[maryz]

that He put them to the test, although we are not sure which test

I seem to remember something from high school -- not doctrine, I don't think, but maybe educated speculation(?) -- that the idea of the Incarnation itself was the test. And I guess that, too, was a "hard saying" that not all the angels could accept.

[fr maximilian mary]

Of interest on this point is Colossians 1:20. It is noteworthy that the Greek word apokatallaxai, usually translated as “reconciled,” actually means ‘leading to unity in the same goal’. Thus Colossians 1:19-20 might be translated more accurately into English as follows: “For it has pleased God the Father that in Him all His fullness should dwell, and that He should lead all things to unity in Christ, whether on the earth or in the heavens, making peace through the blood of His Cross.” (Col. 1:19-20). Thus God willed it before He began creating out of nothing—that all things be unified and centered in Jesus. It comes as no surprise, then, that the Franciscan school affirms that the test of the angels was centered on the mystery of the Incarnation. Shown a vision of the Virgin with the Divine Child, those angels who accepted Jesus and Mary as their King and Queen are the blessed angels and those who refused the reign of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary are the cursed demons who say, “non serviam”—“I will not serve.”

Thus the evil one in Genesis 3 goes after the first woman, Eve, because he had been shown a vision of the Woman with Child and was immediately searching for her—“Is this the predestined Virgin? Let us tempt her! Let us ruin God’s plan and make ourself the center of creation! Let us entice her to ‘be as gods’ (Gen. 3:5) apart from Christ!” The serpent allured her and she disobeyed God’s plan which was that we might receive of the “fullness of the Godhead” (cf. Eph. 3:19; Col. 2:8-10; Jn. 1:16) and become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pt. 1:4) and “sons of God” (cf. Jn. 1:12-13) through the Incarnation.

Interestingly, when Jesus Christ walks this earth the demons recognize Him. “I know who Thou art, the Holy One of God,” says one demon (Mk. 1:24). Another “legion” of demons cry out from two possessed men in the country of the Gerasenes, “What have we to do with Thee, Son of God? Hast Thou come here to torment us before the time?” (Mt. 8:29). And the demons fear that He has come to destroy them (cf. Mk. 1:24; Lk. 5:34). Their recognition of the Incarnate Word and their fear of torment and destruction in His presence indicate that they have foreknowledge of Him and that their damnation and torture is to be subject to the God-Man and His Immaculate Mother whom they eternally rejected before the visible world was even created.