
The existence of the Angels and Demons is a truth of faith: these are beings created by God, as is attested in the Dogmatic Constitution, “De Fide Cattolica” of the Fourth Lateran Council (November 30, 1215): “We firmly believe and openly confess that the true God is one alone#133;. that He is the only source of the universe, the creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and material. With His all-powerful force He – from the very beginning of time – created from nothing both orders of creatures: the spiritual and the material, namely, Angels and the earthly world. Then he created human beings as sharers, as it were, of both one and the other, composed of body and soul. In fact, the Devil and the Demons were created by God naturally good, but on their own they transformed themselves into wicked beings. Then man sinned through the instigation of the Demon.”
The sin of the fallen Angels is worse than that of man because their spiritual perfections, the knowledge of their Angelic intellect, their freedom and closeness to God were greater. By rejecting the truth about God with an act of his own free will, Satan becomes “the cosmic liar” and “the father of lies.” (See Jn 8:4). The French writer, Charles Baudelaire used to say that the most insidious cunning of Satan consists in persuading us that he doesn’t exist. John Paul II used to say that Satan “lives in a radical and irreversible negation of God and tries to impose on creation, on the other beings created in the image of God, and in particular on human beings, his tragic ‘Lie about the Good,’ which is God.”
In certain situations God “permits” the Devil to “torment” people but does not allow the Devil to try them beyond their strength. In fact, we know by faith that God is always able to draw from this “evil” an even greater good because, with His grace, the heart is purified by trial and faith becomes stronger. In the stories of these Saints we can see that the Devil generally works with temptation, deceit and deception. This topic has to do also with us because the Demons have always tried to ensnare men and women with a thousand acts of cunning. However, we know that Jesus Christ has – once and for all – conquered Satan, smashing the power of the evil spirit: “Have faith in me, for I have conquered the world,” the Lord tells us (Jn 16:33). “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which is immovable; which forever stands” (Ps 125).
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August 22, 2010
Categories: Books & Publications, Catholic Q & A, Events, Inspirational . Tags: angels, apparitions, catholic, christian, demons, god, mankind, saints, satan . Author: Doug Lawrence . Comments: Leave a comment