Saint Michael the Archangel Through the Ages

Review

SECTION ONE St. Michael the Archangel appears in Scripture at moments of existential weight: war in heaven, the guarding of Israel, the dispute over the body of Moses. What does that ancient figure have to do with a seventh-century Irish bishop, a French teenage soldier, or a child saying a short prayer before bed? Fr. Frederick Schmit, O.Praem., and Fr. Peregrine Fletcher answer that question by threading twelve stories of saints and holy people together into a single narrative line that runs from the archangel's first battle with Satan to his expected role at the end of time. The book is aimed at children, but it reads as a genuine work of hagiographic synthesis: Michael is not a symbol or a mascot but an active agent in salvation history, one who gave St. Joan of Arc courage, nudged Blessed Alcuin of York with a poke on the head, and established a tradition of shrine-pilgrimage that still draws worshippers to seven specific sites across Europe and the Middle East. Parents and catechists looking for a way to introduce children to the communion of saints without reducing that communion to sentimentality will find this a useful and specific guide. SECTION TWO - **Created**: The book rests on the Catholic conviction that the created order includes persons who are not human — angels whose nature, though immaterial, is real and whose agency in history is not metaphor. By depicting Michael as genuinely acting in the lives of particular saints, the authors affirm that creation is inhabited by rational beings ordered toward God, and that human persons are not alone in that ordering. This is the imago Dei premise extended into its cosmological frame: the world is structured for worship, and Michael's ministry is part of that structure. - **Fallen**: The narrative opens with the primordial rupture — Michael's battle with Satan — and returns repeatedly to the reality that angelic protection is needed because the fallen condition is not merely individual but cosmic. The saints in these twelve stories are not paragons of easy virtue; they are people under pressure, in danger, in spiritual conflict. Michael's presence in their stories is not decorative; it marks the seriousness of the adversary they face. - **Redeemed**: The arc of the book moves from battle to intercession to eschatological completion. Michael's role at the Second Coming is treated not as a frightening end-note but as the culmination of a protective mission that has been running since before human history. For young readers, this frames redemption as something already underway, already supported by a named and active intercessor. - **Justice (worship)**: The sections on Michaelmas and the seven shrines do something specific: they show children that veneration of St. Michael is not private sentiment but a structured, communal, and historically located practice. The feast, the pilgrimage sites, and the Prayer to St. Michael are all presented as forms of corporate worship with their own proper occasions and forms — which is precisely what the virtue of religion, as a part of justice, demands. - **Prudence (memory)**: By arranging the twelve saint-stories chronologically and connecting them to Michael's continuous mission, the book trains a kind of sacred memory — the habit of reading the present through the accumulated testimony of those who came before. This is prudence's integral part of memoria operating at the level of a child's formation. SECTION THREE Pope Benedict XVI[^1], in his Wednesday Audiences on St. Jerome, observed that 'ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ' and that the Word of God 'builds community' when read in communion with the living Church rather than as a private text. This book extends that principle into the domain of angelic tradition: the stories of Michael's interventions are themselves a form of received witness, passed through liturgy, hagiography, and pilgrimage, and the book asks children to receive them in exactly the communal register Benedict described — not as private curiosities but as shared memory that shapes identity within the Church. ## References 1. Pope Benedict XVI (n.d.). *Wednesday Audiences*. Page 1. — 'Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ'

✓ Strengths

• ✓Traces St. Michael's presence from the Old Testament through salvation history, giving children a historically grounded rather than merely sentimental encounter with angelic ministry.
• ✓Grounds angelology in concrete human stories — twelve interwoven accounts of saints such as Joan of Arc, Patrick, and lesser-known figures like Lorenzo of Siponto — so the theology of intercession becomes legible through particular lives rather than abstract doctrine.
• ✓The treatment of Michael's role in the Second Coming connects the present life of faith to eschatological hope, situating the child's prayer life within the full arc of salvation.
• ✓The section on Michael's Sword — the seven Michaeline shrines — introduces the idea of sacred geography and pilgrimage as a form of embodied devotion, integrating place, memory, and worship.
• ✓The Prayer to St. Michael and the feast of Michaelmas are presented as living practices, not historical relics, modeling for young readers that tradition is a form of ongoing participation.

⚠ Considerations

• ⚠A children's book format, however well executed, will inevitably compress the theological complexity of angelic nature and action; parents or catechists will need to supplement with more precise doctrinal teaching as children mature.