Father Pierre Doat, rector of the Mont Saint Michel sanctuary in France since September 2023, describes his role as that of someone immersed in everyday wonder and in stark contrast to the secular Western world, where social disintegration and the culture of death reveal a deep disenchantment.
Since his arrival in this emblematic place of Christianity, which is actually a tidal island in Normandy, this young priest of the Community of Saint Martin, a public clerical association of pontifical right, has witnessed first-hand the powerful evangelizing force of Saint Michael the Archangel. Based on this rich experience, he has recently written The Romance of Angelsa novel that describes the meeting between Arnaud, a young lawyer torn between the meaning of life, and his guardian angel at the time of his death.
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Through the story of various chapters of the life of the young protagonist, the author distills the teachings of the Church about the heavenly world and the role of angels throughout the earthly pilgrimage of the human being, from conception to passage to eternal life.
Father Doat believes that this form of fictional narrative is well received by Western audiences, who often view the angelic world with detachment or do not take it seriously.
Exalting the thirst for transcendence
“Due to the excesses of modern Western rationalism, which also led the Roman Catholic Church to neglect an entire part of the teaching of the faith, everything that has to do with the angelic can seem unserious, even more so because it is difficult to convey the Catholic faith in a simple and realistic way on this topic,” Father Doat told the National Catholic Register.
While he has seen a growing interest in angelic figures among young people, both Christians and non-Christians, he notes that this fascination is often based more on esotericism than Catholic theology, highlighting the need for re-evangelization.
“This fascination is, without a doubt, the result of the failure of materialism, which has become evident in recent years, as people have been made to believe that the invisible world no longer matters, that to be happy you just have to have a nice house and a car. Now many people have realized the impasse of this worldview and are becoming much more receptive to the question of angels, which easily opens the door to transcendence in their lives,” he continued.
Proof of this is the unexpected success of his teaching sessions on Christian angelology at the Mont Saint Michel sanctuary in recent years, attracting crowds from all walks of life.
Parallel to this field experience, while trying to stock the sanctuary’s bookstore, he realized that there was a lack of literature that was sufficiently accessible to the general public.
“There are often very intellectual theology books, or devotional books that only appeal to people who are already convinced, so I had the idea of producing something a little different to spread the teachings about angels in a ‘painless’ way, without people realize it,” said the young rector.
Reenchantment Vector
Drawing on his years as a missionary in Cuba in the 2010s, where he developed his pastoral charisma, Fr. Doat easily connects with visitors to the sanctuary and experiences small miracles daily, particularly through confessions.
He has often witnessed how adult visitors are naturally drawn to the sacrament of reconciliation, even after decades of not going to confession. He remembers in particular a young man in his 30s who, having not confessed since his First Communion more than 20 years ago, instinctively approached the confessional after seeing another person enter. His initiative then inspired his young wife, followed by her parents, grandparents and in-laws, all of them rediscovering confession for the first time in decades.
“There is a very strong link between Saint Michael and mercy, which is reflected in all the stories of the archangel’s appearances,” he said.
Reflecting on widespread de-Christianization in the West, which he says does little to encourage celestial apparitions, the rector noted that it is no coincidence that the most recent apparitions recognized by the Church, particularly that of the Virgin Mary with the Archangel Gabriel on Ile Bouchard , France, in 1947, were children.
“Apparently, in the West, the only people who are still able to see angels are children, because they are not yet consumed by materialism and rationalism, and they still have an enchanted view of the world.”
In his view, the gradual disappearance of angels from Western consciousness in recent centuries reflects a deepening disenchantment with the world, a trend accelerated by atheistic humanism.
This worldview has blinded humans to the fact that, in the perfect natural order created by God, benevolent beings look out for them. His novel was designed to remind readers of this, noting that friendship with angels “opens our hearts to the invisible,” causing us to grow in friendship with God and granting us a more heavenly view of the world.
Taking inspiration from the East
This phenomenon, he points out, is much less frequent in the East, where Christians have a cosmological vision of salvation that “preserves them from the lie of materialism.” Therefore, consider that, unlike Westerners, who tend to have a rather individual vision of salvation, Eastern Catholics and Orthodox adopt a more communal and cosmological vision.
“When tradition is impregnated with Byzantine hymns that speak of visible and invisible creation—angels, trees, flowers and birds, etc.—we do not lose sight of the fact that heaven is not for this earth,” he said, convinced. that Western Christians would do well to draw more inspiration from their Eastern brothers, who also have a much more elaborate form of devotion to St. Michael.
The consoling dimension of the archangel, for example, is an aspect little known today in the West, but remains central to popular Eastern devotion.
“Saint Michael ‘psychopomp’, ‘psychostasis’, Saint Michael the consoler… We left that aside and reduced the archangel to a kind of fighter, a hunk of a muscular body in armor. However, all these aspects were present in the Western tradition of the first millennium,” continued Father Doat.
In his opinion, recovering the richness of this ancestral devotion is all the more beneficial as it fosters Christian unity, since even some Protestants are devotees of Saint Michael the Archangel.
“We have here an authentic common treasure, which we must take care of,” he concluded, “and my mission as custodian of an ancient Christian jewel is precisely to enrich it wherever possible.”
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in National Catholic Register.
Solène Tadié
European correspondent for the National Catholic Register. She is French-Swiss and worked at L’Osservatore Romano in 2015. She has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas.