St Michael the Archangel: Who He Is, Prayer and Feast

St Michael the Archangel is the prince of the angels who remained faithful to God, the leader of the heavenly host against Satan, and the protector of the Church. Holy Scripture names him in the Book of Daniel, in the Epistle of St Jude and in the Apocalypse, and the Church has honoured him from the earliest centuries; in the calendar of 1962 his great feast, Michaelmas, the Dedication of St Michael the Archangel, falls on 29 September as a feast of the first class. This page gathers everything about him in one place: who he is, the prayer to St Michael in Latin and English, his Chaplet and novena, his feasts, his place in the traditional Mass, his symbols and his patronage.

Who is St Michael the Archangel?

St Michael is an angel, a pure spirit created by God, not a man who lived on earth and was later declared a saint. The Church calls him saint because he is holy: he stood firm in the trial in which part of the angels fell, and he sees the face of God for ever. He is called archangel because Scripture itself gives him that title (Jude 9) and because he is the chief of the angels in the battle against the dragon (Apocalypse 12:7).

His name is his whole story. Michael is Hebrew for "Who is like God?" — in Latin, Quis ut Deus? Tradition hears in it the answer of the faithful angels to the pride of Lucifer, who wished to make himself like the Most High. St Gregory the Great, read in the Breviary on his feast, draws the lesson: whenever some work of wonderful power is to be done, Michael is said to be sent, so that by his very name and work we understand that no one can do what God alone can do.

Is St Michael and Archangel Michael the same? Yes: "St Michael", "St Michael the Archangel", "Archangel Michael" and "St Michael Archangel" are all one and the same angel, the Michael of the Bible.

St Michael the Archangel in the Bible

Scripture names Michael in three books, and each passage reveals a part of his office. We quote the Douay-Rheims version.

The Book of Daniel. An angel tells the prophet that the prince of the kingdom of the Persians resisted him "one and twenty days: and behold Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me" (Daniel 10:13), and that "none is my helper in all these things, but Michael your prince" (Daniel 10:21). At the end of the book comes the great promise: "But at that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people" (Daniel 12:1). Michael is the guardian of the people of God; the Church, the new Israel, inherited him as her protector.

The Epistle of St Jude. "When Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of railing speech, but said: The Lord command thee" (Jude 9). Even in combat, Michael does not rely on his own word; he calls upon the authority of God. The same spirit breathes in the St Michael prayer: "May God rebuke him, we humbly pray."

The Apocalypse. "And there was a great battle in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels. And they prevailed not: neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world. And he was cast unto the earth: and his angels were thrown down with him" (Apocalypse 12:7-9).

The liturgy also sees Michael in the angel who stands at the altar with a golden censer, offering "the prayers of all saints" before the throne of God (Apocalypse 8:3-4); the Church sings these words in the Offertory of his Mass.

What did St Michael do? His four offices

Drawing on Scripture and the liturgy of his feasts, Michael's service can be described under a few headings:

• The soldier of God. He leads the faithful angels against Satan, from the first battle in heaven to the last combat at the end of time. The Alleluia of his Mass is the cry of the Church: Holy Archangel Michael, defend us in battle.
• The protector of the Church. As he guarded Israel in Daniel, he is honoured as the guardian of the universal Church, and in the Middle Ages as the protector of Christian peoples and kingdoms.
• The intercessor. He stands before God with the censer of the prayers of the saints. The Magnificat antiphon of his Office addresses him as "most glorious prince" and asks him: "be mindful of us; here and everywhere, pray always for us to the Son of God".
• The guide of souls at death. In the Offertory of every Requiem Mass the Church asks that "the holy standard-bearer Michael lead them into the holy light". This is why he is invoked for a happy death and for the souls in purgatory.

The prayer to St Michael the Archangel (Leo XIII)

The most famous prayer to St Michael is the short invocation that Pope Leo XIII added in 1886 to the prayers recited kneeling after every Low Mass, the "Leonine Prayers". For nearly eighty years priest and people said it together at the foot of the altar, until the instruction Inter oecumenici of 1964 suppressed the prayers after Mass. Here is the text as the Iter Fidei app gives it.

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,
cast into hell Satan
and all the evil spirits
who wander through the world
for the ruin of souls.
Amen.

The St Michael prayer in Latin

Sancte Michaël 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.

Who wrote the St Michael prayer? Pope Leo XIII. A story, widely repeated but not recorded in any act of the Pope himself, says he composed it after a terrible vision of the assaults of the devil against the Church; it is a pious account, not a documented fact. In 1930 Pope Pius XI asked that the prayers after Low Mass be offered for the people of Russia, that they might regain peace and the freedom to profess the faith.

For the history of the prayer, how and when to pray it, and the longer exorcism of Leo XIII from which it is distinct, see our full page on the Prayer to St Michael the Archangel. For other prayers of protection that the tradition joins to it, see prayers for protection: Psalm 90, St Michael and the Guardian Angel.

How to pray to St Michael? Simply and often: the short prayer above in the morning, in temptation, before a difficult duty, and at the end of the day; his name in the Litany of the Saints and the Confiteor; his Chaplet; and, before his feasts, his novena.

The Chaplet of St Michael the Archangel

The Chaplet of St Michael is made of nine salutations, one for each of the nine choirs of angels, each followed by an Our Father and three Hail Marys, and closed by four Our Fathers in honour of St Michael, St Gabriel, St Raphael and our Guardian Angel. Tradition says it was made known in the eighteenth century to a Portuguese Carmelite, Antonia d'Astonac; it was approved under Pope Pius IX in 1851. The full text, the beads and the step-by-step method are on our page the Chaplet of St Michael the Archangel.

The novena to St Michael the Archangel

Many of the faithful prepare for Michaelmas with nine days of prayer, from 20 to 28 September. The complete text is on our page the novena to St Michael the Archangel. Some also keep "St Michael's Lent", forty days of prayer and penance from the Assumption to Michaelmas, a custom that Franciscan tradition traces back to St Francis of Assisi.

St Michael the Archangel feast day

29 September — Michaelmas. The feast of the Dedication of St Michael the Archangel (In Dedicatione S. Michaelis Archangeli) is, in the calendar of 1962, a feast of the first class, in white vestments, with Gloria and Creed. It has been kept "with great solemnity at the end of September ever since the sixth century at least", Butler writes. Its title recalls a church: the Roman Martyrology connects the feast with the famous sanctuary of Monte Gargano in Apulia, but, Butler explains, it appears really to celebrate the dedication of a basilica of St Michael on the Salarian Way, six miles north of Rome. As the prayers of the Mass show, the feast honours not Michael alone but all the holy angels with him.

8 May — the Apparition of St Michael. This second feast commemorated the sanctuary of Monte Gargano. The rubrics of 1960 removed it from the universal calendar; in the books of 1962 it survives only "for some places" (pro aliquibus locis), where a local calendar keeps it.

After 1969. The reformed calendar of 1969 turned 29 September into a common feast of Sts Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, and suppressed the separate feasts of St Gabriel (24 March) and St Raphael (24 October), which the calendar of 1962 still keeps. You can read about them on our pages St Gabriel the Archangel and St Raphael the Archangel, and about all three together in the Archangels: Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

The Collect of Michaelmas (Missal of 1962)

Collect of the feast, 29 September

Deus, qui, miro ordine, Angelórum ministéria hominúmque dispénsas: concéde propítius; ut, a quibus tibi ministrántibus in cœlo semper assístitur, ab his in terra vita nostra muniátur. Per Dóminum nostrum Jesum Christum, Fílium tuum: qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.

O God, who in a wonderful order dost dispose the ministries of Angels and of men: mercifully grant that our life on earth may be defended by those who stand ever ministering to Thee in heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

Alleluia verse of the Mass

Sancte Míchaël Archángele, defénde nos in prœ́lio: ut non pereámus in treméndo judício. Allelúja.

Holy Archangel Michael, defend us in battle: that we may not perish in the dreadful judgment. Alleluia.

St Michael in the traditional Latin Mass

St Michael is present in the traditional rite far beyond his feasts. In the Confiteor, said at the foot of the altar, we confess our sins "to blessed Michael the Archangel", immediately after the Blessed Virgin Mary, and ask his prayers. At a Solemn Mass the priest blesses the incense "through the intercession of blessed Michael the Archangel, standing at the right hand of the altar of incense". And in the Offertory of the Mass for the dead the Church entrusts the departed to "the holy standard-bearer Michael". The Order of the Tridentine Mass gives these texts in their place.

What is St Michael the Archangel the patron saint of?

• The universal Church, which he protects as he protected the people of God in Daniel.
• The dying and the souls of the departed, whom he leads to judgment and to the holy light (Offertory of the Requiem).
• Soldiers: Butler notes that today he is honoured as captain of the heavenly host and protector of soldiers, whereas in the East, where his cult began even earlier, he was regarded as having care of the sick, and healing waters were named after him.
• Police officers, among the patronages commonly given to him in our own time.

Countless churches, abbeys and sanctuaries bear his name, from Monte Gargano to Mont-Saint-Michel. In the Litany of the Saints he is the first of the Catholic saints invoked after the Blessed Virgin Mary.

St Michael the Archangel symbol and images

In Christian art St Michael is shown as a young warrior-angel in armour, with wings, holding a sword or spear and treading on a dragon or the devil, according to Apocalypse 12. Often he also holds a pair of scales, weighing souls: this is not in Scripture, but an image drawn from his office at death and judgment. His shield sometimes bears the words Quis ut Deus. Medals of St Michael, with his image and the prayer of Leo XIII, are pious sacramentals when blessed and worn with faith, not charms.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is St Michael the Archangel?

He is the archangel who leads the faithful angels against Satan and protects the people of God. Scripture names him in Daniel 10 and 12, Jude 9 and Apocalypse 12; the Church honours him as protector of the Church and guide of souls.

Why is St Michael the Archangel a saint?

Because he is holy: he remained faithful to God when the rebel angels fell, and he enjoys the vision of God. "Saint" here means holy, not someone canonized after an earthly life.

When was St Michael the Archangel born, and when did he die?

He was never born and will never die. As an angel he is a pure spirit without a body, created by God at the beginning together with the whole of creation; he does not age or die.

When was St Michael the Archangel canonized?

Never. Canonization is for human beings who lived on earth. St Michael is honoured as a saint on the authority of Scripture and the immemorial practice of the Church, which has kept his feast since at least the sixth century.

When is the feast of St Michael the Archangel?

On 29 September (Michaelmas), a feast of the first class in the calendar of 1962. The feast of his Apparition on 8 May is kept in the 1962 books only in places that have it in their local calendar.

What is St Michael the Archangel known for?

For casting Satan out of heaven (Apocalypse 12:7-9), for the short prayer "Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle", and for his protection of the Church and of souls at the hour of death.

What does St Michael the Archangel represent?

The victory of God over the pride of the devil. His name, "Who is like God?", is a question that already contains its answer: no one.

Where was St Michael the Archangel from?

He is not from any place on earth. He is an angel of heaven; the places associated with him, such as Monte Gargano or Mont-Saint-Michel, are sanctuaries where he has been honoured, not his homeland.

The Iter Fidei app gives the prayer to St Michael in Latin and English, his Chaplet and novena, and the Mass and Office of Michaelmas from the Missal and Breviary of 1962. Join early access here.

Sources. Holy Scripture, Douay-Rheims (Daniel 10:13, 10:21, 12:1; Jude 9; Apocalypse 8:3-4, 12:7-9). Roman Missal (1962), 29 September (Dedication of St Michael the Archangel), Ordinary of the Mass and Mass for the Dead. Roman Breviary, 29 September. Butler's Lives of the Saints, 29 September. Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, 29 September. Pope Leo XIII, Prayer to St Michael (1886).