Commentary on My Catholic Faith 22 December 2022

Those angels which rejected God were cast to hell and will eventually be punished for eternity. These angels are called devils, demons, or fallen angels. They harm us by temptation, but whatever the demons do are always by the permission of God. So were God to place His hand on the demons, they would not be able to do anything. Sometimes demons can enter a person’s body and overcome them which is called diabolical possession. In this case the Church’s aid must be sought for an exorcism that is the driving away of demons. Spiritism is a way for demons to enter human life and as such must be rejected completely.

Not all temptation comes from the demons, some comes from our concupiscent nature or things around us. Temptation itself is not a sin, it becomes a sin if we consent to it and actually do it or take pleasure in the temptation. Temptations are allowed to make us holier as the conquest of a temptation can lead to greater holiness. It is a form of enduring suffering, so to speak. Temptation can always be resisted and if we call on God’s help, He shall surely provide the graces. If we obey God’s Law, the temptations have no power over us. Several remedies against temptation is watchfulness and prayer, frequent sacraments, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin and our guardian angel.

Man is a creature with body and soul, whose soul is created directly by God in the image and likeness of God. This likeness is that man has an intellect and will just as God has, though there are certainly essential differences between man’s faculties and the Divine Essence. The body of man may have been evolved, but the soul is directly from God. What distinguishes the soul of man from animals are reason and free will, as animals only possess the senses and instinct. The soul and body of man are substantially united. The soul is not located in any particular part of the body but in the entire body wholly.

The soul is immortal, meaning it has a beginning but not an end, it cannot die. As the soul is spiritual, meaning it is immaterial. Things which are immaterial cannot die or perish on their own, it requires an extraordinary act of God removing His sustaining Hand from our souls to make our souls perish. The belief in the immortality of the soul is universal and is of course taught by Sacred Scripture.

The first man and woman are Adam and Eve as recorded in Scripture. For this reason we are one big family. It has been known that all man possess common bodily, intellectual, and emotional characteristics. To Adam and Eve God bestowed sanctifying grace, also known as the spiritual union between the soul and God. God also bestowed other gifts that are happiness, great knowledge, the authority of reason over passions, and the freedom from suffering and death. The garden of Eden may not be literal but instead an expression of what gifts God gave to our first parents. Adam and Eve had obligations to God, that is to acknowledge God as God and themselves as creatures. This is expressed as the tree of knowledge prohibition. If Adam and Eve remained faithful to God, then they would pass into heaven without bodily death. However, Adam and Eve did not remain faithful, and so they lost many gifts, particularly that of sanctifying grace.

 

The body of the first man was created by God according to Scripture. Scripture says that the body was first created from dust, but this might not be literal. It simply shows that God created man and that man is mortal by nature for his material body. The theory of evolution states that complex forms develop from simpler forms of life. However, it is known that this theory is not proven absolutely. There are evidences, but not definitive proof. Furthermore, regardless of the truth of evolution, the Scriptural truths remains unchanged. The human soul comes directly from God, not evolved from matter nor from the soul of parents. There is no definitive answer to the question of how many centuries exist between Adam and Christ, only that there is a connection.

Due to Adam and Eve’s sin, they lost all their gifts and chiefly of sanctifying grace, thus they can no longer reach heaven. It seems that a terrible punishment is rendered for one sin. Yet it is reasonable, as God has bestowed many gifts to man, such that one sin against God is a sin against all the gifts of God. As a consequence of Adam’s sin, we inherit his punishments as original sin, particularly the deprivation of sanctifying grace. This is later restored by Christ through baptism. The chief punishments of original sin is suffering, death, ignorance, and concupiscence. However, there is one person preserved from original sin and that is the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is because she is to become the mother of God Himself.

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