St. Michael and his angels throw the dragon out of heaven

ROME, September 29, 2026 AD — The Church keeps the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel today, with Saint Gabriel and Saint Raphael, and the Scripture passage its Roman Martyrology sets for the day is the account of a battle. In four verses of the Apocalypse, St. Michael leads his angels against a dragon and the dragon’s angels, the dragon is beaten, and he and his followers are thrown out of heaven.

The Apocalypse, also called the Book of Revelation, sets down the visions of Saint John.

The Roman Martyrology is the Church’s book of the saints for every day of the year. It celebrates the three archangels together on September 29, the anniversary of the dedication of a basilica of St. Michael built long ago on the Via Salaria, six miles outside Rome. When the day’s saints have been read out, one of the short Scripture readings printed in the book may follow, and for today the book prints the Latin of Apocalypse 12:7-10.

The reading opens with the fighting already under way. St. John wrote: “Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.”

The next verse names the dragon. St. John wrote: “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”

Then St. John heard “a loud voice in heaven.” The voice announced what the battle had brought about: “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.”

The Martyrology’s reading stops there. The reader closes it with Verbum Domini (The word of the Lord), and those listening answer Deo gratias (Thanks be to God).

In the Apocalypse the voice goes on for two more verses and says how the brethren beat the accuser: they “have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” It then warns earth and sea that “the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short.”

Pope Saint Gregory the Great explained the battle by what St. Michael’s name means. In his thirty-fourth homily on the Gospels, St. Gregory wrote that the devil “desired in his pride to be like God.” He put the prophet’s words in the devil’s mouth: “I will ascend into heaven; I will exalt my throne above the stars of heaven; I will be like the Most High.” The name Michael means “Who is like God,” St. Gregory wrote. He went on: “whenever some act of wondrous power must be performed, Michael is sent, so that his action and his name may make it clear that no one can do what God does by his superior power.”

Pope Saint John Paul II read the first three verses of the reading aloud at the grotto of St. Michael on Monte Gargano, in Apulia, on May 24, 1987 AD. He said that St. John was describing the fall of the first angel, who was led astray by the ambition to become like God. The Pope said that St. Michael’s Hebrew name, “Who is like God?”, was the answer to that angel. The name, St. John Paul II said, insists that no one is equal to God and no one can touch him.

Catholic Tradition tells the story at greater length and calls the leader of the fallen angels Lucifer. In the Golden Legend, the collection of saints’ lives compiled by Blessed Jacobus de Voragine in the thirteenth century, St. Michael is “the archangel which bare the banner of the celestial host,” who “came and chased Lucifer out of heaven with all them that followed him, and hath inclosed them in dark air unto the day of doom.”

In the whole of Scripture St. Michael speaks one sentence, and it is not in the Apocalypse. It is in the Letter of Saint Jude, who wrote against men who “reject authority, and revile the glorious ones.” St. Jude held up the archangel’s conduct as the opposite of theirs. He wrote that “when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him,” and that St. Michael said to the devil: “The Lord rebuke you.”