"Quis ut Deus"

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JMJ

Feast of St. Michael the Archangel

God did not create the devils; in the beginning He created angels, spirits possessed of reason and free will, but "a third of [these]" instantly turned themselves into devils in following the revolt of Lucifer – who became Satan – against God, claiming: I will be like the most High (Is. 14.14). But what is to be like God? It is to seat as the Supreme Judge deciding what is good and what is evil (cf., Gen. 3.5).

Before admitting the angels to the Beatific Vision, God, before Creation, placed them under probation, just as later He subjected mankind to a trial of obedience in the persons of Adam and Eve. The nature of the trial is not known with certainty. However, Sacred Scriptures reveals this circumstance which was taken by the learned and saintly doctors of the Church to be the point which Lucifer stumbled over: When He bringeth in the First Begotten into the world, He saith: And let all the angels of God adore Him (Heb. 1.6). That is, Lucifer, perhaps the most glorious and exalted princes of the heavenly court, dazzled by the splendor of the great power and gifts God bestowed on him, revolted at the thought that human nature should be preferred to his own angelic nature or that he should bow down to such lowly a nature no matter how God should perfectly unite it to the divine through the hypostatic union (cf., also our post "The Papal Condemnation of the Freemasons and their Doctrines"). At the same instant another great Archangel, equal in beauty and grace to the proud Lucifer, prostrated himself before the throne of God. With an act of profound adoration, he opposed to the battle cry of the revolters (I will be like the Most High) his own battle cry of love and loyalty: Mi-cha-El – Quis ut Deus (Who is like unto God?).

And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world (Apoc. 12.7-9). This passage in the Apocalypse, though revealing what happened in heaven when God tested his angelic creatures, was rather a prophecy of a future event – the Apocalyptic battle in the Church, for heaven, where God reigns most perfectly,  in the prophetic sense used here refers to the Church founded and built by Christ (we recall here that after the Great Sign appeared in the Church at Fatima, cf., our post “The Great Sign in Heaven”, another sign – a great red dragon – also appeared  in heaven [the Church], cf., our post “TheYear that was 1929”). The circumstances of this Apocalyptic battle  were revealed to Pope Leo XIII in a vision, the summary and height of it is contained in the original version of the prayer to St. Michael the Roman Pontiff composed for the deliverance of the Church: the See of Peter in Rome would appear to be the seat of Satan (Apoc. 2.13) [cf., our post “A Perilous‘Catholic’ Voyage” and related posts: “The Great Tribulation”, “The UltimateDelusion of Vatican II ‘Catholicism’”, “Pope Benedict XVI’s ‘Motu Proprio’ onthe Traditional Latin Mass: ‘An act of toleration [of evil]’”, “Vatican II and ‘religiousliberty’”, and “Vatican II ‘spirit’ on homosexuality”] – the seeming eclipse of the Church of Rome ( “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, etc.,” cf., our post “Our Lady and the New Orientation in Rome inthe 1960s”), asserting and defending, not the rights of God, but of man (the cult of “the dignity of man” – the orientation given, but without formally binding the universal Church, by Pope John XXIII to the Second Vatican Council, cf., our post “The ‘Great Tribulation’”, and the same maintained up to this day! 

The visitations of Our Immaculate Mother at Fatima in Portugal preceded by the appearances of St. Michael and the present evil s that have consumed almost the whole of the institutional Church –  must convince us that we must turn, as Pope Leo XIII had already urged us long in advance, with deeper devotion to St. Michael the Archangel, who, as prefigured in the Old Testament, is “the Guardian Angel, Protector and Defender of the People of God”. We can choose no better leader fighting under the banner of Our Immaculate Mother in this Apocalyptic conquest of Satan than the powerful captain who led the faithful Angels to victory and to whom God has “entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude” (Pope Leo XIII in his “Prayer to Saint Michael”).