Saint John Henry Newman and the Archangel Michael

Our Lovers of Newman group met in September to read a Parochial and Plain Sermon delivered by John Henry Newman on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel (Michaelmas) in 1831, "The Powers of Nature" with the introductory verse of "Who maketh His Angels spirits, his ministers a flaming fire." Psalm 104:4:

ON today's Festival it well becomes us to direct our minds to the thought of those Blessed Servants of God, who have never tasted of sin; who are among us, though unseen, ever serving God joyfully on earth as well as in heaven; who minister, through their Maker's condescending will, to the redeemed in Christ, the heirs of salvation.

There have been ages of the world, in which men have thought too much of Angels, and paid them excessive honour; honoured them so perversely as to forget the supreme worship due to Almighty God. This is the sin of a dark age. But the sin of what is called an educated age, such as our own, is just the reverse: to account slightly of them, or not at all; to ascribe all we see around us, not to their agency, but to certain assumed laws of nature. This, I say, is likely to be our {359} sin, in proportion as we are initiated into the learning of this world;—and this is the danger of many (so called) philosophical pursuits, now in fashion, and recommended zealously to the notice of large portions of the community, hitherto strangers to them,—chemistry, geology, and the like; the danger, that is, of resting in things seen, and forgetting unseen things, and our ignorance about them. . . .

Please read the rest there, if you like.

Reading this sermon led us to consider how much devotion Newman had to the Angels and Archangels throughout his life and this devotion is expressed in his works. 

The Dream of Gerontius is filled with Angels: the Soul's Guardian Angel, the five Angelical Choirs, Angels of the Sacred Stair, the Angel of the Agony, even the Fallen Angels (Demons).

Newman wrote poetry about the Angels, including "Angelic Guidance". 

"The Pillar of the Cloud" ("Lead, Kindly Light") ends with the poignant lines:

And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

And this 1853 verse addressed to his Guardian Angel.

But, most appropriate for today, he wrote this poem about St. Michael the Archangel as a hymn at the Oratory in 1862:

THOU champion high  

Of Heaven's imperial Bride, 

For ever waiting on her eye, 

Before her onward path, and at her side,

In war her guard secure, by night her ready guide!

To thee was given,  

When those false angels rose 

Against the Majesty of Heaven, 

To hurl them down the steep, and on them close

The prison where they roam in hopeless unrepose.

Thee, Michael, thee, 

When sight and breathing fail, 

The disembodied soul shall see; 

The pardon'd soul with solemn joy shall hail,

When holiest rites are spent, and tears no more avail.{322}

And thou, at last, 

When Time itself must die, 

Shalt sound that dread and piercing blast, 

To wake the dead, and rend the vaulted sky,

And summon all to meet the Omniscient Judge on high.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Le Grand Saint Michel, 1518, by Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), Archangel Michael defeating evil.

Saint Michael the Archangel: An Antiphon and A Hymn

According to the Ordo of the Roman Missal of 1962, today we celebrate The Dedication of the Archangel Michael, referring to a basilica in Rome dedicated by Pope Saint Boniface IV in 610. In the current calendar for the Roman Rite we celebrate the three Archangels, Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, named in scripture as God's special messengers. 

Michaelmas, September 29, is one of the quarter days, an important date for paying debts, hiring servants, etc. More about the feast here.

The Antiphon for the Lauds (Morning Prayer) of Michaelmas describes the "war in heaven" recounted in the Book of Revelation ("Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it." Revelation 12:7–9):

Factum est silentium in caelo,
Dum committeret bellum draco cum Michaele Archangelo.

Audita est vox millia millium dicentium:
Salus, honor et virtus omnipotenti Deo.
Millia millium minestrabant ei et decies centena millia assistebant ei.
[Alleluia.]

There was silence in heaven
When the dragon fought with the Archangel Michael.

The voice of a thousand thousand was heard saying:
Salvation, honour and power be to almighty God.
A thousand thousand ministered to him and ten hundreds of thousands stood before him.
[Alleluia.]

Richard Dering, a Catholic convert and exile from England, offers this setting of the antiphon, sung by the Choir of Clare College. As another record label, Hyperion, describes Dering and this work, which is the Antiphon for the Benedictus canticle during the Lauds of Michaelmas:

Dering was, like Philips, an English Catholic musician who went into exile in the Spanish Netherlands (or, according to another account, converted to Catholicism while visiting Rome in 1612). By 1617 he was organist to the convent of English nuns in Brussels, and in the same year published his first collection of Cantiones Sacrae; the publisher was the noted Phalèse of Antwerp who also published music by Philips. Factum est silentium comes from a second collection which appeared in 1618; its declamatory, dramatic style shows clearly the influence of the new Italian Baroque style which Dering’s compatriots in England were perhaps slower to embrace.

More about the Benedictine convent in Brussels Dering served here. He returned to England in 1625 to serve Queen Henrietta Maria as organist in her private Catholic chapel and also served at Court as a musician among the king's Lutes and Voices. He was buried in the Savoy Chapel, a Royal Chapel, on March 22, 1630.

Father Edward Caswall translated the hymn, Te splendor et virtus patris for use at the Birmingham Oratory during Matins and Vespers for this feast:

O Jesu! Life-spring of the soul!
The Father's power and glory bright!
Thee with the Angels we extol;
From Thee they draw their life and light.

Thy thousand thousand hosts are spread
Embattled o'er the azure sky;
But Michael bears Thy standard dread,
And lifts the mighty Cross on high.

He in that Sign the rebel powers
Did with their Dragon Prince expel;
And hurled them from the heavens’ high towers,
Down like a thunderbolt to hell.

Grant us, with Michael, still, O Lord,
Against the prince of pride to fight;
So may a crown be our reward,
Before the Lamb's pure throne of light.

To God the Father, with the Son
And Holy Paraclete, with Thee,
As evermore hath been before,
Be glory through eternity.

The Latin text is attributed to Rabanus Maurus, the ninth century Frankish Benedictine monk and theologian.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us!

Saint Gabriel, the Archangel, pray for us!

Saint Raphael, the Archangel, pray for us!

75 Years Ago Today: Coventry Cathedral

The German Luftwaffe bombed Coventry on November 14, 1940, destroying the Anglican Cathedral and the Cathedral is celebrating the 75th anniversary of that night of terror:

BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme highlighted Coventry’s perspective on the subject of remembrance in a special feature broadcast on the morning of Remembrance Sunday, November 8th. You can listen to it here.

On the evening of Saturday 14th November, the city is planning to create a giant Human Chain of Peace and Light in the city centre finishing at the Cathedral. Each person attending will carry a light along the chain to symbolise communities joining together in a universal message of remembering the past but looking to the future. Join His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent KG GCMG GCVO ADC and listen to LocalVocals as they sing songs from the 40’s. Hear survivor stories and stand shoulder to shoulder with your neighbour and a host of VIPs to remember the Blitz. The event begins in the University Square at 6.30 pm. Bring your torch or mobile phone to light up the square at 7 pm.

The inspiration for the Human Chain comes from Dresden where a similar event takes place annually and attracts thousands of people from across the country.

The Blitz 75th Commemorations programme continues with a concert in the Cathedral at 7.30 pm on Saturday evening with the Saint Michael’s Singers performing Mozart’s Requiem and Solemn Vespers with the Parliament Choir and the English Symphony Orchestra. . . .

On the evening of Sunday 15th November, the Cathedral will be hosting a Civic Service of Commemorationat 7 pm. Everyone is invited to come and join in looking back to the events of 75 years ago in company with representatives from Coventry’s friends across the world – including nations with whom we were at war in 1940.

The destroyed Cathedral, dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, was of course formerly a Catholic church, built in the 14th and 15th centuries. The first cathedral of Coventry was St. Mary's, a Benedictine Priory. One might note that Henry VIII destroyed St. Mary's in the 16th century (the only cathedral destroyed during the English Reformation) in the course of the Dissolution of the Monasteries--he had offered it to the people of Coventry for purchase, but they could not raise the funds, so he had it razed. The ruins are of course now a tourist site.

St. Mary's was founded in the 11th century and there's an intriguing historical connection:

Leofric, earl of Chester, and Godiva his wife founded the great Benedictine monastery of Coventry in 1043, it being consecrated on 4 October by Archbishop Eadsige. The church was dedicated to the honour of God and His Blessed Mother, and also of St. Peter the Apostle, and of the Holy Virgin St. Osburg and of All Saints. It was endowed by the founder with one-half of the town in which the monastery was situated, and with twenty-four lordships, fifteen of which were in this county, four in Leicestershire, two in Northamptonshire, and one each in Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and Cheshire. Among the witnesses to this foundation charter were Edward the Confessor, the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Worcester and Lichfield, the abbots of Winchcombe and Pershore, and the earls Godwin, Harold, Siward, and Ordgar. The king confirmed to this abbot and his successors sac and soc and toll and all other liberties.

Yes, that Lady Godiva, who probably never rode a horse naked.

St. Mary's Priory was surrendered to the Crown on January 15, 1539. St. Michael's Cathedral was rebuilt after the Blitz and was consecrated in 1962 with Benjamin Britten's War Requiem premiering. The War Requiem combines traditional parts of the Catholic Missa pro Defunctis with the poems of Wilfred Owen, a World War I poet. Sir Simon Rattle recorded it in 2013 with the Berlin Philharmonic.

Image credit: Winston Churchill visits the ruins of the Cathedral in 1941.

Michaelmas and St. Michael

From the first chapter of Henry Adams' Mont Saint Michel and Chartres:

The Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the tower that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devil crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched on his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardly room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for the Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangel stands for Church and State, and both militant. He is the conqueror of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God. His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find him here. For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the patron saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted to Christianity, put themselves under his powerful protection. So he stood for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watching across the tremor of the immense ocean,--"immensi tremor oceani"--as Louis XI, inspired for once to poetry, inscribed on the collar of the Order of Saint Michael which he created. So soldiers, nobles, and monarchs went on pilgrimage to his shrine; so the common people followed, and still follow, like ourselves.

Today's feast of the Archangels was one of the important days of the sanctoral and secular year in England before the English Reformation, according to this site:

Michaelmas, or the Feast of Michael and All Angels, is celebrated on the 29th of September every year. As it falls near the equinox, the day is associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days; in England, it is one of the “quarter days”.

There are traditionally four “quarter days” in a year (Lady Day (25th March), Midsummer (24th June), Michaelmas (29th September) and Christmas (25th December)). They are spaced three months apart, on religious festivals, usually close to the solstices or equinoxes. They were the four dates on which servants were hired, rents due or leases begun. It used to be said that harvest had to be completed by Michaelmas, almost like the marking of the end of the productive season and the beginning of the new cycle of farming. It was the time at which new servants were hired or land was exchanged and debts were paid. This is how it came to be for Michaelmas to be the time for electing magistrates and also the beginning of legal and university terms. . . .

Traditionally, in the British Isles, a well fattened goose, fed on the stubble from the fields after the harvest, is eaten to protect against financial need in the family for the next year; and as the saying goes:

“Eat a goose on Michaelmas Day,
Want not for money all the year”.

Sometimes the day was also known as “Goose Day” and goose fairs were held. Even now, the famous Nottingham Goose Fair is still held on or around the 3rd of October. Part of the reason goose is eaten is that it was said that when Queen Elizabeth I heard of the defeat of the Armada, she was dining on goose and resolved to eat it on Michaelmas Day. Others followed suit. It could also have developed through the role of Michaelmas Day as the debts were due; tenants requiring a delay in payment may have tried to persuade their landlords with gifts of geese!

As you might expect, things changed:

Through the celebration of the day in this way, the prosperity and wealth of the family is supported for the coming year. The custom of celebrating Michaelmas Day as the last day of harvest was broken when Henry VIII split from the Catholic Church; instead, it is Harvest Festival that is celebrated now.

The Fisheaters website has more details about other customs on Michaelmas.

Saint Michael the Archangel,

defend us in battle;

be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;

and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,

by the Divine power of God, cast into hell Satan,

and with him all evil spirits

who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen

Today in Oklahoma City

Today is the day of the horrible mockery of the Catholic Mass in Oklahoma City: some 88 people have paid the price of admission at the Civic Center to attend. Five buses from the diocese of Wichita, Kansas are on the way, filled with Catholics praying and offering reparation. Although the group conducting the Black Mass says that they returned he consecrated Host, the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present under the form of unleavened bread, it will still mock the Mass and horribly call upon Satan to exorcise the Holy Spirit--and can we really trust that they don't have another consecrated Host? Too terrible to imagine!

Archbishop Paul Coakley published another letter to his flock and the public with some last minute guidance:

On Sunday, Sept. 21, we will gather for a public act of worship at St. Francis of Assisi Church. I invite all Catholics as well as other Christians and people of good will to join us for a Eucharistic Holy Hour, an outdoor Eucharistic procession and Benediction beginning at 3 p.m. We will prayerfully bear witness to our faith as an expression of our solidarity and in reparation for acts of blasphemy.

I am aware that other groups are planning to show their opposition to the blasphemous event that evening at the Civic Center. I urgently ask everyone to avoid confrontations with those who might oppose them. Our witness ought to be reverent, respectful and peaceful. I urge those who might plan to attend the black mass in order to pray or to protest not to do so! Please do not enter the venue. It would be presumptuous and dangerous to expose oneself to others to these evil influences.    

Finally, let us demonstrate our faith in the power of the Lord’s grace by praying for the conversion of those who are perpetrating this sacrilege and are bound by the Evil One. “But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” (Mt 5:44,45)

One of the unexpected (by the organizers, I'm sure) results of this event in Oklahoma City--also in Cambridge at Harvard University earlier this year--is that it reminds Catholics of one of the most central facts of our Catholic Faith. Every day of year (except Good Friday, of course), Jesus comes to us in his Body and Blood in Holy Communion, just as he promised his followers in the Gospel of St. John:

I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world." The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?" Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever." These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. Then many of his disciples who were listening said, "This saying is hard; who can accept it?" Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, "Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe." Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said, "For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father." As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, "Do you also want to leave?" Simon Peter answered him, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

I have been working on a project about St. Thomas More in the Tower, preparing for martyrdom. Before his arrest he wrote his Treatise on the Blessed Sacrament in which he defended Catholic teaching about the Mass and the Eucharist, particularly writing about the preparations a Catholic should made before receiving Holy Communion:

We must (I say) see, that we firmly believe that this Blessed Sacrament is not a bare sign, or a figure, or a token of that Holy Body of Christ: but that It is in perpetual remembrance of His bitter Passion, that He suffered for us, the self-same precious Body of Christ that suffered it, by His own Almighty power and unspeakable goodness consecrated and given unto us.

And this point of belief is in the receiving of this Blessed Sacrament of such necessity, and such weight with them that have years of discretion, that without it they receive It plainly to their damnation. And that point believed very full and fastly must needs be a great occasion to move any man in all other points to receive It well. For note well the words of St. Paul therein: Qui manducat de hoc pane, et bibit de calice indigne judicium sibi manducat et bibit, non dijudicans corpus Domini. He that eateth of this Bread and drinketh of this cup, unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment upon himself in that, he discerneth not the Body of our Lord. (2 Cor. 11.)

Leonine Prayers after Mass

With the two crises of Black Masses in Cambridge, Mass. and Oklahoma City, Okla, mocking the Catholic faith and desecrating the Sacramental Host, Catholics have been urged to pray the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, composed by Pope Leo XIII:

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle;
be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the Divine power of God, cast into hell Satan,
and with him all evil spirits
who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen

The prayer to Saint Michael is just one of the prayers that Pope Leo XIII ordered to be said after Low Mass by the priest and the congregation in Catholic churches throughout the world. Pope Pius IX had required Catholics in the Papal States to offer certain prayers after Mass during the crisis of the Italian revolution in 1859: three Hail Marys, the Salve Regina and a special Collect. Pope Leo expanded the use of those prayers in 1884 and added the St. Michael the Archangel Prayer in 1886 Popes Pius XI and XII emphasized that the Leonine prayers, named for Pope Leo XIII, were to be prayed for the conversion of Russia.

In 1964, the Instruction on Implementing the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, Inter oecumenici suppressed both the Last Gospel, read after the dismissal and final blessing, and the Leonine Prayers. On Sunday, April 24, 1994 St. John Paul II nevertheless encouraged Catholics to pray the St. Michael Prayer during his Regina Caeli message and prayers:

May prayer strengthen us for the spiritual battle we are told about in the Letter to the Ephesians: ‘Draw strength from the Lord and from His mighty power’ (Ephesians 6:10). The Book of Revelation refers to this same battle, recalling before our eyes the image of St. Michael the Archangel (Revelation 12:7). Pope Leo XIII certainly had a very vivid recollection of this scene when, at the end of the last century, he introduced a special prayer to St. Michael throughout the Church. Although this prayer is no longer recited at the end of Mass, I ask everyone not to forget it and to recite it to obtain help in the battle against forces of darkness and against the spirit of this world.

Archbishop Coakley in Oklahoma City asked that this prayer be said at the end of every Mass and that Eucharist Holy Hours be offered "to honor Christ's Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist". Bishop Slattery in the Tulsa Oklahoma diocese asked Catholics there to pray a decade of the Rosary and the St. Michael Prayer. And although we have the good news that the organizers of the Black Mass have returned the consecrated Host they planned to desecrate, those prayers are still needed as they still plan to hold some mockery of the Mass at the Civic Center in Oklahoma City.

You may find the full text of the Leonine Prayers in both England and Latin here. Although the congregational praying of them has been suppressed, anyone may pray these prayers after Mass, High or Low, in the Ordinary or Extraordinary Form--or whenever!

Pope Leo XIII, RIP

Pope Leo XIII died on July 20, 1903. He was born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi on March 2, 1810 and elected as the Vicar of Christ on February 20, 1878. As this article from the Catholic Encyclopedia describes his papacy, he had great impact on the Catholic Church in England and left an important legacy for the universal Catholic Church with his many (12!) encyclicals on the Rosary, his ground-breaking social encyclical, Rerum Novarum, and other Catholic devotions, like the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel:

Saint 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, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

Sancte Michael Archangele,
defende nos in proelio;
contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur:
tuque, Princeps militiae Caelestis,
satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,
qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute in infernum detrude.
Amen.

As to his influence on the British Empire and Ireland, the Catholic Encyclopedia article notes:

Among the acts of Leo XIII that affected in a particular way the English-speaking world may be mentioned: for England, the elevation of John Henry Newman to the cardinalate (1879), the "Romanos Pontifices" of 1881 concerning the relations of the hierarchy and the regular clergy, the beatification (1886) of fifty English martyrs, the celebration of the thirteenth centenary of St. Gregory the Great, Apostle of England (1891), the Encyclicals "Ad Anglos" of 1895, on the return to Catholic unity, and the "Apostolicæ Curæ" of 1896, on the non-validity of the Anglican orders. He restored the Scotch hierarchy in 1878, and in 1898 addressed to the Scotch a very touching letter. In English India Pope Leo established the hierarchy in 1886, and regulated there long-standing conflicts with the Portugese authorities. In 1903 King Edward VII paid him a visit at the Vatican. The Irish Church experienced his pastoral solicitude on many occasions. His letter to Archbishop McCabe of Dublin (1881), the elevation of the same prelate to the cardinalate in 1882, the calling of the Irish bishops to Rome in 1885, the decree of the Holy Office (13 April, 1888) on the plan of campaign and boycotting, and the subsequent Encyclical of 24 June, 1888, to the Irish hierarchy represent in part his fatherly concern for the Irish people, however diverse the feelings they aroused at the height of the land agitation.

When Pope Leo XIII made Father John Henry Newman a Cardinal Deacon of the Church, he knew it was a controversial move--he called Newman "my cardinal" and said, "My cardinal! it was not easy, it was not easy. They said he was too liberal, but I had determined to honour the Church in honouring Newman. I always had a cult for him. I am proud that I was able to honour such a man."

May Pope Leo XIII, Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi, rest in the peace of Christ. Image credit from wikipedia commons.

Henry Adams and St. Michael the Archangel

From the first chapter of Henry Adams' Mont Saint Michel and Chartres:

The Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the tower
that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devil
crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched
on his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven
and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardly
room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for the
Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangel
stands for Church and State, and both militant. He is the conqueror
of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God.
His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find him
here. For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the
patron saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted to
Christianity, put themselves under his powerful protection. So he
stood for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watching
across the tremor of the immense ocean,-immensi tremor oceani,-as
Louis XI, inspired for once to poetry, inscribed on the collar of
the Order of Saint Michael which he created. So soldiers, nobles,
and monarchs went on pilgrimage to his shrine; so the common people
followed, and still follow, like ourselves.

 

Seems required reading on this Feast of the Archangels!