116. However, we must now say how it is possible for an angel to perceive and feel something as his own, and so receive and retain it, when in fact it is not his. For we said above that an angel is not an angel because of anything his own, but because of those qualities which are in him from the Lord.
The fact of the matter is essentially this. Every angel possesses in him freedom and rationality. He has these two faculties in him in order that he may be capable of receiving love and wisdom from the Lord. Still, neither faculty, freedom or rationality, is his, but both are the Lord's in him. Yet because these two faculties are intimately bound up with his life, so intimately that they may be called integral to his life, therefore they appear as powers belonging to him. Because of them he can think and will, and speak and act, and what he thinks, wills, speaks and does by virtue of them appears as something emanating from him. This makes possible the reciprocity necessary for conjunction.
[2] Even so, however, to the extent an angel believes that love and wisdom are inherent in him and so claims them as his own, to the same extent he lacks in him the angelic quality and thus conjunction with the Lord. For he has not arrived at the truth; and because truth is inseparable from the light of heaven, to that extent he cannot be in heaven. Indeed, because of his belief he denies that his life is from the Lord, believing that he lives of himself and consequently that he possesses the Divine essence.
In these two faculties, freedom and rationality, consists the life which we call angelic and human.
[3] From this it can be seen that an angel possesses the ability to reciprocate for the sake of conjunction with the Lord, but that regarded in itself, the ability to do so is not the angel's but the Lord's. So it is that if this ability to reciprocate, which causes the angel to perceive and feel as his what is the Lord's, is abused by him, which he does by making it his, he falls from the angelic state.
That conjunction is reciprocal, the Lord Himself teaches in John 14:20-24, 15:4-6; 1 and that a conjunction of the Lord with a person and of a person with the Lord is achieved in things that are the Lord's, which are called His words, in John 15:7. 2
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1. "At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, "Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?" Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who sent Me." (John 14:20-24)
"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned." (John 15:4-6)
2. "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it will be done for you." (John 15:7)
