Newsletter n. 2/23 – Lucifer, the Beautiful
Jesus says:
N45-50 pp. 132-133 – Italian version
«The primitive name was Lucifer: in the mind of God it meant “standard bearer or bearer of the Light” or rather of God, because God is Light. Second in beauty among all that is, It was pure mirror reflecting the intolerable Beauty. In the missions to men he would have been the executor of God’s will, the messenger of the decrees of goodness that the Creator would have transmitted to his blessed sons without fault, to bring them ever higher in his likeness. The Bearer of Light, with the rays of this divine light which he carried, would have spoken to men, and they, being free of faults, would have understood these flashes of harmonic words all love and joy».
It is the famous passage of the fall of Lucifer who, once his choice was made, became Satan and is defined as: Sacrilege-Atheism-Turpitude-Anticharity-Negation or Superb-Averse-Tempter and Traitor-Greedy-Enemy. The question that many ask themselves in front of the angel who has chosen to become – alas with many others – light-off and dark-eternal, is apparently trivial: why did he make this choice? What benefit did he have? These are followed by many other questions on how, on the consequences for him and for all of creation, on who followed him and why they followed him. But perhaps we never stopped to consider from what height he fell. In other words: who was Lucifer? What privileges did he have? How was he viewed by the other angels? What did God think of him? And the most important: what did God want from him? This passage really suggests the answers about who he was in the beginning.
He was a creature. He was not the Creator, nor a demiurge. He was a creature wholly dependent on God the Creator; its existence depended totally on its Creator. Obviously any attempt at comparison with God is impossible, because their distance is infinite, the difference is immeasurable between him and the One who wanted him, creating him.
But, in the universe of all creatures, Lucifer had been willed second only to his Creator. Words describe the greatness of him. He was God’s masterpiece. He had been made “standard bearer or bearer of the Light”. God had willed him as a bearer of His own light, that is, of Himself, because God is light. Here we must certainly think of Light in an analogical sense, because the full meaning of “God-Light” is impossible to truly penetrate due to the limits of human reason. It remains that Lucifer was “light from Light“ and gave the reflection of that creative Light. His beauty had to be overflowing, enthralling, brimming over.
The role of a “standard bearer“ is described as a “champion of an idea or of a movement, forerunner or major exponent of a doctrine, of an ideology“. Lucifer, being the Standard Bearer of God, referred directly to Him. Whoever saw him, saw God. He reflected the Light of God in that this Light – and the power it emanated – was unbearable for creatures. In other words: he had a dignity, an honor and a glory without measure. By reflecting the Divine Light he somehow illuminated the angels and was an instrument of nourishment for all of them. No creature could compare to him in any of his qualities. All other creatures were less – and much less – than him.
Freely bound to God, he would have had an extraordinary mission towards men: to make them grow in holiness and spiritual beauty before God. Therefore Lucifer would have been master, teacher, pedagogue, companion towards God and transmitter of God’s will to ensure that every being human being more and more like the Creator. If the angels found in him the confirmer of their praise and adoration of God, for men he would have been a guide and companion to Heaven.
God continually created new people, who as such are free, and for this very reason He wanted their free and conscious participation. They had to grow freely in perfect – but chosen – adherence to God’s will (which is never a whim!), according to their own nature. Lucifer therefore held a very great place in the work of God: to educate perfect people, who had to be educated, helped, enlightened on the way indispensable for them to be in the full Joy of the Creator.
Lucifer, as a reverberator of the Divine Light, was something extraordinary for everyone: he participated in some way in the paternity of the Creator towards all rational creatures. This makes us guess something about why so many, too many, are linked to him even in tragedy: he was father-mother-brother of each creature and they all saw in him the type, the model to imitate and follow according to their own nature.
But Lucifer, dazzling beauty and Divine music, bearer of Light, Theophorus more and better than any other, is gone, since he chose to be Night. Eternal and hopeless night. Boundless darkness. Boundless silence without echoes. Noise without any harmony. Immeasurable and unlimited hatred. Emblem of seduction and builder of all evil. Destroyer of anything that lets itself be destroyed. Left to itself and its limits. Unmeasured misery, continuous falsehood and profound agony. Complete, satiated, unchangeable sadness.
May the Mercy of God keep us from any resemblance to him; that the Beautiful True Light attracts and fascinates us away from any possible influence of him.