And the petition was granted, for on the third day the great Archangel Michael appeared to the Bishop and told him that the portent of the returning arrow was intended to show that he wished to have a sanctuary consecrated in that cave to the glory of God and in honour of the Angels. So immediately the Bishop came forth and, gathering all the people to him, led them, with prayers and chants, into the heart of the hills to the mysterious cavern, and, entering in, they found it hollowed out and disposed in the form of a Church, with all things ready, so that the Bishop at once said Mass there; and from that hour so many wonderful miracles took place on that spot that all men knew certainly that it was greatly favoured by Heaven. And from that day to this it has been a place of holy pilgrimage, where many sinners have been converted, and many afflicted with terrible diseases cured. The Church celebrates the Apparition of St. Michael the Archangel on Monte Gargano on the 8th of May, but the feast of that spring morning is not the only one in which she commemorates his glorious interventions on her behalf. Far away in the North, another promontory, strangely like that of Monte Gargano, once encircled by forests, too, but now cut off from the land at each return of the tide, the Mont Saint-Michel, stands as the last outpost of France, flinging defiance at its twin peak across the water in Britain. There is something strangely significant in the choice of these two points for the most notable apparitions of the great Archangel, who commands the heavenly hosts and watches with such sublime benignity over the destinies of men. One in the North and one in the South, the great lonely rocks rise sheer from the sea as if set apart as resting-places where the glorious pinions might be folded for a while, and the effulgence of the angelic countenance, too overwhelming for man to bear as it comes straight from the Presence of God, a little tempered and veiled by the mists of sorrowful earth. But one feels, too, that the purity of the lonely rock, the brave song of the wind, the long roll of Atlantic surge, and the chant of Adriatic billows were dear and welcome to the Warrior Angel, who holds our world in his hands as the Creator’s chief Minister, who carries out His mandates, chastising when he must, but so tender to the contrite, so inspiring to the valiant, so royal in protection to the oppressed!