St Michael as the Commander of all the Angels comes into view many times in the Story of Salvation. As we come to the end of the Liturgical year of the Church we find ourselves confronted by the Eschaton - the Last Day - the end of days! And there, at the heart of it, both in the prophet Daniel [Dan 12] and in the Book of the Apocalypse [Apoc 12:7], looms the figure of St Michael.

The name ‘Michael’ means in Hebrew ‘Who is like God?’ His name was the war-cry of the good angels as they fought the War in heaven. Michael and the good angels stood against the rebel seraphim, Lucifer, who led a third of the angels into rebellion [cf Apoc 12:4]. The rebellion of Lucifer and his angels did not succeed and St Michael and his angels, by the grace of God, cast them down from Heaven.

In these days when the glamour of evil besets us on all sides, it is always good to remember that two thirds of the angels did not rebel but stayed faithful and with St Michael they retained all their powers and graces, unlike the rebel angels who became demons. One lesson we can draw from this is that no matter how much evil seems to have the upper hand, we should never forget that this is just the glamour of evil and not the actual reality of things. The War of the Angels teaches us that evil does not have the last word.

We find that the War in heaven does come down to earth. However, mankind’s Saviour is not an angel but the God-Man, Our Lord Jesus Christ. The glorious victory of the resurrection of Jesus followed the dark clouds that thundered above the dread day of the crucifixion. The cross teaches us that because of eternal life, life ultimately triumphs over death, light ovecomes the darkness and good conquers evil. Even down here on earth when we seem to be living at times in the murky fog of the shadowlands that often bedevils the history of mankind, failure can be the sacrament of the resurrection.

Pope Leo XIII, in 1886, was shown that the next phase of the Spiritual War was to be the infiltration of the Church. After experiencing an appalling and a prophetic vision of demons coming down into the Vatican and a locution between Christ and Satan, Pope Leo XIII promulgated the Prayer to St Michael and stipulated that it should be recited after every Mass throughout the whole world. Today only a few priests still remember to call on St Michael after Mass to defend the people of God and to protect the Church as she strives to fulfill her mission. Given what is happening today in both the Church and in the World, we need to call on St Michael to help us overcome the minions who are animated by the unholy spirit, the spirit of the world, that serves Lucifer and his Legions. Minions who are active both in the world and in the Church in the corridors of both worldly and eccleciastical power.

We know from both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture that St Michael has four missions:

• The first is to fight Satan.

• The second is to escort the faithful to heaven at their hour of death.

• The third is to be a champion of all Christians, and especially the Church.

• And the fourth is to call all men, women and children from life on Earth to their eternal judgment.

Clearly these four missions point to the consequences of the Spiritual War which followed the Fall of Man, the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. Here it is affirmed that at Death, the soul leaves the body and comes before God for judgment and this is called by the Church, Individual or ParticularJudgement. There is also the General Judgment which follows the General Resurrection of the Dead at the end of time when all will receive in their risen bodies either punishment or reward as is their due. Judgment [krisis in Greek] means that we will either go to Heaven, if we die in a state of grace, or we will go to Hell, if we die in a state of unrepentented mortal sin. It is death that brings an end to this temporal struggle for each soul, so that we can truly say whilst there is time there is hope and whilst there is breath there is hope. But time runs out when death comes knocking for we move from the state of temporality and change to the state of the eternal and the permanent. The choice is ours. For on Judgment Day God will say to each one of us, and it will be for ever, “Thy will be done!”

It is for this reason that Our Lord and the Church proclaims the call of the Gospel, namely, repent and believe. In the life of Christ and in the life of the Church we find that there is an urgency and an imperative in this call to all mankind to repent of their sins and turn back to God and trust in his mercy. God offers an ocean of divine mercy to sinners flowing from the life, death and resurrection of Christ that neither sin nor evil can outweigh, nor overcome. But as our free-will can unleash the divine mercy, if we say yes; so to our free-will can block it, if we say no. This is sobering to know, this is good to know and for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, it really is good news!

The above points presume certain fundamental truths about human beings: that human beings truly possess free-will which God never takes away and always respects; that human beings possess an immortal soul which survives death; that what we do on earth echoes for all eternity; that life on earth is a story of soul-making where I will finally be either at home in heaven or at home in hell; that the true and fullest definition of death is the separation of the soul from the body; that the soul is made for a specific body and the body is made for a specific soul - there is no body hopping and no re-incarnation of souls; that a human being is a human person who is known in and through their body and soul; and that ultimately there has to be a resurrection of our bodies if we are to be who we were made to be and if we are to be recognised by ourselves and by others as such, for we are embodied spirits and not ghosts in a machine!

See the website of Magis Centre and the evidence for the soul based on medical research into near death experiences [NDEs]: https://magiscenter.com/category/near-death-experiences/