The Chaplet of St. Michael

Full Explanation

The Chaplet of St. Michael is built on the nine choirs of angels, and that is the thing to understand before praying it. It is not nine repetitions of the same prayer. Each salutation addresses a different rank of the heavenly host, in the traditional order: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Powers, Virtues, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. After each, one Our Father and three Hail Marys. When the nine are finished, four Our Fathers close it — one for St. Michael, one for St. Gabriel, one for St. Raphael, and one for your own guardian angel. That last is the hinge of the whole devotion. It moves from the seraphim, who are as far from you as anything in creation, down to the one assigned to you personally, and the descent is the point. The origin is where honesty is required. The chaplet is traditionally attributed to a private revelation given to a Carmelite, Antonia d’Astonac, in which St. Michael is said to have asked for this form of prayer and attached promises to it. The documentation for that account is thin, and dates given for her vary between sources. This is not a reason to avoid the devotion, which the Church permits and which has been prayed for a long time. It is a reason to be careful about how the promises are held. Those promises, in the usual telling, include an escort of one angel from each choir when approaching Holy Communion, and assistance in life and after death for those who pray it. As with the Twelve Promises of the Sacred Heart, this is private revelation. The Church does not oblige belief in it, and a devotion prayed to collect on a promise has become a transaction. Pray it because the nine choirs are worth thinking about one at a time. If you want the structure without the beads, the chaplet works perfectly well counted on an ordinary rosary: nine sets of four, then four more. Chaplets made for it usually carry thirty-nine beads and a medal.