Lucifer’s justice compared to Mary’s

Why did Lucifer and his angels fall to pride, and the Blessed Virgin Mary not? Lucifer, prior to his fall, was the greatest and most beautiful of all God’s creatures. From her conception, Mary was the greatest and most beautiful of all God’s creatures. Lucifer was created without original sin, in fact he was created prior to sin even existing, and Mary was conceived without original sin also. So was Mary at risk of falling just as much as Lucifer was? I don’t think so.

The difference, I think, is that Lucifer was without sin because he was created in original justice, a justice that was his own justice. He was, simply from the way he was created, just, and ordered properly towards God. He had the justice natural to creatures.

But Mary’s Immaculate Conception did not give her a justice of her own: she was given the justice of the Christian, to share in Christ’s own justice, by the power of the Holy Spirit. She was not simply created fresh, without sin in the same way that Adam and Eve were, she was recreated in the divine recapitulation of Jesus, infused with the life of God. She is not just new, she is renewed. Her holiness belongs entirely and solely to God.

Lucifer’s justice was from God as its creator, to God as its end, but of Lucifer as its object.  Mary’s justice is from God, to God, and of God.

It is from God, but not as its creator, since the justice of Mary is the justice of Jesus, and the justice of Jesus is not created, but simply His being, His life of obedience and love to the Father from eternity to eternity. Jesus’s justice is His alignment with the Father, which is who He is.

It has God as its end, but not merely, as in Lucifer’s case, as the standard it is directed to, as an oven has cooking as its end. Mary’s justice has God as its end in a more perfect way, because Mary’s justice is her union with God, sharing His divine life, His very Godhead, and so its end is nothing less than for Mary to be made perfectly one with God.

It is of God, because it is Christ’s saving work upon the cross, and her being united to Christ crucified, Him living in her. It is not her work, but her union with Christ’s saving work. Lucifer had the justice of a servant: of doing what is required of him; Mary had the justice of a spouse: of loving and being loved, intimately and tenderly.

So we see just how great our salvation is, and how it leaves no room for pride.

God bless, and have a wonderful Christmas!

After sin

I’ve decided that, following on from my post, On Gluttony, I’ll try to write something for each of the seven deadly sins. But before I go on talking about sin, I thought it best to first say something about mercy.

In the event of committing a sin, I think the majority of us a) hide ourselves from God in shame, and then b) attempt to justify ourselves with excuses. Both of these are a denial of God’s mercy and a refusal to repent, and must be avoided like the plague. You can see both approaches in the account of Adam and Eve after the fall:

And when they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise at the afternoon air, Adam and his wife hid themselves from the face of the Lord God, amidst the trees of paradise. And the Lord God called Adam, and said to him: Where art thou? And he said: I heard thy voice in paradise; and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. And he said to him: And who hath told thee that thou wast naked, but that thou hast eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? And Adam said: The woman, whom thou gavest me to be my companion, gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

Genesis 3:8-12 (DR)

Note that Adam was not hiding his sin, but his nakedness. We become afraid for God to see us as we are and so we hide ourselves from Him, avoiding His presence in our conscience, in silence, and in prayer. We hide ‘amidst the trees of paradise’, distracting ourselves with the various pleasures of creation. Then when He finally finds us, we hide again, this time behind excuses and the sins of others. We are afraid to let God see us naked, because we think He won’t like what He sees.

How can this fear which keeps us separated from God be overcome? I will tell you: He Himself overcomes our shame by getting naked first. At Jesus’s birth and upon the cross, in His incarnation and His death, He gives Himself to the world completely naked, withholding nothing, revealing the deepest depths of Himself. We can reveal ourselves to God, we can trust Him with ourselves, because He has given Himself entirely to us in perfect love, He has placed Himself into our hands. He has said, ‘I am yours’, or rather, ‘This is my body, which is given for you.‘

So if and when we next sin we must not hide, but without hesitation turn directly to God, ask for His mercy (I recommend saying an Act of Contrition), and trust Him to provide it. There is no use in hiding from God, attempting to justify or save or punish yourself. You will never escape God’s judgment except by surrendering yourself to His mercy. As St Therese of Lisieux wrote:

‘For those who love Him, and after each fault come to ask pardon by throwing themselves into His arms, Jesus trembles with joy.’

God bless you!

What does it mean to be human?

What does it mean to be human?

The ancient, “in the image of God” sums it up quite nicely for me. I’d put it two ways: it is our ability to reach eternal, invisible truths, such as maths, the laws of physics, beauty, morality, love, humanity, etc. and also our ability to explore and express these in entirely new ways, through our own creativity and shared life. We bring eternity into time. I believe this is what St. Thomas Aquinas was getting at (more or less) when he claimed we each have a “rational soul”.

While animal life, even as far as they are capable of reasoning, is determined by the nature of each species, life for humans has no boundaries imposed upon it, but is capable of reaching/creating entirely new horizons. Humanity is essentially transcendent, innately seeking to go deeper, and express more fully, breaking apart old ways to create new possibilities.

But we see how terribly humans can abuse this power, these new possibilities. We see our great inhumanity. The same scientific breakthrough that allows billions of people to live today, was utilised by the Nazis in their horrific gas chambers. I would argue that our greatest atrocities follow when we sever these two ways; separating eternal truth from our self-creation, and so making our self-creation a mere perversion. Here is, I believe, the original sin, the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

Our personhood, I believe, refers to our freedom in our relationship, both with these higher truths and with each other. We deny others their personhood (and our own too) when we refuse to relate to them in freedom, whether because we don’t understand, or we are afraid, or we wish for power.

What about those who are unintelligent, or incapable of self-expression? The definition I gave is, I believe, entirely qualitative, and so we do not become “more human” as we become more intelligent or more expressive. Intelligent people often scoff at meaningful questions, while the supposedly stupid often have profound insights (though they also often lack the confidence to recognise them as such). Regardless of intelligence or ability, we have an innate openness to eternal truths, to the divine, and for these to come to the world through us (even those without working brain cells). Indeed, at her very conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary was intimately united as spouse to the Holy Spirit of God.

[This originated as a comment on the video.]

God bless you