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1. LUCIFER’S PRIMACY
Quis ut Deus? Who is like God? The very name of St. Michael, Commander-in-Chief of the Church Militant, is a question. So capital a query immediately suggests another which must have preceded it: Who thinks he can be like God? Answers to both are given in Scripture, for God would not have us ignorant of either of them.
Who is like God? No one. God himself told Moses, “There is none like me in all the earth!” (Ex. 9:14), and the answer has been faithfully relayed by His prophets to every generation. “Understand that I myself am. Before me there was no god formed, and after me there shall be none. I am, I am the Lord” (Is. 43:10-11). God alone is. Anyone else exists only by participation.
But who thinks he can be like God? Someone. Scripture says it is Lucifer, who promised himself in the beginning, “I will be like the Most High.” Isaias tells us that before his fall he had determined in his heart, “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the height of the clouds” (Is. 14:13-14).
Losing heaven in no way shook his resolve, for his next official act, so to speak, was to infect humanity with his ambition. He persuaded Mother Eve to barter her innocence, that she and Adam might be “like gods,” knowing not only good, but evil as well, becoming like him who wants to be like God. Today we all stand warned by the Almighty: “Remember the former age, for I am God, and there is no God beside, neither is there the like to me: Who show from the beginning the things that shall be last, and from ancient times the things that as yet are not done!” (Is. 46:9-10).
We have been told the present situation in the Church is one no ordinary person can hope to deal with, for it is without precedent. Besides betraying a high degree of ignorance, such a statement cannot fail to mislead. From the beginning of human history we have been prepared to face nothing else than the situation we face today. We have been hearing about it for thousands of years. To understand “the things that shall be last … that as yet are not done” in these latter times, we need only study “the ancient times” where they have already taken place.
We are conscripted in a battle being waged on earth, but which is not of earth and never began there. It began in heaven and was carried here by the enemy. Now being worked out in flesh and blood, it is the transposition of a contest decided long ago in heaven, where naked intellects and wills first strove against one another. The conflict’s causes, progress and effects being known from revelation, there is little difficulty in predicting its probable course and conclusion here below. The character of the enemy chieftain and his mode of operation can be deduced from the flow of current events, as long as these are kept in proper historical perspective. No one need fight in the dark.
Everything comes into focus with the realization that the position of Lucifer in heaven before his fall was analogous to that of the Pope here below. It would seem that he outranked St. Michael in the hierarchical order, for Chapter 12 of the Apocalypse speaks of him as the great red dragon who was initially vested with power sufficient to subvert one third of the celestial authorities, whereas St. Michael rises to command only after the subversion was under way. “Satan was the supreme angelic spirit,” says St. Gregory, “and was so created that he might preside over all the legions of angels” (Mor. IV, 13).
He was God’s deputy, his Vicar, if you will, at the head of the angelic government. Tertullian taught the same as St. Gregory, calling Lucifer “archangel,” not because he belonged to the lower choir, but because he was the archon, or prince of all the angels, a view commonly held by all the Doctors and Fathers of the Church. St. Jerome, commenting on Psalm 23, said, “Satan had under his domination the nine choirs of angels, including both those who fell and those who remained faithful,” a teaching approved by St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine, and followed by St. Thomas and the scholastics.
The very name Lucifer, the “light-bearer” or Morning Star, was applied to Satan by the Fathers because he was indeed the brightest of the “stars” of God, preeminent in gifts of both nature and grace. It was, said St. Gregory, “the chief angel who sinned, being set over all the angelic hosts, who surpassed them in brightness and was by comparison the most illustrious among them” (Hom. 34 in Evang.) It is reasonable to suppose that only a spirit with the highest authority could have exerted so much influence over angelic officialdom. How could a lesser functionary bend to his will the mighty above him?
St. Thomas adds that the urge to rebellion existed more in the highest angel than in the lower, pride being the impelling motive. Lucifer’s sin did not arise from any natural propensity to evil, for he had been created wholly good by God; and being pure spirit, he was not subject to the passions or sensuality found in a material body. He led the others who fell with him, and constituted so severe a scandal to the good angels, by the fact that his sin was the free choice of his will aspiring to greater excellence. Being without sin, he thought he could actually be like God. Eve would think the same.
In The Angel World, Fr. Simon Blackmore, S.J., says, “The opinion that Lucifer’s influence in seducing other angels arose from his preeminence and leadership is supported by eminent theologians. It is based on certain scriptural texts which would not be altogether cogent unless maintained by the authoritative exposition of the early Fathers of the Greek and Latin Church.” He cites Origen as saying, “The opinion prevails among very many that the devil in his apostasy persuaded vast numbers to follow him, and even to this day these are called his angels” (Lib. I Periarch. in proem.).
Our Lord Himself testified to Lucifer’s primacy by referring to “Satan and his angels” (Matt. 25:24). God’s gifts being without repentance, he retains his status even in hell. The book of Job, in the passage describing Satan under the figure of Leviathan, calls him “king of all the children of pride” (41:25). As the prototype of all real revolutionaries, he did not instigate rebellion from below, but launched it from the top, enlisting traitors at the summit. As vulgar wisdom has it, fish rots from the head. The reason is theological and anchored in natural law.
St. Ambrose’s friend St. Gaudentius summed up sacred tradition on the difficult parable of the unjust steward by applying this figure to Satan, whose authority was allowed to continue, says he, “for the correction of mankind, so that we, flying from the malignant cruelty of this so evil steward, might run together toward the compassionate God, through whose power and mercy we can be delivered from every assault…seeing that the steward also is subject to the power of God … The devil wasted the substance of his Lord when he sought the ruin of mankind…and this most wicked one, reckoning the death of man as his profit , is consumed with anxiety because the Lord is about to take away his power over others.
“And since he is unable to will what is good and is ashamed to ask mercy through repentance, he thinks within himself how he may still have power over the debtors of his Lord (that is, over those involved in the debt of sin) not alone by open persecution, but also, under the pretext of benevolence, by deceiving them with smooth words, so that seduced by his false kindness they may more readily receive him into their houses since together with him they must be judged forever” (PL 20, col. 971, Sermo 18).
Satan was created to rule. To believe that he whom our Lord called “the prince of this world” exercises no valid authority in it is to fly in the face of reality and deny the structure of the universe. He is one of those “rulers of the world of this darkness” with whom St. Paul says we must “wrestle,” (Eph. 6:12). Without authority he could do nothing. Not only does God allow him to afflict and tempt us, but we operate under his jurisdiction as his agents whenever we follow his promptings. Those unfortunates who go so far as to “receive him into their houses” become his intimates, communing with him sub tectum in their very souls.
Scripture tells us, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” calling angels into being before men and the material universe. The word “heavens” here does not mean that they enjoyed the beatific vision. It means only that they were entirely spiritual and inhabited a non-material realm distinct from earth. They were not created outright in the intimacy with God which the faithful ones now enjoy before the throne of the Lamb.
Like men, the angels underwent a period of probation, for the beatific vision is a supernatural destiny as utterly beyond the angelic nature as it is beyond the human. Like men they required, and were given, the grace to attain it. Had they been enjoying the vision of God they could never have sinned, for once God is possessed He fulfills all possible aspirations, leaving nothing more to be desired. According to Fr. Blackmore, what they did receive was an infusion of grace with all its virtues, especially faith, together with a capacity to posit supernatural acts.
Testing this faith necessarily entailed a confrontation with revelation, whereby the angels agreed or refused to conform their wills to the plans of their Creator. Again, like men, the revelation given them was that of the Most Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation, together with the Blessed Virgin, shown to them under the “sign” St. John speaks of in Chapter 12 of the Apocalypse. Understanding that through her maternity the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity would become man and rule over all God’s works, not only material but angelic as well, the faithful angels acclaimed God’s design with love and wonder.
Only Christ and His blessed mother have surpassed the sublime humility of those blessed spirits, who not only willingly lent their resplendent power and intelligence to the operation of the material cosmology, but consented to serve creatures of flesh as helpers and guardians, sharing their superior gifts with them. Lucifer’s pride, on the other hand, drove him to open rebellion. Finding abhorrent the prospect of subordinating his spiritual nature to a lower, human nature wedded to crass matter, he contended that the hypostatic union should in all justice and propriety be consummated with himself, highest of the angelic creatures.
The Blessed Virgin explained to Venerable Mary of Agreda that Lucifer had previously “tarried with inordinate pleasure” in the consciousness of his God-given excellences, in the course of which he conceived hatred for God for not having given him more; and at the revelation of the Incarnation, he coveted the stature and gifts reserved to divinity. In other words, he wanted to be like God, not only because he thought he could be like God, but because he thought he should be like God. He and his cohorts fell from heaven rather than comply with the divine decree.
In her exegesis of the aforecited Chapter 12, Agreda describes how, “with utmost boasting he spoke in the presence of the Woman symbolized in the heavenly sign: This Son, which that Woman is to bring forth, is of lower nature than mine: I shall devour Him and destroy Him. I shall lead my followers against Him, I shall spread my doctrines against His decrees and against His laws which He shall set up. I shall wage perpetual war and contradiction against Him.
“Unjust is God in raising human nature above the angelic. I am the most exalted and beautiful angel, and the triumph belongs to me. It is I who am to place my throne above the stars and who shall be like unto the Highest; I will subject myself to no one of an inferior nature, and I will not consent that anyone take precedence of me or be greater than I.” As their divinely appointed leader, Lucifer subverted by such arguments angels of all ranks, whose test of fidelity lay precisely in a choice between obedience to his directives and God’s. One could not be obeyed without disobeying the other, for even in heaven it is impossible to serve two masters.
The faithful St. Michael let fly with the ultimatum “Quis ut Deus?” and rallied his troops. Invoking the only authority higher than Lucifer’s, namely God’s, the faithful angels gave proof of their perfect obedience by resisting their legitimate commander. “For the obedient and holy angels, filled with an ardent desire of hastening the glory of the Most High and the honor of the Incarnate Word, asked permission, and as it were, the consent of God to resist and contradict the dragon, and the permission was granted.” The war was on.
Lucifer’s powers had been bestowed by the Almighty, and we may be sure he exercised them to the full. Even after he was cast from heaven and deprived of grace, he continued his defiance. Pursuing the Woman and her Son, he was constrained by the logistics of the Incarnation to shift his revolutionary activities to human affairs on earth where, still at the head of his legions, he uses his preternatural talents and resources to win men to his cause. If he could not rule them as Christ the God-man, he would rule them as Antichrist the angel-man.
St. John describes the hostilities in the past tense because they have been concluded in heaven, where he saw them waged in vision from Patmos, but his account is not past history. It is prophecy still happening. Were that not so, there would be little point in relaying it. The precedent set by that great battle in heaven is not the only one vouchsafed us in Scripture, for the encounter on high between Lucifer and St. Michael would be replayed in Jerusalem between the high priest Caiphas and the Incarnate Word himself.
In heaven the battle had opened when St. Michael put the question, “Who is like God?” to the angelic insurgents; in Jerusalem the struggle began when the Son of God hurled the reply, “I AM!” at the Jewish authorities, who immediately “took up stones therefore to cast at him” (John 8:58-9). In both cases those who wished to remain faithful to God had to resolve a crisis of obedience arising from the defection of a legitimate superior. Whereas in heaven the good angels had to obey God above Lucifer, the prince God himself had set over them, in Jerusalem the faithful Israelites who would confess Christ had to defy their divinely constituted high priest. For generations of martyrs and reprobates, the casus belli has never changed.
Our Lord, who in the beginning “saw Satan like lightning falling from heaven” (Luke 10:18), promised His followers before His Passion, “Now is the judgment of the world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out!” (John 12:31). Satan’s ultimate defeat remains decisive, but multitudes will be lost through misplaced loyalty. Those unable to extricate themselves from the toils of their error must end by forswearing St. Michael’s “Who is like God?” and rallying to the luciferian order. Voicing a dire parody of the warrior angel in the vision of the Apocalypse, they exclaim, “Who is like the Beast?” offering as sole excuse for their craven capitulation, “Who can fight him?” (Apo. 13:4).
As the holy angels confronted Lucifer and his cohorts, as our Lord confronted Caiphas and those like him who sat on the chair of Moses, so must the faithful be prepared to confront the Antichrist on the chair of Peter. Both Scripture and Tradition so testify. St. Augustine, like other Fathers of the Church, minced no words. In his Commentary onPsalm 7 he says, “The Antichrist will be seated in the temple, that is, the Church, as if the people of God were formed of a multitude of the impious.”
What better sign and wonder whereby to deceive the elect than by tempting them to sidestep dilemma by humbly submitting their judgment to God’s representative? Lucifer’s pride, let alone his obsessive desire to rule the world, demands that he usurp the Papacy. There is no need to quote from marginal works like “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to prove that Lucifer plots for the Pontificate. At the close of the last century, when the satanic conspiracy began making appreciable headway in a de-Christianized western world, several of its leading “theologians” were already crowing over the impending success of its strategy.
The renegade French priest Abbé Roca was one. Become a Rosicrucian adept, he traveled throughout Europe and the United States introducing cabalistic mysticism into the secret brotherhoods and preaching a “divine synarchy” about to take shape under the authority of a Pope won to a new, scientific Christianity. His works, a veritable summa of the humanitarian Catholicism designed to “consecrate the modern world,” offer substantial proof that the massive alterations in progress in the Church are no work of the Holy Ghost, but the result of plans carefully laid over a century ago by her deadliest enemies.