WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

This is our second show on Job. It’s taken me two weeks to figure out which direction I wanted to go with this series. I don’t like to do book studies – not because they are not worthy, they absolutely are – but sometime it’s harder to grasp the relevance when you just do an exposition of a book. Besides that, it’s been done. If you want that you can get that anywhere. It’s a little harder to come at a book like Job thematically, and that is what I think we are going to do. Today’s show is called, “When All Hell Breaks Loose”, and I don’t know about you but I kind of feel like that right now. The third show, as loosely planned, will be “The Uselessness of Platitudes” and we will talk about Job’s three friends. We will talk about Job as prophecy. The last one will probably look at what God says to Job and sort of the whole main point of point, at least as far as I am concerned. So that is loosely where we are headed. The series will probably be five to six weeks long.

We are going to talk today about when all hell breaks loose, and I think that is appropriate because that happens to everybody. You’ll be moving right along and things are great and then POW – out of nowhere you get blindsided by something. Maybe it’s a diagnosis, maybe it’s a death, maybe it’s a car accident, who knows. I know when I had a car accident recently – thank goodness we didn’t get hurt – it could not have come at a worse time. I had just come home from a trip out of the country. I got home and I was supposed to be filming for my new study coming out in November with Ascension and I was on my way the very next day to do that, and lo and behold. You know how it goes. It happens to all of us.

We talked a lot last week about Job as wisdom. We know at this point that as the author of Job is presenting this literary work to us that it is after the Babylonian captivity. The crash has come. Hell has broken loose. The tribes are scattered all over the place, and they are all in trouble. They are in poverty, in fear, and it seems like the author is almost pointing out what he has come to see: Israel’s take on religion and what religion had not come to the fullness of an understanding of suffering. We talked last week that is part of why Job is considered a book of wisdom, because the author is presenting a new way to look at the mystery of suffering. So this is national calamity, and because Israel is a religious nature, the two go hand in hand. A national calamity is a religious calamity. That is part of why I drew the parallel between the Church in America right now. We are experiencing something similar. The author of Job seems to be presenting this new, fuller consideration of what suffering is, where it comes from, why it happens, and especially people who consider themselves – or as we will see with Job, who God considers – to be innocent. Why does that happen?

It seems also that because the Babylonian captivity happened because of the lives of luxury that the religious hierarchy lived – remember that this is a both a religious entity and a national entity all rolled up into one, both political and religious at the same time – in luxury while the people themselves were poor, it almost seems that because that is what happened in the Babylonian captivity that no only was selfishness mingled in with their lives and their religious lives and their national lives, but they felt that to be rich and to live in luxury was a sign of God’s favor. What we see through the Babylonian captivity is that is not the case. That is what the author of Job is trying to point out. It could even be that he himself was one of those people. Amos and Hosea were two of the minor prophets who preached fiercely against the luxury of Israel and especially of the nobles, and so it could be that the

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author of Job is writing to the very same people that Amos and Hosea preached to, and he could even have been one of those people himself. It’s just very interesting, I think, to consider how the author of the book of Job is separate from the actual book itself. I think it gives us some insight into what we are supposed to be learning from Job.

He is pointing out, it seems, that there is more to a real, true faith and to religious practice than just happiness and plenty. He seems to be pointing out that there is a better faith in the old trust that the patriarchs had. I say that because the book of Job takes place in that patriarchal period. It is also interesting that Job himself was not an Israelite. He was from the land of Uz, which we will see as we read some of the texts. That was either far north to the east of the Jordan or it was far south to the east of the Jordan out in the desert area. Whether it was intended or it was instinctive, the author of Job has painted him as somebody who, with all of his virtue and the perfectness of his life, has spent his life almost in a dream and needed to be awakened. That is what we are going to see.

I’d like to outline it for you. The first two chapters are called the prologue and those are in a narrative format, or prose. Then chapters 3 through 31 are presented through poetry, and those are the dialogues that Job has with four of his friends: Three are thought to be original to the actual book and then there seems to have been some sort of insertion with the fourth, Elihu, in chapters 32 through 37. Then God himself interrupts this dialogue that Job is having with these friends and God speaks directly to Job. He speaks directly to the friends but he also speaks directly to Job. Then we have Job’s response to God in chapter 42, which is one of my favorite sections of scripture (Job 42:1-6), which is also in poetry. The whole book, after chapters 1 and 2, is poetry. The epilogue of the book, which is in chapter 42:7-17 and that goes back to narrative prose. The poetry of the book is sandwiched, or bookended, with a narrative so we get the story. We get the backstory as to what happened to Job and why, and then we get what happened afterward.

I’d like to read some of it. This is Job 1. “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil. And seven sons and three daughters were born to him. (Note: That’s a very round religious number that means complete) Also, his possessions were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large household, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East.” So he is very rich, and they equated their wealth with the numbers of children but especially the flocks.

“And his sons would go and feast in their houses, each on his appointed day, and would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. (Note: The appointed day was thought to be their birthday. So, they were feasting on their birthday. Their sisters were probably unmarried or they would not have been invited. All of the family was together.) So it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did regularly.” What he is doing is offering sacrifices just in case their partying got a little out of hand. What is interesting is that it says, “it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God.” That word “cursed” means literally to dismember or to amputate. It’s not merely saying something blasphemous, it is actually to sever yourself from God, to withdraw from him. And I don’t know about you, but my very first reaction when I am in pain is to withdraw. I can totally see how this whole thing plays out.

“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.” The sons of God is sort of a euphemism in the Scriptures for the angels. They 091018_When All Hell Breaks Loose

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came to present themselves in the court of God, and Satan came among them. “And the Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” It is important to point out that in the Old Testament, Satan was not a proper name yet. It had not yet come to mean the leader of the fallen angels, but I think this is sort of prophetic in a lot of ways.

Before we continue, I’d like to shout out my newest Friends of the Show: Theresa VdP, Gina G, Debbie P, Carol R, Kristine R, Paulene E, and Sheri G. Thank you gifts for all of you who have been waiting for the past month are forthcoming. I do them in batches and I will be doing a new batch soon. I appreciate you so much that you are a Friend of the Show.

So, we were talking about Job 1. Continuing on with that: “And the Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” So Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it.” Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?” Dear One, when God says that about you, you know that it is true. “So Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!” And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on his person.” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.” Blameless in that section means to be complete. It is a word that means a lot of things, but it is like Shalom, the peace word in Hebrew scripture. It means a fullness of integrity, a wholesomeness and wholeness. Job’s claim to be blameless, which he will make later, agrees with God’s own assessment of him. It is not a claim that he is sinless or that he is absolutely perfect. It just means that peace idea of a fully integrated personality.

Satan, then, accuses Job of only serving God because God has blessed him. And Satan says, “You just take away all those blessing and see what happens.” Remember that in that culture blessings meant you were holy. That is sort of what we are seeing now with all of these who have just decided they are not going to follow Christ anymore through the Church. I’m not saying one way or another, I’m just throwing it out there as an example. God goes to Satan. Satan doesn’t go to God. God goes to Satan and says, “have you even considered him? Look how blameless he is.” And then Satan basically accuses Job of only serving God for his own ends, for the blessing. That is true of all of us. We all start out that way, especially because that is how God teaches us to begin leaning on him. He gives us the consolations in the beginning. It’s fun to serve him and we get excited about it and we see things happen from it. Then, at some point, in our prayer or ministry or whatever, it just dries up. It’s almost like God pulls his hand away and says, “Okay, what are you really serving me for?” That is a little bit like what is happening here, but God already knows Job’s heart. He knows how he is going to come through this test.

Most of you are probably at least somewhat familiar with Job’s life, but one of the major themes is that faith does not mean there is no hell. Satan roams to and fro across the earth, it says. And we know that also because the book of Revelation tells us, and Jesus said it too (I believe that was Matthew 24) that he saw Satan fall like lightning and he was cast out of heaven because of the fall. His domain right now is the earth and the principality of the earthly realm. So God says there, “have you considered my servant Job”, and Satan says, “you’ve built a hedge around him, around everything he has on every side.” The Lord comes to the Lord and asks him where he comes from, and he says, “From walking to and fro on the earth and back and forth on it.” It’s almost like he’s looking around.

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The word Satan actually means an adversary, a person or a thing that stands between something else. In this case, Satan is the adversary; not necessarily in the context of the author of Job, but we know because of its prophetic nature it kind of gives us an idea of Satan and how he deals with us. What we want to do, then, in just this section is find out what Job teaches us about how Satan operates in our lives and how we should respond when all hell breaks loose.

After that introduction, those first five verses, we get this glimpse into this heavenly realm where God has this conversation with Satan. Satan means adversary but also accuser. He is called the accuser of the brethren. He is claiming that Job is only practicing his religion because God has blessed him. God, knowing from the beginning that Job is going to pass, gives Satan permission to attack him but he puts clear limits on exactly what Satan is allowed to do. This reaffirms what we said last week about God being 100% in control. Satan can only do what God permits him to do and that is all. Satan kills Job’s children and destroys all his wealth but Job refuses to charge God with that wrong and he worships him anyway. Then Satan returns to God again and gets permission to afflict Job with a health problems, sores from head to foot. This time Job’s wife gets in on it and turns the accuser, so Satan is using her. That is one of the things that we will see throughout the book. Poor Job, it is not just Satan attacking him: It’s his wife and even his “friends.”

The paragraph headings in Chapter 1 say “Job loses his property and his children”, and then chapter 2 begins with “Satan attacks Job’s health.” It says that before one messenger has even stopped speaking, another one comes and reports to Job this terrible calamity. His sons have died; they were eating and drinking in their oldest brother’s house and a messenger came that raiders came and raided everyone and killed them all and he is the only one saved. Another came and said “Fire came from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and I am the only one who escaped to tell you.” And then while he was still speaking a third came and said “The Chaldeans came and raided the camels and took them away and I am the only one who made it out”. Then a fourth one comes in the same sort of way. “Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head and he fell to the ground in worship. He said “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return there. The Lord gives and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” In all of this, Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong. Very interesting.

Our first principle is that Job got the test because he was the best. I don’t know if that is good or bad but it is interesting that God himself went to Satan and pointed Job out. I realize this is just a story based loosely on someone who actually lived, but it is wisdom. There is wisdom here for us. John Paul II said “He who does not believe in the devil does not believe in the Gospel.” There are a lot of people in the Church today who do not believe in Satan. But, you know and we just read that Satan and suffering and hell are a fact of our existence. It amazes me that the Church is full of people who do not believe it. They do not accept the reality of hell, but in a lot of cases that is where we find ourselves. We use this word a lot. We experience hell, we catch hell, we’re going through hell…a lot of times we use the word loosely. Down in the South we say it’s hot as hell outside, or when someone makes you mad you tell them to go to hell or that they are crazy as hell.

What I am referring to when we talk about hell today is trouble. This text is centered on a man who experiences all hell breaking loose in his life is that living a life of faith is not going to prevent hell from breaking loose in your life. Going to church 365 days a year, 24 hours a day you could be in adoration, pray every day, fast, be a priest, a deacon, a choir member, a catechist, whatever. You and I both know that none of those things are going to prevent hell from breaking loose in your life. The catechism says that the Holy Spirit makes us discern between trials, which are necessary for the

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growth of the inner man, and temptation to sin and death. We must also discern between being tempted and consenting to temptation. Finally, discernment unmasks the lie of whose object appears to be a delight to the eye and desirable when in reality its fruit is death. God does not want to impose the good. There is a certain usefulness to temptation. No one but God knows what our soul is, not even ourselves. Temptation reveals it in order for us to know ourselves, and in this way we discover our inclinations, specifically our predominant fault and are obliged to give thanks for the good that temptation has revealed to us.

We see, first of all, that Job got the test because he was the best. Second of all, Satan’s access to our lives, we saw, is limited by God’s sovereignty. I talk about this quite a bit in my book “Fearless”, but the title Lucifer means “lightbearer” and it is thought that he was created to test human beings, but not in a way that made them fall but instead in a way that does what the Catechism is saying, in a way that reveals what God has given us so we can choose to love God. In fact, it was in the meditation in the Magnificat this week on the Feast of St. Teresa of Calcutta. She said, “If it doesn’t hurt, if it doesn’t cost you something, it’s not really love.” That is what we see in the difference between trials, temptations, and testing. Temptation is meant by the fallen angels to make us fall, but God didn’t mean that. It’s just to make us stronger.

We’ve looked at a couple of principles so far. The first principle was that Job got the test because he was the best, and that is just as simple as it is. Sometimes we suffer because God is proving to the principalities and powers that he is worthy of love even if it hurts. Of course, Jesus was the perfect example of that and so was Our Lady. Job got the test in this particular instance because God wanted to prove to Satan that principle. It seems, maybe, like that is unfair; like we are in the middle of this cosmic fight between the fallen angels and God, but you have to remember when we go back to the Garden of Eden and that quote I love from John Paul II that says “He who does not believe in the devil does not believe in the gospel.” The devil’s existence through the scriptures is a matter of infallible revelation. Jesus taught himself the reality of a personal evil enemy. That is why later on the word satan, which was just like an adjective or noun, took on a larger meaning with a capital S, meaning THE Satan, the leader of the fallen angels. He left us with a liberation prayer in the Our Father, which I would like to come back to if we have time. That “deliver us from evil” line actually means “deliver us from the evil one” or “deliver us from the person of Satan”. We can pray that prayer with that intention. Pope Francis reminded us that man’s life on earth is warfare. We have to be careful to know the enemy, and that is part of why I wrote the book “Fearless” was so that we could be fearless even in the face of what is happening to Job.

“The Bible tells us that our enemy is the devil: an evil, objective reality” according to the Catechism in 328. Pope Benedict said that “whatever the less discerning theologians may say, the devil, as far as Christian belief is concerned, is a puzzling but real, personal, and not merely symbolic presence. He is a powerful reality, a baneful superhuman freedom directed against God’s freedom.” The reason he hates us, according to our theologians in the Church, is because he hated the idea that he would have to serve a man-god. It was the incarnation that scandalized him so desperately. Angels are so far above humans. They don’t have a body so they don’t have the weakness that we do. He considered himself too good to serve. He even said that, “I will not serve”. Our theologians tell us that was really the essence of the fall. Angel is actually not their nature but the name of their office, according to St. Augustine. The word angel actually means messenger and it is an indication of their function. Their nature is spirit but their office is angel. Fallen angels keep their created abilities but they use them against us rather than to help us, and that of course is because they don’t want to serve us. The Bible says that one day we will judge angels. 091018_When All Hell Breaks Loose

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The human soul is spirit but the human soul does not become angelic after death when it is separated from the body. The human person was created to be a fusion of body and soul. The human person is an individual and personal. It is able to freely will, to think, to emote, to desire, to imagine, to remember, and to act all by way of the physical senses. We seem to have been created as a sort of middle ground between what is pure spirit, which is angels, and what is pure flesh, which is animals. We are the middle ground between the two. Suffering, and the separation of body and soul which happens at death is actually an unnatural state. It’s a condition that Christians believe, and we state in the Creed, will one day be corrected and restored to an even more glorious state through Christ and his redemptive work: The resurrection of the body, as we proclaim in the Creed. Those in hell will also be resurrected but to eternal suffering in the body as well as the soul. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about that. We talked about this some in the past, but if you are new to the show you may not have been part of that.

According to St. Thomas Acquinas, angelic power is superior to human power because it is exclusively spirit without any need for a body. Angels think, they will, they emote, they act, they are self-aware, they exercise power and are immortal, indestructible, and relational, all without the need for the flesh that the humans have. That is from the Catechism 330. Because angels are pure spirit they are not bound by the physical laws that we are, the laws of time and matter that govern our universe. They possess the ability to produce and manipulate phenomenon in our sensory perspective fields and behavior. According to St. Thomas Acquinas they use the minefield of our accumulated sensory data, especially the visual sensory data, to tempt us. That is why it is important to watch what you watch on TV. You don’t want to be throwing that kind of trashy stuff into the mind because the fallen angels use it against you. They bring it up at times of prayer or when you’re at Mass. Don’t you sometimes think about the oddest things? Fallen angels have the skill, intelligence, and desire to attract human imagination, first in distraction but ultimately as the door to something more serious. We see that on one end with people rebuking Satan at every turn but then at the other end Tarot cards, psychics, and that kind of thing.

The evil angels retain the gifts that God gave them, and so Lucifer, who was called the son of the morning or the bearer of light, was meant to bring light through trials. Trials were meant to be good for us, but now he uses it to tempt us to fall. He lies. He deceives us. That is what he did with Eve, and he is able to do that by planting thoughts in our minds. Angels cannot read our minds but they can plant thoughts in our minds, and that is part of how our guardian angel helps us, by helping us to do good things. Pope Benedict assures us, though, and the Bible does too, that Satan’s power is severely restricted. He is not some sort of second God. The angels that did not keep their own position and left their proper dwelling (Jude 6 and also 2 Peter 2:4) have been kept by him (God) in the deepest darkness until the eternal judgment of the great day. The errant angels, we saw in Job 1:7, were cast to the earth and we see that they roam back and forth on the earth. In their malice, they continue to tempt us until the final judgment.

Part of what is interesting is the labels for some of the things that Satan is called, because those names actually give us some insight into how he comes against us. We can see that here is Job so I don’t really even need to go into that. We’ve talked about the lightbearer and the adversary, the one who stands between you and what is good or you and God, and then the accuser, and the devil. All of those things tell us a little bit about him, but in this case it’s almost prophetic in Satan as the leader of all the fallen angels. God gave us unconditional free will. They had unconditional free will but they chose not to love God because it was going to cost them something. An evil spirit, as I said earlier from the Catechism, cannot produce in us something that is against our will or that was not already there, either 091018_When All Hell Breaks Loose

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actively or potentially. We see that in James 1:14. We also know that they do not know the secrets of God. We see that in 1 Corinthians 2:11. They don’t have particular knowledge of people’s hearts, which we know from 1 Kings 8:39. They don’t have foreknowledge of the future (Isaiah 46:9-10) although they can predict reasonably well based on the past, and that is how they trip us up. They know how we behave, they know our predominant faults, they know our habits, they know what we do when we get tired or hangry. They know all of that, and they use it against us.

We can see here in Job how limited Satan really is. Part of the mystery of suffering is that God permits this activity. It is a great mystery. We also know that God can take all of these attacks from the enemy and turn them for our good. It says in Romans 8:28, “We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him.” St. Augustine said that God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist. Part of it is this principle in Job. It is almost like God sticks his tongue out at Satan and says, “You can’t do anything I don’t allow you to do. And secondly, he loves me.” It’s almost like he’s sticking his tongue out and saying neener-neener. I know that is simplistic and even childish, but that is sort of the picture we get. We know that angels are the earliest works of God’s creation that are known to us. We know that they must have been created on or before the first “day” of creation because Job later indicates in chapter 38:4-7 that “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy when God laid the foundation of the earth.” We just saw that morning stars and sons of God are literary terms for angels. We saw that in that first chapter of Job.

We don’t know the specific or exact reason for the fallen angels revolt but most theologians think it involved blasphemy against the incarnation. It seems that God gave them a preview of Jesus incarnate and all of his suffering and weakness and limitation and humiliation, and because Lucifer was the most gifted of all the angels and he wanted that for himself, he was not going to serve this (to use the precise theological term) the god-man in the hypostatic union.

We need to have an idea of what we are up against but also what we are not up against. I think a lot of times we are scared to death of falling into this situation that Job has fallen into, and maybe you have. Maybe you have been pointed out by God for your faithfulness. We are all offered trials that will help grow our faith. No matter what, we experience them, and what is good is that if you understand something about spiritual warfare and you understand what they can and can’t do it helps with forming a strategy against the attack. That is why we are talking about the fallen angels. We were just talking about how Lucifer would not serve Jesus in the incarnation and he rebelled. It says in the book of Ezekiel “You were the signet (or seal) of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty, until iniquity was found in you.” By the Church Fathers, that passage in Ezekiel 28:12-15 has been attributed to apply to Satan.

They fell in that rebellion of being unwilling to serve. This is why when you are unwilling to serve your brother or sister in Christ, or your real brother or sister, or your child or your husband, it’s an act of Satanic rebellion and it has been motivated by an attack of Satan. He would not serve and he tempts us to not be willing to serve God in the people that are around us. When they fell, hell began. That is their voluntary separation from God. According to the Scriptures and Church tradition the devil and the other demons are those fallen angels, because they would not serve. That is in the Catechism 391, the Book of Wisdom 2:24, and Isaiah 14:12-15. Pope Francis said, “The masterpiece of the Lord is man. Some angels did not accept it and they rebelled, and the devil is one of them.” You can see why the elevation of what is comparatively lowly human flesh in Christ and then the coming resurrection of our own bodies above the angels (we see that in 1 Corinthians 6:3) seems to especially motivate Satan to tempt us in ways that degrade the body as much as possible. That is part of why he afflicts Job with

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this disease, whatever his physical malady is. He hates the flesh so much, and that is why he wants us to sin in the flesh. He hates it, he hates God, and he hates Christ who took the flesh. He wants us to degrade and despise our flesh, but our bodies are the tool that we are able to love God in and to serve him and our fellow man, and to worship. It is a good thing and it was meant as part of our creation. Angels are created but they are pure spirit. Humans are creation but we are spirit and body. Animals are creation but they are purely animal. Then, of course, there is the cosmos and all that is creation as well.

As I said, Lucifer is another proper name for Satan. It means light bearer. We do not know for what original purpose God created Lucifer but speculative theology in the Church suggests that he may have been some sort of teacher and his role was “the signet of perfection”, meaning the pattern or the plan. Perhaps he rejected the perfection of God’s plan and put himself in opposition, and he fell. St. Bridget of Sweden says, “Although the devil lost the dignity of his previous rank, he did not lose his knowledge which he possesses for the testing of the good and for his own confusion.” Why is he confused? Because he doesn’t understand love. He doesn’t understand why anyone would ever serve God if they weren’t getting something for it. That is really the essence of Job’s trial: “How selfish is your religion?” You, Dear One, how selfish is your practice, your faith? What do you expect to get from God? And if you don’t get it, how do you act? If you’ve read any of my books you know I throw a big ol’ temper tantrum. I am not excluded from any of this, of course.

We know that they were created with a free will without the human limitation of a body, so they were capable of love. Because it is love that fits a spirit for that face-to-face sight of God and that eternal union with him that we call heaven, and because love can only be proven through a free and voluntary submission of our will (angels will, too) to God, then the angels fell, or fled, or were cast from his presence. Satan was thrown down to the earth and all those angels with him (Revelation 12:9). Later, after the sin of Adam, which the fallen angels provoked and motivated through deceit, God gave the more vulnerable human race a second chance through redemption, but there was no second chance for the fallen angels. According to St. Thomas Acquinas, that is because they know all things at once. Everything that they know they know at one time. In heaven our thoughts won’t be fleeting. They won’t go and turn from one thing to another and be distracted. We’ll have all our knowledge at one time in the same glance too, and that is because we won’t have the limitation of a brain. The flesh is what limits us, and because we were limited God had mercy with us. Because they don’t have a brain they don’t have to reason in steps. They have perfect intelligence and perfect clarity and they understood the consequences of sin to a degree that Adam never could have. There was never really a temptation for them as we understand it.

The Catechism says that it is the irrevocable character of their choice and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy that makes the angels sin unforgiveable. There is no repentance for the angels after their fall just as there is no repentance for men after death. When the removal of the flesh as the impediment and the weakness are gone at death and the spirit is separated from the body, there is no other chance. You can’t merit it. You can’t do the things you did in a body because the body won’t be there until the resurrection of the flesh. We know, then, that they are hostile to us. The wills are fixed to us – both the fallen angels and the good angels. After they made the choice, it was everlasting. For the evil angels, Satan, there is this complete merciless everlasting hatred for God and all men, and that hatred is more understandable in light of the apostolic fathers belief that God create the human race to replace fallen angels. We know that we will judge them because the Bible says so, but also that God would populate heaven again with as many people as the number of angels that fell.

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St. Padre Pio said that if we could see the number of fallen angels they would block out the sun. There are that many. Legions and legions and legions.

Man is the only creation on earth that God has willed for his own sake to share his love, the Catechism says in 356. There is the crux of the test that Job underwent. “Is Job serving me because he loves me or is he serving me because he gets something from me?” That is really the question that we have to look at. When all hell breaks loose in our lives, we throw our pity party and we have to go through the season of grief, of course, but do we pick up and move forward and do we do it as an act of will and not emotion? Our emotions get the best of us. They tell us that God is mad at us or that God is punishing us or that God doesn’t love us or that the suffering is not going to be worth it or that we are not going to be rewarded. Satan tempts us in those ways to make us quit. Quitting is the only way you can’t make it to heaven. God is determined to do everything necessary that we will be with him forever. Job got the test because he was the best, but Satan’s access to your life is limited by God’s sovereignty. Satan cannot do anything that God does not allow, and God does not allow it to make us fall. He allows it to make us stronger and to make our love ability greater so that he can receive more of him. He wants to give himself more and more and more to us, but we are so full of other things. Those trials are meant to clean some of that away. That is what we are seeing in the Church. It’s a purification. Satan has some power in the world but God has ALL the power. You know what I’m talking about. Satan only has so much power and access. Satan took Job’s possessions, he took his children, he infected his body with disease, and right when he tried to take Job’s life God stepped in and said “You didn’t give him life and you don’t have the power to take his life.” It says in Job 1:21, “It is the Lord who gives and the Lord who takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

You see, brothers and sisters? God did give Satan access to the world and the book of Romans says that he never revokes something that he gives. I believe that is in Romans 11:29. He gave Satan sovereignty over the world temporarily, but he can only go where God permits him to go and do what God permits him to do, and touch what God allows him to touch. He has access to the world, maybe, but God has confusion over the world, and God will only allow so much sickness and confusion and trouble and fear to linger. Wickedness is wide but God’s mercy is wider. In other words, before Satan can even pull up in your driveway he has to have a permission slip from the Lord.

091018_When All Hell Breaks Loose

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