Sermon: Pentecost V / Proper 8 RCL B - "Where is God?"

The Pdocast can be found here.

This is not a "Best of" sermon, but it is a bit of a rerun.  I have been on vacation for the last few weeks, so I opted to use an older one and tweeked it a bit for this Sunday.  Some may say it wasn't worth preaching the first time, but....

Mark 5:21-43

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live." He went with him.

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, `Who touched me?'" He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, "Do not fear, only believe." He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, "Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping." And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha cum," which means, "Little girl, get up!" And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

A young woman comes to Jesus and says, “I sometimes wonder when I think I hear your voice, if I’m just hearing what I want you to say.”.. “Well,” Jesus says, “what was the last thing you thought you heard me say?”.. “You said, ‘Lisa, you’ve had a hard week and have earned the opportunity to relax.  Go and spend the day at the spa…. But,” she added, “now that I think about it, that was really you was it?”… Jesus takes a sip of his coffee and responds, “It helps to think about it.”  (From FaceBook.com/RadioFreeBabylon)

Thomas a Kempis.. that 14^th century monk is by far my favorite.  His work The Imitation of Christ is second only to the Bible in book sales… he writes, JESUS has always many who love His heavenly kingdom / but few who bear His cross…He has many who desire consolation / but few who care for trial… He finds many to share His table / but few to take part in His fasting… All desire to be happy with Him; few wish to suffer anything for Him… Many follow Him to the breaking of bread / but few to the drinking of the chalice of His passion… Many revere His miracles / few approach the shame of the Cross… Many love Him as long as they encounter no hardship; many praise and bless Him as long as they receive some comfort from Him / But if Jesus hides Himself and leaves them for a while, they fall either into complaints or into deep dejection….. Thomas a Kempis

There is a certain type of story out there that is written for one purpose.. to elicit tears… they normally involve some type of suffering.. children.. cute animals.. and some horrible tragedy… I’ve grown to not like these kinds of stories because they seem so contrived… I had a professor in seminary who loved these kinds of stories.. and so every time he preached.. his sermon always involved death… We use to make small wagers on whether or not he would… I kid you not… every sermon of his… included a tragic death.

Yet.. in order for you to understand an event that caused suffering.. I don’t have to give you an example… for I am certain that there is one on the surface of your mind.. one that has rubbed your mind raw trying to understand, why?.. Why did this happen?... Why did they have to do that?... In fact.. we could go around the room… and you could tell your own stories of suffering… things you have experienced personally.. seen others experience.. things that happen in relationships.. and tragedies that occur in our world.. whether natural or man made.

In the midst of these sufferings.. you will find many who try to explain or explain away the relationship between God and these sufferings.. let me give you some examples… 

There is the response… It is God’s will… From an academic perspective this IS an answer… from a pastoral perspective.. it serves no purpose… 

Another is.. Good will come out of this suffering... this is the tendency to look for the silver lining… In Christianity.. this evolves from the cross… the suffering of Christ was good in that it brought about our redemption… however.. when faced with some incomprehensible tragedy..   those who are closest to the event will never be able to find even a silver thread.. much less the lining…

And my all time favorite.. God will never put on you more than you can bear… For starters that’s not in the Bible.. God will not put more sin on you than you can fight, but there’s nothing about suffering.. and as I like to tell folks, God may not put more on you than you can bear, but the devil sure as heck will.

There are times when we also want to skip past the suffering or even deny its existence.. by declaring “we are Easter people and Alleluia is our song.”… So often.. funerals are now referred to as a “Celebration of Life”.. as though death and suffering have not occurred… we want to go straight to Easter Sunday and the resurrection of our Lord and skip right past Good Friday and the suffering Jesus experienced on the Cross… 

If none of these types of answers are satisfactory.. then there is always the blame game… we can blame ourselves.. or others.. I think one that will live on in infamy was Jerry Falwell’s response after 9/11.. he said… “God was mad.... I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the A.C.L.U., People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”… it must be wonderful to know the mind of God so well…

Truth is… the answer just isn’t all that simple… When I was in seminary we had several classes in pastoral ministry… how to work with folks when they are suffering… In the last of these classes we spent a good bit of time role playing… one played the role of someone suffering.. while the other played the priest.. and provided all this marvelous insight and wisdom into the person’s issue…

Yet I remember several years back when my friend Heidi – the Dean of the Cathedral –  was diagnosed with breast cancer.. as she was telling me what all was going to have to happen I kept wanting to come up with something reassuring to say like we did in class.. to explain why this was happening and to fix it… you know what I came up with in all my wisdom… ?.. “Damn”.. well not really.. but it is a close approximation to what I came up with … “Damn”

I asked Heidi if she remembered those pastoral ministry classes.. when we used to have all those marvelous insights and wisdom into how to solve everyone’s problems.. she remembered.. and had an insight of her own… 

She asked if I remembered the story of Job {duh!}… Job had everything.. and God allowed it to be taken away and Job suffered so horribly… so Job’s three friends come along and start explaining with their own wonderful insight and wisdom into why Job is suffering… “it is because you did this”.. “it is because they did that”.. “it is because it is God’s will”.. “it is because of the fallen world we live in”… 

Heidi concluded that Job’s friends had to be seminarians… full of themselves and full of all the answers.. and in truth not knowing a dang thing.. because after the first time you encounter true suffering… you discover how shallow and useless all the answers really are… 

If then that is the case… then what is the relationship between God and suffering… Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor from Auschwitz… he wrote the novel “Night”.. about his experience while there.. in it he recalls an event… “The S.S. hanged two Jewish men and a youth in front of the whole camp.  The men died quickly, but the death throes of the youth lasted for half an hour. “Where is God? Where is he?” someone asked behind me. As the youth still hung in torment in a noose after a long time, I heard a voice within myself answer, “Where is God? He is here, he is hanging on the gallows....”

"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"—which means, "God with us."….. Jesus said, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

To live with mystery is not always that easy… we are a people that like answers.. cut and dry answers… however.. it is often times a mystery to understand why suffering happens… but what is not a mystery.. is knowing that even in the heart of our suffering… Immanuel… “God is with us”… 

In our Gospel reading today.. we read… about the little girl who was sick and eventually dies.. and of the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years… both of them suffering.. with no explanation as to why… It was simply life in a fallen world… there is no reason given why they were suffering.. there is no great plot.. or concocted philosophy to try and give it meaning… Why?... because it really isn’t all that important… The suffering.. “just was”… what is important is “Immanuel”.. God was with them… God loved them no matter the circumstances… and He was with them.. … from sickness he brought health.. From death he brought life.

Today.. I may leave you wanting… because I do not have the answer you are likely looking for… I can’t say why we suffer.. I can’t say why God heals some.. and others are left with a lifetime of trials… but I can tell you this… Immanuel… we can look upon the crucified Lord and understand that he is with us… not just in the resurrection.. but in the suffering of our bodies and our souls… He is with us.. he loves us.. and he will never forsake us.

Let us pray… God, our Father, may we love You in all things and above all things. May we reach the joy which You have prepared for us in Heaven. Nothing is good that is against Your Will, and all that is good comes from Your Hand. Place in our hearts a desire to please You and fill our minds with thoughts of Your Love, so that we may grow in Your Wisdom and enjoy Your Peace.  Amen

Sermon: Pentecost III / Proper 6 RCL B - "Citizen: Kingdom of God"

The Podcast can be found here.

 

Mark 4:26-34

Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."

He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Anyone like to try and spell the word Pseudepigrapha?  Essentially, it is a work that is attributed to another author… roughly the word translates as “false title.”  There are many such works in both the secular and religious world.. and even in the Christian world.  Some of the these books are included in what we call the Apocrypha… The Book of Common Prayer says that Church should read these books “for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine”… such books include “The Book of Judith”.. “Of Bel and the Dragon”.. and “The Song of the Three Children.”  However, others didn’t make the cut even to be included in the Apocrypha.  Some of the more famous are “The Gospel of Thomas” and even “The Gospel of Judas,” which begins "the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot".  These books are interesting to read, but that is about it.  One of these that did not make the cut, but that I found to be a great read is “The Ascension of Isaiah.”

Supposedly, it was written by the Isaiah and contains a good bit of prophecy, including an account of his ascension into and through the seven levels of heaven… The Ascension of Isaiah, is written from Isaiah’s point of view and he tells us how he ascended through the various levels.  As he rises, the angels become more and more glorious in appearance and finally he is allowed access to God.  He writes, “I saw a certain One standing, whose glory surpassed that of all, and His glory was great and wonderful.”  He goes on to see the Son, Jesus, and the angel of the Holy Spirit… and all the angels worship the Lord.

As Isaiah watches and listens he hears God the Father tell the Son to descend through the various levels of heaven.. and finally to be on earth.  So the Son begins his journey to humanity.  At the seventh and sixth levels he retains his glory and all worship Him, but when he reaches the fifth level of heaven, he takes on the appearance of those angels, and they do not recognize him.. and the same occurs at each of the subsequent level, he humbles his glory, and is finally born of Mary.. he lived his life, taking the Name Jesus.. he performed miracles and taught of the things of God, yet the prince of this world became jealous and had the world turn against Him.. so they brought Him before the kings who had Him crucified.. he died and descend into hell.  For three days he remained, then rose again.  He sent His disciples into the world.. and then he ascended into heaven, and as he went he retained His human form, but He also took on his former glory that He had always had.. so the angels in each level of heaven recognized him as he went and cried out, “How did our Lord escape us whilst descending, and we perceived not?"… They could not figure out how he had gotten past them, but as you recall.. he humbled himself and took on their form.. just as he humbled himself and took on ours… As Paul writes to the Hebrews, recalling the Psalmist, “we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels...”

It is an amazing story, and true or not, it is an early Christian’s attempt at explaining the unexplainable, that is, the Incarnation of God, “For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.”  It is an almost unimaginable thought, but through this process of Incarnation and Ascension, there is flesh and blood, just like yours!, flesh and blood in heaven in the person of Jesus and He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty… if that doesn’t pickle your brain, nothing will.

Today in our Gospel reading, Jesus tells us about the Kingdom of God.. it is like a man who goes and scatters seed.. and it is like the mustard seed.  He is speaking to us about the invisible things of God and the greatness of God and His Kingdom.  There are an amazing number of sermons to be preached on these verses, but as I was thinking on it.. I just couldn’t get passed this idea of the Kingdom of God and its implications.

You see, in this world, we gain our identity from all sorts of things.  We are Americans.. Montanans.. [community name, i.e. Buttians].. We base our identity on what school we went to.. as Masons or Rotarians.. even our denominations and our churches.  We fly the American flag.. we wear our t-shirts with our favorite team logo emblazoned on the front of it… We cheer for the team.. We go to countless meetings in support of our groups… But you see, we are also citizens of the Kingdom of God… we are heirs and co-heirs with Christ… All the glory of that seventh heaven that is Jesus’ is also ours… yet very rarely do we claim it.. very rarely do we identify ourselves with it…  We too were made a little lower than the angels, but do we reflect the glory of God?

Here’s a thought.. you know how you can recognize some folks even by looking at their backs.. or by the sound of their voice.. or even by their walk.. well, wouldn’t it be something if folks could also recognize you as a citizen of the Kingdom of God?  Wouldn’t it be something if you radiated that glory of God that is yours through Christ?  There is that funny little saying, “Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor each morning the devil says, ‘Oh Crap, She's up!’"  Wouldn’t it be something to be that kind of woman.. that kind of man that not only the devil was afraid, but that the world rejoiced in because you so closely identify with the Kingdom of God, that they can read it on you just like they can read the name of your favorite football team on the front of your shirt?

The trouble is.. just as Jesus took on the appearance of the various levels of heaven as he humbled himself to take on our likeness.. so we too can descend into the world around us and take on its likeness and no longer be recognizable as a citizen of the Kingdom of God.

Now.. I’m not asking you to walk around as a billboard for Jesus.. with your WWJD bracelet, fish logo on the bumper of your car.. plus a “Honk if you love Jesus” bumper sticker.. and passing out business cards with “John 3:16” boldly emblazoned on them.   That no more makes you a citizen of the Kingdom of God than running around wearing a clerical collar.

I’m not asking you to do any of those things, but I am asking you to proudly claim your citizenship in the Kingdom of God..  Clothe yourself with righteousness.. radiate faith, hope and love.  As Paul declares, “we are the people of God.”.. and we are citizens of His Kingdom, so we should live that out.  Is it within you?  Is that something you can grasp for yourself?  The answer is a resounding, “Yes!”  Your life is not a natural life… your life is a supernatural life.  You are nourished, not with bread and meat, but with the Body and the Blood of the very Son of God… Speaking on that Holy Communion, St. John Chrysostom writes, “Let us then return from that table like lions breathing fire, having become terrible to the devil; thinking on our Head, and on the love which He hath shown for us.”…

We are citizens of the Kingdom of God.. therefore, let us be like lions breathing fire.. let us be terrible to the devil.. let us not only receive, but radiate the love that has been shown to us.

Whether the Ascension of Isaiah was true or not.. the message of that wonderful story is true.  Christ humbled himself and became like us.. he was crucified, died and was buried.. yet on the third day rose again.. and finally he ascended into heaven clothed in His own glory... That glory is also yours… It is why the apostle Paul urges you “to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom.. and glory.”… Nelson Mandela said, “We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.”  Boldly live out your citizenship in the Kingdom of God.  Let His glory be known.

Let us pray… I encourage you to make this prayer your own…  I offer you, Lord, my thoughts: to be fixed on you; my words: to have you for their theme; my actions: to reflect my love for you; my sufferings: to be endured for your greater glory. I want to do what you ask of me: in the way you ask, for as long as you ask, because you ask it. I pray, Lord, that you enlighten my mind, inflame my will, purify my heart, and sanctify my soul.  O Mary, Mother of God and my Mother, pray also to Jesus for me. Amen.

SJARM June 2012 Newsletter

Sermon: Pentecost II / Proper 5 RCL B - "A Kingdom Divided"

The Podcast can be found here.

Mark 3:20-35

The crowd came together again, so that Jesus and his disciples could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, "He has gone out of his mind." And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, "He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons." And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

"Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin" -- for they had said, "He has an unclean spirit."

Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you." And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

A few fun facts about the human body....

You use 200 muscles to take one step.

A pair of human feet contains 250,000 sweat glands.

A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball.

The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades.

Men without hair on their chests are more likely to get cirrhosis of the liver than men with hair.

Finally... Your thumb is the same length as your nose.... And just so you won’t spend the rest of the sermon wondering if that is true you may now go ahead and check....

 From the book of Genesis... Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.... the human body is indeed a masterpiece of the highest order.... This week I was even looking into how the cells in our body work.

Each cell in our bodies serves a very specific purpose.. and each serves the greater good... Each cell is programmed so that when it is old or no longer needed it dies.  The cells are able to reproduce based on the DNA that is found in each of them.. and even more fascinating is that the cells are smart enough to generate the tissue needed to create and maintain specific parts of the body... You don’t have a muscle cell in your leg suddenly deciding, “Hey, I think I’ll form a lung down here.”... Although it has been proven that certain cells in the brain of a teenager can occasionally be transformed into rocks.

Now.. as the DNA helps these cells to reproduce, errors do happen - actually they happen quite frequently and in many cases there is this wonderfully smart gene - that coding material in the DNA - called P53.  From my understanding this gene is not only smart, but a genius type gene.  If there is an error in the DNA coding and the newly created cell is not as it should be, then the P53 comes in and slows the growth of the cell so that the DNA can be corrected or the P53 tells the cell to self destruct.... essentially the are safeguards that keep things like your nose from becoming longer than your thumb.

Anyone care to wage a guess as to what happens if these safeguards fail?... Cancer.  All cancer cells essentially begin the same way.. it is an error in the DNA coding that allows the mutant cell to over ride the safeguards.  The P53 can’t slow the cells progress to allow the cell to repair itself... the cell refuses the command to self destruct... It just grows.. it reproduces... it does not care which organ is which as long as it can continue to multiply.... The initial system of a cancer tumor is essentially weak.. they grow to such an extent that they can’t supply enough nutrients to keep themselves alive, so they develop their own blood supply system by developing veins that were never there in the first place....

What causes the DNA in a cell to go wrong and form a cancerous cell?... It seems anymore the question is “What doesn’t cause..?” but it seems for the most part the contributing factors are outside sources of which we have all heard.. smoking.. too much sun.. certain forms of radiation.. on and on the list will go and continue to grow, but whatever the case, these outside forces cause the DNA to be altered within a single cell and from there the malignancy begins.

Now there are many forms of cancer and many of them can be treated and the survivors can go on to lead very good lives, but if unchecked, untreated.. the cancer will grow and eventually kill the person... The human body is indeed a masterpiece, but in this case, the masterpiece turns against itself.. and the end result can be death.

Jesus said, “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”

I don’t know if all dogs are like this.. but if you take some of them out into a field with cows, the dog will inevitably find the freshest pile of cow poo and take a nice long roll in it... they come out smelling like.. well.. poo.  The first thing you do when you get them home is to give them a bath and wash it away.

When we sin, it is through the blood of Jesus that we can be cleansed of the eternal effects of those sins... we can wash the poo right off, but there are other sins in our life that aren’t like washing off poo.. they are more like cancer and they come on in a very similar way.. one little bit at a time.. and they are just as difficult to get rid of.... ask someone who has an addiction... smoking.. drugs.. pornography.... That first puff, hit, or image.. was like the first cell going bad... Yet, there were still safeguards in place to correct the problem... primarily the Spirit of God saying, “This is not good... this is not right... this is against the things of God”....  Yet there is also this thing called free will - it is your choice.

You can be obedient and heed the Spirit.. or you can choose to ignore... and just as a cancerous cell divides and then divides again.. so will the sin until it becomes a part of you...  We can make the mistake and think that we can control the sin and quit whenever we want, but remember that line from the movie, “If you dance with the devil, the devil doesn’t change.. the devil changes you.”.. Paul says that before Christ we were slaves to sin.. and we may think we can overcome the master who controls us, but we can’t... and so our house... this temple of God... can become divided against it self... you end up with these two warring parties within you.

As much as anyone of us might believe it... we are not alone in this struggle... St. Augustine writes in his Confessions, “So did my two wills, one new, the other old, one spiritual, the other carnal, fight within me and by their discord undo my soul.”... How often have you heard the words of St. Paul, “When I want to do good, I find that evil is right there with me.”

Now you may think I’m about to give you some sage advice on how to bring this war within you to and end.. and believe it or not.. I do have a very simple solution -- Die.  When you die the battle is over and one side or the other has won, unless.. unless sometime before you die you simply quit fighting.... Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.".. This is not a full or perfect understanding of this most grievous of sins.. the blaspheming of the Holy Spirit, but it is close... essentially it says, I recognize the good path that God has set me on, but I willingly choose not to follow it.. or.. the battle.. the war within me is too difficult.. I have failed so many times.. that I quit.  You see, there is a vast difference between failure and quitting... Failure means you get to try again.. quitting means you’ve decided not to try any more.

Like Augustine and Paul and every other person that has ever tried to follow Christ -- you will fail, but you must try again.... you will be forgiven every sin and blaspheme.. except quitting.

There is story of a magnificently handsome young man sitting in a congregation.  After service the young man stayed for confession.  He confessed so many terrible sins that the priest was horrified.  The priest says, “You must have lived long to have done all that.”... the young man replied, “My name is Lucifer and I fell from heaven at the beginning of time.”... “Even so,” said the priest, “say that you are sorry, say that you repent and even you can be forgiven.”... Legend has it that the young man looked at the priest for a moment and then turned and walked away.... He could not ask for forgiveness.. he refused to try again to follow the ways of God.. and left that place damned.

St. Josemaria writes, “You tell me that in your heart you have fire and water, cold and heat, empty passions and God: one candle lit to St. Michael and another to the devil [you are trying to be on good terms with both].... Calm yourself.  As long as you are willing to fight there are not two candles burning in your heart.  There is only one: the archangel’s.”

There are three solutions to the battle against this cancer of sin.. die.. quit.. or fight... You are going to die, but in the meantime.. I pray that you choose to fight, but be prepared.. it is a life long battle, and you must be willing to overcome a multitude of failures.. Yet always remember.. throughout the battle - even on the darkest days - you can trust in God.. Why?.. “He does not lose battles.”

Let us pray... “Holy Michael Archangel, defend us in the day of battle; be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil.  May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust down to hell Satan and all wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.   Amen.”