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Question

Dear Father Angelo,

I would ask you some questions which I honestly do not see a way to answer for. I hope you can find one moment to clarify with a little answer. I am asking what always bounces around in my head without getting an answer. I beg your pardon if my questions may seem a bit stupid, trivial or, in some way, evidence of my little faith.

At the beginning, how could Satan possibly sin, being an Angel, indeed the most beautiful Angel and closer to God, assuming that he was in Heaven, contemplating God, full of an infinite Grace and pervaded by the infinite Love of God? How could he fall from such a condition? Above all, how possibly could the sole concept of sin exist in such a Paradise, so perfect, and how could it be the same Paradise we strive to enter for eternal life?

These are my questions for now.

Thank you for your important work for the whole world.

I will try to remember you with affection and admiration in my next prayers.

Regards,

Paolo

The answer of the Priest

Dear Paolo,

1. the proposed argument contains a fundamental mistake.

In fact, you keep the case that the fallen angel was for a certain time in Heaven, in perfect communion with God, in the beatific vision and, at a certain moment, he rebelled.

But it is not so.

2. According to St. Thomas, in the first instant of their creation, the angels were made participants in the divine nature by grace.

At that very instant of creation, although endowed with grace, they were not yet in glory.

3. This is precisely what Saint Thomas says: “Although there are conflicting opinions on this point, some holding that the angels were created only in a natural state, while others maintain that they were created in grace; yet it seems more probable, and more in keeping with the sayings of holy men, that they were created in sanctifying grace. For we see that all things which, in the process of time, being created by the work of Divine Providence, were produced by the operation of God, were created in the first fashioning of things according to seedlike forms, as Augustine says (Gen ad lit. viii, 3), such as trees, animals, and the rest. Now it is evident that sanctifying grace bears the same relation to beatitude as the seedlike form in nature does to the natural effect; hence (1 John 3:9) grace is called the seed of God” (Summa Theologiae, I, 62, 3).

And “so straightway that from the beginning the angels were created in grace” (Ib.) distinct from glory, also called beatitude, beatific vision or paradise.

4. Clearly, the angel attained beatitude after being created in grace and “that the angel had grace ere he was admitted to beatitude, and that by such grace he merited beatitude” (Summa Theologiae, I, 62, 4).

The instant next to their creation, the angel entered beatitude.

St. Thomas says that “An angel did not merit beatitude by natural movement towards God; but by the movement of charity, which comes of grace” (Ib.).

5. The angels found themselves in heaven after having accomplished their deliberation or act of love for God

And in that condition, they can never sin because their will became immutably fixed in God.

Here, what St. Thomas adds: “Therefore the beatified angel can neither will nor act, except as aiming towards God. Now whoever wills or acts in this manner cannot sin. Consequently the beatified angel cannot sin” (Summa Theologiae, I, 62, 8).

Now, St. Thomas resolves your objection reaffirming: “there is in the holy angels that nature which cannot sin” (Ib.).

Therefore, that angel sinned before entering Paradise, before contemplating God.

In that instant he deserved hell.

Listen again to what St. Thomas teaches that the opinion “more in harmony with the teachings of the Saints, is that the devil sinned at once after the first instant of his creation” (Summa Theologiae, I, 63, 6).

Thank you for the prayers you promised with affection, and I bless you.

Father Angelo