Happy Michaelmas!

Today is the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, or Michaelmas, as our friends across the pond will tell you, and one of my favorite feast days of the year. Let's face it - St. Michael is a rockstar - he cast Satan into Hell!

I pray the shorter, modern Prayer to St. Michael each week at Mass for a variety of reasons, both general and personal requests for intercession, as well as praying privately as I sort out the day during bedtime prayers.

It seems like I've been pestering him a lot more in recent years - certainly since 9/11/01 and the onset of the war, the ever-increasing number of child predator cases on the news, and a spate of unsavory characters we've come across in our professional and personal lives - pretty much any time I'm confronted with inexplicably evil people or situations. My oldest told me recently that she's been praying to St. Michael since her problems began with the wretched female bullies she's [still] contending with at school. So today we're saying the prayer as a family, and I've posted it in Latin down in the kitchen for the girls to decipher during breakfast:


Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the malice 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 evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.


Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in praelio. 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.


Some Michaelmas trivia: Michaelmas daisies (asters, really) are named due to their ability to thrive in the autumn/Michaelmas season weather...quite pretty in the fall garden:
Michaelmas is also known as "Goose Day" - it is an Elizabethan tradition to eat goose on Michaelmas, as she received good news of a successful battle while eating goose on Michaelmas - and thus many "Goose Fairs" took and still take place on this date in England. It is also a traditional date to pay quarterly rents, and for school and Court terms to begin.

And finally, legend says not to eat blackberries (another hardy fall plant) after Michaelmas, as the brambles of the blackberry bush are where Satan landed - and bled - when St. Michael cast him out and he fell to Earth.

On that note....time to wake the girls. Have a great day!