The Annunciation and the Consecration of Russia and Ukraine

The world is changing, and not for the better. The Annunciation proclaims an eternal truth: “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8)

Forty years ago, at my priesthood ordination on June 5, 1982, I received a number of gifts from a multitude of friends who had entered my life at various points along its path. Not a single one of them is a part of my life today. Many have left this life, almost all in God’s friendship but some also at various stages of doubt. It is not easy to keep the company of a friend you constantly doubt, but in the case of God we should just be thankful that it was never mutual.

One of the gifts I received on that day was from one of the greatest of my lifelong friends, Fr. Tony Nuccio, CSS. A priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmata, he served Holy Family Parish in Lynn, Massachusetts, a rather rugged industrial city on the North Shore of Boston. I was a 17-year-old lost, faithless, fatherless teen, a condition which had not yet become so common, when Father Tony arrived to rescue me from the path of the Prodigal Son.

Father Tony filled in some very empty space in my life. He was present fourteen years later for my priesthood ordination. Tony died a year later from complications after a heart transplant. I have missed him ever since, but thanks to him that empty space in my life remained filled. I thank him, and thank God for him, at every Mass I have offered ever since.

The ordination gift that Father Tony gave me was very special. It was a wood panel reproduction of The Annunciation, a famous painting by the 15th Century Italian artist and Dominican friar, Fra Angelico. Father Tony brought it back from Rome and it was one of my great treasures, gracing the wall of every place I have lived since — except the place where I live now.

The scene depicted in the Annunciation, which is honored by the Church on March 25, is that of the Archangel Gabriel announcing to Mary that the Messiah is about to enter our world through a union between her and the Holy Spirit. I wrote of that scene with all its meaning in “Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us.”

The Archangel Gabriel appears in only two places in Sacred Scripture: in the scene above and in the Book of Daniel (8:16 and 9:21). The two appearances are like bookends. In Daniel, Gabriel is an interpreting angel who explains to Daniel events that will accompany the Messiah to come (9:21-27). This places the Archangel at both ends of Biblical prophecy. Having foretold the Messiah’s coming in the Old Testament, he now heralds in the New the arrival of Jesus and John the Baptist, his forerunner.

I have pondered Father Tony’s gift for most of the years of my priesthood. There is no doubt in me that the scene of the Annunciation took place on Earth, but, like the painting itself, it seems to have been made in Heaven. In the landscape, you can see Adam and Eve in a side panel that depicts their exile from Eden, an exile mended by the Birth and Cross of Christ.

Then one day, through the betrayal of false witness, the bottom fell out of my world. I never saw Father Tony’s gift again. For a long time, I had no idea what happened to it, and to all the other signs and symbols of my priesthood. When this miraculous blog took shape from behind these prison walls, I wrote of that loss and many other losses in “The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts.”

That post was read by many around the world, including some who had become misplaced from my life by the cruel waves of time and circumstance. I learned that Father Tony’s gift had a chain of custody, ending up in the home of another priest and dear friend who took it into his heart without fully knowing from whence it came or what it meant to its owner.

Saving a World in Crisis

I was overjoyed to learn all these years later that Father Tony’s gift awaits my return to the land of the free just as Father Tony himself awaits my life in his company in a place where justice reigns and loss is unknown. Father Tony knew that his Redeemer lives, and he passed the surety of that knowledge onto me just as a real father should. And for those who doubt whether there is any real plan in place here, it was because of what Father Tony passed onto me that I passed onto Pornchai Moontri that same surety of faith. You can read about it, if you haven’t already, in “To Christ the King Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

In the few decades just before the Birth of Christ, the Roman Empire adopted a calendar introduced under the authority of Julius Caesar. It was the first calendar to observe a solar year, the 365-day passage of one revolution of the Earth around the sun. The Julian Calendar also included a leap year, an additional day observed every four years on February 29 to compensate for the six extra hours of Earth’s yearly revolution. The Julian Calendar was observed throughout most of Europe until it was replaced by the Gregorian Calendar introduced by Pope Gregory VIII in 1562.

The “New Style” Gregorian Calendar observed the New Year as beginning on January 1, but in the “Old Style” Julian calendar, March 25 was New Year’s Day. As Christianity spread throughout Europe, New Year’s Day came to be called “Annunciation Day,” a tribute to the centrality of its meaning and message.

The world is once again in a time of great political and social upheaval. After writing a week ago here of the latest grim manifestation of evil in our midst, I wanted to follow it with something that may give hope. This is not the first time the world has been under the dark cloud of a regime spreading war like a plague.

In 2017, marking the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima to three peasant children, I received a letter from Craig Turner. An accomplished journalist and historian, Mr. Turner had been working on a CD presentation for Lighthouse Catholic Media that placed the Fatima appearances and all that followed into a context against the backdrop of history.

The result was fascinating. Having read some of my posts, Craig offered his CD presentation to me for a guest posting at Beyond These Stone Walls. He placed it into a narrative format that on its face may seem a little daunting. It turned out to be the most read and shared post of that year and one of the most read in the five years since.

After I wrote my recent post, “Beyond Ukraine: The Battleground Against Tyranny Is Us,” many readers asked why Pope Francis has not consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as was once requested in her appearance at Fatima. At one time, I joined some of the rest of the world in not taking this very seriously. It is serious now. So I posed the question to my friend Father George David Byers. He in turn posed the same question to a close contact in Rome. On March 16, Father George received a response which he passed on to me.

His friend confirmed that the Holy Father, Pope Francis, intends to consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary at 5:00 PM Rome time on the Feast of the Annunciation, Friday, 25 March, 2022. The Holy Father had said he was going to be doing this in union with Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the Papal Almoner sent to Fatima for this purpose. Father George asked his friend to request from Pope Francis that this consecration be made in union with all the other bishops in the world. Having made this request with the Holy Father about 12:00 Noon Rome time, 17 March, 2022, Pope Francis affirmed that all the bishops — “every bishop around the world” — will be joining him for the consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Five minutes later, at 7:05 AM EST, on 17 March, Father George received this email from his friend:

“Dear George, I have just asked the Holy Father about the Consecration with all the Bishops of the world. He confirmed that that is the way it is going to be: He will do it with every bishop around the world. Let us pray to Our Blessed Mother to stop the devil’s work …; and I also pray to her to stop the ongoing cultural revolution. God bless you!”

Much later that day, seemingly in response to what was set in motion here, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States sent this message to Archbishop José Gomez, President of the U.S. Conference of Bishops:

“In the context of the tragic events unfolding in Ukraine, the Holy Father, Pope Francis, will lead an Act of Consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25 next. The Holy Father intends to invite each bishop, together with all priests, to join in this Act of Consecration at an hour corresponding to 5:00 PM Rome time.”

Mary is at work here, not in the human sin that lies beneath Vladimir Putin’s horrific assault on the people of Ukraine, but in the spiritual warfare that all human beings face. In the end, the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph. On the 100th anniversary of Mary’s apparition at Fatima, I was immersed in a time of spiritual warfare of my own as chaos descended all around me. I was unable to write. It was at that time that I was contacted by Craig Turner and made a decision to host his guest post which opened my eyes and the eyes of many to our need to submit to the Immaculate Heart of Mary the knots of a screwed up world. Please do not miss:

“How Our Lady of Fatima Saved a World in Crisis.”

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You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us

To Christ the King Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

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Qumran: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coming Apocalypse

The Angel Michael Binding Satan (“He Cast him into the Bottomless Pit, and Shut him up”), 1805 drawing by William Blake.

The community of believers that left behind the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran awaited an apocalyptic battle between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.

My annual Holy Week post this year was somewhat unusual. It profiled an announcement from the government of Israel about a new archeological discovery in the general region of Qumran in modern day Jordan. The discovery includes 2,000 year-old remains of the Bar Kochba rebellion against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem about 100 years after the Crucifixion of Jesus. My post was, “The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage.”

It told the story of Bar Kochba and a revolt by residents of Jerusalem against the secular suppression of their religious beliefs by Roman Emperor Hadrian in the Second Century AD. The story has many parallels with current events and especially with the growing “cancel culture” disdain for Catholics, our faith, and our public witness of that faith.

Several readers have since asked me to write about the Dead Sea Scrolls, their place in Salvation History, and their connection to Sacred Scripture. Understanding the mindset of those who created and left behind the Dead Sea Scrolls can inspire and empower our own struggle against forces in our own time seeking to eradicate and silence our religious convictions.

First, a little geography. It’s ironic that I am typing this post on my 68th birthday. In the 16 years Pornchai Moontri was here with me, he organized an annual birthday acknowledgment among prisoners I knew. Part of its ritual was the unveiling of a birthday card by a local inmate-artist. The cards were always insulting, but hilarious. One of them declared, “When Father G was born, the Dead Sea was only sick!” One of the other cards was about Latin being my first language. Hmmph!

Anyway, regarding the Dead Sea, Pornchai was not so far off the mark, but its geography is very interesting. It is the lowest inland body of water on Earth. Its surface is 1,290 feet below sea level, and it reaches a depth of 1,300 feet. It is fed by the Jordan River and several smaller streams. The Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18) have long been thought to lie under the waters of the Dead Sea’s southern end.

The term, “Dead Sea” is mentioned nowhere in Scripture. It was known as the Salt Sea in Genesis (14:3) and Deuteronomy (3:37). The Prophet Ezekiel called it the Eastern Sea. The Roman historian Josephus called it the Asphalt Sea. Owing to evaporation, its salt concentration is the highest of any body of water on Earth. Neither animal nor plant life can live in it or around it. But in Biblical times in the valley created by the Dead Sea, there were several settlements such as Qumran and Masada.

In 1947, quite by accident, scrolls were discovered in ancient jars in a cave near the Dead Sea by two nomadic Bedouin shepherds who sold them to antiquities dealers. The writings made their way to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. To the amazement of the Judeo-Christian world, the scrolls contained intact Hebrew and Aramaic books of the Bible composed between 250 BC and 70 AD, the latter being the date of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple mentioned in my post linked above.

In 1956, multiple excavations in multiple caves at the site yielded some 800 manuscripts containing complete scrolls and thousands of fragments of virtually every book of the Hebrew Bible. Some ancient apocryphal and Deuterocanonical texts were also discovered and I will write more about these below. A decades-long scholarly translation of the discoveries was set in motion. One of the translators was my late uncle, Jesuit Father George W. MacRae, a renowned Biblical scholar and expert in ancient Semitic languages and texts at Harvard University and the Institute Biblique in Jerusalem.

The Essenes: The Community behind the Scrolls

After decades of excavation and historical analysis, scholars have settled on the identity and origin of the group that created and preserved the scrolls. They arose in the years after the Maccabean Revolt in 167 BC. Hellenism — Greek civilization — spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean region after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Jerusalem, the center of Jewish thought, culture and religion, experienced a wave similar to the progressive “cancel culture” movement of today. The elite among the aristocracy of Jerusalem fostered a strong movement toward Hellenism, and the replacement of Judaism with Greek traditions.

The majority of the Jews in Jerusalem were conservative and resisted this movement. Most, however, did not have the voice and the influence of the left-leaning liberal elite. Signs of rebellion and civil unrest gave the newly installed king of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes, the excuse he needed to suppress conservative thought and practices among the Jews. He did this by demoralizing them. In 168 BC, his army plundered the Temple and its treasury. They suppressed Jewish worship and the sacred Books of the Law, the Torah.

The final straw came with the “Abomination of Desolation” as described in the Book of Daniel (9:27). Antiochus took the Temple, removed the Torah, and replaced it with an altar to the mythological Greek god, Zeus. This triggered a revolution by Judas Maccabeas and his family which became the central story of the First Book of Maccabees. In 165 BC, the Maccabees led by Judas forcefully retook the Temple, deposed the statue of Zeus, and restored the sanctuary. They held it for eight days while awaiting reinforcements. This is the origin of the Jewish Festival of Hanukkah.

The two predominant religious sects in Jerusalem at that time, the Pharisees and Sadducees, were both tolerant at best, and at worst accommodating, to the Hellenist conquerors just as they would be to Caesar nearly two centuries later. I wrote of their plot in “The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’ .”

To those who have been paying attention to recent trends in our own time and culture, this should all have a ring of the familiar. Just as with the revolt of the Maccabees, resistance is not at all futile. So resist — with fidelity as your sword and Divine Mercy as your shield — the Abomination of Desolation that is being handed to us by the “woke” elite around us. Many have the spiritual depth of mud puddles.

Sorry for the editorial. By 150 BC, the accommodations of the Pharisees and Sadducees toward the wave of Hellenistic culture resulted in the emergence of a third religious identity in Israel, that of the mysterious Essenes. Jews returning from exile in Babylon heard of the successful revolt of the Maccabees and were inspired by it. Their communal reaction was to focus on fidelity to the Covenant. They came to be known by history as Essenes — Hebrew for “Pious Ones.”

The Essenes are not mentioned by name in Sacred Scripture. This was possibly due to the quiet and secret nature of their rebellion. The historian, Pliny the Elder, mentions them as having emerged as a community on the Western shore of the Dead Sea at a place that, by his description, could be none other than Khirbet Qumran. Philo and Josephus, two other historians of the period, describe the Essenes in more detail and their descriptions correspond seamlessly to what is now known of the record they left behind: the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Hosts a Living Faith

The Essenes lived as a structured community believing that over Israel’s entire history, God had prepared for this Community of the New Covenant. The Prophet Habakkuk wrote in this same period that for all those who observe the Law among the Jews, God will deliver from judgment because of their suffering and because of their faith in a Holy One. Habukkuk identifies their time as the final time, but now prolonged according to the mysterious plan of God. This was also a time when expectations of a Messiah and life beyond death became prominent themes in Israel.

In the decades after the Maccabean revolt that restored the Jerusalem Temple after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes, the concept of an apocalypse spread widely throughout Judaism. The prophetic witness of the Book of Daniel, composed at about the same time the Essenes formed, was highly influential. This influence continued well into the early Christian era.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls brought to light the existence of the Essene sect whose way of life was heavily influenced by apocalyptic ideas as a reaction to what they saw as the secular infringement upon their Jewish, and later Jewish-Christian, faith. These ideas included an emphasis on exploration of the heavenly mysteries and a sense of participation in the angelic realm. Their commitment to fidelity and a community of faith was to prepare them for an epic final battle between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness — a battle that raged in both the spiritual realm and the Earthly one.

The Essenes had an influence that reflected far beyond their separatist community hidden for twenty centuries in Qumran on the Western shore of the Dead Sea. Their emphasis on apocalyptic ideas came to be widely accepted. This included a belief in resurrection from the dead and eternal life, a belief that was embraced by the Pharisees and gradually entered the mainstream of Jewish faith by the time of Jesus. The argument could be made that this development was in preparation for the time of Jesus.

It is now widely believed among scholars that the Essenes had a connection with John the Baptist. In the Dead Sea Scrolls about their own community, they described themselves in words identical to those ascribed to John the Baptist in each of the Gospels (see Luke 4:18-19). Both were citing Isaiah 40:3, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

It also appears that the Essenes had an influence on the Gospel of John, the last of the four to come into written form around 90 AD. It was once believed that this Gospel was heavily influenced by Hellenistic philosophical ideas. The Dead Sea Scrolls made clear that John’s Gospel is solidly rooted in Jewish thought and traditions faithful to the Covenant, the Law and the Prophets.

The apocalyptic traditions of the Essenes were also influenced by the Book of Enoch, a Second Century BC work considered by Jewish scholars as a Deuterocanonical text. “Deuterocanonical” is a Scriptural term derived from Greek meaning “Secondary Canon.” Enoch and some other books considered to be deuterocanonical were accepted in the Jewish Canon of Scripture well into the time of Jesus until about 90 AD. After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple — a cataclysmic event for Judaism and one predicted by Jesus — the apocalyptic ideas of Enoch diminished.

Michael Contends With the Devil

Other books considered to be outside the Canon of Hebrew Scripture but later accepted in the Catholic Canon were Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, and the Book of Tobit which was analyzed here recently in “Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri.”

The Book of Enoch is especially interesting because it had a wide influence on the Essenes — and therefore is also prominent among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Enoch also had an influence on some early Christian writings of Jude, Barnabas, and Irenaeus. Among the Christian Patriarchs, Tertullian regarded it as Scripture while Augustine and Jerome saw it as apocryphal, but influential. In the New Testament Letter of Jude (Jude 9) the Apostle refers to a story that appeared nowhere else but the apocryphal book, The Assumption of Moses, and in references in the Book of Enoch. He wrote as though this account was highly familiar to both Jews and Jewish Christians:

“When the Archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him [which would have been the purview only of God] but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you.’”

— Jude 9

The Letter of Jude included a reference to this story from an apocryphal book without explanation. This implies that the story was well known among the Jews of this period. In the story, Moses died in the desert without ever entering the Promised Land. Satan tried to take the body of Moses but the Archangel Michael fought him and won. Michael then escorted the physical body of Moses to Heaven. In the Hebrew Scriptures, only one other human being was taken into Heaven for eternity. It was Elijah. It is for this very reason that Moses and Elijah could appear with Jesus in the Gospel account of the Transfiguration (see Luke 9:28ff) where they represent the Law and the Prophets, the two pillars of Jewish tradition.

It is possible that the Essenes latched upon the Book of Enoch to preserve it. Though composed in their time (the Second Century BC) it is named for the Enoch of Genesis, father of Methuselah. Here is the Genesis account of Enoch: At the age of 65,

“Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years ... thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.”

— Genesis 5:22-24

Enoch appears, by adoption through the line of Joseph, in the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 3:37).

It was not lost on the writers of the Book of Enoch — or on the Essenes — that the number of his years was also the number of days in a single year. The Book of Enoch explores the Genesis reference to Enoch being taken bodily into heaven for 300 years, and is filled with visions of the cosmos, of angelic tours of the heavenly realm, of the abode of the dead awaiting redemption, and of a pre-existent Son of Man. It is likely that the Essenes sought to preserve it because it was Israel’s first example of a developed apocalyptic faith and the expectation of resurrection.

All of this apocalyptic tradition — and its call to arm for battle in spiritual warfare between light and a growing darkness — entered both Judaism and Christianity as a result of elitist secular values and their infringement upon our lives of faith. The Essenes were short lived. They died out along with the Jerusalem Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. That their legacy emerged into our world by “accident” 2,000 years later is a gift to our time.

And perhaps there is more of this gift to come. The apocalyptic message of Daniel, also influential to the Essenes, hints at books that are shut up until the end of time:

“At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation ... but at that time your people shall be delivered, every one whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the Earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting contempt ... But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end.”

— Daniel 12:1-4

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Writing from prison is difficult, and has become even more so in this time of pandemic. I rely on the postal service to mail my weekly post for scanning, and I am unable to make a photocopy so I mail the only copy I have. If there is a delay (there have been two late arrivals in the last four weeks) I have no way to inform readers.

It would help much if you would subscribe. This way, you receive a notice of a new post in your inbox even if we are a bit late in posting. We will invade your email only once per week. If you have not already done so, please click “SUBSCRIBE.”

Please also share this post, and these related posts that appear herein:

The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage

The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’

Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri

and one I didn’t mention, but should have:

Apocalypse Now: Jesus and the Signs of the Times

The Once and Future Catholic Church

The Book of Daniel and the Gospel of Mark warn of a great tribulation to come. Its early signs are already upon us and require invoking the Patron Saint of Justice.

A strange case has been simmering in the courts of the European Union for several years, and it came to an even stranger close at the end of October. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) upheld a 2011 Austrian court verdict against a seminar presenter, a woman, for “disparaging religious doctrines.” In a 2009 seminar sponsored by the conservative Freedom Party in Austria, the woman recounted an event in the life of Muhammad ibn Abd Allah whose 7th Century proclamations of the Qur’an gave birth to Islam. The event is well documented.

In 620 AD, at the age of 56, soon after the death of his first wife, Muhammad married a young girl named A’isha. At the time of their marriage, A’isha was six years old. Muhammad described her as “very attractive and of a lively mind.” Many of the revelations resulting in the Qur’an occurred while he was in her company.

One day, when she was left behind during one of Muhammad’s expeditions, she returned to the group accompanied by a young man. This set off a monstrous scandal that threw the girl’s marital fidelity into doubt. Muhammad then dictated what he described as a divine revelation that assured him of her innocence. This story is recounted in the Qur’an (24:11-20).

In 2009, in an Austrian seminar entitled “Basic Information about Islam,” the seminar presenter described the story of the marriage of Muhammad and A’isha, concluding, “A 56-year-old and a six-year-old?… What do we call it if not pedophilia?” In 2011, the Austrian court convicted the woman, imposing a fine for statements that constitute “an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam.”

The woman appealed the verdict to the European Court of Human Rights. Last month, the verdict was unanimously upheld by an ECHR panel of seven judges including judges from Ireland, Germany, and France. The ECHR judges reasoned that the marriage between Muhammad and six-year-old A’isha lasted until Muhammad’s death when A’isha was 18-years-old. Thus, according to the court, “the marriage need not be motivated by pedophilia.”

The ECHR further reasoned that the convicted woman’s observations about the marriage could “stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace” and “could only be understood as having been aimed at demonstrating that Muhammad was not worthy of worship.” The ECHR arrived at this conclusion after having “carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected.”

I could go into a long protracted analysis of a double standard in what constitutes “stirring up prejudice and threatening religious peace” — and how political correctness influences it — but I think you may already get the point. If you contrast the above story with the treatment the Catholic Church has been receiving in the news media and power centers of Western Culture, the duplicity is not at all subtle.

Sometimes you have to stand back a little from scandal in the Catholic Church to see a more panoramic view. The scandals feel less personal then, but also seem more ominous. A view from a little distance will leave you with a sense that there have been, and still are, some nefarious agendas behind the scenes of the Catholic abuse story.

The truth is that the world in which we live is retreating from all the institutions that once gave us meaning and purpose, and, most important of all, identity. “Losing my religion” is not just a 1991 pop culture hit by R.E.M. It is a cultural calamity.

The State of the Union

Without doubt, trust in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has been strained in recent years. There is no denying it, and some of that distrust is justified by inconvenient truths that too many have tried to keep hidden. But look around you. Where DO you place your trust? Our politics are at the brink of civil war. Our news media once respected as the “Fourth Estate,” has hit rock bottom in public trust. Among polls of Americans, Congress is the second lowest source of trust among all institutions and the news media lower even than that.

Fatherhood has retreated into the forests. Families are falling apart. Gender has become confused, and a product of the will instead of the heart of one’s identity. In the Western world, the psyches of the young have become fragile. Universities pamper screaming mobs of students who block points of view that challenge them. Conservatives make them feel “unsafe.”

Colleges hire grief counselors to help 20-something year-old men and women cope with a C-level grade, or the trauma of being exposed to ideals, or of seeing a mouse in their dorm room. The resilience of young people — though still with some courageous exceptions — is under siege.

Politically, we are at each others’ throats in a game of one-upmanship and gotcha. It seemed to reach its most hurtful and horrifying peak in the public spectacle to which we were subjected in the Senate confirmation hearings for “Justice Brett Kavanaugh, guilty for being accused.” That was the point at which I realized that we have reached a new low, and cannot descend much further without dissolving our union in hate.

In October this year, a middle-aged man in Florida mailed pipe bombs to a long list of political figures with whom he disagrees. Then a middle-aged man in Pittsburgh, a Holocaust denier on social media, killed eleven worshippers in a Synagogue after posting a rant about Jews and President Trump. Much of the news media played down the fact that the man despised Trump. Politics, that once honorable favorite pastime of America, has become dangerous.

Our Once and Future Faith

The same is true or is fast becoming true, in our Church. Canadian Catholic blogger, Michael Brandon wrote in response to a post on These Stone Walls  awhile back: “The Catholic Church has become the safest place in the world for children, and the most dangerous place in the world for Catholic priests.” I wrote of the origin for that conclusion in a controversial post that was shared 25,000 times on social media: “Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy.”

The news media would have us all believing that the now forty-year-old sexual abuse scandal “could bring down the Catholic Church.” This is nonsense. The Church will survive this, but there is a far more pernicious threat that the news media makes it a point not to cover. I found a scary analysis of it in “The Catholic Crisis,” a fine article in Commentary (May 2018), by Sohrab Ahmari who also has a panoramic view of why Catholicism stands at a precipice and, surprise, the sexual abuse story is but a symptom of it, not the cause.

Sohrab Ahmari was the London editor of The Wall Street Journal.  A senior writer at Commentary, he is currently an editor for the New York Post and author of From Fire, by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith. His article, “The Catholic Crisis” is a review of a new book by The New York Times’ columnist, Ross Douthat, To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism.

Both Ahmari and Douthat note that “the principal duty of a Catholic” is not to the pope, but to “the truth the papacy exists to preach, to preserve, and to defend.” Mr. Ahmari wrote:

“There is a reason to worry that lately a spirit of relativism has entered the Roman Church that threatens to undermine its unity and catholicity. That should concern Catholics and non-Catholics because the Church is the living bedrock of the West and one of the last bastions of the principal that moral truth is moral truth yesterday, today, a thousand years from now.”

In Pope Francis, both writers see a papacy that “thrives in ambiguity.” Their evidence is found among a list of perplexing notions including recent comments by Pope Francis calling into question the existence of hell. Defenders of the Pope excused the incident as a misreading of the Pope’s remarks by leftist, atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari. However, as Ahmari points out, this particular faux pas was the fifth  interview Pope Francis has granted to this journalist.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis has remained unresponsive to a request for dialogue and clarification on some controversial points in Amoris laetitia. American Cardinal Raymond Burke and other conservative cardinals posed a series of “Dubia” asking whether the prohibition on authorizing communion for those divorced and remarried in a civil, but not sacramental, union still stands. The pope, according to Ahmari, “first ignored, and then ridiculed them.”

Mr. Ahmari also reports on Ross Douthat’s “fascinating speculation” on the future of Catholicism, and it is one in which conservatives should find cause for hope. As I have written in previous posts, the Church and faith will survive this current age of doubt. In the meantime, fidelity is our only effective response to it. But Ross Douthat offers a more sobering source of hope summarized by Ahmari:

“The liberals simply don’t have the numbers… theological liberalism is in demographic decline, and liberal orders struggle to attract vocations. Church coffers may be full, but the pews are empty. The leading lights of theological liberalism are octogenarians, and there are no successors in the wings.

“Conservatives and traditionalists, meanwhile, have the numbers, the intellects, the energy. Orders that prize tradition and orthodoxy are thriving worldwide. In population terms, Africa is a beacon of hope for conservatives, a continent where weekly Mass attendance averages 70 percent (compared with just 20 percent in Europe) and where the Church wins nine million new believers each year.”

Quite by accident in the last few weeks, I came across a much more local summation of the state of the Church in North America, and it seems bleak. At least, it did for me until I got to the last few stunning paragraphs.

In a climate in which I thought the faithful had abandoned the notion of the Church as a mirror of justice, a faithful Catholic, a lawyer no less, concluded his stunning take on the state of the Church by profiling what the witch hunt has meant for one wrongly imprisoned priest. Don’t miss “Priests, Good and Bad” by Frank Friday published at American Thinker (October 27, 2018).

The Patron Saint of Justice

Some extraordinary things can be found in Ordinary Time. It is by no human design that readings assigned long ago for the Sunday liturgy arose just weeks ago at a time of tribulation for the Catholic Church. The readings for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time were anything but ordinary. Their timing seems a divinely inspired gift.

But before I proceed down this path through the labyrinthine ways of Sacred Scripture, I want to share with you a message from a very good priest and a friend, Father Stuart MacDonald. Writing from Ontario, Father Stuart is a canon lawyer and author of the TSW  guest post, “Bishops, Priests and Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

This is a time of great tribulation for faithful Catholics, and especially so for priests who feel their loyalties torn and their allegiance under clouds of doubt. I am not shielded behind These Stone Walls from the doubt and pain experienced by so many priests right now.

A few weeks ago, Father Stuart sent a series of messages to me containing Archbishop Viganò’s published response to Cardinal Ouellet. Archbishop Viganò has challenged Pope Francis for his handling of the Cardinal McCarrick affair and other matters. I wrote about this in a series of posts I will link at the end of this one.

Just days before sitting down to type this post, wondering what on earth I could write about without taking a side on the vortex of information and misinformation, Father Stuart sent me this message:

“I have been so shaken by all this that a few weeks ago, I informed my small congregation that henceforth all weekday masses would be ad orientem because the time has come to focus on Christ and not the cult of the priest and his performance. I pray the canon in Latin sotto voce now and we pray the Prayer to St. Michael at the end of every mass. Call me foolish if you want, but it is the only way I am going to survive.”

The world might call him foolish, but I could only call him faithful. And like me, he perhaps had no idea when he wrote that message that the Mass readings for the following Sunday, the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, provided a solid basis in Scripture for what he has undertaken. The Book of Daniel (12:1-3) calls upon Michael, the Great Prince, and Guardian of the Faithful of God, while the Gospel of Mark (13:24-32) warns of a time of great tribulation. For many, that time has come. I can only add to Father Stuart’s resolve the words of Saint Peter, Bishop of Rome:

“Stay sober and alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, knowing that the same suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world.”

— 1 Peter 5:8-9

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Editor’s Note: Please share this post. You may also like this related post from Father Gordon MacRae at These Stone Walls:

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy

Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us

The Gospel of Saint Luke opens with a news flash from the Archangel Gabriel for Zechariah the priest, and Mary — Theotokos — the new Ark of the Covenant.

Prisoners, including me, have no access at all to the online world. Though Wednesday is post day on Beyond These Stone Walls, I usually don’t get to see my finished posts until the following Saturday when printed copies arrive in the mail. So I was surprised one Saturday night when some prisoners where I live asked if they could read my posts. Then a few from other units asked for them in the prison library where I work.

Some titles became popular just by word of mouth. The third most often requested BTSW post in the library is “A Day Without Yesterday,” my post about Father Georges Lemaitre and Albert Einstein. The second most requested is “Does Stephen Hawking Sacrifice God on the Altar of Science?” Prisoners love the science/religion debate. But by far the most popular BTSW post is “Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed.”  And as a result of it, dozens of prisoners have asked me for copies of the prayer to Saint Michael. I’m told it’s being put up on cell walls all over the prison.

Remember “Jack Bauer Lost The Unit On Caprica,” my post about my favorite TV shows? In the otherwise vast wasteland of American television, we’re overdue for some angelic drama. For five years in the 1980s, Michael Landon and  Victor French mediated the sordid details of the human condition in Highway to Heaven. The series was created and produced by Michael Landon who thought TV audiences deserved a reminder of the value of faith, hope, and mercy as we face the gritty task of living. Highway to Heaven ended in 1989, but lived on in re-runs for another decade. Then in the 1990s, Della Reese and Roma Downey portrayed “Tess and Monica,” angelic mediators in Touched by an Angel which also produced a decade of re-runs.

Spiritual Battle on a Cosmic Scale

The angels of TV-land usually worked out solutions to the drama of being human within each episode’s allotted sixty minutes. That’s not so with the angels of Scripture. Most came not with a quick fix to human madness, but with a message for coping, for giving hope, for assuring a believer, or, in the case of the Angel of the Annunciation, for announcing some really big news on a cosmic scale — like salvation! What the angels of Scripture do and say has deep theological symbolism and significance, and in trying times interest in angels seems to thrive. The Archangel Gabriel dominates the Nativity Story of Saint Luke’s Gospel, but who is he and what is the meaning of his message?

We first meet Gabriel five centuries before the Birth of Christ in the Book of Daniel. The Hebrew name, “Gabri’El” has two meanings: “God is my strength,” and “God is my warrior.” As revealed in “Angelic Justice,” the Hebrew name Micha-El means “Who is like God?” The symbolic meaning of these names is portrayed vividly as Gabriel relates to Daniel the cosmic struggle in which he and Michael are engaged:

“Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your mind to understand, and humbled yourself before God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me. So I left him there with the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to befall your people in the latter days . . . But I will tell you what is inscribed in the Book of Truth: there is none who contends at my side against these except Michael.”

— Daniel 10:12-14, 21

In the Talmud, the body of rabbinic teaching, Gabriel is understood to be one of the three angels who appeared to Abraham to begin salvation history, and later led Abraham out of the fire into which Nimrod cast him. The Talmud also attributes to Gabriel the rescue of Lot from Sodom. In Christian apocalyptic tradition, Gabriel is the “Prince of Fire” who will prevail in battle over Leviathan at the end of days. Centuries after the Canon of Old and New Testament Scripture was defined, Gabriel appears also in the Qu’ran as a noble messenger.

In Jewish folklore, Gabriel was in the role of best man at the marriage of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I found that a strange idea at first,  but then it dawned on me: Who else were they going to ask? In later rabbinic Judaism, Gabriel watches over man at night during sleep, so he is invoked in the bedside “Shema” which observant Jews must recite at bedtime in a benediction called the Keri’at Shema al ha_Mitah:

“In the name of the God of Israel, may Michael be on my right hand, Gabriel on my left hand, Uriel before me, behind me Raphael, and above my head, the Divine Presence. Blessed is he who places webs of sleep upon my eyes and brings slumber to my eyelids. May it be your will to lay me down and awaken me in peace. Blessed are You, God, who illuminates the entire world with his glory.”

In a well written article in the Advent 2010 issue of Word Among Us (www.WAU.org) – “Gabriel, the Original Advent Angel,” Louise Perrotta described Gabriel’s central message to Daniel:

“History is not a haphazard series of events. Whatever the dark headlines — terrorist attacks, natural disasters, economic upheavals — we’re in the hands of a loving and all-powerful God. Earthly regimes will rise and fall, and good people will suffer. But . . . at an hour no one knows, God will bring evil to an end and establish His eternal kingdom.”

East of Eden

The Book of Tobit identifies the Archangel Raphael as one of seven angels who stand in the Presence of God. Scripture and the Hebrew Apocryphal books identify four by name: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. The other three are not named for us. In rabbinic tradition, these four named angels stand by the Celestial Throne of God at the four compass points, and Gabriel stands to God’s left. From our perspective, this places Gabriel to the East of God, a position of great theological significance for the fall and redemption of man.

In a previous post, “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden,” I described the symbolism of “East of Eden,” a title made famous by the great American writer, John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for it in 1962. I don’t mean to brag (well, maybe a little!) but a now-retired English professor at a very prestigious U.S. prep school left a comment on “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden” comparing it to Steinbeck’s work. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Archangel Gabriel, but I’ve been waiting for a subtle chance to mention it again! (ahem!) But seriously, in the Genesis account of the fall of man, Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden to the East (Genesis 3:24). It was both a punishment and a deterrent when they disobeyed God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil:

“Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good from evil; and now, lest he put out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever,’ therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove the man out, and to the east of the Garden of Eden he placed a Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every which way, to guard the way to the Tree of Life.”

— Gen.3: 22-24

A generation later, after the murder of his brother Abel, Cain too “went away from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod, East of Eden.” (Genesis 4:16). The land of Nod seems to take its name from the Hebrew “nad” which means “to wander,” and Cain described his fate in just that way: “from thy face I shall be hidden; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” (Genesis 4:14). The entire subsequent history of Israel is the history of that wandering East of Eden. I wonder if it is also just coincidence that the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the only source of the story of the Magi, has the Magi seeing the Star of Bethlehem “in the east” and following it out of the east.

An Immaculate Reception

In rabbinic lore, Gabriel stands in the Presence of God to the left of God’s throne, a position of great significance for his role in the Annunciation to Mary. Gabriel thus stands in God’s Presence to the East,  and from that perspective in St. Luke’s Nativity Story, Gabriel brings tidings of comfort and joy to a waiting world in spiritual exile East of Eden.

The Archangel’s first appearance is to Zechariah, the husband of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth. Zechariah is told that he and his wife are about to become the parents of John the Baptist. The announcement does not sink in easily because, like Abraham and Sarah at the beginning of salvation history, they are rather on in years. Zechariah is about to burn incense in the temple, as close to the Holy of Holies a human being can get, when the archangel Gabriel appears with news:

“Fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard, and your wife, Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John . . . and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God and will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah . . .’”

— Luke 1:12-15

This news isn’t easily accepted by Zechariah, a man of deep spiritual awareness revered for his access to the Holy of Holies and his connection to God. Zechariah doubts the message, and questions the messenger. It would be a mistake to read the Archangel Gabriel’s response in a casual tone. Hear it with thunder in the background and the Temple’s stone floor trembling slightly under Zechariah’s feet:

“I am Gabriel who stand in the Presence of God . . . and behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things come to pass.”

I’ve always felt great sympathy for Zechariah. I imagined him having to make an urgent visit to the Temple men’s room after this, followed by the shock of being unable to intone the Temple prayers.

Zechariah was accustomed to great deference from people of faith, and now he is scared speechless. I, too, would have asked for proof. For a cynic,  and especially a sometimes arrogant one, good news is not easily taken at face value.

Then six months later “Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the House of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary.” (Luke 1: 26-27). This encounter was far different from the previous one, and it opens with what has become one of the most common prayers of popular devotion.

Gabriel said, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” His words became the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that and centuries of “sensus fidelium,” the consensus of the faithful who revere her as “Theotokos,” the God-Bearer. Mary, like Zechariah, also questions Gabriel about the astonishing news. “How can this be since I have not known man?” There is none of the thunderous rebuke given to Zechariah, however. Saint Luke intends to place Gabriel in the presence of his greater, a position from which even the Archangel demonstrates great reverence and deference.

It has been a point of contention with non-Catholics and dissenters for centuries, but the matter seems so clear. There’s a difference between worship and reverence, and what the Church bears for Mary is the deepest form of reverence. It’s a reverence that came naturally even to the Archangel Gabriel who sees himself as being in her presence rather than the other way around. God and God alone is worshiped, but the reverence bestowed upon Mary was found in only one other place on Earth. That place was the Ark of the Covenant, in Hebrew, the “Aron Al-Berith,” the Holy of Holies which housed the Tablets of the Old Covenant. It was described in 1 Kings 8: 1-11, but the story of Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary draws on elements from the Second Book of Samuel.

These elements are drawn by Saint Luke as he describes Mary’s haste to visit her cousin Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea. In 2 Samuel 6:2, David visits this very same place to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant.  Upon Mary’s entry into Elizabeth’s room in Saint Luke’s account, the unborn John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. This is reminiscent of David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant in 2 Samuel 6:16.

For readers “with eyes to see and ears to hear,” Saint Luke presents an account of God entering into human history in terms quite familiar to the old friends of God. God himself expressed in the Genesis account of the fall of man that man has attempted to “become like one of us” through disobedience. Now the reverse has occurred. God has become one of us to lead us out of the East, and off the path to eternal darkness and death.

In Advent, and especially today the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we honor with the deepest reverence Mary, Theotokos, the Bearer of God and the new Ark of the Covenant. Mary, whose response to the Archangel Gabriel was simple assent:

“Let it be done to me according to your word.”

“Then the Dawn from On High broke upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet on the way to peace.”

— Luke 1:78-79

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed

Saint Michael the Archangel is often depicted wielding a sword and a set of scales to vanquish Satan. His scales have an ancient and surprising meaning.

I worked for days on a post about Saint Michael the Archangel. 
I finally finished it this morning, exactly one week before
 the Feast of the Archangels, then rushed off to work in the 
prison library. When I returned four hours later to print the 
post and get it into the mail to Charlene, my friend Joseph
 stopped by. You might remember Joseph from a few of my posts,
 notably “Disperse the Gloomy Clouds of Night” in Advent and
 “Forty Days and Forty Nights” in Lent.

Well, you can predict
 where this is going. As soon as I returned to my cell, Joseph
 came in to talk with me. Just as I turned on my typewriter,
 Joseph reached over and touched it. He wasn’t aware of the 
problem with static charges from walking across these concrete 
floors. Joseph’s unintentional spark wiped out four days of
 work and eight pages of text.

It’s not the first time this has happened. I wrote about it 
in “Descent into Lent” last year, only then I responded with 
an explosion of expletives. Not so this time. As much as I
 wanted to swear, thump my chest, and make Joseph feel just 
awful, I couldn’t. Not after all my research on the meaning 
of the scales of Saint Michael the Archangel. They very much 
impact the way I look at Joseph in this moment. Of course, 
for the 30 seconds or so after it happened, it’s just as well
 that he wasn’t standing within reach!

This world of concrete and steel in which we prisoners live is 
very plain, but far from simple. It’s a world almost entirely
 devoid of what Saint Michael the Archangel brings to the 
equation between God and us. It’s also a world devoid of 
evidence of self-expression. Prisoners eat the same food,
 wear the same uniforms, and live in cells that all look alike.

Off the Wall, And On

In these cells, the concrete walls and ceilings are white — or
 were at one time — the concrete floors are gray, and the 
concrete counter running halfway along one wall is dark green.
 On a section of wall for each prisoner is a two-by-four foot
 green rectangle for posting family photos, a calendar and 
religious items. The wall contains the sole evidence of
 self-expression in prison, and you can learn a lot about a
 person from what’s posted there.

My friend, Pornchai, whose section of wall is next to mine,
 had just a blank wall two years ago. Today, not a square inch 
of green shows through his artifacts of hope. There are 
photos of Joe and Karen Corvino, the foster parents whose 
patience impacted his life, and Charlene Duline and Pierre
 Matthews, his new Godparents. There’s also an old photo of 
the home in Thailand from which he was taken at age 11, photos
 of some of the ships described in “Come, Sail Away!” now at 
anchor in new homes. There’s also a rhinoceros — no clue why
 — and Garfield the Cat. In between are beautiful icons of the 
Blessed Mother, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Saint Pio, and one of 
Saint Michael the Archangel that somehow migrated from my wall
 over to Pornchai’s.

My own wall evolved over time. The only family photos I had
 are long lost, and I haven’t seen my family in many years. It 
happens to just about every prisoner after ten years or so. 
In my first twelve years in prison I was moved sixteen times, 
and each time I had to quickly take my family photos off the 
wall. Like many prisoners here for a long, long time, there
 came a day when I took my memories down to move, then just
 didn’t put them back up again. A year ago, I had nothing on
 the wall, then a strange transformation of that small space
 began to take shape.

When These Stone Walls — the blog, not the concrete ones — began
 last year, some readers started sending me beautiful
 icons and holy cards. The prison allows them in mail as long 
as they’re not laminated in plastic. Some made their way onto
 my wall, and slowly over the last year it filled with color 
and meaning again.

It’s a mystery why, but the most frequent image sent to me by
 TSW readers is that of Saint Michael the Archangel. There are
 five distinct icons of him on the wall, plus the one that 
seems to prefer Pornchai’s side. These stone walls — the 
concrete ones, not the blog — are filled with companions now.

There’s another icon of Saint Michael on my coffee cup — the 
only other place prisoners always leave their mark — and yet 
another inside and above the cell door. That one was placed
 there by my friend, Alberto Ramos, who went to prison at age
 14 and turned 30 last week. It appeared a few months ago. 
 Alberto’s religious roots are in Caribbean Santeria. He said 
Saint Michael above the door protects this cell from evil. He 
said this world and this prison greatly need Saint Michael.

Who Is Like God?

The references to the Archangel Michael are few and cryptic in the canon of Hebrew and Christian Scripture. In the apocalyptic visions of the Book of Daniel, he is Michael, your Prince, “who stands beside the sons of your people.” In Daniel 12:1 he is the guardian and protector angel of Israel and its people, and the “Great Prince” in Heaven who came to the aid of the Archangel Gabriel in his contest with the Angel of Persia (Daniel 10:13, 21).

His name in Hebrew — Mikha’el — means “Who is like God?” It’s
 posed as a question that answers itself. No one, of course, 
is like God. A subsidiary meaning is, “Who bears the image of
 God,” and in this Michael is the archetype in Heaven of what 
man himself was created to be: the image and likeness of God. Some other depictions of the Archangel Michael show him with a
 shield bearing the image of Christ. In this sense, Michael is 
a personification, as we’ll see below, of the principal 
attribute of God throughout Scripture.

Outside of Daniel’s apocalyptic vision, the Archangel Michael 
appears only two more times in the canon of Sacred Scripture. 
In Revelation 12:7-9 he leads the army of God in a great and 
final battle against the army of Satan. A very curious
 mention in the Epistle of Saint Jude (Jude 1:9) describes 
Saint Michael’s dispute with Satan over the body of Moses.

This is a direct reference to an account in the Apocrypha, and
 demonstrates the importance and familiarity of some of the
 apocryphal writings in the Israelite and early Christian
 communities. Saint Jude writes of the account as though it is
 quite familiar to his readers. In the Assumption of Moses in
 the apocryphal Book of Enoch, Michael prevails over Satan,
 wins the body of Moses, and accompanies him into Heaven.

It is because of this account that Moses and Elijah appear 
with Jesus in the account of the Transfiguration in Matthew 
11. Moses and Elijah are the two figures in the Hebrew 
Scriptures to hear the voice of God on Mount Sinai, and to be 
assumed bodily into Heaven — escorted by Saint Michael the 
Archangel according to the Aggadah, the collection of
 milennia of rabbinic lore and custom.

Saint Michael as the Divine Measure of Souls

In each of the seven images of Saint Michael the Archangel
 sent to me by TSW readers, he is depicted brandishing a sword 
in triumph over Satan subdued at his feet. In five of the 
icons, he also holds a set of scales above the head of Satan. 
A lot of people confuse the scales with those of “Lady Justice” 
the famous American icon. Those scales symbolize the equal
 application of law and justice in America. It’s a high ideal,
 but one that too often isn’t met in the American justice
 system. I cited some examples in “The Eighth Commandment.”

The scales of Saint Michael also depict justice, but of 
another sort. Presumably that’s why so many readers sent me 
his image, and I much appreciate it. However, some research
 uncovered a far deeper symbolic meaning for the Archangel’s 
scales. The primary purpose of the scales is not to measure 
justice, but to weigh souls. And there’s a specific factor 
that registers on Saint Michael’s scales. They depict his 
role as the measure of mercy, the highest attribute of God for 
which Saint Michael is the personification. The capacity for 
mercy is what it most means to be in the image and likeness of
 God. The primary role of Saint Michael the Archangel is to be
 the advocate of justice and mercy in perfect balance — for
 justice without mercy is little more than vengeance.

That’s why God limits vengeance as summary justice. In 
Genesis chapter 4, Lamech, a descendant of Cain, vows that “if 
Cain is avenged seven-fold then Lamech is avenged seventy-seven
fold.” Jesus later corrects this misconception of justice by 
instructing Peter to forgive “seventy times seven times.”

Our English word, “Mercy” doesn’t actually capture the full
 meaning of what is intended in the Hebrew Scriptures as the 
other side of the justice equation. The word in Hebrew is 
”hesed,” and it has multiple tiers of meaning. It was 
translated into New Testament Greek as “eleos,” and then 
translated into Latin as “misericordia” from which we derive 
the English word, “mercy.” Saint Michael’s scales measure 
”hesed,” which in its most basic sense means to act with 
altruism for the good of another without anything of obvious 
value in return. It’s the exercise of mercy for its own sake,
 a mercy that is the highest value of Judeo-Christian faith.

Sacred Scripture is filled with examples of hesed as the chief 
attribute of God and what it means to be in His image. That 
”the mercy of God endures forever” is the central and repeated
 message of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The references are
 too many to name, but as I was writing this post, I
 spontaneously thought of a few lines from Psalm 85:

“Mercy and faithfulness shall meet. Justice and peace 
shall kiss. Truth shall spring up from the Earth, and 
justice shall look down from Heaven.”

— Psalm 85:10-11

The domino effect of hesed-mercy is demonstrated in Psalm 85. 
Faithfulness and truth will arise out of it, and together all 
three will comprise justice. In researching this, I found a
 single, ancient rabbinic reference attributing authorship of 
Psalm 85 to the only non-human instrument of any Psalm or 
verse of Scripture: Saint Michael the Archangel, himself.
 According to that legend, Psalm 85 was given by the Archangel 
along with the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai.

Saint Thomas Aquinas described Saint Michael as “the breath of
 the Redeemer’s spirit who will, at the end of the world,
 combat and destroy the Anti-Christ as he did Lucifer in the
 beginning.” This is why St. Michael is sometimes depicted bearing a shield with the image of Christ.  It is the image of Christ in His passion, imprinted upon the veil of St. Veronica.  Veronica is a name that appears nowhere in Scripture, but is simply a name assigned by tradition to the unnamed woman with the veil.  The name Veronica comes from the Latin “vera icon” meaning “true image.”

Saint Thomas Aquinas and many Doctors of the Church regarded Saint 
Michael as the angel of Exodus who, as a pillar of cloud and
 fire, led Israel out of slavery. Christian tradition gives to 
Saint Michael four offices: To fight against Satan, to measure 
and rescue the souls of the just at the hour of death, to 
attend the dying and accompany the just to judgment, and to be 
the Champion and Protector of the Church.

His feast day, assigned since 1970 to the three Archangels of 
Scripture, was originally assigned to Saint Michael alone
 since the sixth century dedication of a church in Rome in his 
honor.  The feast was originally called Michaelmas meaning, “The Mass of St. Michael.” The great prayer to Saint Michael, however, is 
relatively new. It was penned on October 13, 1884, by Pope 
Leo XIII after a terrifying vision of Saint Michael’s battle
 with Satan:

---

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, 0 Prince of the heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

---

It’s an important prayer for the Church, especially now. I know the enemies of the Church lurk here, too. There are some who come here not for understanding, or the truth, but for ammunition. For them the very concept of mercy, forgiveness, and inner healing is anathema to their true cause. I once scoffed at the notion that evil surrounds us, but I have seen it. I think every person falsely accused has seen it.

Donald Spinner, mentioned in “Loose Ends and Dangling Participles,” gave Pornchai a prayer that was published by the prison ministry of the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association. Pornchai asked me to mention it in this post. It’s a prayer that perfectly captures the meaning of Saint Michael the Archangel’s Scales of Hesed:

“Prayer for Justice and Mercy
Jesus, united with the Father and the Holy Spirit, give us your compassion for those in prison. Mend in mercy the broken in mind and memory. Soften the hard of heart, the captives of anger. Free the innocent; parole the trustworthy. Awaken the repentance that restores hope. May prisoners’ families persevere in their love. Jesus, heal the victims of crime; they live with the scars. Lift to eternal peace those who die. Grant victims and their families the forgiveness that heals. Give wisdom to lawmakers and those who judge. Instill prudence and patience in those who guard. Make those in prison ministry bearers of your light, for ALL of us are in need of your mercy! Amen.”