The Ministry of Angels and the Work of Devils

by Bishop Richard H. Ackerman, C.S.Sp., S.T.D.

Although at the time we were not aware of it, on the day of our (infant) baptism we—by proxy—renounced Satan and all his works and all his empty promises. What we could not proclaim on our own was done for us by our godparents.

Later, when we were at that age when we were able to act on our own, and immediately before receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation, we repeated this renunciation of Satan and his works and all his empty promises.

These words are repeated earnestly I am sure, and with every sign of conviction. But I fear that sometimes they are expressed simply and solely because they are part of the rite—and without a true understanding of what they mean.

How many of us, how many Catholics know who the devil really is? How many, instead, regard him as children believe in Santa Claus—or as a sort of bogeyman who will get us if we don’t watch out? In recent years we have been told by some theologians that there are no such beings as angels. Thus they demolish belief in the devil; if there be no angels, then there can be no bad angels, of whom Satan is the chief.

When was the last time that you heard a sermon, or a homily, or a talk dealing with the devil—call him Satan or Lucifer, as you will? This silence renders us a great disservice; it places us in a false security and makes us easy victims of the great adversary of our eternal salvation.

Does the Devil Exist?

The word “devil” comes from a Greek word, diabolos, meaning wicked spirit. The term “Satan” is a Hebrew word meaning adversary and/or enemy. Isaiah 14:12 refers to this supreme spirit of evil and unrighteousness as “Lucifer.” Christ calls him in His last words to the people, “the prince of this world” (Jn. 16:11). St. Paul identifies Satan as the “god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4).

One of the questions that comes easily to the mind of those receiving instruction in the Catholic faith is, “Who made the devil?” (God created him an angel; he made himself a devil.)

The teaching of the Church is very clear (De Fide, Fourth Lateran Council). The angels were created in the state of innocence, but not impeccable, in heaven. They were subjected to a trial of their fidelity (perhaps belief in and adoration of the Incarnation). One-third of the heavenly host revolted in pride (Rev. 12:4). “And the great dragon was cast down, the ancient serpent, he who is called the ‘devil’ and ‘Satan,’ who leads astray the whole world; and he was cast down to the earth and with him his angels were cast down” (Rev. 12:9). Further, they were cast into hell—created for them. “Then he will say to those on his left hand, ‘depart from me, you accursed ones, into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Mt. 25:41).

“For God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but dragged them down by infernal ropes to Tartarus and delivered them to be tortured and kept in custody for judgment” (2 Pet. 2:4).

With their rejection of the plan of God they were confirmed in their decision; they had no second chance. They became and are still the implacable enemies of God. They are occupied now in

a) cursing and blaspheming God, in opposing His plan for the universe;
b) unable to touch God directly, they do so indirectly: They attack His creature man, through whom God accomplishes the purpose of His Creation. Their hatred has no effect on God, therefore they turn on men to tempt them to turn from God in the countless ways open to them.

St. Paul urges us: “Put on the armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness on high” (Eph. 6:11). And St. Peter: “Be sober, be watchful! For your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8).

Personal being though he is, the devil’s trump card is anonymity; his chef d’oeuvre is the belief that he does not exist. The French author, Gide, in one of his written dialogues, puts these words in the mouth of Satan: “Well, why are you scared of me? You know very well that I don’t exist.”

Although we have been speaking of the devil in the singular, it is only to place emphasis on the Prince of Devils—the leader of the group of fallen angels, which the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) numbered one-third of the heavenly host of angels created by God. They have their chief; and he is identified in the Scriptures as Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, or simply the devil.

Lucifer and those angels whom he captained were adequately punished for their refusal to serve the living God—“Non serviam.” As we have said, he and his followers were condemned to everlasting torments. But we must remember that that punishment—that condemnation—did not affect their nature. They became bad angels, but they were still angels.

What Is an Angel?

An angel is a pure spirit—that is, a being created without a body, unlike us. We also possess a spirit, which is our soul, but our spiritual activity, our intellectual processes, the decisions of our will—faculties of our soul—depend entirely on our senses. There is nothing in the intellect that does not come through the senses. Not so with the angels.

It is the nature of the angels to exercise power, free will, intelligence, free of dependence on any other created being. They are not impeded by any material agent—by space or time. The word “angel” means “messenger”—and this describes the purpose of the entire angelic host all together and singly. Angels are messengers of God; they are His personal liaison agents to the world, especially to His creature man. Their number is countless, as the Prophet Daniel informs us: “Thousands of thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him” (Dan. 7:10). Our Lord in His Passion spoke of legions of angels.

These notes and all others concerning angels, believed and taught by the Church from the earliest times and strengthened by competent theologians, are deduced mainly from the Sacred Scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to the Apocalypse.

In these Sacred Scriptures, the mystery of the Godman (the Incarnation) is revealed gradually to the minds of men. It is otherwise with the angels, to whom they are made completely manifest from the very beginning; and though, in the course of the centuries of the gaith, angels show forth now one kind of activity, now another, their essential behavior is always the same.

Nothing is more casual and unexpected than the mention of angels in every portion of the Scriptures; you never know when to expect an angel; there is no set of events that you could predict with certainly would bring an angel from heaven to earth. The Sacred Scriptures accept the angelic world as a complete, self-sufficient, unaccountable power, which cannot itself be altered by the course of human events, but which may influence them whenever it pleases.

References to Angels in Scripture and Tradition

There are some 300 references to an angel or angels in the Old and New Testaments. In the inspired texts we read of:

1) the angel sent to Hagar, the handmaid of Sarah, wife of Abraham;
2) the angels seen by Jacob in vision, ascending and descending the ladder that reached from earth to heaven;
3) the angel who spoke to Moses and the Avenging Angel;
4) the account of the Archangel Raphael sent to assist the holy man Tobias and his son;
5) the angel who entered the fire of the furnace along with Daniel and his companions;
6) the angel of the Annunciation;
7) the angel who spoke to Zachary, the father of John the Baptist;
8) the angel who spoke to the shepherds of Bethlehem;
9) the angel who spoke to the holy women at the empty tomb of Christ;
10) the angel who delivered St. Peter from his prison;
11) the statement of Satan in his temptation of Christ: “He hath given his angels charge concerning thee, to preserve thee; upon their hands they shall bear thee up lest thou dash thy foot against a stone”;
12) the angel who came and ministered to Christ after the great temptation;
13) the words of Christ regarding the innocent children: “Their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven”;
14) regarding the conversion of one sinner: “There shall be joy before the angels of God in heaven”;
15) regarding the beggar who died and was carried by the angel to heaven;
16) the angel of the Garden of Gethsemane, the place of Christ’s agony: “And there appeared an angel from heaven to strengthen him.”

These scriptural examples and other similar instances, far too numerous to mention here, are supported by the strong evidence of tradition. Especially it is to be noted in the Roman Ritual, where we find so many references to angels, asking their assistance, confiding them to our requests, begging their intercession. Along with the Roman Ritual we find similar allusions in the Sacred Liturgy. The new Sacramentary, and especially the new Roman Missal which preceded it, contains a number of references to the existence and ministry of angels. One excellent example is to be found in the first Eucharistic prayer, formerly the Roman Canon of the Mass of St. Pius V:

“Almighty God, we pray that your angel may take this sacrifice to your altar in heaven. Then as we receive from this altar the sacred Body and Blood of your Son, let us be filled with every grace and blessing.”

The Works of Good and Bad Angels

We are talking about the good angels who are judged to be good, not only from the ontological viewpoint, but from the ministry they perform. They serve God in a special way and we have seen from the Scriptures that their main work is to help man to love God, to keep His law, to fulfill His design, and to gain abiding happiness with God in heaven. Now let us return to Satan, Lucifer, and his vast army of devils.

As created beings, Lucifer and all other angels are pure spirits with power far exceeding that of any other creature, with free will and with an intelligence that transcends that of man and which is supernatural in quality. From this viewpoint, Lucifer (like all angels) is a good angel—but only from this viewpoint. Having chosen to reject God, to disobey His will, he forfeited his status in the heavenly host. He was likewise rejected by God, condemned to everlasting punishment in hell, without hope of any kind. He has now become a bad angel, established in his rejection of God forever. As good angels serve man in view of his eternal glorification, so Lucifer as a bad angel strives to destroy this plan and bring man into eternal damnation. Every soul who dies outside of God’s friendship is a conquest of Satan, a victory to be chalked on the infernal scoreboard of Satan’s domain. Ceaselessly, with strategic allurement, he wages his campaign to make every man turn from God with the shout that was the hallmark of his rebellion: “Non serviam!” “I will not serve.”

The Book of Job should be read by every Christian, not only once but at definite intervals in his lifetime. It was written, we are told, by some scholars as a play. And in its long, detailed exposition of the trials and persecutions of holy Job, we see the lengths to which Satan will go, the variety of means he employs to have one man curse God and die.

Man, weighted by the consequences of the original sin (consequences which theologians have placed under three headings: the concupiscence of the eyes, the concupiscence of the flesh, and the pride of life), becomes an easy prey to temptations, and this is especially true of the unbaptized as well as those of the baptized who, having lost sanctifying grace through sin, remain in this sad condition. It is easy for the devil to tempt such as these to sin, with evil suggestions and imaginations, through enticements that build up pride and hypocrisy. The Scriptures and the written traditions of the Church are replete with examples of the presence of the devil in the world and the ruin, spiritual and otherwise, of so many. In the lives of the saints we find so many evidences of his bold activity. (St. Teresa of Avila, the Curé of Ars, St. Anthony the Hermit).

Bold enough to tempt Our Lord after His sojourn on fasting and prayer in the desert, he allows no one to escape his wiles, and exercises his power and his intelligence to engage and capture the sensitive faculties of men to make them accept him as an angel of light and to frighten them into submission. Father of lies, he wins men over to him and away from God by confounding truth and by making fact appear as fiction and fiction as fact.

Satan is a tireless worker, a crafty operator, and a cunning enemy.

Influence of Satan Today

And so, we could go on and on. I am fully aware that there are some who would take the words I have spoken until now with a lot of salt and shrug off these statements of angelology with a smile and a reference to a medieval mind. So be it.

Must we believe these people, accept their judgment about the non-existence of a being so clearly described in the Sacred Scriptures, Sacred Tradition, and the constant teaching of the Church? Must we believe that Satan, at long last satisfied with his victories, has given up and gone home to rule his own kingdom? Are we to believe that God has finally come to the conclusion (if God can make conclusions) that the genius of man has reached such perfection that he no longer needs the help and protecting guidance of angels? Such a supposition is entirely ridiculous.

I firmly believe—and the Church firmly teaches—that the devil exercises great influence today. The evidences of his presence in the world and his involvement with the current lifestyles of men are many. And while it may be true that the unhappy state of human society today can be attributed to the fact that so many men, women, and children have lost a belief in God and an understanding of how men relate to God and His will, it is equally true that what we see and hear of the extensive moral depravity which afflicts our society—almost everywhere—the well structured efforts against the Church and its mission to the world, the denial of truths that must be fundamental to the true Christian—the Catholic—when we contemplate the great losses the Church has suffered across the world, a loss of priests, of religious, of the laity, when one is confronted with definite division in the household of faith, one can only conclude that all these are the result not of human frailty and weakness alone, but of a supernatural power working through the weakness of human nature to destroy the work of God and of His Church; and that power can only be the devil. For me, there is no other explanation.

Alienating the Faithful from God and His Church

It serves no good purpose to deny or to remain silent concerning the intense and wide-reaching struggle within the very bosom of the Church. This struggle—so well organized—has for its purpose to reinterpret Catholic doctrine, to give us, as Pope Paul VI said, “an easy Christianity.” We have seen manifestations of this campaign by the enemies of Christ in the public opposition to Pope Paul’s Encyclical Letter on Human Life. This is but one of the many rounds in the field of “literature”—so many books, beginning with that infamous Dutch Catechism and going on to Hans Küng’s aberrations and the controversial report commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of America, entitled “Human Sexuality,” the many television programs that are nothing more than high-class pornography, all destructive of the ideals of the Christian family, and the false prophets who crowd the country’s classrooms, the media—electronic and otherwise—our lecture platforms—some of them spewing real and recognizable hatred of the Catholic Faith and the Church which promotes and protect it—all of these and more are a clear evidence of a diabolical effort to draw the faithful away from their God and His Church by proposing that certain traditional doctrines are non-infallible and therefore capable of change.

The Pontificate of Pope Paul VI was marked by this worldwide contestation. To him it was evident, as he publicly stated, that “the smoke of Satan” had invaded the Church. In fact, he publish his famous “Creed of the People of God” on June 30, 1968, to combat the errors which at that time and even at this present moment continue to agitate men with reference to the faith. The heretical movement “Modernism”—which was so brilliantly exposed and condemned by Pope St. Pius X—and silenced for a while—has surfaced again with new and effective energy.

Nothing—no area of Christian doctrine or Christina living or Christian worship—has escaped the attack that campaigns under the banner of Satan. And of all of them there is one area that disturbed me more than any other: It is the effort to destroy the sacred within this world into which all of us were born, must live and die.

What Is the Sacred?

What do I mean by the sacred? Well, simply stated, that is sacred which in some way related to God. It reflects in some way, however imperfectly, the absolute holiness of God—that holiness which the heavenly hosts proclaim without ceasing and of which we are reminded when we sing or say in our Holy Mass: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts! Heaven and earth are filled with your glory. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

What we call or identify as sacred may be a person, place, or thing, or an action. Thus a man who shares the priesthood of Christ is considered a sacred person, as are those men and women whose lives are dedicated by public profession to the perfect imitation of Christ through a free acceptance of a life patterned on the three evangelical councils.

A church is a sacred place, especially if within it are reserved the sacred elements of the Body and Blood of Christ. A crucifix is one of the many sacred objects that demand respect and reverence because they remind us of, they proclaim to us—even in silence—the presence of the glory and the power of God.

Of all sacred objects, the altar of sacrifice is sacred above all others. On its table, the Sacrifice of Calvary is renewed for our salvation, not figuratively, but actually and in reality. Our faith, resting not alone on the Sacred Scriptures considered as the inspired Word of God, but also on the testimony of the ages, established the verity of this conclusion. Christ becomes the Victim in every Eucharistic Sacrifice, interceding with His heavenly Father for a sinful humanity.

Loss of the Sense of the Sacred

Echoing the forceful description of the subject Rev. Francis King, S.J., in his recent essay (Homiletic and Pastoral Review): “It seems true to say that many people in the Church today, in all categories, have lost or at least mentally suppressed any genuine sense of the sacred. A well-qualified professor of history tells us that the decline of the sacred is the greatest single problem facing Catholicism today. Cardinal Suhard, the late Archbishop of Paris, describes this decline as a loss of the sense of mystery and of the transcendence of God. Religion in some quarters seems reduced to sociology and social action; man’s relationship with his fellow man has overshadowed his intimacy with and reverence for God.

I am not speaking principally of any kind of direct and deliberate attack—philosophical or theological—against the “otherness” of God, or about any explicit denial of Christ’s divinity or that of His Church. I am more concerned—and we should all be concerned—about more practical, everyday matters which betray an exaggerated, even false attitude—an attitude which can be so easily characterized as an informal, thoughtless, and at times sacrilegious approach to the entire realm of the sacred.

So widespread has become not only a loss of a sense of the sacred, but also a rejection of what is sacred—and I include in this rejection of God, if not directly at least indirectly—that I am firmly convinced that it has been brought about by the devil, working by himself, working through those whom he has won over to his side. I have seen too much and heard too much to think otherwise. And it is quite true that one may be the devil’s agent without being aware of it.

God doesn’t interfere with man’s free will—and man’s free will rules the world. God’s enemy, Satan, influences that free will, directly and indirectly. This I believe with all my heart. I can conceive of no other explanation for the moral depravity in which we live, or the revolt against the Church, no other reason for the loss of faith in so many hearts, and especially among the young.

And what are we going to do about it? Shake our heads? Click our tongues? Wring our hands? This will accomplish nothing.

St. Peter tells us: “Be sober and watch! For your adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith” (1 Pet. 5:8–9).

How Do We Resist Him?

Resist him. To resist means to strive against. And how can we strive against the devil? By getting down on our knees, literally and metaphysically, to pray with all our hearts that God will deliver us from the scourge of Satan. By doing everything we can to revive a sense of the sacred everywhere—to teach our young those good habits which good Catholics practiced years ago when the mere taking off a hat or simple Sign of the Cross as one passed the church as an act of faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. By being bold enough to speak out in support of what the magisterium of the Church directs us to do—but to speak out rationally, not emotionally or in anger. Sometimes it is necessary to exercise the patience of Job. To support those organizations which, like Catholics United for the Faith, it seems to me, have been provided by divine providence for the defense of our holy faith.

Finally, we must present to the world in which we live and move, and work and play, a vibrant, sound example of what a good Catholic is. We must give prayerful thought each day to God’s transcendence, His otherness, Christ’s Divinity (He is the Son of God), the divine mission of His Church. Not only must we pray and meditate, but we must study to learn all we can about God. These are indispensable. The Sacred Scriptures of both Testaments should be searched to discover all that they contain relative to the holiness, the sacredness of God, how essentially He differs from us. “God is all; man is nothing.” He is infinite, we are finite, kin to nothingness.

We must never forget, or allow others to forget, that if man loses the sense of the divine, the Gospel will cease to be good news. Our responsibility to ourselves, our family, our community, is to work without ceasing, to turn the world from its present perplexed secularity to the serene security of the sacredness of God!

To quote St. Paul:

For the rest, brethren, be strengthened in the Lord and in the might of his power. Put on the armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against the flesh and blood, but against the principalities and the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness on high. Therefore, take up the armor of God that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of justice and having your feed shod with the readiness of the Gospel of peace, in all things taking up the shield of faith with which you may be able to quench all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take unto you the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit that is the word of God. (Eph. 6:10–17)

From the December 1981 issue of Lay Witness. Originally part of a talk given at the 1980 annual dinner of the CUF Immaculate Conception Chapter, Long Island, New York.

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