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| Fra' Richard renewing his vows before the Lieutenant, Fra' Max Rumney, with his witnesses, Patricia Lady Talbot of Malahide and Fra' Julian Chadwick, watched by his family. |
This is the text of the first paper given by Father Rupert Allen at Wardour Castle last Saturday. For those who were present it merits careful rereading, and equally we are sure it will be of spiritual benefit to our wider readership. Fr Allen touches upon the areas of grave concern to all Catholics in the Church today, but particularly to knights committed to the defense of the Faith, as well as our perennial goal to get ourselves, and each other, into Heaven.
Fr Allen is a priest of the Diocese of Clifton, and Catholic Chaplain to Bristol University.
The second paper will be published tomorrow.
There has long been a tradition amongst Catholics in this land to say one Hail Mary each day for the conversion of our country and so to make us mindful of all our quest and aim let us now so petition the Holy Mother of God, Patroness of the Order, Our Lady of Mount Phileremos as we say; Hail Mary ….
I must begin by thanking you for the kind invitation to come and lead you in your recollection today. This place is of course permeated with the prayers and devotions of so many of the faithful and has such a particular place in the history and life of our diocese of Clifton, and it is all the more splendid to be here with all of you. Members of your Order have always played a part in my own Christian life; I see before me already a good number of old friends and so too in other parts of the world where I have had occasion to live and work the knights have been amongst my most loyal and loving of friends. It is good therefore to see you all ‘en masse’ today.
This is not the first time I have been asked to perform a service for the Order of Malta (and I hope it will not be the last!). Very many years ago I was in Rome to visit some saints and Fr. Ronald asked me to come and answer Mass on the Via dei Condotti. I dutifully took a cab from the nuns I was staying with but the driver could only take me so far. It was the day of the Rome marathon and the only way I would make it to the Magistral Palace in time for Mass was by running the course of the marathon. Onlookers encouraged me by their cheers as, cassock and surplice flying, I sped through the streets of the Eternal City. I did make it in time for Mass, albeit exhausted and even more red-faced than usual, but I am glad you will never require a marathon of me again.
There is a point to that little story – when faced with trails, as all Christians are if we truly live the Faith, we need encouragement to help us reach our Heavenly home.
In a time of tension, difficulty and scandals in the Church and, seemingly at every level of society, we need to be encouraged to continue to fight the good fight. When we are weary we need the soothing balm of our Faith to patch us up a bit and allow us to labour on, not only actually, but with the love and joy which ought to accompany our labours for Christ and the least amongst us. And it is encouragement that I hope to offer you today.
Today is all about Saint Michael. Saint Michael fights evil. Knights fight evil. So I will today try to encourage you to be like Saint Michael in your fight, our fight, against evil. I don’t have much of a head for words or eloquence I’m afraid, but I do know something of what it is to try to be a Christian, and perhaps a little of what it means to do that amidst hostility.
Today’s feast is very much a feast of encouragement. The feast of the dedication of Saint Michael is a very lovely one. For so very many of us Michaelmas is that wonderful time of year which recalls our memories of a new year at university or school. New adventures to be had, a return to friends and the crisp autumnal mornings to give colour to it all. Of course for us as Christians Saint Michael is so beloved as our angelic defender in the fight against evil.
His very name ‘Who is like God?’ offers us that great starting point for our life with Christ. Who is like God, so wonderful, so glorious, so loving and so powerful? Who is like our God that we should ever even think to prefer another? Who or what else offers us so very much, so generously, so freely and so ardently as our loving Creator? How foolish and indeed how stupid we should be if we were ever to make the choice of some thing, or some one, other than God. Yes, Saint Michael, even in just his name, reminds us of our God so great and so prodigious that besides Him all else is as nothing.
That is a nice thought, and one to remember when we are tempted. There is that lovely story isn’t there of St. Dominic Savio and how he went around wearing a great badge in his lapel saying ‘Death rather than Sin’ to encourage those he met to lead a life of virtue and thus to shun the empty promises we are offered daily. St Michael rather offers us the same encouragement; why choose anything but God?
And yet we do. We do so so foolishly and so repeatedly. We do it in our choices, in our thoughts and words and actions. Often almost without a second thought but sometimes so tragically and so wilfully. But Saint Michael does not sit idly by ignoring our falls and our trysts with damnation. We invoke his intercession during the sacred liturgy to call down the worship our Heaven to our own altars, to unite ourselves and our own poor voices with the worship of the Heavenly chorus. As we accuse ourselves in the sight of God and the heavenly court so too do we ask Saint Michael and all that army of heaven to pray for us to the Lord our God. Sometimes we rattle off the Confiteor so glibly and habitually that we forget what we do. We are there before the Most High, before the Church in Heaven and on earth, to accuse ourselves and to beg our Mother, Saint Michael and all the saints, as well as our brethren, to pray for us to the Lord our God. For us we might sometimes forget to really mean the words we say, but Heaven doesn’t and isn’t it a lovely thought that every time we say the Confiteor we know that Heaven acknowledges our need of its intercession and that they really, really do, pray for us?
We are strange sometimes as Catholics in regard to the Mass. We all know there is some great and spiritual meaning behind every word and action and how very sacred every detail is, but how often we treat the most extraordinary thing this side of heaven like it’s the most ordinary thing in the world. I’m not saying that we must know every detail of the liturgy but we ought at least to have a good idea of what we are entering into. It will help us to pray.
Have you ever wondered what the priest is actually saying as he blesses the incense at the offertory? He is asking Saint Michael to intercede for us that the offering of incense might be received by the Lord as a sweet odour in Heaven. That is a holy thought – that the prayers of the archangel can assist in making something so earthly into something that even Heaven finds not only acceptable but sweet.
And then when the sacrifice is done, in the Old Mass, and in some places in the New, we all kneel down and turn to him again. Pope Leo XIII was a great friend of your Order and saw, prophetically, the need for us to turn unceasingly to Saint Michael as a powerful help against Satan and his fallen angels who prowl through the world for the ruin of souls. We know that when we have a brush with the Enemy we can say that prayer – which we all must know by heart – and be assured of the help of Saint Michael against the impulses of the Evil One.
Isn’t all of that lovely? We have this glorious archangel who prays for us, encourages us along the way, and assists by his prayers. His name and his battle call are encouragement for us in the good fight of faith and he is always on hand to help us.
Some of you, I know, will have read the Evelyn Waugh novel ‘Brideshead Revisited’. In that novel Waugh has the character Sebastian Flyte explain his faith as one based on lovely things; his friend Charles Ryder protests “You can’t believe things because they are a lovely idea” “But I do” says Sebastian “that’s how I believe”. I wonder, is it how we believe?
It would be nice wouldn’t it believe only in lovely things. The world is getting quite adept at it. I see this all the time in my life as a priest – how people are lied to from infancy that life has to be what they feel to be nice and that they have a right to it. That’s why it’s so normal now not to have any concept of truth, or the idea that there is a right way to live and a wrong way to live. And woe betide you if you dare to suggest it.
You probably realise by now that it’s not my intention to sit here and tell you only lovely things. I could of course. I could stand here and tell you that actually we’re all doing rather well and should pat ourselves on the back for bothering to come out to listen to a rather odd little priest rattling on in a waffling about how lovely Saint Michael is. Haven’t we all done well? But I’m not here to hide the Truth from you, much less to lie to you. Our baptismal vocation as Christians impels us to acknowledge the Truth, to live it by following the Law of He who is Truth Incarnate and to boldly preach that Truth in season and out of season. Saint Michael’s rôle in all of our sacred history has been to defend God – to defend Truth – in the face of lies and against the Prince of Deception. If we are to be encouraged, then it is in that fight against Satan that we must take up our place with Michael at our head. And indeed, there is nothing so encouraging as the Truth.
The Devil you see hates the Truth. He is jealous of the love that Truth bestows and of its reward if we follow it. He rebels against it and yet must acknowledge it. We have all heard that quotation from Baudelaire that his greatest trick has been to convince the world he does not exist, and yet how true that is! If we talk to non-Christians about Saint Michael fighting Satan they think we’ve had a knock on the head or have something of the night about us. Even amongst our fellow Christians don’t we hear so often that Christ’s exorcisms were simply encounters of a primitive culture with mental illness? But the Devil is real and he is at work. To believe otherwise is to call Truth Himself a liar. We cannot understand Saint Michael, or even our Faith, unless we acknowledge the enemies that assail us and call them by their name.
“There was a war in Heaven” St. John tells us in his Apocalypse “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; and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” This then is the Truth that God has revealed to us. Satan rebels against God and is thrown down from Heaven by Saint Michael and the heavenly cohort. Satan is on the prowl to lead our souls from our share in Christ’s victory in Heaven. He hates God and is jealous for our souls. This is the supernatural reality in which we live. This is the war in which we are called to fight. If we fail to fight, if we allow ourselves to go astray then Satan has us. If we fight and make use of all the weapons God gives us that we have, not a world to win, but Heaven and for ever.
I want to ask you then this morning; are you fighting? Are you really making use of the weapons God gives you?
When I ask you if you are fighting I mean are you really trying? Are you in your own life really trying to give the first place to God? Does He yet have everything you might give Him? We know all too well that Christianity doesn’t really work if we try to do it by halves. Satan is very good at suggesting to us those little compromises with our conscience and with Truth that really do compromise our souls. We know the great and so dangerous temptations against Faith – we tell ourselves we don’t really have to accept this or that teaching because of a thousand reasons, and yet know that in doing so we call God a liar and His Church a fraud. What sort of evangelisation do we do if we tell people that even we don’t take it seriously? We know how easy it is to think only of God’s mercy and ignore His justice, much more His wrath. Very easily we can become comfortable with these large, and often little, compromises with the Truth. And we become Quislings and collaborators with the enemy who seeks our eternal ruin.
It is our souls that are the battleground for this war between Satan and Heaven. That is why we must always be in a state of Grace, in friendship with God and on His side. God does not have favourites, but He does have friends. And that is why engaging in this spiritual battle isn’t optional. Each and every day we must make the choice of God. Our symbol is the Cross; not a promise that our Faith is an easy one but rather a sign of a victory over sin and death that is won by sacrifice. Christ never promised us this war would be an easy one; sin and death still hurt but they don’t win any more precisely because of the Cross. But we can bear it gladly, and yes joyfully, because in carrying our crosses we are only able to do so with that glorious sight of Heaven and He who is Love before our eyes.
The war is one we fight every day. In our choices and in our conduct. Satan himself acknowledges God but refuses to serve Him. We who proclaim with Michael “Who is like God?” – what else is there besides Him? – know that our Faith leads us to service, in our love of God and of our neighbour. To love Him by living for Him alone, and to recognise His countenance in the face of our brothers and sisters, and to love them. Your Order is renown for its practical and far-reaching living out of the second great commandment. You really do feed the hungry, clothe the naked and incarnate the life of the Beatitudes. For all of us the call to live as Christ did and to do good must be not only what we do but who we are.
Are we kind people then? It’s seems to be rather fashionable these days to say that Christianity isn’t about being nice to people. But it is about being kind and good, as Christ was to all. That doesn’t mean we lie to them about the Truth, but that we battle to outdo one another in kindness; it is after all the best way to show others who’s side we are on and to attract them to it. Simple kindness to others is much under-rated these days, but if each of us Christians were kind, and dare I say gentlemanly, then we should draw so many to fight with us against unkindness and evil.
St. Paul urges us to this daily living out of the battle to imitate Christ: “Brethren” he writes to the Ephesians “be strengthened in the Lord, and in the might of his power. Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace: In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God). By all prayer and supplication praying at all times in the spirit; and in the same watching with all instance and supplication for all the saints”.
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| Placing the signed vow papers under the altar-linen before the Offertory of the Mass. |
How encouraging! The Apostle not only recalls us to the reality of our battle with evil, but also reminds us that God gives us so many weapons we must use. How loving and how generous God is! He not only enlists us in His army and promises us a share in His victory, but gives us everything we need to win Heaven. Do we use these weapons then? Do we pray – and I mean really pray? Do we remember when we say our prayers that we are talking to God? Do we remember that the serpent’s head has been crushed already by Our Lady? She above all must be the one we fly to for refuge when we are battle weary. Do we know our fellow soldiers, the saints who show us that victory is possible and can be won? Are they really our friends and do we seek to know them and imitate them? I do hope each of you has a particular friend in Heaven. They will hold you up when the battle seems too much, and they will urge you on.
Do you really make use of the Sacraments? Is Mass truly the summit and source of your life; of your day, or your week? We should very soon fall and flail in our fight if we didn’t use these means of refreshment and of refuge. Do you really acknowledge your wounds and your disloyalties by a good examination of conscience each day? Are we pushing our best soldiers to the front lines by encouraging them to become monks and nuns, priests and consecrated persons? Do we ever pray for vocations or ask that encouraging question of our young people – might you be a priest? Would you be so heroic to enter a monastery? Do you try, and I mean really try, to follow Christ in every part of your life – or is there some part you keep from Him? We cannot half fight a battle just as we cannot half love.
And we have Saint Michael. He who banished Satan from Heaven can, if we let him and fight with him, banish that darkness and its prince from our soul too. But we must engage in the fight, we must use the weapons God gives us.
Holy Scripture tells us that when the Son of Man returns the Holy Angels will return with Him to draw to the Heavenly Jerusalem the souls of the just and to deliver the souls of the damned to everlasting fire. That will be the reckoning when battle is done. It is a sobering thought, and a scene we shall not only witness ourselves but each be part of. Let us therefore resolve this very moment to make the choice of God in all things and so follow Saint Michael to victory! Death rather than sin! Life for life! Love for Love! Wounds for wounds! What would be the point in anything else? What is the point in any other choice, any other way of life? For who is like God?
I hope therefore, in my own confused and rambling way, that I’ve told you something about what Saint Michael does and why. And I hope I’ve encouraged you to fight on and to help you see the need to fight the good fight of faith with all you have and all you are, and to use all that God’s gives us.
In the afternoon I will talk about you. That is to say the particular rôle your Order has in the particular fight against Satan that we are faced with today. Shall we call upon him now?
Holy Michael the Archangel, defend us in the day of battle …..
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