The battle now is joined in ernest. Christ is stripped like a champion ready for the fight. His vulnerability, His weakness, His submission to the stares of the passers by and the jests of the people seems like the seal of His failure, the sign of imminent defeat. Yet it is by emptying Himself that Jesus brings His Godhead into our humanity, and His very nakedness is a sign that He is to restore man to the purity our first parents knew when they walked naked before the Lord in the Garden of eden and were not ashamed.

This battle on Calvary is the only engagement which matters in the long war of good against evil; of sin against the Love of God. Michael and his angels are a vast host and their panoply is spread across the heaven. Their battle with the devil and his angels is joined with the clash of arms as their vanguards meet with cries which shake the world to its foundation.

And yet the end is not in doubt: not because of the power of Michael and the heavenly host, but because of the weakness of Christ, who was stripped of all His power, and yet triumphed through love.

Father when I am powerful help me to be filled with the love of your Son. When I am weak, make me strong with love. So may I triumph over all evil and tread down Satan under my feet. Amen