Modern Satan: Paradise Lost and Prayer to Saint Michael
The guardian prince Saint Michael, spiritual warrior, leader of the Army of God, cast into Hell Satan. And there it is. Yet, Satan is not content to lay about in the pit of Hell, prideful busybody that he is. No, Satan goes about the world, and who knows where else, causing havoc, ugliness, breaking things, ruining people and challenging the Father’s Goodness, Beauty, and Truth.
Might be helpful to know: the name “Michael” translates, “Who is like God?” The name “Satan” translates, “Adversary, the one who resists.” And again, there it is, the difference between beautifully ordered Heaven and disgustingly chaotic Hell, beauty and ugliness, good and evil, truth and deception. In resistance Satan admits that he would rather “reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” You might picture Satan in Pandemonium, the ugly city of Satan (Hell) after boasting to his fellow demons that he infected man with ugliness, evil and deception … the moment when Satan’s formerly beautiful outer form manifests his hideous inner form is described by Milton:
His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare,
His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining
Each other, till supplanted down he fell,
A monstrous serpent, on his belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vain; a greater power
Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned,
According to his doom. He would have spoke,
But hiss for hiss returned with forked tongue
To forked tongue; for now were all transformed
Alike to serpents, all as accessories
To his bold riot. Dreadful was the din
Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now
With complicated monsters, head and tail,
Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbæna dire,
Cerastes horned, Hydrus and Ellops drear
And Dipsas — not so thick swarmed once the soil
Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle
Ophiusa — but still greatest he the midst,
Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the Sun
Ingendered in the Pythian vale on slime,
Huge Python; and his power no less he seemed
Above the rest still to retain.
Yes, of course, when next you witness San Francisco, Detroit and other Progressive cities you will recognize Pandemonium and the demons who infect beauty with ugliness, you will see the gargantuan serpent who makes a nest of New York. Remember, our great cities were built by good and faithful people; our great cities are being destroyed by evil and faithless people. “Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell,” Milton hears Satan say, and we too hear Satan in the works of his demons, in the songs, poems, buildings, arts and worldly depravity of the Modern.
Satan, “A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,” whose greatest fault is Pride. As you will have noticed, Pride flies everywhere that Satan is, on every flagpole, flowerpot, bicycle and tricycle, on every pole that sticks itself into places it should not be. The queer flag is Satan’s boasting success against man; hear Satan’s demons hiss in applause, see our people transformed into serpents who hypnotize then strike with poisonous fangs rose-cheeked children.
Saint Michael (Archangel ordered by the Father to defend naïve man from conniving Satan) appeared in 1886 to Pope Leo XIII. In the apparition, Leo witnessed the corruptions of Modernism, its atheism, its envy, its wars and degradations, the progressive corruptions of pornography, lust and lasciviousness, the destruction of souls, the supremacy of evil and degradation of the Catholic Church. Leo understood that only by Saint Michael might Satan again be subdued, and he composed the following prayer, requiring that it be recited after Mass. The current pope excuses Catholics from reciting the prayer in the same spirit that he denies the Traditional Latin Mass. Even so, Pope Leo XIII’s prayer to Saint Michael is not yet forbidden, and can be spoken without excommunication:
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
Be our defense 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, cast into hell Satan
and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen. *
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* Here given in the abridged, simplified form. The fuller, earlier form was composed in 1888. In 1893 Pope Pius X succeeded Pope Leo XIII. Pope Pius X required that “all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries” recite the (his) Oath Against Modernism (1910). The Oath remained in effect until Vatican II schema were mandated (1967). This month (July 2023), Pope Francis elevates 31 bishops to cardinals, one of whom is likely to complete the worldly work, some say “wicked work” of Vatican II.
Originally published by the Society of Classical Poets, Paradise Lost: Satan Found in the Modern.
For more on Modern Satan and the demonic Traditional Catholic Beauty.
For Catholic Church architecture, visit The Beautiful Home, Houses of God.
Modern Satan: Paradise Lost and the Prayer to Saint Michael.
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