LISTEN - Read: Volume I Book I Chap. VII - HOW THE MOST HIGH GAVE A BEGINNING TO HIS WORKS AND CREATED ALL MATERIAL THINGS FOR THE USE OF MAN, WHILE ANGELS AND MEN WERE CREATED TO BE HIS PEOPLE UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF THE INCARNATE WORD.
The Cause of all causes is God, who created all things that have being from nothing. All of Angels were informed that God their Creator was to create a human nature and reasoning creatures lower than themselves, in order that they too should love, fear and reverence God, as their Author and Eternal Good.
They were informed that these were to stand in high favor, and that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was to become Incarnate and assume their nature, raising it to the hypostatic union and to Divine Personality; that therefore they were to acknowledge Him as their Head, not only as God, but as God and man, adoring Him and reverencing Him as Godman.
Moreover, these same Angels were to be His inferiors in dignity and grace and were to be His servants. God gave them an intelligence of the propriety and equity, of the justice and reasonableness of such a position.
For the acceptation of the merits foreseen of this Godman was exhibited to them as the source of the grace which they now possessed and of the glory which they were to obtain.
They understood also that they themselves had been, and all the rest of the creatures should be created for His glory, and that this Godman was to be their Head.
All those that were capable of knowing and enjoying God, were to be the people of the Son of God, to know and reverence Him as their Chief. These commands were at once given to the Angels.
To this command all the obedient and Holy Angels submitted themselves and they gave their full assent and acknowledgment with a humble and loving subjection of the will.
But Lucifer, full of envy and pride, resisted and induced his followers to resist likewise, as they in reality did, preferring to follow him and disobey the Divine command. This wicked prince persuaded them, that he would be their chief and that he would set up a government independent and separate from Christ.
So great was the blindness which envy and pride could cause in an angel, and so pernicious was the infection that the contagion of sin spread among innumerable other angels.
Then happened that great battle in heaven, which St. John describes (Apoc. 12). 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.
But also another mystery was concealed in all this: When it was revealed to the Angels that they would have to obey the Incarnate Word, another, a third precept was given them, namely, that they were to admit as a superior conjointly with Him, a Woman, in whose womb the Onlybegotten of the Father was to assume flesh and that this Woman was to be the Queen and Mistress of all the creatures.
The good Angels by obeying this command of the Lord, with still increasing and more alert humility, freely subjected themselves, praising the power and the mysteries of the Most High.
Lucifer, however, and his confederates, rose to a higher pitch of pride and boastful insolence. In disorderly fury he aspired to be himself the head of all the human race and of the angelic orders, and if there was to be a hypostatic union, he demanded that it be consummated in him.
The decree constituting him inferior to the Mother of the Incarnate Word, our Mistress, he opposed with horrible blasphemies.
Turning against the Author of these great wonders in unbridled indignation and calling upon the other angels, he exhorted them, saying: "Unjust are these commands and injury is done to my greatness; this human nature which Thou, Lord, looks upon with so much love and which thou favors so highly, I will persecute and destroy. To this end I will direct all my power and all my aspirations. And this Woman, Mother of the Word, I will hurl from the position in which Thou hast proposed to place Her, and at my hands, the plan, which Thou settest up, shall come to naught."
This proud boast so aroused the indignation of the Lord that in order to humble it, He spoke to Lucifer: "This Woman, whom thou refuses to honor, shall crush thy head and by Her shalt thou be vanquished and annihilated (Gen. 3, 15). And if, through thy pride, death enters into the world (Wis. 2, 24), life and salvation of mortals shall enter through the humility of this Woman. Those that are of the nature and likeness of that Man and Woman, shall enjoy the gifts and the crowns, which thou and thy followers have lost."
To all this the dragon, filled with indignation against whatever he understood of the Divine Will and decrees, answered only with pride and by threatening destruction to the whole human race.
The good Angels saw the just indignation of the Most High against Lucifer and his apostates and they combated them with the arms of the understanding, reason and truth.
The Almighty at this conjuncture worked another wonderful mystery. Having given to all the Angels a sufficiently clear intelligence of the great mystery of the hypostatic Union, He showed them the image of the most Holy Virgin by means of an imaginary vision (I speak here according to our way of understanding such things).
They were shown the perfection of the human nature in the revelation of an image representing a most perfect Woman, in whom the Almighty Arm of the Most High would work more wonderfully than in all the rest of the creatures.
For therein He was to deposit the graces and gifts of His right hand in a higher and more eminent manner. This sign or vision of the Queen of Heaven and of the Mother of the Incarnate Word was made known and manifest to all the Angels, good and bad.
The good ones at the sign of it broke forth in admiration and in canticles of praise and from that time on began to defend the honor of the God Incarnate and of His Holy Mother, being armed with ardent zeal and with the invincible shield of that vision.
The dragon and his allies on the contrary, conceived implacable hatred and fury against Christ and His Most Holy Mother. Then happened all that which is described in the Twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, which I will explain, as far as it has been given me, in the following chapter.
(Ezekiel 34:15, “I myself will come and shepherd my people.”)
"And My delight is to be with the children of men." My recreation is to work for them and show them favors: My contentment is to die for them and my joy is to be their Teacher and their Redeemer” “My delight is to raise the needy one from the dust and to unite Myself with the lowly one (Ps. 112,7); My pleasure is to unbend My Divinity for this purpose, and to clothe it with human nature, to constrain and debase Myself, and to suspend the glory of My body in order to make Myself capable of suffering and of meriting for men the friendship of the Father; to be a Mediator between His most just indignation and the malice of men, and to be their Model and Head, whom they might imitate.”
Read: Volume I Book I Chap. VII