St. Michael
We hope you will have an interesting and fruitful visit in this holy place, born through the inscrutable will of Our Lord on the high peak of the rugged and suggestive Gargano and as if suspended between the sky and the sea, between the divine and the human.
by Br. Charles Madden, ofm conv.
All of us have seen statues or pictures of Saint Michael the Archangel, with drawn sword, treading triumphantly on the prostrate and chained form of Satan. Most of us have prayed many times the famous prayer to Saint Michael over the course of our lives. We know him today as the great champion and defender of the Church and as the one who cast Lucifer and the bad angels out of heaven when they rebelled against God.
These images of Saint Michael as the great champion and defender are well known to us and go back in history to the earliest days of the Church. In fact, in the Scriptures we find references to him as the conqueror of Satan; in the Book of Daniel chapters 10 and 12, in the Letter of Saint Jude v. 9, and the Book of Revelation 12:7. But there is another important facet of Saint Michael that has been obscured over time, at least in the West, namely, his role as Healer of the Sick.
The first image that might come to our minds connecting Saint Michael to the relief of the sick is the incident in Rome when Saint Michael was seen standing atop a mausoleum sheathing his sword signifying the end of the great plague afflicting that city in the year 590. Pope Pelagius II had died in the midst of that plague earlier that year and his successor, Pope Gregory the Great, as one of his first acts as pope had organized a penitential procession begging God for an end to the plague. As the procession was crossing over the Tiber River, it was then that the participants experienced the famous vision of Saint Michael sheathing his sword.
The history of Saint Michael as intercessor for the sick extends backwards to the earliest days of the Church. In the Eastern Church as early as the first century, he was invoked as a healer of the sick. It was in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) that he was first venerated by the early Christians. Saint Michael caused medicinal springs to burst forth from the ground in that region, at Chairotopa and at a more famous place near present day Khonas. The sick would come to bathe in these miraculous springs begging Saint Michael for a cure. Near Khonas, at what was known then as the rock of Colossae, the pagans in the area on one occasion tried to destroy the sanctuary of Saint Michael by directing a stream toward it. Saint Michael split the rock with lightning, creating a new bed for the stream to flow away from the sanctuary. This occurred in the middle of the first century.
Another famous sanctuary where the sick came in large numbers to pray to Saint Michael was the Michaelion about fifty miles away from Constantinople, where tradition says that Saint Michael appeared to Emperor Constantine the Great. Egyptian Christians also in the early Church had a great veneration for Saint Michael. They placed the Nile River, which was so vital to the well being of their country, under his protection. His feast day is celebrated on several different dates throughout that part of the world, but most commonly it is celebrated on November 8th. Saint Michael is also invoked as patron of mariners, policemen, grocers and paratroopers.
Saint Michael help of the sick and protector of the Church,
pray for us!
thanks
Call it what it is, Father Stanzione - it's the Catholic Church's failure, in the last 50 years, to sufficiently educate and disciple it's members in this area. Stop passing the buck.
(actually, I beleive in angels -- and I think they have a sense of humor. Mine does, I'll tell you that!)
Although, I sometimes think my guardian angel goes off on vacation or gets distracted.