The first and chief punishment of the fallen angels in hell is the pain of loss, the deprivation of God and of all that holds from Him, i.e. of all good.
1. They have lost the Beatific Vision, the sight of God in all His love and His beauty.
2. They have lost their position of dignity and the company of the blessed.
3. Also such supernatural advantages as they had before the trial, including faith, hope and charity.
4. Although they retain their natural faculties and powers, yet they have lost the natural happiness which springs from employing these in the natural apprehension and service of God; for God is the only object which can satisfy even the natural faculties and elicit all their activity, and He has been utterly rejected and lost. Thus are these perverted beings deprived by their own choice of every advantage but bare existence and the faculties that belong to their nature. Consider what it is to lose at once all that is good, and forever. What a multitude of things you require to make life happy or even endurable: the angels require much more on account of their greater activities and capacities. Think what it is to lose but one of the minor gifts of God, a sense or bodily liberty or health, wife or child, fortune, good-name or employment. Such a loss often makes life unendurable, makes all other goods worthless, drives men to desperation. What will it be to lose everything. Continue Reading.
