Memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus, Bishops
“If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him” (Mark 3:26). Note that this teaching of our Lord starts with an “if.” It is a conditional statement of the form “if A then B.” Protasis and apodosis. Nowhere does the text affirm whether A is the case or B is the case. So, has Satan risen up against himself? Is he divided? Is this the end of him?
Yes. Evil is the privation of a due good. Whenever a creature lacks something it really ought to have, there is evil. Thus, a child should have the gift of sight, but if it lacks that good gift, it is blind, and blindness is evil. Blindness cannot exist, except in a creature that should be able to see, and that creature, in this case a child, is good, no matter how much it suffers from the evil of blindness. Evil therefore is divided.
Satan is divided, too. He exists as a creature, and his existence, as existence, is good, but because Satan denies God, he likewise denies existence itself (which is God), and, therefore, he denies his own existence which is the same as denying himself. Therefore, in rising up against God, Satan has risen up against himself. He is divided. This is the end for him.
We human beings, in our fallen state, are marked by original sin and by personal sin. We are also divided. You might say we are shattered like Humpty Dumpty. This would be the end for us, too, unless there exists a being more powerful than all the kings horses and all the kings men, more powerful than Satan himself, strong enough to tie him up and “plunder his house” (Mark 3:27).