Defend us in the Battle (Guest post on Blessed Is She!)

Today, an article of mine is featured on the Blessed is She blog--you can read the teaser below and head over to their site for the full post.

Saint Michael, from the Met Cloisters

Ah, the glory of the battlefield. My childhood was formed by a thousand tales of skirmishes and battles, knights and soldiers, wars and warfare. Some of them were factual. The best of my history books came blazingly to life in my mind when describing the valor of the opponents of evil in the Second World War. Some of them were fictional. The Battle of Pelennor Fields in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings left me wide-eyed with admiration for the heroism of a little hobbit and a young woman who refused to be complacent.

Sadly, but necessarily, my growth into maturity brought with it an awareness that battles are hardly picturesque and only glorious in the sense that sometimes they are won. Evil is defeated, good triumphs, God’s will prevails. And that is a beautiful thing, despite the ugliness that it takes to get there. Because that is what war and the battlefield bring: ugliness. Suffering, pain, death. Chaos.

Our Church is fighting a particularly ugly and painful battle herself right now. The request by many of our priests and bishops to say the St. Michael prayer at the end of every Mass couldn’t be more vital. “Defend us in the battle,” we pray, while Our Eucharistic Lord rests before us and in us, giving us the strength we need to take up arms.

But what, exactly, does this battle entail? Some Catholics have felt uncertain or even offended by the request to join in this prayer. Why should the Church ask to be defended? Aren’t her members the aggressors in this case? Shouldn’t we be praying and acting for the defense of victims?

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To read the rest of the article, visit the Blessed is She Blog. As always, I'd appreciate if you share it with other readers that it might speak to right now!