy communion with God. They know that we can suffer as Jesus did. And they know that we can make suffering holy as Jesus did. So they're not always going to deliver us from suffering. That's one of the great obstacles to belief in the guardian angel. Why did he let me break my foot when I had so many plans for next week? Well, because suffering itself has a value, a tremendous value, especially when we unite it to the suffering of Jesus Christ as they can't do. So many of the saints tell us that if the angels could envy anything, they would envy our power to suffer as Jesus did. The angels know that our physical bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. They know all these things, and they delight in them. They don't get envious. It doesn't make them the least bit jealous. They're tasked with guarding us and the divine holiness that dwells within us, the grace within us. The holy angels are guardians against real enemies. Whatever the first angelic sin was, it led the demons to other sins. They envied the status of human beings for whom God made the physical world as a home. They wanted to bring us down, and so the prince of the fallen angels took the form of a serpent and tempted the first human beings, and he led them to sin against God and leave a legacy of death in the world. Since then, the fallen angels have unceasingly worked for our demise. God created them as he created all the angels with prodigious powers and strength, and now they turn all those powers against us. One of the old translations of the Bible gave a good summary of our condition. The life of man upon earth is warfare. It's spiritual warfare. We have to struggle to overcome such opposition, and the odds against us are daunting. Even Saint Paul acknowledged, for we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. That's scary, yet we need not be afraid. Though a host encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war arrives against me, yet I will be confident. Where does the psalmist get such confidence in the face of demonic opponents? Is he crazy? No. He's realistic. And Saint Paul is the man in all of history who had the keenest understanding of the angelic powers, and he put the matter in the simplest terms. If God is for us, who is against us? For in God, all things were created, he says, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. Whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. God made the angels. They're powerful, but they have no power over God. In fact, the scriptures tell us he disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in Jesus Christ. So we're in very good company all the time, even though we're on a battlefield. We need not fear because we have the holy angels at our side. But God's triumph does not mean that our struggle is over, far from it. St. Paul insists we will triumph with Christ only if we suffer with Christ, only if we suffer with him. And temptations will be no small part of our suffering. For even Christ suffered temptations in the wilderness and in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus overcame not in spite of these sorrows, but through these sorrows. And thus he showed us how to prevail over our own obstacles and our own enemies. And our angels will help us prevail through our sorrows and through our suffering. They don't always get us through them. That's something we learn early. But they can get us through them stronger. In the church, God has left us an arsenal of powerful weaponry against hell. In this final portion of my talk, I want to talk about one in particular. I want to focus on the powerful devotion to St. Michael the Archangel. If you read the book of Revelation, the letter of St. Jude, and the book of Daniel, you'll see that Michael is the great angelic protector of God's people. And the angels specially chosen to vanquish Satan, the spirits of heaven are uncountable. If every human being has a guardian angel, then we know that angels number at least in the billions. And they live in heaven among the cherubim, seraphim, and others, who again are uncounted and maybe uncountable. But out of all the heavenly hosts, one was summoned and anointed in a special way. Only one was singled out forever as the great prince who has charge of God's people. As we know him from the book of Daniel, the great prince who has charge of God's people. That one angelic person is St. Michael the Archangel. I like to think of St. Michael as the heavenly archetype of that Ethiopian Rambo monk with the machine gun. Michael's got real supernatural firepower and he's not afraid to use it. If he is indeed an archangel, there is some controversy, but if he is indeed an archangel, he actually ranks with one of the lower orders of spiritual beings. And yet he is the one most often named and most often invoked and most often seen in history changing apparitions. God hasn't deemed it necessary to tell us the names of any of the cherubim or any of the seraphim, but he's told us the name of this archangel. And let no one ever say that devotion to St. Michael is an invention of medieval Catholics. Let no one ever say that it's a corruption of some primitive and pure biblical faith. No. It has been with the church from the beginning. And Michael has been with God's people since before the beginning of the church. Based on biblical mentions alone, Michael emerges as a very important figure. In scripture, we find him giving guidance to the prophet Daniel. We see him battling with the devil for possession of the body of Moses. And we find him leading the angels of heaven as they battle the ancient dragon who wants to destroy the holy family and all God's people. But we can perhaps supplement that knowledge as we turn from the pages of scripture to the traditions of Israel. Because the chosen people were always pondering God's word, loving it, trying to read between the lines, trying to get behind the scenes. They prayed for wisdom and insight. And surely those prayers were answered. The writings of the ancient rabbis are not inerrant by any stretch or infallible or even necessarily historically accurate. But they can be illuminating. They can tell us a bit about the religion that was practiced in Jesus' time in his village and in his home. They can tell us a bit about Judaism as it was understood and practiced by holy families in the first century AD. In these ancient texts, we learn that God's people saw Saint Michael not only in the passages where he was explicitly mentioned. They saw him as implicit in many of the books we call the Old Testament. What's more, the rabbis saw Michael as a key protagonist in the divine drama, a supremely important character who was there from the beginning of the story. The Bible, as we saw earlier, begins with the creation of the angels. God created the heavens and earth and said, let there be light. God made the realm of the spirits all at once. And among them, there was Michael. Like all the spirits, Michael underwent a test that demanded his free choice for God. And so God separated the light from the darkness. The Bible doesn't tell us again what that test was. And the question has always been a puzzle to believers. What kind of ordeal did the angels have to endure to prove themselves? The Jewish folklorist Louis Ginsburg gives us one ancient account and it goes like this. God summoned the band of angels under the archangel Michael and he asked their opinion about the creation of man. What did they think about this new creature? And some of them answered scornfully in words we know today from Psalm 8. They said, what is man that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man that thou visitest him? I think these angels were a little jealous. But the Lord God was not amused because man was his most beloved creature. And so we're told the Lord God stretched forth his little finger and all those wiseacre angels were consumed by fire. Of hell and Michael remained. A midrash of the ninth century gives a somewhat different account but still places Michael at the center of the drama. Rabbi Eliezer tells us that Michael had been created in the beginning and so had Michael's adversary known sometimes in the literature as Satan and sometimes as semile. According to Rabbi Eliezer the adversary was the first to fail God's testing and as he was leaving he grabbed Michael to take him down with him and he was dragging him down but Michael was saved by God who snatched him back up to heaven. And why? Why did God do this so dramatically? Because he had an extraordinary task for Michael to fulfill. That's what these Jews saw. The testimony of the rabbis is unanimous on this point. Michael was forever to be the guardian and guide of God's chosen people. It was he who would protect them, preserve them, and lead them safely through history. In the earliest apocrypha he is repeatedly called the Prince of Israel and that's how he's addressed. Michael is Israel's Prince. So the rabbis then returned to the Bible and he saw Michael everywhere. He is present at every great historical event and he's a major player. His is not a bit part or a cameo. In the earliest days of history he was already preparing the way for Israel. Many millennia before Israel was born. The rabbis declared that it was Michael who taught Cain the methods of farming so that this poor exiled man could make a living and support his family. Michael taught him the principles of agriculture. It was Michael who were told who rescued Abraham from the furnace into which he had been thrown by Nimrod. It was Michael who told Abraham that Lot had been taken captive. It was Michael who told Sarah she would bear a son. It was Michael who rescued Lot at the destruction of Sodom. And it was Michael who stayed the hand of Abraham when he was about to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. And then it was Michael who produced a ram to take Isaac's place. The guy kept busy. According to the rabbis it was Michael who wrestled with Jacob and then blessed him. And I love this. We're told that the only reason the angel ceded the wrestling match was because he had to hustle back to heaven in time for morning prayer. I love it. The story of Michael continues as Israel was taken captive in Egypt. In fact our archangel the rabbis tell us was the fire that flamed from the burning bush. As Moses approached Michael was then the pillar of fire that led Israel by night. And he was the pillar of cloud that directed them by day as God's great messenger. His great herald. And it was Michael once again who instructed Moses on Mount Sinai. And Michael who filled the tabernacle in Temple with the glory cloud, the sign of God's presence. He ran the smoke machine. The rabbis tell us also that it was Michael who destroyed the Assyrian army and prevented them from entering Jerusalem. And Michael would have protected Israel from Nebuchadnezzar as well. He would have prevented the Babylonian exile. We're told but the sins of Israel were just far too great at that point. The rabbinic accounts have Michael bargaining with God the way Abraham had made plea for the people of Sodom. But God would not relent and so the people were taken away as captives. Still even while the Jews were in captivity Michael continued to press his case. He was very active we're told during the persecution in the time of Esther. And the more Haman accused Israel on earth the more Michael defended Israel in heaven. Michael was always there for Israel. Sometimes he appeared disguised as a poor man to warn the people of impending dangers. He was the prince who ruled behind the scenes. He was the priest who stood at the altar of heaven and relayed the prayers of Israel on earth. He's shown that way constantly. He was the angel of anointing. So he was the one who brought the power of heaven to Israel's kings and priests and prophets. The Jews of antiquity believed that Michael would herald the end of time by sounding his trumpet. In one compilation we read then Michael will blow the trumpet and once more Elijah will make his appearance this time to introduce the Messiah. Michael is one of the great features in all the ancient apocalypses. He's mentioned 10 times in the Dead Sea Scrolls explicitly 10 times. The Essene sect that produced the scrolls were expecting a world war. And they believed it to be imminent. And they knew that Michael would appear as their deliverer defending them in battle. They even prayed to God to hasten the day. Bring it on. We got Michael. We have nothing to fear. In the war scroll found at Krumran we find a prayer that sounds almost Catholic though it was composed by first century Jews. It says today is God's appointed time to subdue and humiliate the prince of the realm of wickedness. Today God will send eternal support to the company of his redeemed by the power of the majestic angel Michael. According to the Jews in the time of Jesus Michael was omnipresent in protecting God's people. He was everywhere he was needed whenever he was needed. We shouldn't be surprised then to see that the early Christians simply accepted him as the guardian of the church. He would always be there for the congregation that Saint Paul identified as the Israel of God. He would always be there for the Catholic church. Again, his prominent is evident from the text of the New Testament. In the book of Revelation he plays that central role as we see the cosmic war that's been raging since the first big bang of creation. Now war arose in heaven. Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down who accuses them day and night before our God. This is Michael as he had been known by the chosen people for centuries for millennia. And that passage is the stuff of every artwork that shows Saint Michael and every prayer addressed to him. The book of Revelation shows us that the end of the battle had arrived in a sense with the salvation won by Jesus Christ. And yet the drama continued. The Lord's paschal mystery was only the beginning of the end though it was a certain revelation of the ultimate victory. The drama continued in the persecution that raged for the first 250 years of Christian history. Michael emerged immediately as the patron of Christians who suffered for the faith. He was the protector of the persecuted of the martyrs. In the books we call the acts of the martyrs we see that Michael often eased the sufferings of the persecuted. He frustrated their oppressors and when the martyrs died he was the one who conducted their souls immediately to heaven. In the early fourth century Saint Isaac of Tifbrat suffered unspeakable tortures and was on the verge of giving up when the governor brought forth a boiling mixture of oil, wax and sulfur and commanded that it be poured down Isaac's throat. Moments don't get scarier than that. As bad as everything had been for him up to that point it was about to get much worse. He was terrified and he prayed aloud, oh Lord Jesus Christ help me and as you sent your angel and delivered the three holy ones out of the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar the king even so deliver me that the governor may not say where is his god and what do you suppose happened next? We read on, behold the archangel Michael came immediately from heaven and chilled the cauldron making it like cold water. So Michael brought some respite to the martyr even as he approached his inevitable end and when death was near God himself assured Saint Isaac that Michael would protect his body just as he had once protected the body of Moses from the devil himself. That's how it was in the time of the early fathers. Michael accompanied the church as he had always accompanied Israel. Devotion to him appeared in varied forms. He appears in Christian art and texts that have survived from the early centuries. He was venerated wherever the gospel was preached and heard but nowhere was the archangel as beloved as he was in Egypt. Beloved there in ancient times began the custom of honoring Saint Michael on the 12th day of every month. Every single month Saint Michael has a feast day on the Coptic calendar. The custom began in the early years of the church and it continues in Egypt today and each of those monthly feasts in Egypt is associated with one of the Bible's interventions that the Jews once attributed to Michael and now the church did. His appearance to Abraham, the annunciation of Isaac, the deliverance of Lot, the encounter with Jacob at Bethel, his appearance at Jesus' tomb on Easter Sunday, the liberation of Peter from prison and so on and so on and so on. The Coptic Christians in fact took up the Jewish habit of finding Michael everywhere in the Bible. St. Theodosius of Alexandria, 6th century archbishop preached that Michael was the one who carried Abel's sacrifice up to God. Michael was the one who nourished Seth when his mother's milk failed. Michael was the one who navigated Noah's Ark. It was Michael who comforted Isaiah and Jeremiah in their affliction and shut the mouths of the lions for Daniel. From the third century onward it was common, especially in Egypt, to build churches in honor of St. Michael. He was often invoked to overcome the mischief of the gods of Egypt, whom the Christians believed to be demons. When the pagan temples fell into disuse, some of them were dedicated to St. Michael. Since the name alone it was believed would be most effective as exorcism for these pagan temples. The ancient Ethiopians told the story of a man who did little that was good in his life and he was hated by his neighbors. But every month he did this. He celebrated St. Michael's feast by giving alms to the poor. On one lousy day out of 30 he did one thing that was decent and he did it in honor of St. Michael. Well, when he died the demons rejoiced were told and arrived to claim his soul. But God had a different plan. God challenged the demons to a supernatural game of hide and seek. The Lord said to them, choose one of these two things. Either St. Michael shall hide him and you will seek or you shall hide him and Michael seek. You can just picture this as a Warner Brothers cartoon. Well, the demons thought about it and consulted one another and eventually chose to hide the pitiable man themselves. And so they dragged him way, way, way, way off to a remote corner of hell. Michael, meanwhile, we may presume turned his back and counted to 20. Then the story goes three times Michael plunged into hell. And the third time he found the guy and delivered him. Well, that's our protector right there, the guy who will plunge into all that self for three times for our sake. And even the sake of this guy who didn't do much good and was loathed by his fellows. In the western lands Michael was similarly honored. When plague ravaged Rome at the end of the sixth century, Gregory the Great reportedly had a vision of Michael atop an ancient building. And the angel was sheathing his sword. Sure enough, the pandemic came to an end. And even today, the building where he appeared bears testimony. It's called Castle San Angelo, the castle of the holy angel. And in front of it stretches the angel bridge, which bears tourists to the heavenly delights of Gelato and Cappuccino and Piazza Navona. Straight from heaven. Castle San Angelo, the angel bridge, they're named for our patron. Similarly, Mount Gargano in Apulia in Italy is known as Monte Sant'Angelo because St. Michael appeared to the bishop there at the end of the fifth century. Devotion of St. Michael was everywhere in the early church as it had been among the Jews when the temple was standing. And it continued into the Middle Ages. In modern times, geographers have noted that 12 major shrines to St. Michael appear on the world map in a straight line that stretches from Ireland to Israel. Among those shrines is the beautiful Lone Saint-Michel in France. There's a similar alignment of shrines dedicated to St. Michael in the United Kingdom. We couldn't have planned these things. These came from heaven. So great was the church's devotion to Michael. And so great was heaven's blessing on that devotion. But with the Protestant Reformation came a steep decline in devotion to the holy angels. The reformers attacked such piety as idolatry, and the attack was not merely rhetorical, but it was visited with iconoclastic fury on many churches. The art historian, Emel Mala, points out the diabolical irony of the actions of Calvinist mobs that went about France destroying images of the angels. And he says in a reveredose devoted to St. Michael, the archangel has been destroyed while the demon at his feet was spared. And the demon at his feet certainly took advantage of the respite as Christians withdrew from the ancient devotions. Indeed, it was only at the end of the 19th century that the archangel began his amazing comeback tour. It's said that Pope Leo XIII during Mass one day had a vision of the century that was to come. He saw Satan run riot on the planet, opposed principally by St. Michael. In the months after his vision, Pope Leo composed three prayers to St. Michael, ranging from short to long. The brief one he commanded should be prayed at the end of every Mass. And it was so from 1886 to 1964. In 1994, Pope St. John Paul II suggested that believers voluntarily revive the custom of reciting the St. Michael prayer after every Mass. In 2018, Pope Francis repeated that request. And that same year, my own bishop began reciting the prayer at the end of every Mass, he said. And he asked his local flock to follow his example in that practice. St. Michael is there for us in the day of battle, which is every day. He'll be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the enemy. But that doesn't mean that we should stop fighting. Remember again, our virgin monk in Ethiopia. Remember him? Well, in the year 2020, as we were distracted by a presidential election, a civil war raged in Ethiopia. And in November, a rebel militia closed in on the Chapel of St. Mary and the Ark of the Covenant. The local Christians did not flee. They did not leave the Guardian to fight alone. Instead, they defended the shrine with the holy ferocity. And 800 were massacred in the battle. They were defending the holy, like the old monk inside, and like St. Michael in heaven, and like St. Michael on earth. They did it because it is the Christian vocation to guard innocence and protect what is holy. It's our vocation that we share with the heavenly hosts, and especially St. Michael, who I'm so pleased to say is my namesake. For his ministry to us, let's give glory in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning is now and I wish I'll be world without end. Amen. Again, I have to say, I love the thunder of that prayer coming from these pews. Anyway, I'm supposed to answer questions for you, or they won't pay me. Now, more recently, I've heard that you are not named your new angel. Yeah. In 2001, the Vatican put out a, I'm trying to remember the title of the document, but the Vatican put out kind of a handbook on liturgy and popular devotion, and some of it dealt with devotion to the holy angels. And one of the things that the document discouraged was the naming of angels. It didn't give any explanation, and it didn't condemn the practice, but it discouraged it. And Cardinal Lorenze, when he was asked about it, gave two reasons why he included that in the document. He said, one, the angels, I loved it because you can hear it in his voice. He said, the angels are not our pets. He said, what? They are not our pets. We can name our pets. We have that authority. We have the right to do that. But no one has given us the right or the authority to name our angels. He said, the angels are mighty beings, and we should show our respect for that. Now, I know that some people do have nicknames for them, because of what they usually do for them. Hey, you, the guy who gets me the parking space, parking attendant, where are you? That kind of thing. And I find myself doing playful things like that sometimes. So there was another point I want to make, because there were two reasons. Oh, the other reason that Cardinal Lorenze gave was because he said there is the danger of being misled by the occult, of demons trying to take advantage of our weakness, our desire for that kind of intimacy, and give them a name that's the name of a demon, that kind of thing. So Cardinal Lorenze gave those two reasons as the reasons why he included that point in the handbook. There are many depictions of angels in films and television, and do any of them ever get it right? I'm thinking of its wonderful life, and shoulder angels. Yeah, you know, it's funny, the earliest appearance of the shoulder angel is in the 100s. You know, the shoulder angel has its own Wikipedia article, because it's so common. Yeah, I helped contribute to it. I'm sorry. I helped contribute to that Wikipedia article. Right, right, right. Now any image of the angel is obviously not an accurate depiction. It's trying to convey a message about the angels. So it will, by necessity, be filled with some inaccuracies. It'll give some misimpressions. I try to work with that, you know? Like if somebody says to me, well, so and so is an angel now at a funeral. That's not the moment to correct them and say, well, actually, no. There's a moment to make corrections like that. I don't know if the funeral is the time to do that, but because there is a sense that the soul is disembodied at that moment, and is a pure spirit in a temporary way, you know? So you can say that. You can even make that theological point, if you feel like you can do that. In terms of cinematic, that's what you're asking about. Yeah, a title. Has it ever been done well? And that I don't know, because you know what, I don't watch movies. I really don't. I just never get to the movies. Does anyone know of good angel movies? I don't know. It's a wonderful life features Clarence the Angel who discourages George Bailey from committing suicide. Yes. That would be my best example. Yeah, I guess you can look at it as a kind of testing of the angels, because he's, you know, getting his wings and the little bell going off. Yeah, there you go. Any others? Well, I don't want to keep you from dinner. So we can, oh, here comes a question. Got my curiosity of what happened to the monk and the people who were defending the I tried and tried to find out and I have not been able to find out. And I've been looking for some time. So I don't know that there was not much being reported about the civil war, the happenings of the civil war. A lot of it was being kept secret. And I don't know what happened. I never heard about the rebels penetrating the church. But I don't know if they did. Does someone know? Next. There's a publication that many Catholics probably don't know about. But it's called Angels Among Us. And it comes from Guidepost. And if you get a chance, order it because it's got some very nice, very sweet stories. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I had heard, I think it was Father Vincent Lambert who was a exorcist. He was trying to reassure people that sometimes we're very afraid of the power of Satan and evil spirits. And he had said that every one of our guardian angels are more powerful than Satan himself because they see the face of God. Would you agree with that? It seems plausible to me. Like I don't know. Okay. I don't know. But it seems plausible to me because we know that in human beings, what does sin do? Sin darkens our intellect and weakens our will. So people who are sinful, they can still do mighty things sometimes. But not with the kind of strength they would have if they were virtuous. So I have to believe that the same principle operates in angels. That's my guess. Thank you. Every time I see angels in the church, they have wings. I was wondering where do you think that idea comes from? Is that something we found in the Bible or humans made that up? Just here we see two angels at the altar with wings. Where do you think that comes from? Well, I think it's to communicate their swiftness because they can be at our side immediately, right? And so the wings communicate that swiftness better than anything else. That's my best guess. And also in sacred scripture, they're described that way. So it has a good warrant. In our communication with the angels, I ask, can angels read our thoughts and both fallen angels and holy angels? The question applies to both. It's my understanding that the angels cannot read our thoughts unless we give them access to our thoughts, unless we engage them. So I mean, that's why we want to engage with our guardian angels so that we give them greater freedom to work in our lives. But I do believe that both angels and demons are really good at guessing our thoughts from watching us. They know like my wife. My wife doesn't need for me to express any thought. My wife generally knows what I'm thinking. You're hungry, aren't you? That kind of thing. So she knows what I'm thinking at all moments of the day. And I think that she has an angelic intelligence. What can I say? So I think that they read us that way. They read us pretty well. And I think that though demons can't predict the future, they're like pool players. When you're playing pool, you're predicting the future. You're estimating the ricochet angles, right? Seeing what's going to happen, five ricochets down the line. And the demons are really good at that. So they'll get you to do something that you think isn't such a big deal. And they know where it's leading, likely to lead anyway. They can't tell the future, but they know where it's likely to lead given circumstances as they see them right now. And it's the same thing with our thoughts. We wear them on our sleeves for the devils and for our guardian angels. But still I think it's good to cultivate that relationship with your holy guardian angel. And being that there's nothing new under the sun and history keeps repeating itself, the demons can pretty well predict a lot of the outcome of what currently is going on. But they're restrained by the grace of God. Yes. Yes. I have a question. So if the angels were made by God with a far superior intellect to us humans and we sin because of concupiscence, why did a third of the angels knowing what they know and being, you know, in hell if they're going to oppose God? Why would such an intelligent creature choose that? Well, it seems, you know, that the tradition is unanimous on that point that that the sin of the intellect, the sin of the angel is pride, you know, to be so amazed by one's own powers to think that I know better than God. And how many times do I do that in my prayer? Really, you know, I know better than God what's right for my children or my grandchildren, you know, and I have these these wrestling matches with them. But in the end, I surrender, right? I can imagine people not surrendering. I can imagine angels not surrendering. People surrender that all the don't say they say no to that all the time. They walk away from God, because they know better. I thank you for your attention and your hospitality.