When Satan Falls Like Lightning

The Lord Jesus said to his disciples, who were rejoicing at their power over the devil during their just concluded mission trip, that he had seen Satan fall from heaven like lightning.  While Jesus certainly was referring to the driving out of Satan from heaven at the beginning of creation, pious meditation on his words helps us to understand them even more fully. The Italian Benedictine bishop, St. Bruno of Segni (d. 1123) provides the following insights in his commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke:

“Earlier, it was written that the Lord sent the Apostles ‘two by two before him into every city and place where he was about to go’ (Luke 10, 1).  Now they return with joy to the Lord – who knew all that they had done – not that they had done the work, but that he had worked in them.  They rejoiced in the name of Christ, whose power they used well.  They rejoiced over the great harvest the Lord appointed to them.  Not only did they cure the sick, but also they cast out the demons.  They saw that the kings of this world were made subject to them.  They knew that the princes and all wicked rulers were subject to them.  They said to him, Lord, not only diseases and sicknesses, and not only wicked men, but even the demons themselves, were subject to us, from afar and immediately, in your name.  ‘And he said to them: I saw Satan falling from heaven like lightning.  Behold, I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions’ (Luke 10, 18-19).  Now, ‘heaven’, or, ‘the Church’, means ‘the souls of the saints’.  The Lord saw Satan falling from heaven.  He saw Satan fleeing the Church and the souls of the saints.  He had foreseen what the disciples told him, and he confirmed that he knew it.  In another place, he had said: ‘Now is the judgment of the world, now is the prince of this world cast out’ (John 12, 31).  Why would he have come into the world – and taken on flesh – unless he had foreseen this?  This is why the Lord came into the world: to put the devil to flight and to free the souls of men from his evil power.    Even to this day we see Satan ‘falling from heaven’, departing the Church with great fury and rage.  As many times as some shameful person repents, so many times does Satan fall from heaven.”