“In the presence of the angels I will praise Thee…”

Popular conceptions of angels are usually misguided or badly distorted. The biblical and traditional understanding of the angels is far more serious, fascinating, and edifying.

Left: Icon of Archangel Gabriel (1885), by Mikhail Vrubel; middle: "The Archangel Michael defeating Satan" (1635) by Guido Reni; right: The Archangel Raphael (1842) by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (Image: WikiArt.org)

Popular culture reflects the true nature of angels as faithfully as a funhouse mirror. It shows glorious incorporeal spirits in fanciful shapes, from pudgy winged babies to ethereal Nature goddesses and turns these false images into almost every kind of artifact known to man. Mass media adds more distortions: human souls can earn their wings to become angels and dissatisfied angels can become human. Angels in film and fiction may serve probations on Earth, require human teammates to perform good deeds, collaborate with their demon counterparts to save the world, form homosexual attachments, or even pretend to be God.

None of the above fit angels in the Bible. Their name (Latin angelus from the Greek angelos) means “messenger” because they carry messages and execute commands for God. Collectively, they are the heavenly court, eternally praising their Creator in music, song, and prayer. By nature, they’re pure spirits endowed with intellect and will who belong to a separate order of creation.

But they can take physical form to accomplish their missions. For instance, the Easter angels seen at Our Lord’s tomb and at his Ascension appeared as young men in dazzling white garments. The Gospels don’t mention wings or give other details. We assume that their faces, like those of the three angels who visited Abraham, the two who rescued Lot, and Raphael who traveled with young Tobit, matched the looks of the people around them. That assumption justifies adapting angels’ likeness to suit every human culture.

Scripture also has room for marvelous angels who wouldn’t be mistaken for mortals: the six-winged forms of stormy cherubim and fiery seraphim supporting and surrounding God’s presence: Ezekiel’s rushing tetramorphs and many-eyed wheels, the splendid horseman in golden armor trampling a Gentile intruder in the Temple, and the mighty angel of Revelation “with legs like pillars of fire.”

The Church Fathers used Biblical data to develop a specifically Christian angelology. They taught that angels are our fellow creatures who help and protect us. They are never to be worshipped. Angels aren’t gods; Jesus Christ True God and True Man isn’t an angel. God alone made the universe out of nothing. Angels are his servants, not his co-creators. Some angels–traditionally one-third of the heavenly host— freely and irrevocably chose to rebel at the beginning of time. They were cast out of heaven to become demons. Since then, good and evil spirits wage cosmic war as guardians and tempters of individuals as well as communities until God’s triumph at the consummation of the world. Monastic records made this combat vivid for holy monks’ lives were often punctuated by diabolical temptations and angelic favors.

A Syrian monk known as Pseudo Dionysus the Areopagite (ca. 600) grouped angels in nine choirs arranged from greatest to least in three triads: (1) seraphim, cherubim, and thrones; (2) dominions, virtues, and powers; (3) principalities, archangels, and angels. As proposed in his Celestial Hierarchies, this system became the standard model. Although he scrambles the middle ranks, St. Gregory the Great names them all in a sermon read in the Divine Office for the Feast of the Archangels (29 September). Various choirs are also invoked in Mass prefaces for both the Extraordinary Form and the Novus Ordo.

Building on the Patristic consensus, medieval theologians explored some question in more detail as they responded to challenges raised by newly available Aristotelean philosophy and dualist heresies. They concluded that as created beings, angels were immortal but not eternal. They might be able to shape pre-existing matter “as a potter does clay” but not bring it into existence. All angels were originally good but fell through the sin of pride. Demons could never be redeemed but humans could eventually occupy their vacated seats in heaven. Despite differences in the quality and quantity of their knowledge, both mankind and angelkind are wholly dependent on grace to experience God.

Angels are individual but how do they differ one from another? Aquinas said that every angel is its own species because there’s no matter in their natures to differentiate them. Dun Scotus on the contrary proposed that a quality he called haecity, “thusness” differentiated angels. Even if they were immaterial, Bonaventure speculated that angels were not just pure form because they still possessed some subtle, ethereal corporeality. On this issue Aquinas prevailed.

Angels can occupy the tiniest space, even a pin head, but not an abstract mathematical point. They can move from place to place instantly without passing through intervening space: “an angel is where he works.” They can transport living humans as well as human souls. Being immaterial, they can’t learn by sense impressions but don’t need to because God infused them at creation with all the knowledge they’ll ever need. Angels are guardians of chastity because they’re asexual. (Succubae and incubi operate with stolen human gametes.)

In theory, pure spirits shouldn’t feel emotions. Artists ignored the theory. They presented angels who do more than express sober joy. For instance, smiling angels adorn Reims Cathedral (13th C.); Giotto’s weeping angels tumble like stricken sparrows in a Crucifixion fresco (14th C.); and Botticelli’s angels dance above the stable at Bethlehem (15th C.).

Christians expected—and still expect—angels to interact with them just as they had in the Bible. Angels inhabit visions of the afterlife, deliver messages, administer tests, give comfort, or work miracles through God’s power. Their true identity often goes unrecognized until after they have disappeared, but angels can show themselves undisguised in dreams and apparitions. Many saints could see their guardian angels. (St. Birgitta of Sweden received dictation from hers that entered her Order’s liturgy.) Because Satan can pass himself off as “an angel of light,” angelic encounters required very careful discernment. St. Joan of Arc’s judges tried to show that her messages from St. Michael came from a demon. She didn’t take the bait. When asked what the archangel looked like, she sweetly replied: “That would be good to know,” and said no more.

Medieval people of all classes ought the intercession of angels, especially their own guardian angels, in private prayer. Hours of the Guardian Angels sometimes appeared in Books of Hours for the elite. In honor of the angels. People made pilgrimages to apparition sites, joined guilds, held festivals, prepared ritual foods, and lit bonfires. Churches and other religious institutions were dedicated to angels, especially on hilltops and promontories overlooking the sea. On earth, races, nations, cities, and religious communities had their special patron angels; in the heavens, angels moved the sun, moon, and planets within Ptolemy’s crystal spheres.

Angelic intervention was crucial in the hour of death. Ars Moriendi (The Art of Dying) guides pictured the guardian angel repelling a devil’s final assault. This association has left ancient prayers embedded in Roman Rite funeral liturgies: Subvenite (“meet him ye angels of the Lord, receiving his soul, offering it in the sight of the Most High,” and Suscipiat (“may the angels conduct thee into Abraham’s bosom”). In paradisum (“May the holy angels lead thee into paradise) accompanies the coffin as it leaves the church. Angels bestow crowns of glory when souls enter heaven and will clothe resurrected bodies in white garments so that together all may celebrate “the eternal chorus that angels sing with men.”

Christian art strives to make the invisible visible. Angel pose a special challenge because Biblical descriptions are so sparse. No consistent iconography for the nine choirs emerged but a mosaic inside the dome of the Florence Baptistry colorfully differentiates each rank. (13th C.) In Scripture, only cherubim and seraphim have wings—three pairs of them. In the East those angels still keep that ancient form. But in the West, medieval artists trimmed them down to bodiless winged children’s heads, red for seraphim, blue for cherubim. During the Renaissance, the latter turned into putti, naked baby boys symbolizing innocence, which remain the usual concept of cherubs to this day.

Other angels appeared on earth as young men so they didn’t initially have wings in Early Christian art. But they began acquiring them by the fourth century. A mosaic of the Annunciation in Santa Maria Maggiore (ca. 450) shows a winged angel but the original under-drawing was wingless. Scholars debate how much pagan images of supernatural beings influenced the change. But once Christian angels got their wings, they got splendid ones, often featuring peacock eyes. There are, of course, exceptions: a late medieval Annunciation gives Gabriel falcon wings and Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel angels are wingless. Vivid colors faded after the Renaissance, leaving angelic wings mostly plain white.

When Biblical angels take the form of youths—maidens being culturally unfeasible—it’s meant to signal their asexual nature. Traditionally, angels should look androgynous. For example, an exquisite Russian icon fragment known as The Angel with Golden Hair (15th C.) would never be mistaken for a mortal male. Unfortunately, angelic imagery has been sliding away from this ideal, turning effeminate and even overtly feminine in recent times, especially since the late twentieth century angel craze.

The features, coloring, and clothing of angels in art evolved to suit the cultures that produced them. Angels can be dark or fair, blond or brunet. They can wear white Roman tunics or gold brocade vestments or fluttery many-layered robes. Although golden ringlets and pale complexions have dominated Western iconography since Pope Gregory the Great called captive Angles “angeli,” these aren’t universal characteristics. Olive-skinned Byzantine archangels acquired the gear and insignia of eunuch court officials. Ethiopian angels with afro hairdos look like local noblemen in brightly patterned trousers and voluminous cloaks. The angels of colonial Peru are costumed like Baroque gentlemen in petticoat breeches and have startling auburn hair like the children of Incas and conquistadors. Inculturation still continues all over the world. For instance, Japanese-American artist Daniel Mitsui’s marvelous samurai angels are inspired by traditional woodblock prints.

In 1625, Cardinal Federico Borromeo summarized the proper Catholic iconography of angels after Trent in his treatise De pictura sacra: “Angels are endowed with wings to denote speed; with a garment for decorum; with a human appearance, because there is no other more perfect; their figure is youthful to denote strength and vigor, which no senile decline can threaten.”

This isn’t the place to explore how the imagery of fallen angels developed, from scrawny little black figures to loathsome hybrid monsters to humanoids with goat horns, bat wings, and barbed tails. But it’s worth describing the earliest surviving likeness of Satan when he still had angelic traits. A mosaic from Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (6th C) shows Christ sitting in judgment flanked by two angels. The vigorous one on his right, with the sheep, glows fiery red; the effete one on his left, with the goats, shimmers pallid blue.

Having surveyed who angels are, what they do, and how they look, let’s examine individual angels. The only angels named in canonical Scripture and the only ones that the Church recognizes are the three archangels: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. They bear the honorary title “saints” even though they aren’t human and obviously haven’t been canonized. Note that they belong to the eighth choir yet played major roles in salvation history. The Lord likes to invert hierarchies.

The Bible mentions St. Michael (“who is like God?”) four times. In Daniel he is the “great Prince” and patron of the Jewish people. The Epistle of Jude refers to an obscure dispute between him and Satan over the body of Moses. He commands the celestial armies to cast Satan the ancient dragon out of heaven (in Revelation. Some have suggested that St. Michael was the unnamed angel who stayed Abraham’s hand to prevent the sacrifice of Isaac and who annihilated the Assyrian army to save Jerusalem (2Kg 19:35). St. Michael also appears in the influential–though apocrypha–books of Enoch, The Assumption of Moses, and The Ascension of Isaiah as the captain of the heavenly host as as the recording angel. Some have suggested that St. Michael is also the angel who stayed Abraham’s hand to prevent the sacrifice of Isaac and who annihilated an Assyrian army to save Jerusalem. Finally, according to legend, it’s St. Michael who warns the Blessed Virgin of her impending death and thus, he became the guide of departing souls. The Offertory of the Requiem Mass formerly begged God to “bid holy Michael, thy standard-bearer to bring them into the holy light.”

In the East, the first sites honoring to St. Michael were healing hot springs. In the West, his great shrines were at his apparition spots: Mt. Gargano, Italy (530), Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome (590), and Mont-Saint-Michel in Brittany (8th C). All drew pilgrims. In England, more churches were dedicated to Michael during the Middle Ages than to any other saint except Our Lady. Medieval France had a chivalric Order of St. Michael and Portugal a military one (also known as the Order of the Wing). His feast day, still called Michaelmas in England, marks the beginning of court sessions and school terms.

In Western art, St. Michael is commonly shown battling the Devil, wearing late Roman or medieval armor. Sometimes he weighs souls at the Last Judgment, either in armor or wearing an elaborate cope and a deacon’s sash. Eastern Christendom sees St. Michael more as a healer, protector and intercessor than a warrior. It’s customary for, Sts. Michael and Gabriel, richly garbed as imperial officials, to flank the Deesis Group of God’s Mother, Christ, and the Baptist on the iconostasis screen in Byzantine churches. Like his fellow archangels, St. Michael also appears alone on icons or joins an angelic company for common prayer.

As the great opponent of Satan, St. Michael is widely invoked against demons and demonic possession. For Catholics, he’s the official patron of soldiers, security forces, bankers, radiologists and radiology, the sick, and the dying. He watches over the city of Brussels, England, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands. The prayer that begins “St. Michael the Archangel defend us in battle….” used to be required after Mass but is lately returning as a popular devotion.

St. Gabriel (“God is strong”) has been called “the messenger of Divine Comfort.” In the Bible, he interprets visions for Daniel and announces the coming births of St. John the Baptist and Jesus. He’s also credited with destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, wrestling with Jacob, protecting the Three Young Men in the Fiery Furnace, causing the disgrace of Queen Esther’s predecessor, announcing the future births of Samson and the Virgin Mary, proclaiming Christ’s Nativity to the shepherds, and comforting Jesus in Gethsemane.

In art, Gabriel’s emblems include the lily, the olive branch, and the herald’s baton. Western artists usual dress him in flowing pseudo-classical robes or occasionally in lavish brocade vestments. He’s the official patron of radio, television, telecommunications, military signal corps, postal service, stamp collectors, and the diplomats of Spain and Argentina.

St. Raphael (“God heals”) is featured in the Book of Tobit. Taking the form of a man called Azarias, he accompanies young Tobias on a journey where he protects his charge, expels a demon to save a marriage, collects a debt, and afterwards restores the elder Tobit’s sight. Then he reveals himself as one of the seven angels who stand before the Divine throne and disappears. He’s also identified with the anonymous angel who healed Jacob of his wrestling injury and stirred the waters of the Pool of Bethsaida to heal the sick.

St. Raphael is usually depicted in the pilgrim garb he wears in Tobit, sometimes carrying a fish or a pot of ointment. Milton calls him the “sociable archangel” and has him instruct the newly created Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost. St. Raphael is officially the patron of travelers, young people leaving home, pharmacists, health inspectors, the blind, and victims of eye diseases.

Together, these three archangels are assumed to be the “men” who appear to Abram at Mambre. After enjoying his hospitality, they predict the birth of his heir Isaac. In Byzantine iconography, their visit is entitled the Old Testament Trinity, and is considered a prefiguration of the Triune God. Andre Rubelev’s marvelous rendering is one of Russia’s greatest holy images.

Although 29 September originally celebrated the dedication of a basilica to St. Michael near Rome in the sixth century, it’s now the feast of all three archangels Therefore, let’s honor them with lines from a tenth century prayer:

. . . O Michael, Prince of heaven,
And Gabriel, by whom the word was given,
And Raphael, born in the house of Life,
Bring us among the folk of Paradise.


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About Sandra Miesel 30 Articles
Sandra Miesel is an American medievalist and writer. She is the author of hundreds of articles on history and art, among other subjects, and has written several books, including The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code, which she co-authored with Carl E. Olson, and is co-editor with Paul E. Kerry of Light Beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien's Work (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011).

30 Comments

  1. Of the nine choirs of angels, St. Bonaventura writes:

    “God in the Seraphim loves as Charity, in the Cherubim He knows as Truth, in the Thrones He is seated as Equity, in the Dominations He dominates as Majesty, in the Principalities He rules as the First Principle, in the Powers He watches over us as Salvation, in the Virtues He operates as Virtue, in the Archangels He reveals as Light, in the Angels He aids as Piety” (from St. Bernard of Clairvaux to Pope Eugenius III, in Bonaventura, “The Mind’s Road to God”).

    • St. Bonaventure made important contributions to the theology of angels. He’s cited at length in ANGELS AND ANGELOLOGY IN THE MIDDLE AGES by Peter Keck, which was one of the references I used.

      • Wonderful article: reads like a conflated plan for an illustrated book… Should it be the case, we shall be all the more spoilt!!

  2. “Collectively, they are the heavenly court, eternally praising their Creator in music, song, and prayer”

    I entered the splendid hall; it’s beauty beyond recall
    I heard the sound, sung by Seraphim
    It moved my heart it held my will
    All was joy all was still, but the sound of the Seraphim
    Alas my heart could not stay
    The sound became a choir of the day
    A dissembled sound a dissembled way
    A dissembled heart, a dissembled day

    When I was a young man while walking through the busy City centre of Leeds, I purchased a newspaper and commenced to read it. While being absorbed in its content I stepped off the pavement at City Square without looking a hand from behind whipped me back onto the pavement while the large front wheel of a rapidly moving double-decker bus missed me by inches. Stunned I turned to encounter a smiling bright eyed ‘serene’ middle-aged gentle pale faced man, we never spoke, but to this day I consider that I met my Guardian Angel as doubtlessly I would have perished that day.

    Ooh! the joy of it all as I thank (Praise) the Lord’

    kevin your brother
    In Christ

    • It is an excellent article. It is not in the scriptures but somebody have written about Uriel. It is supposed that he would appear in the fourth Esdras’s book that we the Catholics do not admit.

      • Back in 745, a Lateran Synod forbade the veneration of any other angels by name except Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. This wasn’t consistently enforced so a few mentions and images of Uriel still appeared.(Milton puts him n PARADISE LOST.) His presence in non-canonical books only puts him behind the pale for Catholics. But Episcopalians and Ethiopian Copts still count him in. I hope to address Uriel et al in a future essay.

        • Thanks for her reply Mss. Miesel i knew the name of Uriel in a very strange place. And after they were the guards of the Philip José Farmer novel The lovers. I Heard a part of This that Uriel was the ángel Who avoided the men could enter in the Eden’s garden again. I have The Lost Paradaise by Milton in my list of books for reading.

        • It is my understanding that naming is associated with authority. That parents name their children by the right of their parental authority. God’s name HaShem is “the name.” Abram/Abraham, Sarai/Sara, Jacob/Israel, and Simon/Peter had their names changed by God. Trying to name an angel could imply an assertion of authority. Demonologist Adam Blai says that the normal function of an angel is to deliver a message, not to form a relationship with us. Demons can use forming a relationship in order to gain rights over us.

      • Michael I assume that this comment is directed at me “Was that around 1987?
        No, it was around 1964

        kevin your brother
        In Christ

        • Kevin, I was only in Leeds on Saturdays, and only in the eighties.
          By ‘ek ’tis a small world.
          God bless ye’

          • Thank you Michael for your friendly comment with Yorkshire content, for those who do not know ‘Yorkshire is more than just an accent and dialect and there isn’t really such a thing as “Yorkshire Slang”, it’s historical roots go back to the Viking Invasion of Britain and is the basis for quite a lot of Modern English’

            ‘Ear all, see all, say nowt. Eat all, sup all, pay nowt. And if ever thou does owt fer nowt – allus do it fer thissen

            Translation ‘Hear all, see all, say nothing. Eat all, drink all, pay nothing. And if you ever do anything for nothing—always do it for yourself.”
            It doesn’t reflect too kindly, on Yorkshire folk, does it?

            Well! “There’s nowt s’queer as folk.” – People are truly, properly weird.

            God bless ye’ also

            kevin your brother
            In Christ

  3. It would have been appropriate to include in the article the additional devotions or prayers for intercession beyond the last one included in the article. I would suggest the morning angel prayer: Angel of God, My Guardian Dear, etc., and the Prayer to St Michael the Arch Angel. Such prayers I think are important part of traditional Catholoic devotions. Historical information is nice, but a litle more attention to angel prayers would have been a nice addition to the end of the article. Maybe a followon article on are Guardian Angel.

  4. Sandra Miesel touches on the significant ramifications regarding the nature of angels, Aquinas calling them species, which was as she says largely accepted by scholars. Species however understood in context of man, physical body spiritual soul differs. Is there then a difference since species unless formed in matter is a principle of a type, a universal. What then of angels, are they an amorphous reality with no feature of individualization? Aquinas explains that in ST 1a 50 1 Ad 1, “angels, compared to God, are material and corporeal, not, however, as if anything corporeal existed in them”. They are called substances willed by God, meaning definitive beings separate from God and one another, though not confined to the limitations of a corporeal body measurable by spatial dimension. Aquinas uses the analogy ‘compared to God they are material and corporeal’ is actually a reference to their individuality as a spiritual species, which is why Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael have individual names. And all angels consequently endowed with individual wills. For example, if we examine the question of culpability the angels were not collectively guilty of the sin of Lucifer. Only those angels that were in fealty to Lucifer and enjoined his rebellion. Although Man, a species individualized by the act of form on matter were indeed collectively condemned for the sin of Adam. Why? Again the issue is species. While the species angel was necessarily created individually by God [since angels cannot reproduce their species], Man was not. Adam’s sin in context of justice meant we all sinned since we are the progeny of the man Adam who destroyed his filial relationship with God the Father. Adam thus the father of a sinful progeny. Only a man could satisfy justice and restore that filial relationship. Satisfied by the passion and resurrection of the Man who is also God Jesus of Nazareth.

    • Gosh, Father Peter. Original sin applies to man because of Adam’s corporeality. The Angles are directly created by God individually and therefore would not have that problem. Only one issue for me to resolve with your help… My catechism taught me that it is “chiefly in my soul” that I am likened to God. My Soul WAS individually created by God, surely, whilst my body was generated by the seed of Adam? Or am I off-track?? Was both my body and soul generated by the seed of Adam??

      • True Mike. The soul could only have been created in you and all of us by God. Although for Man that occurs in coordination with the human physical transmission of life [which is why the entire process of transmission from attraction, the conjugal act, conception, human life in the womb is sacred]. Man is a complete unity of body and soul, not a soul existing in a body. That’s the key. The transmission of the effect then of original sin is due to that filial, unitive body and soul relation to our human father. Now related to your question is the effect of Original Sin. Originally thought by some, Augustine and Aquinas that the unbaptized were condemned to Hell. However in 1201 Pope Innocent III in a letter to the Archbishop of Arles instructed [papal instructions are Magisterial teaching] that only those who commit serious sin and refuse to repent, and those who refuse baptism are condemned. Persons who are not baptized and who haven’t committed serious sin, particularly infants are withheld the Beatific Vision. So although we suffer concupiscence because of Adam’s serious sin as his progeny, we do not inherit that serious sin. Therefore the Church has since held that the unbaptized deceased free of mortal sin are in a state of Limbo, limbo meaning indeterminate. The Catholic Catechism 1261 endorses the assumption that unbaptized free of mortal [serious] sin although withheld the Vision of God are subject to God’s mercy. I’m reminded in this of Christ’s words, in my Father’s house there are many mansions [dwellings]. If you have further question Mike don’t hesitate to ask.

        • Fr Peter, that helped me and to understand Why Limbo…Many thanks. Despite considering myself an informed Catholic, I had inherited a tacit Descartian body-soul dualism from the 1975 penny catechism i learned as a teen. Who made you? God made me… Reading you I was reminded of the beautiful words first coined of my “human hero” PPBXVI that “man is co-creator”. Every parent can relate to that and find in it faith and mission. Your reference (to the Acquinas Catechism, I believe) is a reminder of a need for the Church to regain that 13th to 16th century wisdom that seems to have gathered a layer of dust by the 19th century rather like the middle stage in a marriage where partners are taking each other for granted.

          • Fr Peter, a further dualistic trouble I think we all have is the fact that at death the soul clearly does leave the body. I recall a homily which explained heaven as our soul-bodies floating around the sun like photons. But each photon would be a microscopic resurrected body-soul. Being able to picture heaven for the first time ever made that image stick. It also reminded me of the arrival and departure of Our Lady at Fatima, and the description of the Angel of Portugal. My question is does this image I have retained equate with Church Teaching (pre-1958, and pray God, post-Bergoglio)?

          • Mike in response to your image of floating protons there isn’t a specific doctrine on what we ‘experience’. Except we know as spiritual bodies we retain our natures, specificity as men or women, and personalities. We will be discernible, a spiritual presence, not floating in an ethereal space. And clearly understood as human. Awaiting for the resurrection of the body, that separated nonetheless inherent dimension of our existence.

  5. JMJ. Traditionally we receive an Angel with the Sacraments of Matrimony & Holy Orders. I would like to learn more about these Angels & devotion to them. Name a book etc.

  6. It is of no irrelevance that PPBXVI consecrated the statue to St Michel he had ordred to defend and protect the Vatican Gardens whilst technically Emeritus of the Active side to the Papal Ministry. As holder of the Munus [Acosta, E.2021. Benedict XVI: Pope “Emeritus”?] Pope Benendict ordered a protection for the Vatican Gardens he would inhabit prior to his departure from the Active side of the Petrine Ministry. This links PPBXVI very closely to Pope Leon XIII who published the prayer to St Michel and who also published the Alta Vendita which predicted the advent of the Sankt Gallen Mafia Pope Bergoglio [Taylor Marshall, 2019: Infiltration] who would embody the Freemasonic goals to destroy Catholicism.

  7. Jean Danielou (SJ, VCII peritus, student of Lubac) authored a book called The Angels and Their Mission: According to the Fathers of the Church. Any comments if you’ve read it?

  8. From the Article ”St. Gabriel (“God is strong”) has been called “the messenger of Divine Comfort.” In the Bible, he interprets visions for Daniel”

    Oddly, Daniel the prophet is not listed in the current Roman Martyr ology. All of the other prophets are, while he has been included in previous editions, I wonder why this is so.

    kevin your brother
    In Christ

  9. From the Article “Monastic records made this combat vivid for holy monks’ lives were often punctuated by diabolical temptations and angelic favors

    Many years ago, monastic scene far more than a dream, a line of hooded monks stood at each cloistered cell door in darkened moonlit corridor. Satan’s hand at the shoulder of a hooded agent he commands. Down the line knife in hand the agent acts on the heart of the ones chosen on each individual command, now turning with distorted face of wanton anger and rage “As for you” his agent knew what to do. Flash of knife with foot I tripped him in his forward flight stumbling his knife appeared to entered on the right a cyst/polyp now resides at the base of that place. A holy monk most certainly I am not but this encounter I have not forgot.

    kevin your brother
    In Christ

  10. I pray every morning and every evening to Archangel Michael. I pray to him every time I attend Mass. His intercession and protection should be sought now more than ever.

  11. I can recall at least two incidents in my life, including one that would have been life or death, which seemed inexplicable. In one, pedestrians close to me gasped. I would not have survived. In another two men appeared from nowhere, and once done, were gone without giving me time to thank them.

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