On not falling like lightening

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Today’s gospel (Luke 10:1-12, 17-20) sees Jesus sending out the seventy-two disciples. He gives them many counsels which they should follow as they carry out their ministry and preach the gospel. We dwelt on most of this passage in October 2024 where the theme of the blog concerned the difference between the wolves and the lambs. Today’s passage also includes the return of the disciples and Jesus’ advice about how they should reflect on their recent actions in which they had exercised extraordinary charismatic gifts. The lessons he gives them then are stark and concern us all today:

I saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven

He tells them. The disciples are elated, filled with wonder at the things they have done. They know it has come from Jesus’ power, and yet in that corner of the human mind that is always looking for a glimpse of itself in the minds of others, there is always the danger that their wonder could evolve into vainglory: an egocentric passion that attributes the good done to ourselves, rather than to our maker.

This is the point of Jesus’ recollection, for recollection it is; not a human recollection but a thought from God’s mind, a thought that was there even before Satan used his freewill against his maker: this creature has turned against me and my reign of love.

There is no pain in God, for God no emotions in the sense that we understand them. And yet in these words, do we not hear the pain of Christ, the incarnate God, one who has been sent as redeemer to the human race but who cannot save the fallen angels? It is surely not beyond God’s power to have offered them redemption of course, but the angels as pure spirits knew precisely what they did when they revolted against God. It is only our susceptibility to ignorance and deceit that means our wills are not locked in a state of malicious, self-destructive rebellion.

What is the antidote to this calamitous revolt of Satan? What lesson can the seventy-two draw from it? Jesus offers it to them not in parables but plainly:

Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

In other words, what they accomplish is less important than what they are by God’s choice and election: His children, beloved of the Father, invited to the eternal banquet. Some of us may do great things from a human perspective; others may accomplish little, humanly speaking. Some may know renown; others may be little thought of or dismissed. Little of this matters in an eternal perspective, though it feels so terribly important to us now. 

What matters rather is placing ourselves in the arms of our Saviour who has come to help us carry our burdens, even or especially those we inflict on ourselves, for whose fault was it that we sinned? I return here to a line of Shakespeare oft quoted on this blog:

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;

And He that might the vantage best have took

Found out the remedy.

Rejoice that our names are written in the bosom of the Father; rejoice that before we loved Him, He first loved us. This is our glory: the care, the condescension, the favour and abiding affection of the King.