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The Army’s Favorite Saint

How St. Michael went beyond his religious roots to become a military icon

by
Maggie Phillips
August 31, 2021
Religious Literacy in America
Tablet talks about Judaism a lot, but sometimes we like to change the subject. Maggie Phillips covers religious communities across the U.S.—from Christians to Muslims, Hindus to Baha’i, Jehovah’s Witnesses to pagans—to find out what they’re talking about.
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@isaac_roman via Instagram
@isaac_roman via Instagram
@isaac_roman via Instagram

“St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.” I remember these words at the end of a speech my father gave, shortly after he returned home from commanding a brigade of U.S. Army soldiers during the intense fighting of the 2006-07 Iraq War troop surge, in the dangerous al-Anbar province. Despite the phrase’s clearly religious meaning—the words come from a Catholic prayer—as far as I know, it was recited without criticism. The ubiquity in military circles of Christianity’s iconic soldier-angel would have rendered it unremarkable to soldiers of all religions.

It isn’t just the Army, and it isn’t just Catholics. From Navy ship crests, to vetbro merch, to military and law enforcement gear suppliers, the killer angel is everywhere. Early in my marriage, when my husband was a young Army lieutenant, I remember listening as a buddy of his (to my knowledge, not especially religious) animatedly considered a variety of increasingly fanciful St. Michael tattoo designs for himself. It’s an enthusiasm shared by many: One of the related search engine questions for “Saint Michael tattoo ideas” is: “How much does a half-sleeve tattoo cost?” An employee at Sacred Raven Tattoo, right outside Fort Bragg, North Carolina, said that they’ve done at least 10 St. Michael tattoos since they opened about two years ago. A session can take up to eight hours, and can cost anywhere from $1,200-$1,400.

Michael’s most popular depiction comes from the Christian New Testament Book of Revelation, which describes Michael and his angels casting Satan and the other fallen angels out of Paradise. St. Michael is usually shown in Christian and popular military art with the typical angel wings, but dressed as a Roman soldier, carrying a spear, and subduing Satan under his feet. For a military whose members want to see themselves as “the good guys,” he’s become a potent symbol across religious lines. Much in the way that imagery of Our Lady of Guadelupe is often deployed in secular contexts simply as an emblem of Mexican heritage, even nonbelievers share an affinity for the winged warrior as a symbol of virtue and bravery.

My nonpracticing husband has a St. Michael medal I gave him when he deployed to Iraq in 2011. Bearing the U.S. Army crest on the back, and misshapen now from being worn under the weight of his body armor for nearly a year, he often takes it with him when he goes away. When I asked around among our military friends and family for their St. Michael anecdotes, one friend said, “My mom gave me a St. Michael charm that was on my dog tags. Just thought it looked cool because he was stabbing a motherfucker.”

Growing up in an Army family that was also an observant Catholic one, often living on small remote American bases in Germany, it wasn’t always clear to me where the rituals of liturgical faith ended and where those of the Army picked up.

After all, there were certain practices—religious and military alike—reserved for certain hours: The ancient Angelus prayer is said at 6 a.m., the same time that a recording of a bugle playing reveille often sounds over Army post loudspeakers. At the end of the duty day, just as pious European Christians of old would stop at 6 p.m. when they heard the church bells to say the prayer’s three Hail Marys, soldiers (and often many civilians, including spouses and even children), upon hearing the retreat bugle call, will automatically drop whatever they’re doing. Without discussion, they turn and face the direction of the nearest flag (and there’s always a nearest flag) with a silent salute. We recited the Apostles’ Creed at Mass, while soldiers recited the Soldier’s Creed at ceremonies. Just as visitors to a monastery might hear the monks chanting the office of Lauds early in the morning, visitors to a military base might hear a group of soldiers calling cadence during a unit run at “oh-dark-thirty.”

Many U.S. Army traditions come to us from long-established European custom, which is why they often have a whiff of Old World pageantry and the high liturgical. This includes the practice of particular branches of service having their own patron saints, with the archangel Michael perhaps emerging as the most iconic of them all. In my imagination, he is simply bound up in the iconography of the two tradition-steeped worlds of my upbringing: my Catholic home, and the hermetically sealed world that was an overseas U.S. military base before the internet.

This popular military icon, embraced by believers and nonbelievers alike, originated as the patron saint of paratroopers specifically during WWII. It was in 1944, during Operation Overlord, when the chaplain of the French 2nd Regiment Parachute Hunters gave out St. Michael medals to each paratrooper before they joined resistance fighters in fierce guerilla operations in Brittany. As recently as 2019, U.S. troops were joining French troops for commemorative jumps on the traditional Roman Catholic feast of St. Michael, even joining their French counterparts for Mass afterward. It’s no surprise, therefore, that the 82nd Airborne Division, which rose to fame by parachuting into Normandy on D-Day, should have adopted this patronage.

Other military branches have patron saints that predate WWII. St. Barbara, for example, has been the patron saint of artillery since the 17th century, and St. George is the historic patron saint of cavalry and armor. The Vatican itself has appeared to bless the parallels between military service and faith on occasion. Not only did Pope Pius XII make St. Maurice the patron saint of the Italian mountain infantry corps in 1941 (today, also the patron saint of U.S. infantry), Pope Francis recently granted a request by the U.S. Archdiocese of the Military Services to make military chapels a place of pilgrimage in honor of Our Lady of Loreto, the patroness of pilots and air travelers.

Saint patronage is widespread practice in the Army, and in my personal experience, not at all controversial from a First Amendment standpoint, since they tend to occupy a place more akin to mascots. At unit balls, certain soldiers will be awarded with large medals depicting their branch’s patron saint, which they then go on to wear with their dress uniforms on special occasions. I often joke that the only people besides Italian grandmothers who proudly wear large patron saint medals are hardened U.S. Army soldiers.

This is the reason, then, that you will find a matter-of-fact blog post on the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson web page about St. Michael’s role as the patron saint of the military, as well as airborne soldiers. The post, by Chaplain Paul Lynn, begins with a quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost, and goes on to cite the significance of the angel in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths. With a name that means “who is like God?” Michael is described in the book of Daniel as being a prince or minister charged with the protection of Israel, which is what differentiates him and makes him a chief, or archangel, with other angels under his command. While he is associated in the Midrash with chesed (kindness), in Islam, he is associated with accompanying Muhammad and his followers to victory at the Battle of Badr in 624, a pivotal moment in the growth of Islam, according to the Quran.

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In his book Lives of the Saints, widely read by Catholics for generations, Catholic hagiographer Alban Butler describes the humility underlying the meaning of Michael’s name to be the motto by which he defeated Satan’s defiance and arrogance.

A little like Roman legions’ fealty to the martial symbolism of the cult of Mithras—which long outlived the empire they served—St. Michael’s popularity with 21st-century American soldiers persists.

Today, the chaplains of the 82nd Airborne Division hold an annual St. Michael’s Jump, in which soldiers of various faiths come together to honor their division patron by parachuting “out of a perfectly good airplane,” as the old Army joke goes.

Most recently, the storied division made headlines once again as part of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, when three of its infantry battalions deployed rapidly to assist with airport security in Kabul. As the wife of an 82nd soldier, I watched as friends suddenly had their worlds turned upside down, their service members here one day, and in a hellish humanitarian crisis the next.

On a recent Sunday, I joined with the congregation after Mass in saying the St. Michael’s prayer, a common pious practice in Catholic churches, after it was written and popularized by Pope Leo XIII in the late 19th century:

Saint Michael Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

The prayer took on added resonance, however, in this church not far from Fort Bragg, home of the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division. My eyes scanned the congregation and noticed more solo moms in the congregation, the dads who had been in attendance just last week suddenly vanished. In the confusion and uncertainty of the recent days and weeks, my husband’s St. Michael medal remained at home with me.

Perhaps the parallels between liturgy and military life aren’t so surprising: Rituals, traditions, and symbols persevere because little else does. The life of faith and military life both come with sacrifice and uncertainty, with little promise of earthly reward. There might be atheists in foxholes, but there are plenty of nonreligious soldiers who will carry a St. Michael image into battle without a second thought.

“I wear the St. Michael pendant because he is the patron saint of soldiers,” said one U.S. soldier who identifies as “not actively religious” and is currently serving overseas. “I think his story represents what we try to do as soldiers every day.”

To paraphrase something a Marine friend told me years ago, the “outside the box” thinking that society often praises isn’t always a virtue.

“Sometimes,” he said, “the box is there because it works.”

This story is part of a series Tablet is publishing to promote religious literacy across different religious communities, supported by a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

Maggie Phillips is a freelance writer and former Tablet Journalism Fellow.