Satan, we know, fears three unbeatable enemies: the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and St. Michael the Archangel. The devil knows that he cannot fight against the Holy Spirit, who is God, while he is a mere creature, reduced to a miserable state because of his rebellion against God.

He has a terrible inferiority complex before St. Michael the Archangel, who is an angel like himself, but whom God has made prince of the heavenly hosts.

But Lucifer’s greatest humiliation is to be crushed by the Blessed Virgin Mary, a purely human being belonging to a category lower than that of the angels; and she crushes him, not only because she is the Mother of God, but with her humility, which is the hammer with which she strikes Lucifer’s chronic pride and will defeat him. (TD 52).