The probation of the angels was a spiritual one as befitted their nature: ours is both spiritual and material.  It is a trial which involves our whole selves, our surroundings, our bodies and our souls, in which we have to desire and to choose either the world, the flesh and the Devil, or the all-holy God and Maker of us all.  

On the one hand there is the world, with its self-interest and love of gold, its avarice and dishonesties; there is the flesh, with its lack of self-control in eating and drinking and its resistance to that chastity in thought, word and deed which God requires; and there is the Devil, the spirit of evil, himself a fallen angel, with his ceaseless temptations to commit the sins of pride and hatred and slander and selfishness in every form.

Such is the conflict against evil which a person wages here in this life and which is symbolised by the drawn sword in the Archangel Michael’s right hand.  It is the conflict which no one can evade, and which can only end in one of two ways: in the soul’s complete victory or in its utter defeat, the first leading to the vision of God, the second resulting in total exclusion from him.