Homily
for the Feast of
Sts.
Michael, Gabriel, & Raphael
Sept.
29, 2026
Rev
12: 7-12
Christian
Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.
St. Michael at Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome
“Michael
and his angels battled against the dragon” (Rev 12: 7).
The
Scriptures refer many times to angels, God’s messengers and protectors of his
people. As messengers, they help us
receive and understand God’s word and his will.
As protectors, they defend us against powerful forces that oppose God
and his will that everyone should be saved (1 Tim 2:4).
We need
the help of the angels to know what God expects of us and then to do it, like
our Mother Mary listening to Gabriel or St. Joseph heeding the unnamed angel
who came to him 3 times.
St. John
Paul understood the “ordinary evil” that lies within the human heart and too
easily leads us astray; and the “extraordinary,” incomprehensible evil that so
often bursts upon humanity. Permit me a
quotation from George Weigel’s biography of the Pope:
John
Paul II knew that “evil” was no abstraction and that the world was an arena of
spiritual and moral combat between light and darkness; for him, these were not
biblical metaphors, but realities of everyday life. Modern psychiatry and psychology—in which he
had long been interested—might explain some facets of the human propensity for
wickedness; it could not explain the kind of evil he had encountered in Nazism
and communism, or the kind of evil that had produced 9/11. Every Tuesday night, … John Paul read a brief
biblical passage during Compline, the day’s last prayer: “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a
roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
Resist him, firm in your faith” (1 Peter 5.8-9a). The presence of the ancient adversary had
been all too real to Karol Wojtyła for decades.[1]
We need
“Michael and his angels” to defend us against the malice of Satan and his fiendish
assistants, in hell and on earth, coming at us in unspeakable forms. We need their help to stand fast in Jesus’
way of acting and speaking, to resist our own frailties and passions as well as
the demonic falsehoods and violence that abound on this earth.
Join me
if you wish: St. Michael the
Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense
against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly
pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God thrust
into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the
ruin of souls. Amen.
[1] The End and the Beginning: Pope
John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (NY:
Doubleday, 2010), p. 343.
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