The following sermon was preached at a traditional Mass today in the USA.
“I am come to cast fire on the earth. And what do I want, but that it be enkindled?”
The breaking of the seventh seal from the Book of Revelation depicts a scene of a certain angel. Seven angels surround God’s presence in Heaven. One angel then steps forth before the celestial altar in Heaven, bearing a golden thurible in his hand. This angel, a celestial thurifer, is given ‘much incense’ to offer to God. Such incense, as the text states, is in fact the ‘prayers of the saints.’ (Rev. 8:3)
The prayers of the saints are the sign of the incense, and the sweet aroma ascends before the face of God from the angel’s own hand. The scene is rather pious and nice, but what follows is what is truly stark. After the aroma ascends to God, the angel then fills the thurible with even more fire, and in taking the thurible brimming with flame and incense, the angel casts it down as a weapon upon the earth, with the result that the thurible’s fire enkindles everything. A third part of the earth is burnt. A third part of the tress is burnt. A third part of all the green grass is burnt. The account even tells of a mountain utterly on fire being cast into the sea. Anything the thurible’s fire touches is consumed.
As the liturgy tells us every time the priest incenses the oblation and the altar at the Offertory of every sung Mass, this celestial thurifer, this angel, is no other the St. Michael the Archangel, the one who uses the thurible to impose the prayers of the saints as the worship of sweet incense before God’s sight but also imposes that same fire of prayer as the weapon against the powers of darkness. The priest prays when he imposes incense at the Offertory: “Through the intercession of blessed Michael the Archangel, who stands at the right side of the altar of incense, and at the right of all the elect, may the Lord deign to bless this incense and to receive it as an odor of sweetness…”
The lesson of St. Michael’s depiction in the Book of Revelation is that worship is warfare. Or better yet, your worship of God is your warfare against hell. There are numerous examples of this throughout Scripture. When Moses and the Israelites battle against their enemies, God tells Moses that if he stands on the mount and keeps his arms in cruciform position in prayer during the battle, then Israel will conquer. Likewise, the eventual battle formation of Moses and the Israelite camps was that of a Cross with the Ark of the Covenant in the very center of the battle formation. Or like King David, whose worship upon the harp as he sang the psalms was also a waging of an exorcistic war. Look at Jesus Crucifixion – there is no greater act of worship we could offer to God nor no better warfare to wage against hell than the Cross. The thurible as a liturgical instrument and simultaneously as a weapon of spiritual warfare shares in the same pattern.
That’s why at Mass we see that the thurible with its burning incense is offered first to God, and then the thurifer goes around and actually ‘casts’ the thurible in people’s direction, just as St. Michael does in Revelation. The thurifer imitates St. Michael from Revelation because the earthly liturgy is an imitation of the celestial. And yet, we are all called to do the same – to offer the incense of our prayer before God’s presence and to allow ourselves to be inflamed with that fire of love.
In a time where spiritual warfare is so heightened especially in the traditional sphere and due to the publicity of various spiritual warfare on the internet, we tend to forget the best weapons we have come from the Sacraments, that the best spiritual weapons are those which primarily focus on giving God His glory, such as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. St. Michael is the exemplar of this: he wins his wars by giving glory to God, because the principal is the same: his worship of God is simultaneously his warfare against the devil. We’ll find if we stay focused on worshiping God that we will wage a warfare upon hell far more efficacious than if we solely focus on the devil, which will never do us any good.
We tend to obsess over the devil; but the devil is not worth it – at all. In the angelic battle, when Lucifer tried to turn Michael’s attention to himself, Michael turned all the attention to God in exclaiming: ‘Who is like God’, which in Hebrew is מִיכָאֵל – the very name of Michael. Michael decided to use a prayer glorifying God to fight the devil because God’s glory is the devil’s defeat.
This is the model, and this is why St. Michael as the Celestial Thurifer teaches us that a heart inflamed for the love and glory of God produces a fire more painful to hell than hellfire itself, because in the end, the sign of the thurible is the sign of our heart inflamed with Divine Love. In what better way does Our Lord’s words apply to St. Michael, the one who offers our prayers to God as incense and wages war by divine fire since like the thurible, our hearts need the fire of Christ’s love to burn the sweet aroma of our prayers before God and to cast that fire upon the world:
“I have come to cast fire. What do I want but that the world be inflamed?”
