Sep 29 – S Michael the Archangel

It’s the Feast of Dedication of St. Michael the Archangel , 1st Class, with the color of White. In this episode: the meditation: “The Sacrament of Penance”, a preview of this week’s episode of The SSPX Podcast: “Audiobook: Operation Survival”, and today’s thought from the Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

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The Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, traditionally called Michaelmas, was once one of the great landmarks of the year in Catholic Europe.

We know Saint Michael from Scripture as the great defender of God’s people, the archangel who battles the dragon in the Apocalypse. But September 29 developed a personality all its own, combining liturgy, pilgrimage, harvest customs, food, folklore, and even the way people organized the calendar.

The feast’s September date is traditionally connected with the dedication of a basilica of Saint Michael near Rome. By the Middle Ages, Michaelmas had become an important feast throughout Western Europe, and because it arrived just after the autumn equinox, it naturally became associated with the end of the harvest.

In England and Ireland, Michaelmas goose became the traditional dinner. There’s even an old belief that eating goose on Michaelmas would protect you from financial need during the coming year. Geese were fat after feeding on the harvested fields, so the tradition was practical as well as festive.

Then there are the blackberries.

An old British and Irish legend says that when Saint Michael cast Lucifer from heaven, the devil landed in a blackberry bush. Furious, he cursed the berries, and in some versions spat on them. So after Michaelmas, you weren’t supposed to eat blackberries anymore.

It’s probably one of the stranger ways a theological battle ever became agricultural advice.

Michaelmas also became a major legal and economic date. Rents were due. Accounts were settled. Servants were hired. Courts opened. Even today, British universities such as Oxford use the name Michaelmas Term for their autumn academic session.

Across Europe, meanwhile, Saint Michael became associated with extraordinary mountaintop shrines.

In Italy, pilgrims traveled to the ancient sanctuary of Monte Gargano, where tradition holds that Saint Michael appeared in the fifth century. In Normandy, the magnificent Mont-Saint-Michel rose from a tidal island. Across the Channel, England had its own Saint Michael’s Mount in Cornwall.

And strangely enough, several famous shrines dedicated to Saint Michael appear along a roughly northwest-to-southeast line across Europe and the Mediterranean. Modern popular devotion sometimes calls this the Sword of Saint Michael. The idea of a deliberately designed ancient straight line is modern rather than an old Church tradition, but the geography itself is fascinating.

Michaelmas was also traditionally one of the quarter days in England, dates that divided the year into four sections for contracts, rents, and business. So September 29 wasn’t merely something Catholics noticed at Mass.

It helped organize ordinary life.

That’s perhaps the most interesting thing about Michaelmas. Medieval Catholics didn’t keep feast days locked inside the church building. A feast could determine what you ate, when you harvested, when you paid your rent, when school began, and where you went on pilgrimage.

September 29 meant autumn had arrived.

And standing at the doorway of the darker half of the year was Saint Michael, sword in hand.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

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The main goal of the Society of Saint Pius X is to preserve the Catholic Faith in its fullness and purity, to teach its truths, and to diffuse its virtues, especially through the Roman Catholic priesthood.

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