Catholicism For Dummies. Rev. Kenneth Brighenti
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infused knowledge. Whereas you and I learn each day and extrapolate more from that knowledge, angels know everything at the moment of their creation. Their knowledge is gained all at once, and their will makes one choice that lasts for all eternity. In other words, angels cannot change their minds after they have made a decision. Unfortunately, some of the angels in heaven made the decision to turn away from God.
The angels’ test and the devil’s choice
After the angels were created but before they were in heaven, God put them to a test. To explain the point of this test, we first need to clarify what Catholics believe about heaven.
Outside of heaven is a different story. Man and angel alike can be tested and tempted. Angels were created first, so their test was different than ours. We don’t know the exact nature of the angels’ test, but some theologians over the ages have speculated. Here are two such speculations:
The angels were given a glimpse of the creation of human beings, and then God disclosed to them that out of pure love, He was going to invite the human race into heaven.
God disclosed that men and women would sin, but God would forgive them and actually redeem them by becoming one of us.
No matter what the exact nature of the test, the end result is that one-third of the angels were unhappy with what God disclosed to them. Perhaps their pride resented that humans would be invited to heaven, or they were disdainful of the possibility that God would lower Himself to become a man and then raise human nature above angelic nature. Humans can look at Jesus as both King and as brother, but the angels in heaven see Christ only as Lord and King, surely another source of irritation to the rebellious angels.
Lucifer was the most intelligent of all the angels. He and one-third of the angels rebelled against God and refused to submit to His dominion. Saint Michael and the other two-thirds decided to remain loyal to God and fought against the angels who rebelled. Hell was created by God as a place of eternal punishment for Lucifer (who was thereafter known as the devil) and all the fallen angels who accompanied him.
Witnessing the Original Sin
The Book of Genesis begins with the story of creation in general and then focuses on Adam and Eve and their fall from God’s grace. In this section, we explain the choice they made, God’s punishment for it, and the everlasting effect of that choice on human nature.
Tempting our first parents
Just as God tested the angels (see the preceding section), He also tested the first human beings: Adam and Eve. He told them not to eat of the forbidden fruit, which was found on only one tree in the entire, bountiful Garden of Eden: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. All they had to do was overlook one tree! A serpent, who was the devil in disguise, told Eve that she and Adam wouldn’t die if they ate the fruit of the tree forbidden by God. Eve ate from the tree and got her husband to do likewise. Adam and Eve chose to defy God and disobey His command. God punished them both — and one of the penalties was death. They didn’t die on the spot, but had they not disobeyed the Lord, mankind would have remained immortal.
Of course, we must place some blame on the serpent. But he never coerced the free will of Eve or Adam. Another name for the devil is the Author of All Lies, which is evident in his distortion and perversion of the truth.
The devil takes a lesser good — like pleasure, convenience, or comfort — and tempts us to raise it above higher goods like life, honor, duty, commitment, family, friendship, and faith. Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation, and there were consequences.
Losing gifts
When Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God, they felt ashamed and hid from God. But immediate consequences occurred. After all, sin is not just breaking the law of God; it’s also engaging in activity that’s dangerous (sometimes lethal) to the soul. Sin causes separation from the Lord.
Here is how Genesis 3:16–19 describes God’s punishment:
To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire will be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
And to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
The main gifts Adam and Eve lost were sanctifying grace (that which makes a person holy and allows him to be in the presence of God), immortality (freedom from death), and impassibility (freedom from all pain). Without sanctifying grace, heaven was not possible, ever. Adam and Eve were subjected to disease, illness, pain, misery, suffering, toil, labor, and death itself.
As if all this weren’t enough, Original Sin had another effect, which we explain next.
Wounding our nature
Concupiscence is the inclination of the human soul toward evil. It’s a consequence of the wounds created by the sin of Adam and Eve, which every human being inherits, and is called Original Sin. The wound in human nature that took place immediately was the darkening of the intellect, the weakening of the will, and the disordering of the lower passions and emotions:
Darkening of the intellect: This wound is the reason many times we can’t see clearly the right path to take even though it’s right under our nose, so to speak. Sometimes, our wounded human nature clouds our intellect’s ability to see with precision the proper course to take. Often, we need good advice, counsel, and perhaps even fraternal correction to compensate when our minds are unable to digest the situation, or we find it difficult to figure out the proper solution to our problem.
Weakening of the will: Even if our mind knows what to do, we lack the patience or courage to see it through. An addict needs to quit and knows the drugs he takes are killing him, but his will is so weak that he can’t just say no. Ask anyone who’s on a diet or trying to quit smoking how hard it is. The intellect knows the body can do better, but the will is too weak to hang in there and do what needs to be done.
The disordering of the senses: This phenomenon occurs when our emotions override or overcome our reason. Anger, lust,