St. Michael's Lent 2026 - Reading #27 - Lineage
Reading
Why are the good angels blessed — and the bad miserable? Augustine’s answer is a single fork.
"Thus the true cause of the blessedness of the good angels is found to be this, that they cleave to Him who supremely is. And if we ask the cause of the misery of the bad, it occurs to us, and not unreasonably, that they are miserable because they have forsaken Him who supremely is, and have turned to themselves who have no such essence. And this vice, what else is it called than pride? For 'pride is the beginning of sin.'"
Cleave to God, or prefer yourself: that is the first impoverishment of any nature.
He goes on, "They were unwilling, then, to preserve their strength for God; and as adherence to God was the condition of their enjoying an ampler being, they diminished it by preferring themselves to Him. This was the first defect, and the first impoverishment, and the first flaw of their nature, which was created, not indeed supremely existent, but finding its blessedness in the enjoyment of the Supreme Being; whilst by abandoning Him it should become, not indeed no nature at all, but a nature with a less ample existence, and therefore wretched."
Pride thins the line.
Reflection
Mark what this destroys: every alibi. Evil is not a substance that infects you, a force with its own army, a circumstance that compels you. It is a direction — a will curving from the greater to the lesser — and the curve is always, finally, chosen. On the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Church shows us the exact opposite motion: a will that never once turned from God, standing at the foot of the Cross, pierced and unbent.
For a father this is a double-edged clarity. It ends your excuses — the temper, the resentment, the habit: no one and nothing made your will consent; that door is locked from inside.
And it grounds your hope for your children: no wound, no culture, no failure of yours can force their wills toward darkness either. Cleave, and teach cleaving. The whole war is fought at that hinge.