Recently, a fairly prominent editor of a “Catholic” publication decided to project publicly his disdain for the St. Michael prayer. It light of that and since it is now fair game, I will equally tell you my own disdain for the worthless drivel he espoused in that post🇻🇦
In 1949, a 13-year-old Lutheran boy started hearing devils scratching inside the walls of his house.
Three months later, St. Michael the Archangel spoke through his mouth and cast the demons into hell.
This is the true story that inspired The Exorcist. And almost none of it made the movie.
It started with a Ouija board.
His aunt was deep into séances and the occult. She taught him to use it. Then she died. And whatever answered through that board did not leave with her.
The scratching turned into pounding. Then words began appearing on the boy's skin, clawed in from the inside. HELL. EVIL. SPITE.
His parents called a spiritualist. Then two Lutheran pastors. Nothing worked. It only got worse.
As a last resort, they called a Catholic priest: Fr. William Bowdern, a WWII combat veteran turned Jesuit. He watched the boy himself. He was convinced. His archbishop granted permission for the full Rite of Exorcism.
That's when the real war began.
The boy became so violent it took five grown men to hold him down. He recoiled from holy water like it burned. He screamed in Latin, a language he had never learned. A six-inch image of the devil appeared in red on his leg. And he knew things no child could possibly know.
A priest named Fr. Raymond Bishop kept a daily diary of all of it. That diary is why this is one of the most documented exorcisms in history. Decades later, a man named William Peter Blatty read about the case and wrote The Exorcist.
But Hollywood left out the ending.
For weeks the priests fought. Some were losing hope. Then, on Easter Monday, a voice that was not the boy's roared out of him:
"Satan! Satan! I am St. Michael! I command you and the other evil spirits to leave this body, in the name of Dominus. Now. Now. NOW!"
The boy later described what he saw.
A blinding white light. A man in robes like scales, his hair moving in a wind no one else could feel. A fiery sword in his right hand. His left hand pointing down, to a pit of fire where the devil stood.
The devil fought. He resisted. Until St. Michael spoke one word: Dominus. The Lord.
At that, the demons were driven out screaming. The boy went still and said, "He's gone."
It was over. He was never tormented again.
And here's the part the movie would never tell you.
After it ended, the boy was received into the Catholic Church, and his family was won over too. A demon sent to devour one soul handed it straight to Christ instead. He even named his son Michael.
Michael's name is not a title. It's a question which means: "Who is like unto God?"
Lucifer said, "I will be like God." Michael answered with one act of humility, and that humility is what casts pride into hell. It's what he did at the dawn of time. It's what he still does today.
Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.
God permits evil for one reason: to draw a greater good out of it. That boy's possession may be the only reason he and his family ever met Christ. The enemy overplayed his hand. He always does.
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
The boy was meant to be destroyed. Instead he was delivered, and his whole family with him. That's how God works.
Share this with a friend who loves St. Michael, or one who needs to be reminded the war is real.
If you want to read the real account: the primary source is the daily diary kept by Fr. Raymond Bishop, S.J., one of the priests present during the rite. The most thorough book is Thomas B. Allen's "Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism," built from that diary and from interviews with Fr. Walter Halloran, one of the last living eyewitnesses.