A Promise to God: St. Michael the Archangel, Defend Us in Battle

Though I am not strong enough to hold the suffering souls in my arms and carry them home, I can do one thing: I can pray for the deliverance of the souls who are in the darkness. I can request help from the angels for them. I can make a 911 call for them. So again, I sat down this morning to pray the rosary, and to say a prayer to St. Michael. I was not surprised that many souls came to my mind. The Spirit kept adding more and more souls on my list of prayer, and I was only happy to oblige.

Highlights

By Youngsun Jun
Catholic Online (https://www.catholic.org)
9/27/2024 (1 month ago)

Published in Christian Saints & Heroes

Keywords: Youngsun Jun, St Michael the Archangel, Lilyboat, prayer, intercession, spiritual warfare

BOYDS, MD (Catholic Online) - I walked down to the statue of St. Michael holding a baby*. Feeling emotionally exhausted after an hour of pure crying, the setting sunlight that never fails to trigger the familiar depressive emotions had no effect on me. Something inside the chapel extinguished the fires of emotions burning inside my heart.

After an hour of constant confusion and grieving the unknown, the answer was given to my heart. I finally said the prayer that the Holy spirit had ignited deep in my soul. I said a prayer for a friend whose soul has drifted away from God, and wrote down a special request in the book of prayer too. I asked God to fill my friend's heart and soul with the longing to get to know Him. And then, only then, I got my peace back. I was finally done with my intense purging.

I have learned through my ongoing prayerful life that whatever is burdening my heart and soul is often not my own issue. I have discovered that I carry the burden and sorrow of my family, close friends, or even a stranger that I have come in contact with earlier in the day.

I have no choice in the matter. I am simply down with sudden attack of grief or sadness, and I have to sit down to pray until the Spirit guides me to the root of the issue. The Spirit would reveal the nature of the heavy emotion I am carrying, and the object of the emotions I am purging for would come to my mind. Then I know what my grievances and tears were all about.

The degrees of grievances vary. Some people carry very highly built-up energies of grief to the point of causing physical suffering in me for days or even weeks. I once met a friend in Hawaii who lost his father recently in a very tragic way.

Even though I had no knowledge of that event because he never told me in the beginning, I could feel his soul in the state of raw grief and shock, and the energy he was projecting nauseated me. I ended up suffering in depression for weeks after our encounter.

I wish I could have held his suffering soul in my arms and carried him to the safe harbor. I wish I can just lift up the souls who are afflicted in pain and sadness and embrace them into my big heart and cover them with my giant wings. I wish I can fly across the sky, away from the evil powers and human miseries, holding and carrying them in my unfailing, mighty body.

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But I can't. I am only another human being afflicted by the same curse of the original sin. I am weak, and I suffer, too, from multiple conditions. But these things sustains me: my faith in God, my love for Jesus, and devotion to Mother Mary, and my knowledge of the protection I get from the mighty archangel, St. Michael.

The statue of St. Michael holding the baby was reflecting all my thoughts and wishes. Though we are weak, we know we have cosmic help from God. God will never abandon us humans. He loves us more than we love ourselves. God of Love would not hesitate to send down his angels in defense of the suffering humans.

Though I am not strong enough to hold the suffering souls in my arms and carry them home, I can do one thing: I can pray for the deliverance of the souls who are in the darkness. I can request help from the angels for them. I can make a 911 call for them.

So again, I sat down this morning to pray the rosary, and to say a prayer to St. Michael. I was not surprised that many souls came to my mind. The Spirit kept adding more and more souls on my list of prayer, and I was only happy to oblige.

And today, I made a very personal promise to God. I told him that I will promise him at least one soul. I promised that I would bring at least one soul back to Him before the day comes when He calls me back to His loving bosom to hold me forever.

And then, I could feel Him already sending me a troop to aid the pact that I made with Him. I could feel the wings of St. Michael the archangel, just lifting me up in his big arms and covering me in his giant wings to take me to the battlefield with him.

And I happily followed.

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*Michael is also represented in icons as standing on a horizontal body and with his left arm held high, holding a small image of a "baby". The body represents a human being at the time of his death and the image of the "baby" represents the soul of the deceased. This icon came about since the belief has always been held that the Archangel Michael takes the souls of the dead with the Guardian Angel (from orthodoxwiki.org).

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Originally from South Korea, Youngsun Jun has been living in the States for the past decade. She shares her spirit-filled and deeply inner stories on her website www.lilyboat.me regularly. Her goal is to magnify God by witnessing His love through writing. Her beautiful writing can be read at her blog entitled Lilyboat http://lilyboat.me/

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