“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
Christ in the Desert: A Devil of a Time
The Gospel according to St Luke tells the story of Jesus, revealed to be Son of God, led into the desert to be tested by the devil who does not give up easily.
The Gospel according to St Luke tells the story of Jesus, revealed to be Son of God, led into the desert to be tested by the devil who does not give up easily.
Ash Wednesday, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae
Many of our readers are aware that the Church follows a three-year cycle for Sunday Scripture Readings. As Ordinary Time now gives way to the Season of Lent, I explore the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent. Being in the “A Cycle,” the Gospel from Saint Matthew (4:1-11) seemed very familiar. Like much of Scripture, I knew that I had read about this passage, but I also felt certain that I had written about it. It is the story of Jesus following the revelation that he is the Son of God revealed at his Baptism in the Jordan. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is led into the desert by the Spirit to face Satan and a series of temptations for which, if he failed, his redemptive mission would end before it even began. All three of the Synoptic Evangelists, Matthew, Mark and Luke, tell the same story but from different perspectives and traditions. Saint Mark’s version appears in Year B in just three lines of Scriptural text (Mark 1:12-15). The Gospel According to Saint Luke is the most theologically nuanced of the three. So even though in our current cycle, the version from Saint Matthew is used on the First Sunday of Lent, it is very similar to that of Saint Luke. So I have chosen the latter to present in exegesis form for our post this week.
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In my estimation, one of the best movies about Catholic life in America taking a wrong turn has been deemed by some to be a bit rough around the edges. Robert DeNiro portrays Los Angeles Monsignor Desmond Spellacy, and Robert Duvall is cast as his brother, LAPD homicide detective Tom Spellacy in the 1981 film, True Confessions. The film is from a novel of the same name by John Gregory Dunne based on the famous Los Angeles “Black Dahlia” murder case of 1947.
DeNiro’s character, Monsignor Desmond Spellacy is a priest of some prominence in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the late 1940s at the epicenter of the power politics of a Church beginning to succumb to the world in which it thrives. Amid corruption while being groomed to become the next Archbishop, the Monsignor nonetheless clings to an honest spiritual life just starting its inevitable fraying at the edges as he is drawn ever deeper into a tangled web of deceit.
Robert Duvall portrays his older brother, Tom Spellacy, an honest and dedicated — if somewhat cynical — L.A. homicide detective whose investigation of the murder of a prostitute brings him ever closer to the perimeter of an archdiocese circling the wagons of self preservation. The Church in America would see a lot more of this in the generation to come. Actor Charles Durning portrays the thoroughly corrupt owner of a large construction firm bidding for church building projects. About to be awarded Catholic Layman of the Year by the Archbishop of Los Angeles, he is also a person of interest in the murder investigation that a lot of powerful people want quietly covered up.
Those wanting to influence and sideline Tom’s investigation come up with evidence — a photograph. It depicts the murdered woman in a social scene with a few prominent people, one of whom, standing next to her, is Monsignor Desmond Spellacy, heir apparent of the archdiocesan throne.
The photograph is entirely bening, but it becomes for Tom Spellacy, as it was intended to be, evidence that the Monsignor knew the murdered woman. Many readers would be reminded by this today of the frenzied media fiasco that has been playing out to much fanfare, recriminations, and disgust about the Jeffrey Epstein files and the many lives, some innocent and some not-so-much, who are entangled by a mere photograph in Epstein’s posthumous web of corruption and deceit. In the hands of politicians on the eve of battle in the midtern national elections, such photographs have been honed as weapons of war in our bitter partisan politics. The film ends with the case solved, but Monsignor Spellacy banished to a small parish in the California desert, his hopes for political advancement in the Church destroyed.
Nonetheless, in the hands of media and various other entities, the photograph remains evidence and a legal and political quagmire for Detective Tom Spellacy tasked with an open and public investigation of a murder scene leading to political corruption. Tom knows that any pursuit of the case that involves this photograph will inevitably destroy the career and good name of his innocent brother. Tom struggles about what to do, but in the end he does the right thing. He pursues the truth of the matter wherever it leads.
The case is eventually solved and of course Monsignor Spellacy had nothing to do with the matter at hand. Someone is convicted (You have to watch the film to find out who). But in the moral sensitivies of the time, which was very much like our time, the photo with the murdered prostitute and the Monsignor becomes more enticing for the press than the murder itself. The photo ends up on the Front Page of the LA Times, and Monsignor Spellacy ends up where our Gospel passage begins: in the desert where he is exiled to a tiny parish in obscurity.
Being exiled in the desert is highly symbolic in Sacred Scripture. It has ancient roots in the Book of Leviticus. This book is composed of liturgical laws for the Levitical priesthood reaching back to 1300 BC as Moses led his people through a forty-year period of exile in the Sinai desert. Some of the ritual accounts it contains are far more ancient.
In a recent Christmas post, “Silent Night and the Shepherds Who Quaked at the Sight,” I wrote that the troubles of our time are the manifestation of spiritual warfare that has been waged in the world since God’s first covenant bonds with us. Before this covenant relationship, we were doomed. Since the covenants of God there is hope for us. We remain oblivious to spiritual warfare to our own spiritual peril. As I have written many times, we now live in a vulnerable time in God’s covenant relationship with us. The Birth of the Messiah and his walking among us are equidistant in time between our existence now in the 21st Century AD and Abraham’s first encounter with God in the 21st Century BC.
Our Day of Atonement Begins
The Gospel according to St Luke (4:1-13) is also set in the desert as the Day of Atonement begins for all humankind. Revealed in Baptism as the Son of God …
“Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil.”
— Luke 4:1
The scene has roots in an ancient ritual for the Day of Atonement described in Leviticus 16:5-10. Aaron, the high priest …
“Shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering .... Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the tent of meeting; and Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat upon which the lot fell for the Lord, and offer it as a sin offering, but the goat upon which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the desert wilderness to Azazel …”
— Leviticus 16:5,7-10
This describes the ritual for purification known in Hebrew as Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, from Leviticus Chapter 16. The ritual reaches far beyond Moses into the time of God’s covenant with Abraham some 2000 years before the Birth of the Messiah.
There are two goats mentioned in the ritual: One for sacrifice, to Yahweh, and the other — the one bearing the sins of Israel — is “for Azazel.” This name appears only in Leviticus 16 and nowhere else in Scripture except here in the Gospel of Luke and in some of the apocryphal writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. One of them is the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, the name of a figure in Genesis who “walked with God” and “was taken up from the Earth.” As such, Enoch is presented in the genealogy of Jesus in Luke (3:37), and thus was spared the deluge of Noah and the destruction intended for all mankind.
The name Azazel is believed by most scholars to be the name of a fallen angel and follower of Satan. Azazel haunts the desert wilderness. Some scholars believe Azazel to be the being referred to as “the night hag” in Isaiah 34:14.
The Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible called the second goat “caper emissarius,” (“the goat sent out”). An English translation rendered it “escape goat” from which the term “scapegoat” has been derived. A scapegoat is one who is held to bear the wrongs of others, or of all. The symbolism in the Gospel of Jesus being led by the Spirit into the desert to face the devil is striking because Jesus is to become, by God’s own design, the scapegoat for the sins of all humanity.
In the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, Jesus is described as “filled with the Holy Spirit.” This term appears in only three other places in Scripture, all three also written by Saint Luke. In the Book of Acts of the Apostles (6:5) Stephen, “filled with the Holy Spirit” was the first to be chosen to care for widows and orphans in the daily distribution of food. Later in Acts (7:55) Stephen, “filled with the Holy Spirit gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God” as he became the first Martyr of the Church.
The witnesses who approved of the stoning of Stephen “laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58) whose radical conversion to become Saint Paul would build the global Church.
Also in Acts (11:24) Barnabas is filled with the Holy Spirit as he founded the first Church beyond Jerusalem for the Gentiles of Antioch. The sense of the term “filled with the Holy Spirit” in Saint Luke’s passages alludes to the hand of God in our living history.
In our first Sunday Gospel for Lent, Jesus, filled with the Spirit, “having returned from the Jordan,” is led by the Spirit for forty days in the desert wilderness. The Gospel links this account to his Baptism at the Jordan at which he is revealed as “Son of God.” This revelation becomes, in the desert scene, a diabolical taunt, and knowing that Jesus has fasted becomes the devil’s first temptation: “If you are the Son of God, turn this stone into bread.” Jesus thwarts the temptation and the taunt with a quote from the Hebrew Scriptures (Deuteronomy 8:3), “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
The symbolism is wonderful here. Like the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son — also from Luke (15:11-32) — God had two sons. In the Book of Exodus (4:21-22) Israel is called God’s “first-born son”:
“The Lord said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. And you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my first-born son, and I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. If you refuse to let my son go, I will slay your first-born son’.”
It was the fulfillment of this command of God that finally broke the yoke of slavery and caused Pharaoh to release Israel from bondage. But, as the Parable of the Prodigal Son implies of the Prodigal Son’s older brother, Israel was not faithful to the Word of God, and spent forty years wandering in the desert as a result of its infidelity.
In the Gospel of Luke, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity assumed the humanity of the first son, and was led by the Spirit into the desert to save us in the Second Exodus, our release, through the Death and Resurrection of the Son of God, from the eternal bondage of sin and death.
Clerical Scandal and the Scandal of Clericalism
The second temptation is the lure of political power. In a single instant, the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and said, “I shall give you all this power and glory for it has been handed over to me… all this will be yours if you worship me.” This has been the downfall of many, including many in our Church. Jesus again quotes from Scripture, “It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone” (Deuteronomy 6:13). This Gospel revisits the lure of political power immediately after the Institution of the Eucharist:
“A dispute arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves… I am among you as one who serves.”
— Luke 22:24-26
The Greek in which this Gospel was written used for the word “leader” the term “hēgoumenos.” Its implication refers especially to a religious leader. The Letter to the Hebrews (13:7) uses the same Greek term for “leaders,” and it is not their Earthly power which is to be emulated, but their faith to the extent to which they reflect Christ:
“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God, consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
— Hebrews 13:7-8
Though it doesn’t generate the media’s obsession with sexual scandals, hubris and self-centered aggrandizement have been a far greater problem in our Church, and are the underlying catalyst for almost all other scandals, sexual, financial, and reputational. This culture has led Church leaders into the temptation of Earthly Powers, and too many have been eager participants. Some refer to this as “clericalism,” and in my opinion the best commentary on it was a brief article by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus in First Things entitled, “Clerical Scandal and the Scandal of Clericalism.”
The Payment of Judas Iscariot
Catholicism in America thrived when it had to earn its dignity. Once it became politically accepted, it went on in this culture to become comfortable, and its leaders (“hēgoumenos”) perhaps a bit too comfortable. Religious authority and the sheer masses of believers spelled political power. The pedestals upon which we stood grew in height with every clerical advance, and our bishops stood upon the highest pedestals of all with palatial trappings more akin to the courts of Herod and Caesar than the Cross of Christ the King, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
It is no mystery why, as the height of our pedestals grew, so did our scandals. This is perhaps why Jesus offered to us the way to pray “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” It is because he alone could be led by the Spirit into the desert of temptation and emerge without dragging along behind Him the evil He encountered there.
As the last temptation of Christ unfolded in the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, it is now the devil, in a final effort, who dares to quote and distort the Word of God. He led Jesus to Jerusalem, and to the parapet, the highest point of the highest place, the Temple of Sacrifice. And now comes his final taunt:
“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge of you, to guard you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone’.”
— Luke 4:9-11, quoting Psalm 91
This devil of the desert takes up the argument of Jesus, the Word of God, quoting Psalm 91 (11-12). The taunt to test God and “go your own way” is far deeper than the mere words convey. In Jerusalem, the devil will take hold of Judas Iscariot (Luke 22:3) leading to the trial before Pilate and the Way of the Cross. In Jerusalem, the powers of darkness, first encountered here in the desert, are mightily at work: “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” (Luke 22:53)
The Church in the Western world has entered a time of persecution but thus far the institutional response — having traded the Gospel for “zero tolerance” in a quest for scapegoats to cast out into the desert to Azazel — does not bode well for the faith of a Church built upon the blood of the martyrs.
Perhaps, as the Spirit leads us into this desert, it is our vocation, and not that of our leaders, that is essential. Perhaps it is not clerical reform that is needed so much as a revolution — a revolution of fidelity that can only be lived and not just talked about. We will not find the Holy Spirit in a revolution that manifests itself in blessing sin or in any politically correct acquiescence to same-sex unions that some now call the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and other moral distortions of our time. Those who abandon their faith in a time in the desert were leaving anyway, just waiting for the right excuse. To use the behavior of leaders to diminish and then abandon the Sacrament of Salvation is to cave to the true goal of Azazel. He could not lure Christ from us, but he can lure us from Christ and he is giving it a go.
The devil finally gives up in the desert scene of the Last Temptation of Christ in Luke Chapter 4. But the devil is not quite done. Luke’s Gospel tells that he will return “at a more opportune time.” Satan finds that time not in an effort to test Jesus, but rather to test his followers. He targets Judas Iscariot in the last place we would ever expect to find the devil: “Satan at The Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.”
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this Ash Wednesday post. You may also like these other posts from Beyond These Stone Walls as we proceed through Lent:
Pope Francis Had a Challenge for the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother
A U.S. Marine Who Showed Me What to Give Up for Lent
Satan at The Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light
Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah
We presently have 39 titles in our collection of Scriptural posts, The Bible Speaks.
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
The Apostle Falls: Simon Peter Denies Christ
The fall of Simon Peter was a scandal of Biblical proportions. His three-time denial of Jesus is recounted in every Gospel, but all is not as it first seems to be.
The fall of Simon Peter was a scandal of Biblical proportions. His three-time denial of Jesus is recounted in every Gospel, but all is not as it first seems to be.
Note from Father Gordon MacRae: At Beyond These Stone Walls, I try to present many important matters of faith, but I also try not to overlook the most important of all: Salvation. In 2023 we began what I hope will be an annual Holy Week and Easter Season tradition by composing past Holy Week posts into a personal Easter retreat. The posts follow a Scriptural Way of the Cross. You are invited to ponder, pray and share them in our season of Highest Hope. They are linked again at the end of today’s post.
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Holy Week, March 27, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae
I had been 17 years old for only one month when I graduated from high school in May, 1970. Unlike most of my peers, I was too young to go to war in Southeast Asia. Some of my friends who went never came back. On my 17th birthday in April,1970, President Richard Nixon ordered U.S. troops into Cambodia while the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam began. Across this nation, college campuses erupted into violence and walkouts. At Kent State in Ohio, four students were killed by national guardsmen sent to prevent rioting. In response to the protests, Congress passed an amendment to block U.S. troop incursions beyond South Vietnam.
The measure did not forbid bombing, however, so U.S. air strikes continued and increased in Cambodia until 1973. The combined effects of the incursion and bombings completely disrupted Cambodian life, driving millions of peasants from their ancestral lands into civil war. The Khmer Rouge was formed and then became one of the deadliest regimes of the 20th century. Meanwhile, the United States was yet again in a state of rage. Satan loves rage.
This was the setting of my life at seventeen. It seemed that evil was all around me then, but not yet in me. As 1970 gave way to 1971 and I turned eighteen, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty was published by Harper and Row. I do not today recall how or why I came to have a copy of it so hot off the presses, but I read The Exorcist within weeks of its publication. I cannot say that I devoured it. At one point, I feared it might devour me.
The book left a vivid imprint on me, so much so that halfway through it I had to set it aside for a month. In its pages I came face to face with the personification of evil, accepting that it was a catalyst behind so much of this world’s agony. But I also had no delusion that I was any match for it. William Peter Blatty’s disturbing story of demonic possession seemed to be an allegory for what was happening in the world in which I lived.
Two years later, in 1973, the film version of The Exorcist was produced to scare the hell out of (or into) the rest of the nation that had not yet read the book. Because I did read the book, I was somewhat steeled against the traumatic impact that so many felt from the film. Its influence was evident in its awards. The Exorcist won the Academy Award for Best Writing and Screenplay for William Peter Blatty, and Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor.
An Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress went to Linda Blair for her unforgettable portrayal of Regan, the possessed and tormented young target of an unnamed demon. The film’s producers hired a priest, Father William O’Malley, to portray “Father Dyer,” one of the priest-characters in the book and film. That lent itself to an aura of realism present throughout the book.
Ultimately, The Exorcist also set in motion my resolve to find something meaningful to embrace in life. I began to explore more deeply the Catholic faith that my family previously gave only a Christmas and Easter nod to. I felt called to a journey of faith just as most of my peers were abandoning theirs, but it did not last long. At the same time, my family was disintegrating and I was powerless to stem that tide and the void it left behind.
I was haunted by a sense that even as I embraced the Sacraments of Salvation, evil and its relentless pursuit of souls was never far behind in this or any age. Both seemed in pursuit of me. I was living in a verse reminiscent of Francis Thompson’s epic poem, “The Hound of Heaven” which begins:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days ;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years ;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him.
Not even Satan can hide from God. I wrote the previously untold story of my path to priesthood on the 41st anniversary of my ordination. It was “Priesthood Has Never Been Going My Way.”
While pursuing a degree in psychology in the later l970’s, I had an interest in the work of psychoanalyst Erik Erikson and his stages of human development. Erikson predicted that in the latter years of our lives — the years I am in now — we enter a crisis of “generativity versus despair.” Many of us begin recalling and recalibrating the past, especially at “inflection points,” the points at which we changed. At this writing, I am 70 years old and counting. I realized only in later years that The Exorcist was an unexpected inflection point in my life, a point at which I turned from one path onto another.
The Betrayer Judas Iscariot
Even at age seventeen, the Catholic experience of Holy Week became a most important time for me. I began then to see clearly that the events of Holy Week were a nexus between the promises of Heaven and the pursuits of hell. The sneakiest thing Satan has ever done in the modern world was to get so many in this world to cease believing in him, and then to marginalize God. Many in the current generation calling itself “woke” now believe that Satan, if even real at all, has just been misunderstood.
The nightmarish story of The Exorcist was like a battleground. I was deeply impacted by a scene near the end of the book and film when the Exorcist, Father Damien Karras, tricked the demon into leaving young Regan and entering himself. He then leapt through a high window to his death on the Georgetown streets of Washington, DC down below. The scene set off a national debate. Had Father Karras despaired and committed suicide? Or had he heroically saved the devil’s victim by sacrificing himself?
Just as I was recently pondering this idea, I was struck by the photo atop this section of my post. It is my friend, Pornchai Moontri standing against a map of Southeast Asia which, I just now realized, is also where this post began. I had seen the photo previously in his January 2024 post, “A New Year of Hope Begins in Thailand,” but I failed to look more closely at it then.
Look closely at the T-shirt Pornchai is wearing in the photo. It quotes another inflection point in both his life and mine. His T-shirt bears a quote from St. Maximilian Kolbe who became a Patron Saint for us and who deeply impacted our lives. Maximilian also sacrificed his life to save another. His simple but profound quote on Pornchai’s T-shirt is, “Without Sacrifice,There Is No Love.”
That is how Father Damien Karras defeated the devil. Pornchai today says it is also how he was released from the prison of his past. And it is how Jesus conquered death and opened for us a path to Heaven. Sacrifice is the “Narrow Gate” He spoke of, the passage to our true home.
Earlier this Lent, I wrote “A Devil in the Desert for the Last Temptation of Christ.” It was about how Satan first set his demonic sights in pursuit of Jesus Himself. What utter arrogance! At the end of that account, having given it his all, the devil in the desert “departed from him until an opportune time.” (Luke 4:13)
By his very nature, the betrayer Judas Iscariot provided this opportune time. The Gospel gives many hints about his greed and ambition, traits that leave many open to the subtle infiltration of evil. Satan plays the long game, not only in human history, but also in a person’s life and soul. In the allegorical book, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis laid out the long, subtle trail upon which we humans risk the slippery slope toward evil:
“It does not matter how small sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge a person away from the Light and out into the Nothing ... . Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
— The Screwtape Letters, Letter #12, p. 60-61
Judas Iscariot gave Satan a lot to work with. He served as a treasurer for the Apostles but he embezzled from the treasury. The Gospel of John described him as “a devil” (6:70-71), “a thief” (12:6), “a son of destruction” (17:12).
The Gospel makes clear that Jesus was betrayed because “Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot” (Luke 22:3). At the Passover meal (John 13:26-30), Jesus gave a morsel of bread to Judas. When Judas consumed it, “Satan entered into him.” That would not have been possible had Judas truly believed in the Christ. The Gospel of John then ends this passage with a chilling account of the state of Judas’ life and soul: “He immediately went out, and it was night.” (John 13:30).
In the scene laid out in the Gospel of John above, Satan finds his opportune time when Judas let him in. I wrote of a deeper meaning in this account in one of our most-read posts of Holy Week, “Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.”
The Turning of Simon Peter
The Eucharist had just been instituted and shared by Jesus among his Apostles. All the Gospels capture these moments. All are inspired, but Luke is my personally most inspiring source. The Evangelist cites at the very end of the meal its true purpose: “This chalice which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 23:20). Jesus adds that “The Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed.”
The others at the Table of the Lord are alarmed by all this talk of Jesus being betrayed. They launch immediately into a dispute about who among them would do such a thing, who among them would never do such a thing, and finally who among them is the greatest (Luke 22:26). Simon Peter leads that last charge, but first we need to look at what has come before. How and why did Simon come to be called Peter? The answer opens some fascinating doors leading to events to come.
On a hillside in Bethsaida, a fishing village on the north side of the Sea of Galilee, a vast crowd gathered to hear Jesus. They numbered about 5,000 men. This was Simon’s hometown so he likely knew many of them. After a time, the disciples asked Jesus to send the crowd away to find food. Jesus instructed the disciples to give them something to eat. They protested that they had only seven loaves of bread and a few meager fish.
In a presage of the Eucharistic Feast, Jesus blessed and broke the bread, and with the few fish, a symbol of Christ Himself, the disciples fed the entire multitude on the hillside (Luke 9:10-17). Immediately following this, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Simon replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Simon is thus given a new and transformative name and mission:
“You are Peter (in Greek, Petra and in Aramaic, Cephas — both meaning “rock”) and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
This is more than a figurative gesture. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Hades is the abode of the dead, the place where souls descend through its gates to an eternal Godless realm of the dead (Psalm 9:13, 17 and Isaiah 38:10) where they are held until the Last Judgment. It is the precursor to our traditional concept of hell being under the Earth, the place of the habitation of evil forces that bring about death.
In Hebrew tradition, the Foundation Stone of the Temple at Jerusalem, called in Hebrew “eben shetiyyah,” was a massive stone believed since ancient times to seal and cap off a long shaft leading to the netherworld (Revelation 9:1-2 and 20:1-3). It is this particular stone that the Evangelist seems to refer to as the rock upon which Jesus will build His Church. The Jerusalem Temple, resting securely on this impenetrable rock, was thus conceived to be the very center of the Cosmos and the junction between Heaven and Hell.
Jesus assures Peter, from the Biblical Greek meaning “rock,” that Peter and his successors will have the figurative keys to these gates and the power to hold error and evil at bay. By being equated with the very Foundation Stone itself, Peter is given the unique status of a prime minister, a position to be held for as long as the Kingdom stands.
Later in Luke’s Gospel, Simon Peter insists that he is “ready to go to prison and even death” with Jesus. Jesus corrects him saying, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” (Luke 22 : 31-32)
We all know, now, that Peter’s faith did fail. It gave way to fear and led him to three times deny being with, or even knowing, Jesus. But there is a lot more packed within that brief statement of Jesus above. The word “you” appears three times in the short verse. Like the rest of Luke’s Gospel, it is written in Biblical Greek. The word used for the first two occasions of “you” is plural. It refers to all of the Apostles, except Judas who had already gone out into the night.
The third use of the word “you” in that passage is singular, however, referring only to Peter himself. Jesus knew he would fall because his human nature had already fallen. But, “When you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” Peter’s three-time denial of Jesus pales next to the betrayal of Judas from which there is no return. The story of Peter’s denial is remedied, and he “turns again” in the post Resurrection appearance at the Sea of Galilee (John 21:15-19).
Jesus brings restorative justice to Peter’s three-time denial by asking him three times to “feed my lambs,” “tend my sheep,” “feed my sheep.” Then Jesus tells Peter what to expect of his unique apostolate:
“Truly, truly I say to you, when you were young, you fastened your own belt and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will fasten your belt for you and carry you where you do not wish to go”
— John 21:18
This was to foretell the assaults from beyond the Gates of Hell to which the Church will be subjected. And then, in John 21:19, He spoke His last words to Peter which, in Matthew 4:19, were also His first words to Peter. Through them, He speaks now also to us in this Holy Week of trials, assailed from all sides:
“Follow me.”
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“Stay sober and alert for your opponent the devil prowls about the world like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him steadfast in the faith knowing that your brethren throughout the world are undergoing the same trials.”
— First Letter of Peter 5:8-9
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Photo by Nicolas Grevet (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED)
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: You are invited to make our Holy Week posts a part of your Holy Week and Easter Season observance. I cannot claim that they are bound in Earth or Heaven, but we will retain them at our “Special Report” feature until the conclusion of the Easter Season at Pentecost:
The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage (2020)
Overshadowing Holy Week with forced pandemic restrictions and political outrage recalls the Bar Kochba revolt of AD 132 against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem.
Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light (2020)
The central figures present before the Sacrament for the Life of the World are Jesus on the eve of sacrifice and Satan on the eve of battle to restore the darkness.
Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane (2019)
The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of the Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.
The Apostle Falls: Simon Peter Denies Christ (2024)
The fall of Simon Peter was a scandal of biblical proportions. His three-time denial of Jesus is recounted in every Gospel, but all is not as it first seems to be.
Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands (2014)
‘Ecce Homo,’ an 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri, depicts a moment woven into Salvation History and into our very souls. ‘Shall I crucify your king?’
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’ (2017)
The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.
Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross (2023)
Simon of Cyrene was just a man on his way to Jerusalem but the scourging of Jesus was so severe that Roman soldiers feared he may not live to carry his cross alone.
Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found (2012)
Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Salvation.
To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell (2022)
The Apostles Creed is the oldest statement of Catholic belief and apostolic witness. Its Fifth Article, what happened to Jesus between the Cross and the Resurrection, is a mystery to be unveiled.
Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb (2015)
History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerges from the Gospel a faithful, courageous, and noble woman, an Apostle to the Apostles.
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Satan at The Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light
The central figures present before the Sacrament for the Life of the World are Jesus on the eve of Sacrifice and Satan on the eve of battle to restore the darkness.
The central figures present before the Sacrament for the Life of the World are Jesus on the eve of Sacrifice and Satan on the eve of battle to restore the darkness.
As I begin this eleventh Holy Week post behind These Stone Walls all the world is thrust under a shroud of darkness. A highly contagious and pernicious coronavirus threatens an entire generation of the most vulnerable among us on a global scale. Many Catholics face Holy Week without the visible support and consolation of a faith community. Many of our older loved ones face it entirely alone, separated from social networks and in dread of an unknown future darkness.
A week or so before writing this, I became aware of a social media exchange between two well-meaning Catholics. One had posted a suggestion that a formula for “exorcized holy water” would repel this new viral threat. The other cautioned how very dangerous such advice could be for those who would substitute it for clear and reasoned clinical steps to protect ourselves and others. I take a middle view. All the medical advice for social distancing and prevention must be followed, but spiritual protection should not be overlooked. Satan may not be the cause of all this, but he is certainly capable of manipulating it for our hopelessness and spiritual demise.
This “down time” might be a good time to reassess where we are spiritually. A sort of “new age” culture has infiltrated our Church in the misinterpretations of the Second Vatican Council since the 1960s. There is a secularizing trend to reduce Jesus to the nice things He said in the Beatitudes and beyond to the exclusion of who He was and is, and what Jesus has done to overcome the darkest of our dark. In a recent post, I asked a somewhat overused question with its answer in the same title: “What Would Jesus Do? He Would Raise Up Lazarus — and Us.” Without that answer, faith is reduced to just a series of quotes.
By design or not I do not know, but the current darkness drew me in this holiest of weeks to a scene in the Gospel that is easy to miss. There are subtle differences in the Passion Narratives of the Gospels which actually lend credence to the accounts. They reflect the testimony of eye witnesses rather than scripts. One of these subtle variations involves the mysterious presence of Satan in the story of Holy Week.
This actually begins early in the Gospel of Luke (Ch. 4) in an account I wrote about in “To Azazel: The Fate of a Church That Wanders in the Desert.” Placed in Luke’s Gospel after the Baptism of Jesus and God’s revelation that Jesus is God’s “Beloved Son,” Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert wilderness for forty days. He is subjected there to a series of temptations by the devil. In the end, unable to turn Jesus from his path to light, “the devil departed from him until an opportune time.” (Luke 4:13)
That opportune time comes later in Luke’s Gospel, in Chapter 22. There, just as preparations for the Passover are underway, the conspiracy to kill Jesus arises among the chief priests and scribes. They must do this in the dead of night for Jesus is surrounded by crowds in the light of day. They need someone who will reveal where Jesus goes to rest at night and how they can identify him in the darkness.
Remember, there is no artificial light. The dark of night in First Century Palestine is a blackness like no one today has ever seen. This will require someone who has been slyly and subtly groomed by Satan, someone lured by a lust for money. This is the opportune time awaited by the devil in the desert:
“Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the Twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and the captains how he might betray him to them. And they were glad, and engaged to give him money. So he agreed and sought an opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of the multitude.”
The Hour of Darkness
In Catholic tradition, the Passion Narrative from the Gospel of John is proclaimed on Good Friday. In that account, there is a striking difference in the chronology. Satan enters Judas, not in the preparations for Passover, but later the same day, shockingly at the Table of the Lord at the Last Supper on the eve of Passover:
“So when he dipped the morsel, Jesus gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then, after the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’… So after receiving the morsel, he immediately went out, and it was night.”
Who could not be struck by those last few words, “and it was night”? They describe not only the time of day, but also the spiritual condition into which Judas has fallen. Judas and Satan are characters in this account from the Temptation of Jesus in the desert to the betrayal of Jesus in the hour of darkness. But darkness itself is also a character in this story. The word “darkness” appears 286 times in Sacred Scripture and “night” appears 365 times (which, ironically, is the exact number of nights in a year).
For their spiritual meaning, darkness and night are often used interchangeably. In St. John’s account of the betrayal by Judas, the fact that he “went out, and it was night” is highly symbolic. In the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament, darkness was the element of chaos. The primeval abyss in the Genesis Creation story lay under chaos. God’s first act of creation was to dispel the darkness with the intrusion of light. “God separated the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:4) which, in the view of Saint Augustine, was the moment Satan fell. In the Book of Job, God stores darkness in a chamber away from the path to light. God uses this imagery to challenge Job to know his place in spiritual relation to God:
“Have you, Job, commanded the dawn since your days began, and caused it to take hold of the skirts of the Earth for the wicked to be shaken out of it? … Do you know the way to the dwelling of light? Do you know the place of darkness?”
In the Book of Exodus, darkness is one of the plagues imposed upon Egypt. For the Prophet Amos (8:9) the supreme disaster is darkness at noon. In Isaiah (9:1) darkness implies defeat, captivity, oppression. It is the element of evil in which the wicked does its work (Ezekiel 8:12). It is the element of death, the grave, and the underworld (Job 10:21). In the Dead Sea Scrolls is a document called, “The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness.” In the great Messianic Proclamation of Isaiah (9:2): “The People who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”
In the New Testament, the metaphors of light and darkness deepen. In the Gospel of Matthew (8:12, 22:13) sinners shall be cast into the darkness. In the Gospel of Mark (13:24) is the catastrophic darkness of the eschatological judgment. The Gospel of John is filled with metaphors of darkness and light. Earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus confronts those who plot against him as under the influence of darkness and Satan:
“If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God. I came not of my own accord, but He sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
I once wrote about the person of Judas and the great mystery of his betrayal, his life, and his end in “Judas Iscariot: Who Prays for the Soul of the Betrayer?” At the Passover meal and the Table of the Lord, he dipped his morsel only to exit into the darkness. In the original story of the Passover in Exodus (13:15-18) God required the lives of the firstborn sons of Pharoah and all Egypt to deliver His people from bondage. Now, in the Hour of Darkness set in motion by Satan and Judas, God will exact from Himself that very same price, and for the very same reason.
The Hour of Light
Biblical Hebrew had no word for “hour,” nor was such a term used as a measure of time. In the Roman and Greek cultures of the New Testament, the day was divided into twelve units. The term “hour” in the New Testament does not signify a measure of time but rather an expectation of an event. The “Hour of Jesus” is prominent in the Gospel of John and also mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels. Jesus is cited in John as saying that His Hour has not yet come (7:30 and 8:20). When it does come, it is the Hour in which the Son of Man is glorified (John 12:23; 17:1).
In the Gospel of Luke (22:53), Jesus said something ominous to the chief priests and captains of the Temple who came, led by Judas (and Satan), to arrest Him: “When I was with you day after day in the Temple, you did not lay hands on me but this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”
In all of Salvation History there has never been an Hour of Darkness without an Hour of Light. In the Passion of the Christ the two were not subsequent to each other, but rather parallel, arising from the same event rooted in sacrifice. This was the ultimate thwarting of Satan’s “opportune time.” Jesus, through sacrifice, did not just defeat Satan’s plan, but used its Hour of Darkness to bring about the Hour of Light.
Amazingly, “Light” and “Darkness” each appear exactly 288 times in Sacred Scripture. It is especially difficult to separate the darkness from the light in the Passion Narratives of the Gospel. Both are necessary for our redemption. Without darkness there is no sacrifice or even a need for sacrifice.
The Hour of Light began, not at Calvary, but at the Institution of the Eucharist at The Last Supper, the Passover meal with Jesus and His Apostles. The Words of Institution of the Eucharist are remarkably alike in substance and form in each of the Synoptic Gospels and in St. Paul’s First letter to the Corinthians (11:23).
The sacrificial nature of the Words of Institution and their intent at bringing about communion with God are most prominent in the oldest to come into written form, that of Saint Paul:
“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the chalice, after supper, saying, ‘This chalice is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the chalice, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
The enormity of this gift, the beginning of the Hour of Light, comes in the midst of words like “betrayal” and “death.” It is most interesting that the Gospel of John, which has Satan enter Judas at the Passover Table of the Lord, has no words for the formula of Institution of the Eucharist. But John clearly knows of it. The Gospel of John presents a clear theological allusion to the Eucharistic Feast in John 6:47-51:
“Truly, Truly I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the desert and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats this bread he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
The term “will live forever” appears only three times in all of Sacred Scripture: twice in the above passage from John, and once in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in Genesis 3:22. There, God expels Adam and Eve from Eden for attempting to be like God. It is a preventive measure in Genesis “lest they eat from the Tree of Life and live forever.” For John’s Gospel, what was denied to Adam is now freely given through the Sacrifice of Christ.
It is somewhat of a mystery why the Gospel of John places so beautifully his account of the Institution of the Eucharist there in Chapter 6 just after Jesus miraculously feeds the multitude with a few loaves of bread and a few fish, and then omits the actual Words of Institution from the Passover meal, the setting for The Last Supper in each of the other Gospels and in Saint Paul’s account.
Perhaps, on a most basic level, the Apostle John, beloved of the Lord, could not bring himself to include these words of sacrifice with Satan having just left the room. At a more likely level, John implies the Eucharist theologically through the entire text of his Gospel. In the end, after a theological and prayerful discourse at table, Jesus prays for the Church:
“When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him power over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
Now Comes the Hour of the Son of God, The Cross stood only for darkness and death until souls were illumined by the Cross of Christ. From the Table of the Lord, the lights stayed on in the Sanctuary Lamp of the Soul.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Take a time out from anxiety and isolation this Holy Week by spending time in the Hour of Light with these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
A Personal Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls
Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King But Caesar’
Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed
Saint Michael the Archangel is often depicted wielding a sword and a set of scales to vanquish Satan. His scales have an ancient and surprising meaning.
Saint Michael the Archangel is often depicted wielding a sword and a set of scales to vanquish Satan. His scales have an ancient and surprising meaning.
I worked for days on a post about Saint Michael the Archangel. I finally finished it this morning, exactly one week before the Feast of the Archangels, then rushed off to work in the prison library. When I returned four hours later to print the post and get it into the mail to Charlene, my friend Joseph stopped by. You might remember Joseph from a few of my posts, notably “Disperse the Gloomy Clouds of Night” in Advent and “Forty Days and Forty Nights” in Lent.
Well, you can predict where this is going. As soon as I returned to my cell, Joseph came in to talk with me. Just as I turned on my typewriter, Joseph reached over and touched it. He wasn’t aware of the problem with static charges from walking across these concrete floors. Joseph’s unintentional spark wiped out four days of work and eight pages of text.
It’s not the first time this has happened. I wrote about it in “Descent into Lent” last year, only then I responded with an explosion of expletives. Not so this time. As much as I wanted to swear, thump my chest, and make Joseph feel just awful, I couldn’t. Not after all my research on the meaning of the scales of Saint Michael the Archangel. They very much impact the way I look at Joseph in this moment. Of course, for the 30 seconds or so after it happened, it’s just as well that he wasn’t standing within reach!
This world of concrete and steel in which we prisoners live is very plain, but far from simple. It’s a world almost entirely devoid of what Saint Michael the Archangel brings to the equation between God and us. It’s also a world devoid of evidence of self-expression. Prisoners eat the same food, wear the same uniforms, and live in cells that all look alike.
Off the Wall, And On
In these cells, the concrete walls and ceilings are white — or were at one time — the concrete floors are gray, and the concrete counter running halfway along one wall is dark green. On a section of wall for each prisoner is a two-by-four foot green rectangle for posting family photos, a calendar and religious items. The wall contains the sole evidence of self-expression in prison, and you can learn a lot about a person from what’s posted there.
My friend, Pornchai, whose section of wall is next to mine, had just a blank wall two years ago. Today, not a square inch of green shows through his artifacts of hope. There are photos of Joe and Karen Corvino, the foster parents whose patience impacted his life, and Charlene Duline and Pierre Matthews, his new Godparents. There’s also an old photo of the home in Thailand from which he was taken at age 11, photos of some of the ships described in “Come, Sail Away!” now at anchor in new homes. There’s also a rhinoceros — no clue why — and Garfield the Cat. In between are beautiful icons of the Blessed Mother, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Saint Pio, and one of Saint Michael the Archangel that somehow migrated from my wall over to Pornchai’s.
My own wall evolved over time. The only family photos I had are long lost, and I haven’t seen my family in many years. It happens to just about every prisoner after ten years or so. In my first twelve years in prison I was moved sixteen times, and each time I had to quickly take my family photos off the wall. Like many prisoners here for a long, long time, there came a day when I took my memories down to move, then just didn’t put them back up again. A year ago, I had nothing on the wall, then a strange transformation of that small space began to take shape.
When These Stone Walls — the blog, not the concrete ones — began last year, some readers started sending me beautiful icons and holy cards. The prison allows them in mail as long as they’re not laminated in plastic. Some made their way onto my wall, and slowly over the last year it filled with color and meaning again.
It’s a mystery why, but the most frequent image sent to me by TSW readers is that of Saint Michael the Archangel. There are five distinct icons of him on the wall, plus the one that seems to prefer Pornchai’s side. These stone walls — the concrete ones, not the blog — are filled with companions now.
There’s another icon of Saint Michael on my coffee cup — the only other place prisoners always leave their mark — and yet another inside and above the cell door. That one was placed there by my friend, Alberto Ramos, who went to prison at age 14 and turned 30 last week. It appeared a few months ago. Alberto’s religious roots are in Caribbean Santeria. He said Saint Michael above the door protects this cell from evil. He said this world and this prison greatly need Saint Michael.
Who Is Like God?
The references to the Archangel Michael are few and cryptic in the canon of Hebrew and Christian Scripture. In the apocalyptic visions of the Book of Daniel, he is Michael, your Prince, “who stands beside the sons of your people.” In Daniel 12:1 he is the guardian and protector angel of Israel and its people, and the “Great Prince” in Heaven who came to the aid of the Archangel Gabriel in his contest with the Angel of Persia (Daniel 10:13, 21).
His name in Hebrew — Mikha’el — means “Who is like God?” It’s posed as a question that answers itself. No one, of course, is like God. A subsidiary meaning is, “Who bears the image of God,” and in this Michael is the archetype in Heaven of what man himself was created to be: the image and likeness of God. Some other depictions of the Archangel Michael show him with a shield bearing the image of Christ. In this sense, Michael is a personification, as we’ll see below, of the principal attribute of God throughout Scripture.
Outside of Daniel’s apocalyptic vision, the Archangel Michael appears only two more times in the canon of Sacred Scripture. In Revelation 12:7-9 he leads the army of God in a great and final battle against the army of Satan. A very curious mention in the Epistle of Saint Jude (Jude 1:9) describes Saint Michael’s dispute with Satan over the body of Moses.
This is a direct reference to an account in the Apocrypha, and demonstrates the importance and familiarity of some of the apocryphal writings in the Israelite and early Christian communities. Saint Jude writes of the account as though it is quite familiar to his readers. In the Assumption of Moses in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, Michael prevails over Satan, wins the body of Moses, and accompanies him into Heaven.
It is because of this account that Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus in the account of the Transfiguration in Matthew 11. Moses and Elijah are the two figures in the Hebrew Scriptures to hear the voice of God on Mount Sinai, and to be assumed bodily into Heaven — escorted by Saint Michael the Archangel according to the Aggadah, the collection of milennia of rabbinic lore and custom.
Saint Michael as the Divine Measure of Souls
In each of the seven images of Saint Michael the Archangel sent to me by TSW readers, he is depicted brandishing a sword in triumph over Satan subdued at his feet. In five of the icons, he also holds a set of scales above the head of Satan. A lot of people confuse the scales with those of “Lady Justice” the famous American icon. Those scales symbolize the equal application of law and justice in America. It’s a high ideal, but one that too often isn’t met in the American justice system. I cited some examples in “The Eighth Commandment.”
The scales of Saint Michael also depict justice, but of another sort. Presumably that’s why so many readers sent me his image, and I much appreciate it. However, some research uncovered a far deeper symbolic meaning for the Archangel’s scales. The primary purpose of the scales is not to measure justice, but to weigh souls. And there’s a specific factor that registers on Saint Michael’s scales. They depict his role as the measure of mercy, the highest attribute of God for which Saint Michael is the personification. The capacity for mercy is what it most means to be in the image and likeness of God. The primary role of Saint Michael the Archangel is to be the advocate of justice and mercy in perfect balance — for justice without mercy is little more than vengeance.
That’s why God limits vengeance as summary justice. In Genesis chapter 4, Lamech, a descendant of Cain, vows that “if Cain is avenged seven-fold then Lamech is avenged seventy-seven fold.” Jesus later corrects this misconception of justice by instructing Peter to forgive “seventy times seven times.”
Our English word, “Mercy” doesn’t actually capture the full meaning of what is intended in the Hebrew Scriptures as the other side of the justice equation. The word in Hebrew is ”hesed,” and it has multiple tiers of meaning. It was translated into New Testament Greek as “eleos,” and then translated into Latin as “misericordia” from which we derive the English word, “mercy.” Saint Michael’s scales measure ”hesed,” which in its most basic sense means to act with altruism for the good of another without anything of obvious value in return. It’s the exercise of mercy for its own sake, a mercy that is the highest value of Judeo-Christian faith.
Sacred Scripture is filled with examples of hesed as the chief attribute of God and what it means to be in His image. That ”the mercy of God endures forever” is the central and repeated message of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The references are too many to name, but as I was writing this post, I spontaneously thought of a few lines from Psalm 85:
“Mercy and faithfulness shall meet. Justice and peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring up from the Earth, and justice shall look down from Heaven.”
The domino effect of hesed-mercy is demonstrated in Psalm 85. Faithfulness and truth will arise out of it, and together all three will comprise justice. In researching this, I found a single, ancient rabbinic reference attributing authorship of Psalm 85 to the only non-human instrument of any Psalm or verse of Scripture: Saint Michael the Archangel, himself. According to that legend, Psalm 85 was given by the Archangel along with the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Saint Thomas Aquinas described Saint Michael as “the breath of the Redeemer’s spirit who will, at the end of the world, combat and destroy the Anti-Christ as he did Lucifer in the beginning.” This is why St. Michael is sometimes depicted bearing a shield with the image of Christ. It is the image of Christ in His passion, imprinted upon the veil of St. Veronica. Veronica is a name that appears nowhere in Scripture, but is simply a name assigned by tradition to the unnamed woman with the veil. The name Veronica comes from the Latin “vera icon” meaning “true image.”
Saint Thomas Aquinas and many Doctors of the Church regarded Saint Michael as the angel of Exodus who, as a pillar of cloud and fire, led Israel out of slavery. Christian tradition gives to Saint Michael four offices: To fight against Satan, to measure and rescue the souls of the just at the hour of death, to attend the dying and accompany the just to judgment, and to be the Champion and Protector of the Church.
His Feast Day, assigned since 1970 to the three Archangels of Scripture, was originally assigned to Saint Michael alone since the sixth century dedication of a church in Rome in his honor. This Feast Day is observed annually in the Catholic Calendar on September 29. The Feast was originally called Michaelmas meaning, “The Mass of St. Michael.” The great prayer to Saint Michael, however, is relatively new. It was penned on October 13, 1884, by Pope Leo XIII after a terrifying vision of Saint Michael’s battle with Satan:
St. 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, 0 Prince of the heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
It’s an important prayer for the Church, especially now. I know the enemies of the Church lurk here, too. There are some who come here not for understanding, or the truth, but for ammunition. For them the very concept of mercy, forgiveness, and inner healing is anathema to their true cause. I once scoffed at the notion that evil surrounds us, but I have seen it. I think every person falsely accused has seen it.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Since the election of Pope Leo XIV at the Conclave of 2025, renewed interest has been directed to Pope Leo XIII, at least in part for his vision of Saint Michael and the prayer above, which is a small part of the intercession written by Pope Leo XIII. You may also be interested in these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
Saint Michael the Archangel Contends with Satan Still
St. Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Our Salvation
Saint Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us
