29 Sep 26 – Saint Michael and His World

0:00The star you're about to hear is true. Catholic commentary. Spiritual warfare. Stay ready so you don't have to get ready. Jesus 9-1-1. And we are alive. Everybody on an incredible Tuesday. Happy Feast day of the arcane. Jules and I couldn't think of a better guest to bring on than my near and dear friend my brother. Mike Mike Aqualina and fittingly I got you here and finally you got a book that came out not long back. Now I don't know exactly how long back not long back though. I don't know. It's official release date is today.

1:02Are you kidding me? No way. I don't know why I thought the release date was about a month or two back. And let me let the audience know by the way for our incredible moderators. I know we have some tremendous moderators in the audience. For you all if you could do it in an enormous favor. Get that link and post it. I think that's the brand new book from my near and dear brother. St. Michael and his world. There you go. So today is the official release date. Now can people find that they can find that in a physical edition. And is it also available in a digital edition? I believe it is. I believe it's already available on digital. So I think they both went live today. Very nice and happy Feast day brother. It's my name day. It is your name day. I love that. Now, you know, let's dive right in. Let's dive right in. You've written and we've had you on for, you know, multiple topics before.

2:05You've written about the incredible St. Joseph before. You've written a lot of stuff. Your your prolific author. What may and I'm going to take a wild guess. But what made you decide, okay, I'm now going to write the life of an angel. So I think it's a big deal. I think it's a big deal. I think it's a big deal. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. Is it your name? It's something else. Well, you know, I had written the book. St. Joseph and his world, as you point out. And after that I wrote St. Patrick and his world. And, uh, And the reason I wrote those books is because we have two saints there. Joseph and Patrick. Who left us very little on the record. Right. And he's just a little bit better. He's just action, you know, in a few places there. So I wanted to give some historical context to his life so that we could learn. Learn to understand a little bit better. So, um, So I wrote that book. And then I wrote St. Patrick and his world because,

3:06because Patrick also. Challenges us. If we want to understand him, he's a very important saint. He's, he's had a profound effect on history. And he left us two texts that are indisputably his. But he doesn't tell us the things we want to know. Okay. You know, he doesn't really place himself in history. He doesn't really give us physical details of where he was from time to time. So, so, so I wanted to place Patrick and his historical contract context. So we can understand him better. So. My publisher asked me, are you going to do any more in the series? And I said, I'd like to do St. Michael in his world. And I was kind of joking because an angel doesn't really inhabit the same world that we do. Right. Right. He doesn't have an historical moment the way we do. Sure. We, we arrive and we flourish and then we fade away. But angels, angels just live, right?

4:07So, uh, I decided to do the, do the book. And, um, and what I wanted to do in the course of the book is show Michael's interactions with humanity throughout history. Because he's a constant. He's always there. So the way I do that is I, I show the history of devotion to St. Michael. And, and even interaction with St. Michael, because there've been, there've been, um, apparitions of St. Michael and there've been, uh, many miracles attributed to him down, down the ages. Now one thing that I, I personally, and you would probably be able to test it as well. One thing that I love when it comes to writing books is I learn a lot that I didn't know beforehand. I learned a lot. What would you say is the biggest thing you learned about the incredible St. Michael while researching for this book that maybe you genuinely didn't know beforehand. I guess I didn't know, uh, the, the depth and the breadth of, um, of the devotion to St. Michael among Jews and antiquity.

5:16So I got to learn a lot about, about that through the ancient texts and also through material culture, through the things that, um, that archaeologists have found in, and some of the ancient sites. That was, that was, uh, eye opening for me. The other thing that I discovered was the particular devotion of the cops in Egypt, the ancient Christians, um, of, of Egypt. And, and how well they love Michael, you know, they under calendar. Now they celebrate 12 feasts of St. Michael every year and that's been their custom, you know, that's been, that's been the custom of the cops. They celebrate one feast of St. Michael every single month. I mean, I can't think of another saying two zons or that way. Uh, but Michael, Michael is among the cops and, and he deserves it. So, you know, those two things, those two, uh, people's and their manifestations of devotion were my two big takeaways, my, my two big surprises as I did, um, as I did research for this book.

6:21Incredible. For people barely tuning in, we're talking about a brand new book that Mike Aqualina released called St. Michael and his world. We have the links that are posted, but if you are, maybe you're driving right now, you're on the road, you're hearing on radio or you're hearing hearing on the app. The book can be found on sceptre publishers.org. You can find it there. And it is a great book and I got a hold of a copy. Yeah, you all can be jealous. I got a hold of a copy several days ago, because I wanted to read it before bringing Mike on and, uh, and I loved it. I loved it because I love St. Michael, but it's hard to find a book with media theological information and you've done a tremendous job. You've jammed back into great information. I love it. I love it, brother. You mentioned your book. And rightly so that St. Michael's name means who is like God and you make a comment in the book. I forgot the page. I forgot to write down the page number, but I wrote, I made a note.

7:21You call it almost, you call it almost a battle cry. What does his name tell us about who St. Michael actually is? What can you say about that? Well, there are a couple of accounts in history of how Michael got his name and, and one of them, actually, that the most common one, the one you'll see most in the historical record is that, uh, is that at the beginning of time, God created all of the angels and he tested all of the angels, just as he later tested human human beings, right? And, uh, and, and we're told in sacred scripture that a third of the stars fell from the sky. So a third of the angels created by God chose something other than God. They, they chose to, uh, to serve themselves really, uh, to fall away from God. We don't know the nature of their testing. There's a lot of speculation about that. Many, many scholars, many saints believe that it had something to do with the creation of man.

8:23Or possibly the incarnation of God as a man. And so, so they, they rebelled against that idea that they would bow down and worship this lowly creature. So, uh, so in the midst of that rebellion, Michael stood up for the angels of God and said, who is like God? And that's why it's a battle cry. It's saying, why would you, why would you go for anything other than God? God is, is God. And, and God is unlike anything else he's created. He's the creator. Everything else is created. And, uh, so it's a reminder of, of who God is and, and who every creature is, you know. When people think about the Archangel Michael, they very often immediately go to the New Testament. And there's nothing wrong with that. Till immediately they could think of the book of Jude. They'll think of, uh, St. John's Apocalypse, the book of Revelation. Rarely do people think about the book of Daniel. And I'm glad that you brought it up. So is that St. Michael that appears in the book of Daniel?

9:30It is. And there he's called a prince, you know, a mighty prince, a highly ranked prince, right? So, so he's leading, leading the heavenly hosts and, and what Daniel sees in his visions is, uh, as a vision of spiritual combat really. Okay. He's, he's, he's, he's living in exile. And, and the, the people are dispersed. They're, they're away from the promised land. They've been taken away. And, uh, they're, they're longing to be home. They're longing for the opportunity to worship God according to the law, the way God wants to be worshipped. And they can't do that. Right. So, so they're, um, they're suffering. They're suffering in their dispersion. And, and Daniel gets visions that are consoling, that are comforting, that give him hope for the future, that one day, this is going to be better. Uh, and, uh, and Michael is an important part of those visions. So is the Archangel Gabriel. So we have two out of the three named Archangels in, uh, in the book of Daniel.

10:39And, and, and what Daniel sees is, uh, is that Michael is, is somehow leading the people of Israel in this spiritual combat against someone he calls the Prince of Persia. Now, that's obviously not an earthly prince. He's talking about, he's talking about some angelic power, a fallen angelic power who has seized control over a people. Right. And, uh, and, and probably by their consent. Right. They chose to follow the fallen angel rather than the angel given, given, given to them. So what, what, what Daniel learns is that Michael is the great guardian angel of God's people on earth. So he's the one who's going to be their guardian and their guide. I love that. I love that. A great cliffhanger to leave the audience with. We're also taking any of your questions, audience. We want to hear from you as well. What a great topic we're talking about.

11:46This audience will be back on the other side of the way, just to know you stick around. Audience and we are here with the incredible Mike Aqualina we're talking about. St. Michael and his world brand new book and you were talking about the book of brand of Daniel and you were talking about the prince. And when the break crept up on us, go ahead, pick up where you left off my friend. Alright. So, so Daniel recognizes that, that, um, that Michael is the special guardian of God's people on earth. He is their prince. Right. So he is the one who's taking care of them. And that's an interesting moment of disclosure.

12:54God is revealing something at that moment, but it might have been something that they, that the people of Israel had already intuited because what's interesting is that as we go, you know, a couple hundred years later, and we start to see what we call the pseudopigrafa Old Testament pseudopigrafa, the intertestimental literature, these other popular religious books that came out in between the testaments between the time of the Old Testament, the New Testament. Many of these books came out right before our Lord's incarnation, right after it. But they express the devotion that was popular at the time and they tell us a lot about what religious Jews were thinking at the time our Lord came to, came to earth. And what's interesting is the prominent place that Michael plays occupies in these books. Michael is mentioned in one book of the Old Testament, but those rabbis, the later rabbis who, who looked back on those books, the Hebrew scriptures, they saw Michael everywhere.

14:02Everywhere there's an unnamed angel, they said that angel is Michael. So for example, Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac, right? And right. And angel arrives and stays his hand and then provides a lamb for the sacrifice. Well, the rabbis looked at that story and said, that's Michael. Michael was the angel who did that. And a little bit later, we have the patriarch Jacob and he wrestles with an angel, right? Well, they looked, they looked at that story and they said he wrestled with the archangel Michael and they even had an explanation for why the angel stopped wrestling because he stopped wrestling because he had to get back to heaven in time for morning prayer. Oh, I love that. Isn't it great? And then of course they identify Michael as the pillar of cloud that leads leads Israel out of Egypt by day and then the pillar of fire that leads them by night. They identify Michael as the fire in the burning bush, the fire that that that burns the bush, but it doesn't consume it.

15:07And then the devil is seen everywhere everywhere. There's an unnamed angel. The the pious Jews of Jesus time see St. Michael and Michael appears abundantly in the in the Dead Sea Scrolls. You know, they're there. Wow. Yeah, they're there at least a 10 or 12 times when he's mentioned by name and other times when it's very likely that they're alluding to Michael because they they seem to describe them without using his name. There's also a prayer to God to send Michael to fight alongside these people as they engage in spiritual combat in in their time. So it's it's a great prayer. We can read it today and it's very much in the spirit of the same Michael prayer that we use as Christians. So so yeah, Michael is mentioned in just one one book of the Old Testament, but he seems to appear everywhere, at least a word to take take our take the word of the people from ancient Israel.

16:10Yeah, one thing that I love about your incredible book is you don't ignore books like first in a you know, they're not scripture, but you don't you don't ignore them. I realize that second temple Jewish literature is important in understanding Michael, the St. Michael we encounter in the New Testament. I like how you brought up that how by the time we get to first, you know, the Dead Sea Scrolls, St. Michael's already a massive figure. Now that clearly that right away refute the idea that devotion to St. Michael is like a late Catholic medieval invention. Clearly, it isn't at all. My question of being you have this fascinating material where where St. Michael is clearly an intercessor in ancient Jewish literature. Do we know how early that goes? Well, you know, as I said, I think that that's what you see at work in the book of Daniel, right?

17:11So so you see it at work there at the time of the first dispersion. But but you see it also in the Dead Sea Scrolls, you see it in in in this other literature. So it was there and it was well established by the time of our Lord's arrival. You see it very well developed even in the archaeological record. I mentioned these incantation bowls we found and they're almost like religious goods you buy in a Catholic store today because they're bowls that have a prayer along the inner rim, right? So you see that there's a prayer that goes around the bowl so that if you're using the bowl for food or drink, you could offer the prayer while you're having your dinner while you're having your drink. And very often these bowls, the prayers inside these bowls will mention Michael. They'll mention Michael. So we see that that even in popular devotion, the Jews had this these these ways of addressing Michael of asking God for the help of Saint Michael. This is something that endured.

18:24Now in the New Testament, you're correct by the time we get to the New Testament, Saint Michael's firmly entrenched there. Yes, encounter right he is. We get to the book of Jude, chapter nine in particular, where well, Jude only has one chapter. Jude nine has Saint Michael fighting with a devil over the body of most now. I've had a lot of people come up to me, Mike, I'm sure you have as well. They say, well hold on. That particular story isn't in the old Testament. What is going on there? What would you tell them? How would you answer them there? Well, it's something that that Jude just assumes everybody knows everybody knows this story. And sure enough, it does appear in other Jewish literature from that time and a little bit before. We find it an entire book that that's focused on it called the assumption of Moses. Right. That's that seems to be where Jude is drawing the story from.

19:29Again, it's a story that foregrounds the archangel Michael and Jude just assumes that everybody everybody knows knows this. What's interesting is that once again we see Michael kind of fulfilling the type that he presents in in the book of Daniel. Because in Daniel, he appears as a warrior, as a leader among warriors. And here he is in the epistle of Saint Jude. He's a warrior. He's a guardian. He's going to protect you against this terrible alien power, this evil power, who would profane the body of Moses. What's what's I was going to say it really is finds its ultimate fulfillment in the ultimate book of the Bible, but you haven't gone there yet. So I guess it's right. Right. We're getting there. We're definitely getting there. But yeah, I love that answer on Jude clearly referring to the assumption of Moses. There's no doubt about that. Yeah, that's pretty incredible.

20:36Now, I love how throughout throughout this book, you show how really St. Michael's identity and I love this is Christ centered, you note, Christocentric. Now we can see that as well. Getting to write what you were alluding to to the book of Revelation chapter 12 where you see St. Michael where he is perhaps the most famous for right there in the book of Revelation. How about you tell us a little bit about St. Michael. And what do we see in occurring there in the book of Revelation chapter 12. Well, once again, we see military imagery, martial imagery, right. We see we see this scene, this dramatic scene where the arc of the covenant who is identified with this woman is is bearing a male child into the world and this male child will rule the nations with a rod of iron. Well, the male child is clearly Jesus because all of the the prophecies that the early early church associated with the world.

21:44And we see that the person who is associated with Jesus are right there in that passage. They're in both from Psalm 2 and other places. So here is here is that male child here is his mother Mary. And we find Michael emerging as the one who protects them from the dragon who would devour the child. Right. So the dragon is Satan quite obviously and Michael is the one who's defending the mother and the male child and also her other offspring her other offspring. We know that Mary is perpetually virgin. What is this about other offspring? Well, we are her other offspring. Right. And we are the mothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. That's what we attained by baptism. That's what would God gives us by baptism. So we're part of that family of God. We're there with him in the family and we're protected by Saint Michael.

22:49So it's very clear from this passage that Michael is there to protect protect us from from from these evil threats. There's a passage at the end. I don't have it handy. But it was it was in the first reading this morning where where it where it mentions that the people who would die for the faith. Right. It mentions that there would be these these people and there have always been those who who were persecuted, you know, and who and who died for for for their faith and God. So so once again, we see something. Show there and and we find him as the protector of not only Israel, but now Israel and the Gentiles who are gathered together in the church. Michael is always the one who is guardian and guide of God's people on earth. The the the people of Israel believe that that was true from the time of Adam and Eve forward.

23:52If you read some of the apocryphal literature, Michael is the one who was given to care for the body of Adam after Adam died. Okay, so we we once again see him caring for Adam's body as he cared for Moses body, right. This is part of Michael's job and part of his life. He's the one who taught Kane how to do agriculture so that Kane would have a way of supporting himself and supporting his offspring in the future. All of these all of these little details that they attributed to Michael. We find kind of summarized at the end that he's still doing all of these things for God's holy people on earth. I love that I love that and we're about to get to another break that is sneaking up on us. But for people that are wondering we're having an incredible dialogue with my near and dear brother Mike Aqualina. And I want to recommend you all head over to Scepter Publishers and get a hold of his brand new book which dropped it fittingly today on the feast of the Archangel's Saint Michael and his world.

25:03And we also want to remind you all any and all questions you have we want to hear from you if you have any questions stick around. We got a lot more to come on the other side of the break. And audience were back we're having an incredible dialogue with Mike Aqualina talking about his brand new book Saint Michael and his world. And we left off we were talking about the book of Revelation.

26:06Now we're going to hop into early church history and the shepherd of Hermes. We're talking about early church writings early church fathers, Shepard of Hermes. Fascinating by this right here fascinated by this because you got Saint Michael appearing here. To me seems like he's overestined the people of God. What is occurring here in the in the Shepard of Hermes? Well what we see here is is another visionary text right so these are visions reported by someone who was living in this second century. And Hermes is a book by this visionary Hermes who was identified in some places as the brother of one of the folks. So he's somebody who's living in Rome. He's well placed and he's regarded well regarded by the Christian community. But but Saint Michael is part of his visions just as they're part of Daniel's vision and then part of St. John's visions in the book of Revelation.

27:09So what we can conclude from this is that when the veil is pulled back, when people can see things as they really are when they can see the things that are unseen in everyday life. They see Saint Michael in a prominent place. They see him in a in a place of leadership. They see him in a place of judgment that he is able to judge others. We see him, you know, they see him as an instrument of God's mercy as well because because he's involved in judgment and God's judgment. We pray concludes in a merciful way. So so so Michael is there from that first generation. We count the shepherd of Hermes as one of the works of the apostolic fathers, the very first generation in the Christian church after the time of the apostles. So many of these people were disciples of the apostles, you know, or they knew others who heard the apostles or heard Jesus.

28:13So so here he is and he's already invoking Saint Michael in his work at that time. It's it's of course not unusual because this is something something that continues in Christian popular devotion ever afterward. I want to emphasize that the shepherd of Hermes had a had a particularly prominent place within the church and it was even included in some local churches within the can of Canon of scripture. And in in early times. Yeah, and it says right here, but those who are weak and sloffful in prayer hesitate to ask anything from the Lord, but the Lord is full of compassion and gives you without fail to all who ask. But you Hermes having been strengthened by the holy angel and having obtained from him such intercession. That's ancient intercession right there of the saints and as you pointed out brother. Every time you look at you would know because you know all about the patristics.

29:17Every time you look at a collection of early church writings, those apostolic fathers, those writings closest to the time of the apostles, you're always going to find the shepherd of Hermes right here with all of the other apostolic era writings. That's true. Yes, yes, yes. And and I think that that passage you just read is is so important because it shows the angels strengthening us. And this is something that I think too often gets bleached out of our our our scriptural interpretation are our prayerful scripture reading too. We can forget the role of the angels right and we can we can we can we can miss what's being revealed to us. The angels are everywhere in the scriptural record. We find them at so many important turns. I mentioned before many of those like the the Okada offering the binding of Isaac the the Exodus from Israel all of these important of events are attended by angels.

30:23And we see a certain back and forth that goes on between these these heavenly beings and the human beings, you know, who's who's whose whose lives are impacted by these events. And I think that we're supposed to learn from that at the very beginning of of human creation in the book of Genesis. It's you know God says that it's not good. It's not good for the man to be alone right. So he made us to live in society not just in family not just in marriage, but in a wider society we live in families we live in communities right. But what we learn when the veil is taken back what we learn when the curtain is drawn is that is that we're in a much wider community. That includes all the angels and all the saints. That's what we see in the visionary text like the book of Daniel like the letter to the Hebrews and the New Testament and like the book of Revelation and the New Testament.

31:25We see that we live among the saints and we live among the angels. And we're interacting with them. This is the foundation for Catholic devotion to the Holy Angels. This is why we have feast days. This is why Hermos writing in the 100s can can know that he was strengthened by an angel because he knows that so much of life is an interaction with these heavenly beings. God, the Lord God didn't make it that way. You are right about that. And what an early writing early testimony we have right there in the shepherd of Hermos. But we don't only have the shepherd of Hermos. I love how you also brought up the incredible Saint Jerome because they magnificent Saint Jerome. By the way, it's feast day tomorrow. If I'm correct, I believe tomorrow is the feast day. He will apparently see Saint Michael presenting the prayers of God's people before God. That is even more evidence of not only the great love and devotion the early church had towards Saint Michael, but in helping us understand angelic intercession in early Christianity.

32:37And the person that even painted greater picture for us, even the great Saint Jerome. Yes, because Michael is often portrayed in Jewish literature as a priest at an altar in heaven. Sometimes he's seen as the high priest in heaven, right, whose whose worship is mirrored on earth by the high priest in the Jerusalem temple. This is one of the roles often attributed to Michael. And there's a certain richness to Michael that's there in the time of the early church that that maybe we don't have today. Today, almost any time you see Michael depicted, he's depicted as the warrior. He's got the sword or he's got the spear, right, and he's conquering his, he's defeating Satan. But in the ancient world, he's he often also appears as a priest standing at an altar offering sacrifice, taking the prayers of the people on earth and presenting them before God in heaven. He's also revered as a healer so that there were many healing shrines of Saint Michael in the ancient church.

33:41One of the most famous ones was established by Constantine near his city near Byzantium. And it's it was called the Macalien. And it was a place of healing. And I have a special fondness for it because one of the ancient church historian, Sazaman, mentioned some healings that took place there. And one of the the men who who were cured was was a nobleman named Aqualienus. So he bore my name. Wow, I didn't know that. Really? He bore my name, but what's interesting is that Aqualienus was still alive at the time. Sazaman was writing. Sazaman knew him and had taken down his deposition. So he was just relaying again this information that would be public information. It's it's it's one of those rare cases when we have a miracle that's attested in the early early church and is recorded by contemporaries.

34:41Now forgive my ignorance. That church is it's still around. No, no, it's not. But Constantine, Constantine built it because he wanted his soldiers to have this intense devotion to Saint Michael. He wanted them to be earthly warriors as Michael was a heavenly warrior, right? And fight on the side of Jesus Christ. So that's why it was built, but it became known as a healing shrine as a shrine that extends the reach of God's mercy into the world. And again, this steals no thunder from God, right? Because Michael is all about glorifying God and Michael was created by God to do this work. Whenever we recognize any glory and Michael, it's glory that he received from Almighty God in order to share it with us on earth and to use it in the service of us on earth. And that's that's an amazing gift that God has given us. It's that gift that even Hermos knew in the 100s that Michael has strength that he's ready to share with us that he's ready to use on our behalf.

35:51I love that. I love how you pointed out how as early as a shepherd of Hermos, by the way, an apostolic era of a patricistic writing and you can find it throughout the centuries how there is this great imagery of Saint Michael. He is viewed as a great and a holy intercessor. You see that all throughout the centuries, I tell you one thing, if you find in the shepherd of Hermos, which is an apostolic era writing, well, the right away, we can eliminate the idea that, well, you know, the Catholic church invented this in the middle ages, they had an agenda. Now, you can eliminate that immediately. Now, one thing that I find incredibly fascinating and I know that we're coming up on another break, our final break, but I want to leave you the audience with this cliffhanger before we return. Again, I want to put in an enormous plug for this tremendous book, Saint Michael in his world, written by my near and dear brother, the incredible Mike Aqualina, you can find it on sector publishers.org, the link has been provided, but I'm going to leave you with a cliffhanger that you're going to have to stick around the other side of the break.

36:56If you all might be a little bit surprised or shocked, you got Saint Michael in the Quran as well. You've got it there as well. So we're going to ask when we return from the other side of the break is Saint Michael really there in the Quran, who is Michael in Islam? And, you know, how is that different from the Michael that can be encounter in the book of Daniel, in the book of Jude and in St. John's Apocalypse, because you have an image in Christianity of Saint Michael as that great warrior again, Satan. What imagery do we have of them in the Quran? Audits, you're going to have to stick around, we'll be back in just a moment.

38:15And we are back and we've been having a tremendous time talking with the incredible Mike Aqualina's brand new book, Saint Michael in his world. Now, I left y'all with a little bit of a cliffhanger. Maybe you'll be surprised, maybe you won't, I bet you will be Saint Michael in the Quran. What's going on there? And he is just once, you know, and it's a quick hit, he's name checked in the Quran. We have to keep in mind that by that that Muhammad was was living in the seventh century of AD, the seventh century of the Christian era. And so Christianity was already well established throughout the Middle East and throughout Europe. And the Jews were present too. And so there were there were already patterns of devotion to Saint Michael everywhere.

39:16Just as there were patterns of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary everywhere in the Christian world. And these are the things that that Muhammad encountered as he was conquering those areas during the era of invasions. And often what we find is that the texts accommodate the Christian religious base or the Jewish religious base by acknowledging the things that were important to these people. So, you know, as as many people point out, the Blessed Virgin Mary appears in the Quran, the name of Jesus appears in the Quran, and the name of Saint Michael appears there. Whoever is an enemy to God and his angels and his messengers and Gabriel and Michael, then truly God is an enemy to those unbelievers. Right. Michael is just mentioned in this list of the important figures, but they're very important figures. There's there's there's there's Jesus the the Blessed Virgin Mary and Michael and Gabriel.

40:18Right. So they're seen as these two officers in heaven, so to speak, serving God. What's interesting is that in in later Muslim tradition, Michael is often mentioned, but he's never presented the way you see him in the Old Testament and the New Testament. He's never presented as a military figure as a warrior as a martial figure. You don't see him with the sword. You don't see him with the spear. Michael is presented always as an angel of mercy and provision. Michael is the one who distributes God's gifts, his his his provision on earth. So Michael is the one who brings the reins for the farmers. Michael is the one who ensures a good crop, a good harvest and so on. All of these material gifts are are brought by Michael, but you don't see him in the same way he appears in the Old Testament and the New you don't see him as a warrior.

41:19So that's been clearly edited out, which is unfortunate. It really is unfortunate. Yeah, you got to get the the full picture of the Saint Michael and go do the the Catholic Bible and Catholic early church fathers definitely for that and even early Judaism apparently as well. Yes, yes, yeah, the you know what I mentioned earlier that what especially impresses me is is the the devotion of the Christians in Egypt and the ancient church and because they've known persecution so often they knew persecution under the Romans and and today they know persecution. It's been you know century after century, you know, they're they're persevering amid the greatest challenges many many Egyptian Christians have died for the faith into our own time and and you see this and they really do have that strong devotion to Saint Michael. They see him the way he is shown to be in the book of Daniel the letter of St. Jude and the book of Revelation, they see him as as the protector of the martyrs, they see him as the one who strengthens Christians who are being persecuted and and that's why they celebrate him in those 12 feasts every year.

42:41And when Christianity was still illegal under the Romans, the Egyptians would build these churches and they would build monasteries and and often they would name them for Michael and what's curious about the Egyptian Christians is is that they were different from the Europeans in so many ways the the Romans and those who lived in the Roman orbit were very reluctant to take a pagan temple or a church. They didn't like to do that they'd rather like knock it down make it into something else now but don't use it for a Christian church why is that well because they feared a kind of lingering infestation of the demons who had been worshiped there right they didn't want that they didn't want that and they thought it was unworthy of God the site was considered unclean. The Egyptians did not have that scrupule what they would do is they would take the shrine or take the temple and they would name it for Saint Michael because they obviously believe that his name was exorcism enough his name sent the demon screaming you know they just has them like running from the place for a moment for Saint Michael and then it's in it's a good place right for the Christians.

44:03Yeah I love that I love that there great intercessor great great great and holy saint to call upon. You and I wrote this down this was great this is great you have kind of I guess you kind of call it a darkly funny story from the reformation you know what I've referred you to where where yeah how about how about you tell the audience the story your way but you know how you're like to get a better than that. Let them know it's kind of like a darkly funny story go go ahead brother. Well yeah you know Michael went into eclipse at the time of the reformation in many places because because what happened was that after afterwards you had to follow the religion of your local prints and if your local prints was was Protestant suddenly you had so much of what had been traditional Christian devotion taken away from you. Devotion to the saints devotion to the holy angels you know Protestantism sees those as a threat to devotion to God as a distraction from devotion to God we don't see it that way you know we see them as part of God's glory we see them as part of God's God's creation we don't worship them the way we worship God but we we do see them as gifts from God and we're grateful for their their ministry.

45:26So often when churches were sacked by by Protestant mobs they would take out the images of the saints and the angels and the artist or an emulmala has this great account in one of his books about about a mob that took a church in France and they they knocked down all of the artworks and they crushed them they shattered them and they took down a statue of Saint Michael and they you know they hammered it to bits and for what you know they were going to do. So it's kind of yeah darkly funny emulmala said calls it calls it demonic you know literally demonic but but you know that kind of eclipse of devotion to Saint Michael began in the reformation and continued afterward because after that we get into the period of the enlightenment which is dominated by rationalism and by empiricism what you see is the way you see it. And by empiricism what you see is what you get well the the work of the angels is never seen with the eyes of our bodies you know the only times it's seen is by those visions where you know the veil is torn and Daniel sees and john sees and and her last sees what things are really like so you have another period then where Michael's in eclipse and suddenly in 1886 things changed.

46:52Hopefully the 13th published three prayers that year all of them to Saint Michael and there's a short one a medium sized one and a long one right and the short one he required to be said at the end of every mass every lower in the world you know by the church so so that continued being said at the end of every low mass until you know then in the 1960s and he also revised the right of exorcism so that it would emphasize more the role of Saint Michael in every exorcism so he was saying something there you know and there there are all kinds of accounts of what might have been behind that there's one story that says that Leo had a vision of the century to come which which would be the 20th century now passed and he saw all of the e evels that would be fall that the world in that century you know the two world wars and and all the slaughter that would take place the Holocaust you know the dropping of the atomic bombs all of these things that would be horrors visited upon people during that time and he saw them as as works of the enemy as works of the devil and so he wanted to teach the church to invoke Saint Michael to invoke Saint Michael so we did at every mass and it's interesting when when the the the

48:21rights of the mass were revised at the 1960s it was no longer required to say that prayer but then it came time to the time of Pope Saint John Paul II and he said something important he said just because it's not required doesn't mean you can't say it right to do it voluntarily and he encouraged people to begin again reciting the prayer to Saint Michael and it and people started doing it and it really did get it. And so we had a lot of people gathered together steam so that that idea was emphasized again by Pope Benedict and then Pope Francis took it to another level and ask people to start doing it again to invoke Saint Michael the Archangel when he did that my local Bishop ask the pastors in the diocese to begin doing this and we do it now in my parish at the end of every mass over here too. We're here as well and we've got a few seconds left before we're off probably about a minute I want to give you a chance Mike to plug in anything you want we got about a minute a little bit less than a minute anything you want to plug in my friend I want to tell you it's been an incredible pleasure as it always is having you on brother you're near and dear friend your work is incredibly influential and incredible plug in whatever you'd like to plug in right now my friend.

49:39If I have one message it's this God has revealed Saint Michael to us in the pages of Sacred Scripture this is extraordinary and he did it for a reason he wants us to know Michael's place in his creation and Michael is there to serve our cause he's there to be the guardian and guide of God's people on earth and that means us he's there to help us to prevail against evil he's there to fight beside us in spiritual combat. This is a tremendous gift that we have received and we shouldn't neglect it that's why the church gives us this devotion to Michael let's do it. 1000% brother Mike what a great time we had I look forward to having you back on again and we definitely will bring you back on again God bless you my friend thank you for your time thanks so much for.

50:39you you