It’s a great breakthrough to see that “Those who do evil are part of the body of the apostate angel”. That brilliant summing-up by Hugh of St. Victor in the 1100’s, in one simple sentence, still sheds light on problems we face nearly a millennium later.
We often find ourselves saying, of politicians, for instance, “Why can’t so-and-so figure out that his votes are doing so much damage?” We are all so besotted with innocence, which often disguises a lack of courage, that we think people who make mistakes don’t realize that they’re making mistakes. They know exactly what they’re doing, with one exception. They simply can’t see that their choices have precluded the possibility of a joyful eternity in Heaven.
In the great battle that each of us wages for our own soul, we want to take Jesus’s advice to steer clear of the broad pathways to destruction. We combine that Scriptural passage with Hugh of St. Victor’s description by seeing that traveling that broad pathway to destruction may be likened, if Hugh of St. Victor can be expanded upon, to being actually swallowed within the very gullet of the apostate angel. Thus do those who choose evil become part of his body, being sent where they can do the most harm.
After they are thoroughly chewed and digested, they take their place as parts of the body of the apostate angel. When they die, they stay right where they lived, but the tiny pleasures they once had are reversed, and there is naught but wailing and gnashing of teeth remaining for eternity.
We should not relish the thoughts of what awaits them, though it’s hard to avoid.
Instead of rejoicing at the agony they will become,
we may consider trying to pry them away from their pathway to misery. That’s hard to do! And, they hate it! Still, we have the same duty that our predecessors took upon themselves to save the souls of those whose bodies still live among us.
We begin by, thanks to Hugh of St. Victor’s unbelievably brilliant exposition of their dilemma, understanding that they are in the body of the evil one. Every endangered soul is a part of that accursed body. It may still be in the devil’s mouth, being chewed to be more easily absorbed within it after swallowing. It may have been swallowed, and on its way to the next stage, in the belly of the beast. Or, the lost soul may have passed through that, and have been pumped within the mass of internal sewage to take its place as an operating cell within the body of the apostate angel.
Wherever the lost soul is, it is in there, somewhere. And, since that soul is programmed to be reachable as long as it’s in that evil body, we must work to see how to do so. First of all, the soul is immutable. It was programmed to operate in a lesser image of the God Who programmed it. It has an affinity for God that the “spiritual digestion” that takes place from mastication to the acid bath of the apostate angel’s digestion cannot destroy. We know that the soul always has an affinity for God because we know that the lost souls suffer torment, and that the greatest torment comes from knowing that the separation between it and its Creator is permanent.
So, let’s look at one of the most hurtful souls
still in an earthly body, Fidel Castro’s. His soul has embraced such evil that it’s destroyed an entire nation. He has had hundreds of thousands of people murdered, and torments millions every day. Yet, when Pope John Paul II visited Cuba, Fidel appeared at the airport, where the Pope shook his finger at him. If the Pope, himself, admonishes him, that admonishment would be a waste of time if not accompanied by a belief that Fidel’s soul was still salvageable.
Even a lost soul yearns to be saved. Though it may be thoroughly incorporated into the body of the apostate angel, it can still escape. Such a soul knows that if it renounces evil and embraces Christ, its remaining days will, in all likelihood, be accompanied with poverty and pain inflicted by those enraged that it escaped the sure and certain punishment that awaits those too cowardly to break away. That fear tends to keep souls locked in place, so one thing we can ask God to do is to transmit some courage to help the brave soul leave the body of the apostate angel.
