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Dear Father,
I would like to know what advantage demons derive from attacking men. Thanks for your help, I wish you a Merry Christmas (e-mail received in 2019)
Paolo
The Priest’s reply
Dear Paolo,
1. Demons derive no advantage from tempting or attacking human beings in any other ways. They only derive major punishment from their actions. As the Eternal Father reveals when speaking with Saint Catherine of Siena, even the demons are His ministers, though against their will. Therefore everything they do contributes to the greater glory of God as well as to their further desolation.
2. Here is how: “The devils are in Hell as My justiciars and augmenters of My Glory; that is, My instruments of justice towards the damned, and the augmenters of My Glory in My creatures, who are wayfarers and pilgrims on their journey to reach Me, their End. They augment in them the virtues in diverse ways, exercising them with many temptations and vexations, causing them to injure one another and take one another’s property,and not for the motive of making them receive injury or be deprived of their property, but only to deprive them of charity. But in thinking to deprive My servants, they fortify them, proving in them the virtues of patience, fortitude and perseverance. Thus they render praise and glory to My Name, and My Truth is fulfilled in them, which Truth created them for the praise and the glory of Me, Eternal Father, and that they might participate in My beauty. But, rebelling against Me in their pride, they fell and lost their vision of Me, wherefore they rendered not to Me glory through the affection of love, and I, Eternal Truth, have placed them as instruments to exercise My servants in virtue in this life and as justiciars to those who go, for their sins [to Hell]. So you see that My Truth is fulfilled in them, that is, that they render Me glory, no as citizens of life eternal, of which they are deprived by their sins, but as My justiciars, manifesting justice upon the damned”. (St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogue 81).
3. Saint Catherine claims that if there were no temptations, men would more easily fall into the “sleep of negligence” (Letter 335) and that they would not be prompted to be more virtuous nor would they be able to win the fight.
Victory as well as the crown of righteousness will be a cause of perennial envy for the demons who had tempted them to make them lose the eternal reward that God gives those who win.
4. Also those who had helped sin and go to hell will be condemned to a further punishment consisting in being hated by their companions in eternal misfortune as well as receiving further punishment by Divine Justice on Judgement Day. Just as the Holy Angels in Heaven can increase their accidental glory until the end of the world, so too demons can increase their punishment until the Last Judgement Therefore they gain nothing by tormenting men but an increase in their own torments. I wish you all the best for Christmas 2020, I remind you to the Lord and I bless you.
Father Angelo
