Feast day: May 8

The Apparition of St. Michael the Archangel

Feast

Patron of Soldiers, the sick

Commemorates the traditional appearances of St. Michael, chief of the angels, especially on Monte Gargano in Italy, where one of his oldest shrines has drawn pilgrims for fifteen centuries.

The feast kept on May 8 commemorates the traditional appearances of St. Michael the Archangel, the leader of the heavenly host, and especially his apparition at Monte Gargano in southern Italy, where stands one of the oldest and most venerated shrines dedicated to him in all the Western Church. Michael, whose name is the war-cry 'Who is like God?', is honored in Scripture as the great defender against the powers of evil.

By the tradition, around the year 490 a wealthy man of the region lost a prized bull, and finding it at last in a mountain cave, in frustration shot an arrow at it — only for the arrow to turn back and wound the archer himself. In the wonder and fear that followed, St. Michael appeared and made known that the cave was under his protection and was to be consecrated for Christian worship.

A sanctuary was established in the grotto, and the cave-church of Monte Gargano became a great place of pilgrimage through the Middle Ages, drawing emperors, popes, crusaders, and countless ordinary pilgrims, and inspiring other Michael shrines across Europe, including the famous island abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel in France.

The feast honors Michael as the protector of the Church and of God's people, the angel who casts down the dragon in the Book of Revelation and who guards the faithful in the unseen battle against evil. Long invoked by soldiers, by the sick, and by the dying, he is celebrated in this feast as heaven's mighty champion, ever ready to defend those who call upon him.

The mountain shrine of Monte Gargano, marking his apparition there around 490, is the oldest sanctuary in Western Europe dedicated to St. Michael.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/10275b.htm