CHAPTER LIII
THE FALL
I. – IN HEAVEN
The preceding chapter may have seemed a digression, an hors d'oeuvre, but it is not, it said what was necessary to say to prepare the mind for understanding all that will follow. Therefore, from their creation (1), God called the innumerable multitude of angels to contract with Him an alliance of friendship such that, if they were faithful, it would lead them to enjoy the sight of His Being, to contemplate face to face, to enter into one's intimate life and to participate in it. His Goodness warned them of love; It was their duty to respond to this advance.
What happened? The archangel Saint Michael and those of the angels who listened to his voice, opened themselves with enthusiasm and gratitude to the divine gift. Lucifer and the angels who followed his example refused divine munificence.
1. Contains in eis naturam and largiens gratiam. (S. Aug. De natura et gratia.)
How could it happen? The angels, in the superiority of their intelligence, saw and understood the excellence of the gift offered to them better than we can. How can such an excellent gift, a truly divine gift right down to its object, be despised? This fact, the most disconcerting that has been and will ever be, takes us down to the depths of the misery of the contingent being, even if it had the sublimity of one who, by the excellence of his nature, was at the height of the angelic hierarchy. By transmitting being to intelligent creatures, God puts in them the desire for happiness. This impulse carries them away and directs them towards God, the sovereign good, when they welcome within themselves, through a free correspondence, the ray of divine love; it delivers them to evil when they prefer to this love the blind movement of self-love. To this desire for happiness God added Grace, that is to say an attraction of a supernatural order superimposed on the attraction of a natural order towards the Sovereign Good. The present life is given to man, and the first moment was given to the angel so that the creature makes the self in itself yield to love; so that the self, renouncing selfishness, gives itself to the Sovereign Good. “By thus giving itself, far from annihilating itself, the self, through the marvel of personality, enters itself into the possession of the Good; he is penetrated by it as one is penetrated by joy, as the body is penetrated by the air which it breathes and by which it is enveloped. But the finite, whose nature comes from nothingness, can remain sterile; and despite the divine impulse, become the opposite of Love, fall into the state contrary to God, into the state of one who refuses to give oneself, of one who does not love. This selfishness is possible for the being who has the freedom to use, as it wishes, the sacred gift of existence and the power to refuse Love” (1).
This was, alas, the conduct of many angels, it is also the conduct of many men. Created for eternal Bliss, they turned away from it, and turned away from it to run to their ruin. This movement of independence of the creature is called superbia (2), super – over, bia - force, and in our language sufficiency, state of one who believes himself to be sufficient. Isn't self-importance or pride in those who suffer from it the feeling of an exaggerated strength which claims to find everything in oneself? Saint Thomas Aquinas says (3) that all the angels without exception, under the motion of God, accomplished a first good act which brought them towards God as the author of nature. It remained for them to perform a second, more perfect act of love, the act of charity, the act of supernatural love. Grace invited them to it, it pushed them to turn to God as He is the object of Beatitude.
Saint Michael and those of the angels who imitated him by an outpouring of the grace received, paid homage with all their being to God; by an act of love, they united their will to the gift that God offered them, and by this act they arrived at their supernatural end. The others closed themselves within themselves, and God could not bring supernatural life into these proud hearts; He could not violate their freedom needlessly. Because of their purely spiritual nature, their will was fixed in evil by this first act. It was done to them immediately according to their
1. Blanc de Saint-Bonnet: Love and the Fall, 2. Initium omnis peccate superbia. Eccl., X, 15. 3. ST, Pars I, Q. LXIII, art. 5.
choice. While the docile spirits with the supernatural vocation entered the heaven of glory, immediately enjoyed the sight of God in Himself, in the mystery of the divine Processions which constitute His Being; they even abandoned the heaven of grace and were relegated forever to the lower regions, to the gehenna of Hell, the punishment of their pride.
At their head was Lucifer, the most perfect of angels and, consequently, of all created beings. This is his suggestion and his example who led the others. Seeing himself at the summit of creation, he did not want to look above himself, to seek his perfection and his beatitude in union with a nature superior to him, he wanted to find them within himself. He therefore closed himself in his nature, wanting to be content to enjoy his natural faculties. “Superb and unhappy spirit, you have stopped within yourself; admirer of your own beauty, it was a trap for you” (1). It was not only ingratitude, but revolt against God to whom it is up to determine the end of each of his creatures. We must not attribute to him, as Saint Thomas observes, the insane hope of dethroning the Supreme Being, or of sitting down hard at his right as his equal (2). He only had the desire to be like God (3), that is to say, to be able to pose as
1. Bossuet, Elevations, IV Week, 2nd Elevation. 2. The angel who knows God, not like us by reasoning, but, as Saint Thomas observes, from a necessary and infallible knowledge which comes to him from the knowledge he has of himself, reproduction of the divine nature, real and exact, although infinitely distant from the divine exemplar, could not have such an idea. 3. I am like the Most High Is. XIV, 13, 14.
self-sufficient, as having no need to be perfected by anything outside of himself. God has defined himself: "I am who I am." In his pride, Lucifer says: “I am who I am. God does not expect an increase in perfection from any nature superior to His own; In this I want to be like Him. For me too it is enough to be what I am by my own nature and to delight in it.”
“The devil did not stand in the truth,” says the Apostle John (1). The truth is that even his nature he took from God and it made him dependent on Him. Pride pushed him all the more on this path as God, by offering him the supernatural state, made known to him his designs on human nature. Lucifer saw that to enter into union with God and receive supernatural life in this union, he had to bow before a being inferior to himself in one of the two natures of which his person was to be composed, the Son of God made Man become the Head of all creation (2); and even before the Woman who, cooperating in the Incarnation of the Word, deserves to share her royalty over the universe, heaven and earth (3).
1. John, VIII, 44. 2. Primogenitus omnis creaturaê. Col. I, 15, 16, 17. In omnibus Ipse primatum tenens. Eph. I, 20, 21, 22. Pacificans... sive quae in coelis sunt. Col I, 20. Origen says that Jesus pacified the heavens by obtaining from the good angels the gift of gifts, that is to say, supernatural life. “Il coelis quidem non pro peccato sed pro munere oblatus est (Hom. 2, Supra caput, 1 and 2, Levit.)
3. “God having introduced a second time on the scene of the world, His first-born child, said: “Let all the angels adore Him.” This second introduction, this new presentation made by the Father, visibly refers to His Son placed in a second and new state, because it is consistent with His incarnate Son. Believing in the Son of God made man, hoping in him, loving him, serving him, adoring him, such was the condition of salvation. The two testaments tell us that the precept was addressed to angels as well as to men: it was for them written: Et adore eum omnes angeli ejus. Satan shudders at the idea of prostrating himself before a nature inferior to his own, especially at the idea of receiving himself from this strangely privileged nature, a current increase of light, of knowledge, of merit and an eternal increase of glory and bliss. Judging himself injured in the dignity of his native condition, he took refuge in the rights and demands of the natural order.” Cardinal Pir, III Synodal Instruction. See, Summa theologiae, P. I, Q. LXIV, a. I, ad IV. — Suarez speaks of the same: De malig. ang. L. VII, C. XIII, n. 13 and 18.
The Lucifer's fault, the crime of his pride was therefore precisely to repudiate the supernatural; and the temptation which he subjected to the angels who were below him, after having succumbed to it himself, can therefore be called, with full propriety of the term, the temptation of naturalism. Let us remember this observation, it will serve as a torch for us in the rest of this study, because we will see this same temptation reproduced in the earthly paradise, then in the desert where Jesus withdrew after His baptism; and it is also to it that Christianity has been subjected since the fifteenth century, by Freemasonry, Jewry and the devil.
In heaven, this temptation caused what Holy Scripture calls: “The great battle.” Et factum est proelium magnum in coelo. Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon, and the Dragon and his angels fought; but they could not conquer” (1). It is the same war which continues here below and which here presents itself under this aspect: “The antagonism between two civilizations”. To make it clear what she was in heaven, and how on earth, her adversaries are not only men against men, but also humans against demons.
1. Rev, XII, 7. 772
“We do not have to fight only against flesh and blood, but against the princes, against the powers, against the rulers of the world of darkness, against the evil spirits spread throughout air” (1), — it is necessary to declare the order, hierarchy and subordination that God has established among his creatures.
We see at the lowest of creation the inanimate things which only have existence; above them “those who participate, to varying degrees, in vital energy; then the rational animals, and at the top the pure intelligences. We know, from our own experience, that lower beings are dependent on higher beings. God in creating man said: “Let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the domestic animals and over all the earth”; and this domination we exercise. Proportion kept, the same goes for Heaven. There is not only between pure spirits a difference of degree in the resemblance to the divine being, in the participation in its perfection, there is also communication between superior beings and inferior beings, the former giving to the latter. This is what Saint Dionysius Areopagite or at least the author of the treatises attributed to him explains, in sublime language. “In this abundant outpouring of the divine nature,” he says, “over all creatures, a larger share falls to the orders of the celestial hierarchy, because, in a more immediate and more direct commerce, the Divinity allows to flow into them more purely and more effectively the splendor of its glory.” Now, in
1. Eph. VI, 12.
in any hierarchical order, degrees of perfection result in degrees of subordination. “The last order of the Angelic army is raised to God by the august powers of the most sublime degrees. What is the number, what are the faculties of the various orders that arm the celestial spirits? This is what is exactly known only by Him who is the adorable principle of their perfection. The first hierarchy is governed by the sovereign initiator himself, and it shapes subordinate minds into the divine likeness. It does not indulge in the excesses of a tyrannical power over them, but rushing towards things above with a well-ordered impetuosity, it lovingly leads less elevated intelligences towards the same goal. It must be considered, it is still Saint Dionysius who speaks, that the superior hierarchy, closer in rank to the sanctuary of the divinity, governs the second by mysterious means; in turn the second, which contains the Dominations, the Virtues, the Powers, leads the hierarchy of Principalities, Archangels and Angels; and this governs the human hierarchy so that man rises and turns towards God and unites with him."
And thus by divine harmony and right proportion, all rise, one by the other, towards Him who is the sovereign principle and the end of all beautiful order He is called the supreme Dominator, because he draws all to Himself as to a powerful center, and because He commands all the worlds and the. governs with full and strong independence, at the same time as he is the object of universal desire and love. All things submit to his yoke by a natural inclination and tend instinctively towards him, attracted by the powerful charms of his indomitability and sweet love (1).
1. S. Dionysius the Areopagite: Of the celestial hierarchy, Passim.
It is therefore a law of universal nature that between creatures there exists a hierarchy based on the inequality of their participation in supreme perfection, on the superiority or inferiority of the nature which has fallen to them. Beings of an inferior nature, of a lesser perfection, are subordinate to those who are of a superior nature. Angels of the highest rank therefore exercise over those below them what Saint Thomas calls a Praelatio, a supremacy of authority and power. - This prelature belonged, over the entire hierarchy of beings, to the most sublime of all the angels, to the one who had received the name of Lucifer, light-bearer because of the role which was assigned to him in heaven and which the Areopagite explains. thus: “Every excellent grace, every perfect gift comes from above and comes down from the Father of lights. It is a fertile source and a large overflow of light which fills all minds with its fullness." Lucifer, placed in the first rank, therefore received the first waves of this river of light and life which flows from God and from him, they spread into the lower spheres. Hence his name Lucifer, transmitter of light. He would have liked to preserve the prelature which made him so glorious, and it was to maintain it in his possession that he fought battle. Saint Augustine, who calls Satan: Perversus sui amor, says that in his sin he loved the power that was his own. Angelum peccasse amando propriam potestatem (1). He wanted to keep this power even though his sin transferred it to others. As a result of the sin that he and his disciples had just committed, a new distinction was established between the pure spirits, some have been supernaturalized the others has not. Now, the supernatural brought the former into a region inaccessible to the latter, gave them a dignity and prerogatives to which the latter could no longer attain. We have proof of this in the praise that the Holy Church awards to humanity extraordinarily supernaturalized, the humanity of the Man-God: Exultata est super choros angelorum. We know firsthand that the Most Holy Virgin, the Mother of Christ, was crowned Queen of the Angels.
Lucifer, seeing this, still wanted to maintain and affirm the supremacy that the excellence of his nature gave him over the other angels. They resisted, and the cry Quis ut Deus? expresses well the type of this resistance. It marks a fundamental opposition to the naturalistic suggestions that Satan spread in the ranks of the heavenly militia to maintain his domination over his brothers. “Who is like God?” they replied. Who can claim to be self-sufficient, to subsist in himself, to find his ultimate end in himself? And on the other hand, who can be superior to the creature that God has raised to a participation in his divine nature? God, who is above all, gives to the creature with whom He is united by grace, a dignity which elevates it above anyone else in the world of pure nature. The claims of Lucifer and his people were thus rejected. He, the prince of the archangels, became, through his pride, the subordinate of that of the good angels who are the last in the order of nature.
CHAPTER LIV
THE FALL
II. - ON EARTH.
The prehistoric fact that we have just reported according to the Holy Scriptures and divine revelations is also a historical fact, because it entered into the fabric of the events of this world. Without him they cannot explain themselves, in him they find their light.
Since humanity has existed, there has been struggle. there is a fight, a fight in the heart of each man, a fight between the good and the bad, the fight of naturalism against the supernatural, of human selfishness against infinite Love. This fight is therefore only the continuation of that which took place between the pure spirits at the origin of the world, and with us as in heaven, it is Lucifer who leads the battle and if he still meets saint Michael as adversary, at our head, he especially sees Mary who took near God the place he left empty by his sin, the most formal of all: peccatum aversio a Deo.
The sin of Lucifer and his angels deprived them, as we have said, of the prelature, that is to say the pre-eminence and this sort of jurisdiction which results from it, over the angels who were inferior to them. Did the island take away the power they had over the material world? Saint Paul decided the question. He still calls them after their fall: “the virtues of heaven”. Saint Dionysius, in his book of Divine Names (ch. IV), says a general conclusion that the gifts granted to the angelic nature are in no way changed in the demons, but remain there in their integrity. Saint Thomas Aquinas clarifies this truth. He observes that after his fall, the demon is still called "cherub", but no longer "seraph". This is because the word “cherubim” means “fullness of knowledge”, while seraphim means “who burns” with the fire of charity. Science is compatible with sin, but charity is not. They thus keep their power; this is what Bossuet observes. “They continue,” he said, “to be called “Virtues of Heaven,” to show us that they still retain in their torture the power like the name that they had by their nature. God could rightly deprive them of all natural advantages, it is still Bossuet who speaks, he preferred to show, by preserving them for them, that all the good of nature is turned into torture for those who abuse it against God. Thus their intelligence remained as piercing and as sublime as ever; and the force of their will to move bodies, for this same reason, remained with them like debris from their terrible shipwreck.” In book III of the treatise on the Trinity, chapter IV, Saint Augustine tells us that “all bodily nature is administered by God with the assistance of the angels.” In his response to Baldad, Job, speaking of the power of God, calls him: “He under whom bow those who carry the world” (1). Saint
1. Job IX, 13. Translation by Bossuet
Thomas gives a splendid commentary on this word (2). The second cause, the creature, truly act , and it acts by its own virtue, but his virtue and his own action are imbued with the virtue and action of the principal agent, God, whose is somehow the instrument. "When God created pure spirits ," said Bossuet, "as many that he gave them a share in his intelligence, as much their he gave them to his power and by submitting them to his will, he wanted, for the order of the world, that the corporeal and inferior natures were subject to theirs, according to the limits that he had prescribed. Thus the sensible world was subjected in his own way to the spiritual and intellectual world; and God did this pact with bodily nature, that it either united with the will of the angels, as much as the will of the angels , in that conforming to that of God, would determine it to certain effects (3)”. It is not only theologians who tell us that bodies are governed by minds. Newton was immortalized, observes J. de Maistre, in relating to the gravity of phenomena that we had never noticed him to attribute; but the great man knew as much about the cause of gravity as about its master. The principle of motion cannot be found in matter, and we carry in ourselves the proof that the movement begins with a will. It is what Plato says "The movement, can it have another principle that this force which moves herself?” (Plato, De Lege).
2 Sum. theol. q. XLVII. Q. CV, CXIX. 3. Elévation sur les mystères, XXXIIIe semaine, Ve élévation.
Newton, moreover, did not think otherwise. In his letters theological to Dr. Bentlig, he says more explicitly what he said in his natural philosophy (Mathematical Principles) " When I use the word attraction, I do not consider this force physically, but only mathematically. The reader should beware so it is good to imagine that by this word I mean a designer, a cause or a physical reason, neither I attribute real and physical forces to the centers of attraction , because I do not consider in this matter treated only mathematical proportions without concerning myself with the nature of forces and physical qualities”.
The material world is so governed by the angels , to the point that Saint Thomas (q. LII) wonders if there is an angel whose virtue could reach by the same act and as the object proportionate to his power the whole material universe. And he answers that the thing is not impossible in itself. But the angels destined for the administration of the material world being multiple, each of them has only a virtue limited to certain determined effects. The fallen angels have retained the part that fell to them in the government of the material world. Their power over it is such that "if God did not restrain their fury," says Bossuet, "we would see them shake this world with the same ease as we turn a little ball."
Are we subject to their empire, as are material beings? The human species holds the last rank in the hierarchy of spirits and therefore must receive light and inspiration for good through the ministry of angels. In fact, we each have our guardian angel who fulfills this office near us. Has the demon retained his prelature over us? Our race has been endowed, from creation, in the person of Adam, our leader, with sanctifying grace, which brings us into the supernatural order. Now, we have seen that the supernatural establishes between beings a hierarchy of a higher order, removing Adam and his descendants from the empire of the demon. He had bitter feelings about it. The jealousy which had aroused in him when the Man-God had been presented to his worship became exasperated. “It is a furious desire,” says Bossuet, “which animates the demons against us. They see that being much inferior by nature, we pass them far by grace.” And elsewhere: “The enmity of Satan is not of a vulgar nature; it is mixed with a dark desire which gnaws at him eternally. He cannot allow us to live in the hope of the happiness he has lost, and that God, by his grace, makes us equal to the angels; that his Son took on human flesh to make us divine men. He becomes enraged when he considers that the servants of Jesus, miserable and sinful men, seated on august thrones, will judge him at the end of the centuries with the angels who imitate him. This desire burns him more than his flames” (1).
1. First sermon of Lent.
And this is why he strives to draw us into following him in sin which causes us to lose the prerogative that grace gives us over him. On the first day, seeing what human nature is, a single species in the multitude of individuals that with time it was to embrace, he said to himself that if he succeeded in causing to fall from the rank in which grace had placed him, the one in whom the entire species was then contained, he would recover over it the empire that the right of nature gave him, he would become the prince, the head of humanity. Envy was therefore joined by ambition to lead him to try with our first parents the seduction that he had exercised on the angels; if he were to persuade them, the entire race would fall under his sway.
As He had done to the angels, God had given Adam and Eve the gift of sanctifying grace, a prelude and preparation for glory. Before admitting them, they had to prove themselves worthy. Hence, the necessity of the test in the earthly paradise as in the heavenly paradise. There as here, God willed; God, one could say, had to ask his creature for consent to the form of friendship He wanted to contract with, i.e. for eternity. The terms of the commandment, or prohibition, made to Adam and Eve, as formulated in the biblical text, indicate with sufficient clarity a law, a clause referring to the preservation or loss of the paradise state and the privileges that constituted it. “Ne comedas... in quocumque enim die comederis ex eo, morte morieris” It was a question for man to remain in possession or lose the gift of morality, and, as the rest of the story proves, the other gifts which were related to it. The nature of man, composed of a body and a soul, required that the act on which his destiny depended be both interior and exterior, a fully deliberate act and at the same time an exterior act. This is what happened: Do not eat of this fruit, otherwise you will die. To carry out his seduction, Satan presented himself in the garden in the form of the serpent. God, in paradise, showed himself to man and conversed with him through a visible figure; it was the same with the angels. So Eve was not surprised to hear a snake speak. What was this snake? Some people translate the Hebrew word “seraphim” as “flying and sparkling serpent”. Perhaps Adam and Eve were accustomed to seeing the heavenly angels in this form. So he came to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and asked Eve: “Hath God said: You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?” The woman replied: “We eat fruit from the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat thereof, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” The serpent said to the woman: “No, you will not die. But God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” You will be like God. This is the temptation, the renewed temptation of that which seduced the angels. To be like God, to be self-sufficient. What a temptation for selfishness Adam succumbed to it as the angels had succumbed to it who allowed themselves to be flattered by pride. You will be like God, knowing for yourself good and evil, finding in the use of your natural faculties the progress which will lead you to the perfection to which your nature aspires, you will arrive at happiness, a happiness similar to that which God enjoys, a happiness which will be neither overlooked nor dependent.
Like the bad angels, Adam and Eve allowed themselves to be convinced, on earth as in heaven, the essence of the temptation was naturalism. It was to have the pride to say, following the rebel angels: like God, I will be sufficient, that Adam overcame the ban on eating the fatal fruit. Alas! only in the state of nature, but still in the state of corrupted nature, he and Eve saw themselves, suddenly, not as gods, but as beings of flesh! Furthermore, they saw themselves subject to Satan. “Whoever gives himself over to sin,” says Saint John, “is the slave of sin (1),” and whoever gives ear to Satan falls back under his supremacy from which grace had exempted him. Lucifer was then able to promise himself on earth an empire similar to that which he had preserved in hell over those who had followed him in his apostasy. He dominated all the children of pride (2). In fact, until the advent of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the entire human race (3), with the exception of a very small people depositary of the promise, lived in the naturalism whereAdam
1 . John, VIII, 34. 2. God's last word to Job
3. We do not think enough about the consequences contained in the laws of the species. Certainly, there is something in me that was not there in Adam, since I am an individual; but there was nothing essential in Adam that is not in me. For he himself was the species, before being an individual. "Adam," says Saint Thomas, "can be considered as one man, since they all have the same nature." Science, which does not seem to realize the prodigy of the species, within nature, for plants and for animals, how would it probe, for man, the law of solidarity, to which are linked both the reversibility of merit and original sin!
had led it and under the yoke of the demon by whom he had allowed himself to be seduced. Satan had temples erected and altars erected in all places on earth and there he had a cult as impious as it was superstitious. How many times did the chosen people themselves allow themselves to be led by him to the point of sacrificing even their children to “Moloch” (1)! Even today, wherever the Gospel has not been not been preached, wherever the tabernacle is, Lucifer and his demons are still absent. reign," The missionaries of the 17th century were quite surprised when, leaving the slightly skeptical France of the time, they landed in the East Indies and found themselves in the midst of the strangest diabolical manifestations. Travelers and missionaries today witness the same wonders. Mr. Paul Verdun published a book: The Devil in the Missions (2). Countless facts that he collected, in the reports of travels and stays, under the places of the poles as under the lights of the Equator, in the forests of the sources of the Amazon, as well as of on the banks of the Brahmaputra, in the pagodas of Chinese cities and under the huts of the savages of Oceania, everywhere where Christianity has not taken root, the populations believe, and not without reason, in the power of demons in the idols, stones and trees and are dedicated to their worship. Apparitions and possessions are frequent among them, known and accepted by everyone. In all these countries there are sorcerers. To become one,
1. All pagan religions, after and before the coming of Christ, proceed from magic or result in it, and this, in the diversity of its forms and its practices, appears as one in its essence and manifests itself as, the worship of Satan. 2. 2 vols. in-12, by Delhomme.
one must undergo cruel trials which far exceed the most painful practices of Christian mortification. In most of these initiations, a manifestation of the demon shows that he accepts the candidate as his own, he makes him possessed or he abducts him. These sorcerers have as their master's servant a familiar demon whom they make act, dressed in the appearance of a beast. They can give certain objects – amulets, fetishes – a beneficial or harmful virtue. The nature of these objects is indifferent; it is their consecration to the devil that gives them their virtue. Everywhere, sorcerers hate and fear Catholic missionaries and everywhere missionaries cast out demons. Those sent by missionaries, simple Christians, virgins, even children have the same power. These facts observed today confirm not only the stories of the Gospel, but also those of the pagans of antiquity and those of our fathers of the Middle Ages. They also confirm what Catholic doctrine teaches us about original sin and its consequences.