LACRIMA ETERNA
2024
1.At the cost of shattering the sublime work of Alexander Cabanel, The Fallen Angel, I must only show the two details in which I believe all the theological meaning unfolds. Two details on which I want to move all the attention to resonate that hell is self-inflicted, hell is not suffering imposed but suffering self-imposed: hell is a symbolisation of the divine's absence.
2.The tear is the last glimmer of being divine that, in shedding, leaves behind an eye that can only now betray its hate and rage; once the tear falls, the divine will not find any more place in the fallen angel. The lacrima is the ultimate, irreparable disconnection for and from the divine.
3.Once the tear touches the ground, the decision that has been made finds its own fulfilment. The lacrima, in analogy with the other angels, observing impotent and anguished its fulfilment, makes it also glim of desperation. Because they are observing the consequence of the first sin, the consequences of pride, that is not the punishment of the divine per se but the utmost punishment possible: the self-inflicted exile from the divine.
4,But shall not be fooled; the tear is not of repentance but of regret and feeling humiliated from a fallen angel that, in its majesty, perfection and beauty, is confronted with its own ignorance — a quality alien to a perfect being. Yet intrinsic because it arises from ignoring the divine response to the act of pride and the choice made of arrogance. The fallen angel was the first to sin and, as such, the first to discover and taste its own self-inflicted demise.
5.In that tear is the wounded hubris of a perfect being making a perfect decision and being confronted with a choice's imperfection, ultimately condemning it to be imperfect as excluded from the divine.
6.From the emptying eye, evil is unveiled, taking the place of the divine and, as such, excluding and precluding the possibility of repentance and forgiveness. There is no forgiveness for the fallen angel not because of divine will but because before falling, it was already fallen as a perfect being making a perfect decision, in the immediacy of the divine, to overcome the divine itself — there is the perfect choice of not being forgiven, to be disconnected from the divine, to cry.
7.This is why pride is not only the first sin but the sin of all sins, the genesis of sin, what it is at the base of all other sins, and what it is the generator of it. Hubris is the foundation of any sinful act because perpetrating sin is to damage another being. As such, it is a declaration that the own being is superior — thus superior to the divine in taking a right to oppress others to one's satisfaction.
