Prior to the beginning of time, “The Heavenly Father revealed to the Angels the future Incarnation of His Divine Son, whom they were to adore in His Sacred Humanity . . . He also revealed to them the surpassing dignity and glory of Mary whom, as the Mother of God, they were to venerate as their Queen. Lucifer, one of the most glorious and exalted princes of the heavenly court, dazzled by the splendor of his own gifts, rebelled at the thought that human nature should be preferred to his own angelic nature. He would not acknowledge that a woman, inferior to him in nature, should at some future time be made his Queen, and that the Seed of that woman should be preferred to himself for the honor of the hypostatic union. Desiring for himself the prerogatives of the God-man, he raised his great battle-cry of rebellion: “I will be like the Most High” (Is 14:14).”
“In their pride, a third of the angels took up Lucifer’s rebellious cry. At the same instant, another great Archangel, equal in beauty and grace to the proud Lucifer, prostrated himself before the throne of God. With an act of profound adoration, he opposed the cry of the rebellious angels with his own battle cry of love and loyalty: “Mi-kha-el” – “Who is like unto God?” Then followed that tremendous battle . . . which St John describes in the Apocalypse: “And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found anymore in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world” (Rv 12:7-9).
(Source: St. Michael the Archangel, 2006, pp. 5-6).
