• They exist for a purpose- to praise and worship God. Angels are not free agents, floating here and there appearing whenever they want to. Surely angels have the power to speak to us and manifest themselves in a real, even physical way. This can and does happen. But where does this power that they have come from? It comes from God. All that angels do are odered toward God.
• Now we can ask, "why would an angel have a reason to appear to us or make themselves know?" It must be because God desired this to occur. We know that God desires that all be saved and that we find eternal salvation in Him, namely through Jesus Christ. This is God's will for every one of us. So, if God wills that we see or have any connection with angels, it must be somehow helping us to reach our goal- eternal union with God.
• We can get a better clue as to who and what angels are by looking at the word "angel" (from the greek word angelos) which means "messenger." Messengers of what? All creation finds its fullst and truest meaning in Jesus Christ. This holds true for angels. All angels are His. "When the angels themselves come in glory, and all the angels with him..." They belong to Christ and were created through and for Him: "for in him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible..." Angels, who have been present since creation and throughout the history of salvation, announce the saving plan of the Father which was fulfilled in Christ.

What are angels?

• Each angel is a unique, unprepeatable, individual being created and loved by God.
• Angels are pure spirit, not limited by material bodies. This means that they are not confined to space as we are.
• The spirit is essentially two things:
  - The power of thinking-- conscience, deliberate, rational understanding. Not sense perception (like smelling or tasting)- that is the work of the body which is material.
  - The power of willing or choosing and deliberately loving. Not sensory appetite (like hunger)- that is bodily.

• Yes, they do. Angels are persons (but not humans) that have intellect and will. This means that they can choose between good and evil. if they choose evil, they become evil.
• Reason can give us the possiblity of demons existing, but the Sacred Scripture tells us that they exist.

The Battle and Fall

• Angels were created with free will and tested in heaven as we are on earth- some chose to love God and others chose to rebel.
• Scripture describes this as a “war in heaven” (Rev 12:7). Demons were expelled forever (12:8). Earth was the only place where there was spiritual warfare, between good and evil (12:9).
• War on earth (internal of the heart and external evil)- this began when the demons first rebelled.
• The rebellion was a single choice made at the moment of the angels' creation. They turned against God with their whole mind and free will, which they could never take back because there was no ignorance, no excuse, and no part of their self holding back. This is because they, at the moment they were createdm beheld the face of God as He is.
• A war in heaven occureed. It was a real war, not just an image or the use of symbolic language. The war in heaven erupted when Lucifer (Light-Bearer) fell and became Satan (the Accuser) as described: "Now war arose in heavne, Michael (whose name means 'who is like God?' and thus shows the lie of Satan's pride) and his angels fighting against the dragon (Satan); and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world-- he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him" (Rev 12:7-9; Is 14:12-15).
• Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, was closest to God above all other creatures and the highest angel. He rebelled and invented evil. Many angels rebelled with him (one-third of the angelic hosts, according to tradition).
• The fall occured more than likely the instant after the angels were created, but we cannot really speak of time when dealing with pure spirit because time is measured by matter.
• Why did Satan do it?
  - Why would a wholly good person, fresh and innocent from the creation of God, choose evil? The Bible calls it the "mystery of iniquity." And it is jsut that: a mystery, not understood by our reason alone. We can never fully understand it. Evil is irrational to begin with and difficult to understand.
  - Only Satan's pride motivated him. No evil existed up to this point. Satan freely chose knowing full well what he was doing. he was not tempted and can not lay blame.
  - Evil is not rational. What could make someone choose hell over heaven, happiness for misery? It is a question we need to ask ourselves, also.

A healthy belief in demons and Satan

• The Church does not have the power to add or subtract what has been handed onto her in the "deposit of faith" or "sacred tradition." Demons and Satan are part of the package deal with revelation. If we accept all other aspects of revelation and not the truth about demons (or any other article of faith), we become the Teacher or Master and not God.
• Two dangers (we can have a "healthy fear" of evil but confidence in Christ's power over evil):
  1. Satan is pleased when we overestimate him...
       - Giving him more credit than is due and letting an uncontrollable fear overcome us
       - “Nothing to fear but fear itself.”
  2. Satan is pleased when we underestimate him…
       - One can believe that he has no power to tempt or influence
       - This can lead to not believing in him at all. “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.” This leaves us defenseless because we don’t believe in the threat.
       - “The only thing to fear is fearlessness.”

What can demons do?

• As objects of thought, they can inspire fear.
• They can pervert God’s revelations or deceive us with false revelations. Even the “devil can appear as an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14).
• They can tempt us through our imagination or feelings.
• Occasionally they can even move matter supernaturally. This is even rarer than angelic supernatural intervention, but it can happen.
• Demons can possess us only if we invite them in.

How demons can effect us

1. Temptation- intellectual suggestion
   - Demons tempt us by arousing selfish passions for false gods, by placing before us pictures of fake happiness. This happiness would come about if we more and more would "worship" ourselves or something less than ourselves (something wordly, like money).
   - The root of all temptation is to pull us away from the Lord's most important commandment: to love God with our whole heart.
   - Three temptations:
     * Greed- desire for wordly things (fame, money, and power).
     * Lust- selfish self-gratification (sexual or other).
     * Pride- spiritual sins (playing God), as well as envy, jealousy, and resentment.
   - Satan's tactics
     * His strategy is to confuse us- to dim our reason and distort the Truth. This is done by him trying to convince us that the truth is negotiable. He wants us to believe that truth is not simple or direct, but a maze that we can cheat our way through.
     * Then, once we are deciding what Truth is, we are convinced that sin is fun. Since there is no firm grounding on Truth, all is relative. Now our passions can cloud our reason, which is deciding what truth is. A vicious cycle has begun.
   (see the Four Levels of Happiness)
2. Oppression- a great sorrow of spirit or great external tragedies, which happens to many people.
3. Possession- very rare
   - The person's will must give consent to demonic possession. Only our free choice can permit possession.
   - God has safety precautions and serve prohibitions against the occult: "There shall not be found among you one who burns his son or daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an argur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord" (Dt 18:11-12).
   - Exorcism is one of the Church's official and real ministries. It is very real, but very rare. By doing this, the Church only continues the work of Christ. "If I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you" (Lk 11:20).
   - The voice in the movie The Exorcist was a taped voice of a demon-possessed boy during an actual exorcism.
   - The Catholic Church will not bring an exorcist until all natural explanations and treatments have been considered, tried, nad have failed.

In the end, we must remember that Christ has conquered the power of Satan. While the power of evil still exists because we can freely choose, God is infinitely more powerful. A modern tendency is to set good and evil on equal planes of power. God is pure goodness and evil was brought into existence by an angel God created. The Creator has complete dominion over all of creation. The demons trembled at the sight of Christ. our invocation of His name continues the victory Christ has already won.