Tonight is the three month anniversary of my blog’s launch; technically, I started it late at night on the ninth, but I did not really put anything in my first post other than that I was going to start writing. I started writing on the tenth. This is my 83rd post in these past 90 days or so, and it has been much fun for me. One of the main reasons I had not written before was that I was simply too busy with life; that hasn’t changed. In order to write, I just get less sleep. Most of my writing takes place late at night; I try to finish before midnight, but it is usually sometime after when I can actually hit the hay. Since I love it, even though I wish I were doing a much better job of it, it is not difficult to keep going. Thanks to all the people who keep me and my writing in your prayers.
What better readings could there be today for this first Sunday in Lent for my three month anniversary! The first reading talks about the tree of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the Fall itself. I will reprint the whole thing here. I usually use the RSCVE Bible, but of course the Mass readings are using the NAB; it will be interesting to compare the two. It comes from Genesis 2:7-9 & 3:1-7:
The LORD God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being. Then the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and placed there the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God made various trees grow that were delightful to look at and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the LORD God had made. The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman: “You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.” The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
One thing I like about this translation is that the various trees God plants in the garden are delightful to look at and good for food. The word Eden means delight, and the trees planted there are delightful. That makes sense. Part of my theory is that the Garden of Eden is not so much a place as it is the man and woman themselves; the garden refers to them and to their bodies. The trees refer to all of their abilities and powers as humans. God created us good, and how we are created is beautiful. Our bodies are beautiful, and our abilities are beautiful; in an unfallen state, we were perfectly harmonious and in order; we would not die or get sick; our will and intellect and body worked together toward one good common goal; all was well, and all was beautiful. We are still created good and beautiful, yet we are disordered and tend toward the evil; it is a battle to choose the good. It is a battle not to be selfish and not to forget about God. It is a battle not say, My will be done.
The two most important delightful trees, which are in the middle of the garden, are the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. My theory is that the tree of life is the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is our ability to have marital relations and conceive children. Since God had put us on earth but made us for heaven, and since He gave the man and the woman to each other as spouses but made us to be married to Him forever in heaven, He told the man and the woman not to have relations.
He asked them to forgo the greatest of this world’s blessings as a sacrificial test and trial of faith in order be given a child by God directly, virginally, and so also be given the greatest supernatural blessing: complete beatitude and union with God Himself forever in Heaven. We are first and foremost created for heaven, which is to be married to God forever; we are not made for earth or earthly marriage, ultimately; earth and earthly marriage are the pathway we take to prepare us for heaven, where there is no earthly marriage. God still requires this same sort of test for all those who live the priestly or religious life; it is the test of celibacy. And it still takes great trust and love of God to pass this test, but the fruit of a well-passed test is bountiful.
The responsorial psalm is the great penitential psalm David wrote after he acknowledged his sin with Bathsheba; there are a number of parallels between his sin and the Fall, as I see it. Perhaps the most important element of this psalm is David’s request to God to create a clean heart in him. David asks God for a clean heart. Repentance is a matter of the heart. Turning back to God is a matter of the heart. Being faithful and loving God is also a matter of the heart. Life comes through union with God, and in that respect, the faithful heart is the source or conduit of life. The heart is the tree of life.
I will include all of the second reading today from Paul’s Letter to the Romans 5:12-19:
“Brothers and sisters: Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned—for up to the time of the law, sin was in the world, though sin is not accounted when there is no law. But death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin after the pattern of the trespass of Adam, who is the type of the one who was to come. But the gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one, the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many. And the gift is not like the result of the one who sinned. For after one sin there was the judgment that brought condemnation; but the gift, after many transgressions, brought acquittal. For if, by the transgression of the one, death came to reign through that one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. In conclusion, just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act, acquittal and life came to all. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous.”
I think Paul’s argument here is relatively simple. He is saying that through one man, Adam, sin and death entered the world. He was disobedient, sinned, and brought death upon his family, the human race. The implication is that all his children and their children, the sons of Adam or the sons of man, are born dead to God, born without sanctifying grace. In Adam, all sinned, all were condemned, and all died. The one man brought disobedience and death upon everyone. Adam is a type, as in typology or image, of Christ, yet Christ undoes what Adam destroyed. The one man, Jesus Christ, was obedient, and so He brings grace, acquittal, justification, righteousness and life to the many. The one man, the Son of Man, enables us, sinners, to have life again and have our relationship with God renewed.
How is original sin passed on? It passes on through human generation; each child born is born in the state of original sin. This is no personal sin on the part of the baby; it is a state of being not born with sanctifying grace in our souls. Without sanctifying grace, which is the very life of God, we are born dead to God. We need to be born again. That is the state of things Adam left us in by his one act of disobedience.
How do we go from being sons of men to being sons of God? How do we become children of God and born alive to Him? We need to be born again, born from above, born of God in the sacrament of Baptism. Baptism is being really, spiritually united to Jesus, specifically His passion, death and resurrection so that we can die, be set free from our old master, sin, and be born again to be married to our new spouse, Jesus (see Romans 7:1ff). As Adam gives birth to spiritually dead babies through natural generation, so Jesus gives birth to children alive in God through His death and resurrection, which we truly share in through the sacrament of Baptism.
One of my main points here is that both Adam and Jesus beget children; the first through disobedience because of the fear of death and trying to save his own life, begets dead children, and the other through obedience and going through the worst possible death, makes the dead into a new creation and alive to God. Each of these singular men, through their one act, beget children: the first begets children who are dead, and the second begets those dead children to new life in Him.
Lastly, we have the gospel which today comes from Matthew 4:1-11, and it depicts the temptation of Christ by Satan after Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert. Jesus was hungry; I think we can assume that He was most hungry; physically, I do not know how much longer one could possibly fast and still live. It would be difficult to be hungrier than Jesus was when Satan approached Jesus and told Him to turn stones into bread. Then Satan told Jesus to throw Himself down from the temple because, as the Bible says, God gives His angels to watch us to keep us from getting hurt. Lastly, Satan tempts Jesus by saying that he would give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would simply lay flat on the ground and worship him.
As the New Adam, I would assume that Jesus’ temptation would have some similarities to the temptation Adam underwent. My theory is that God commanded Adam not to have relations with his wife. Barrenness was death for the Jews, and wanting to be like God who creates, the man and the woman, fearing the death of not having children, disobeyed God to obey God’s other command to be fruitful and multiply. Abraham and Sarah, after God promised them a son, waited twenty-five years, from the time he was 75 until he was 100, before God actually sent that promised son, Isaac. They were hungry for a son; they were so hungry that Abraham had a son through Sarah’s maid in an attempt to fulfill God’s promise.
How long did the man and the woman wait to have a child? It could have been a very long time. It could have been very short, or it could have been decades or even centuries. We don’t know. I speculate that it was a long time and that they were extremely hungry for a child, to be creative like God and fulfill God’s command to be fruitful. And Satan hit them were they were most weak. Jesus was hungry for bread, so Satan proposes that He make bread from stones. The man and the woman were hungry for a baby, so Satan proposes that they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to have one. And they do, and they name him “gotten,” which is Cain.
When you purposely throw yourself down from a great height to test God and make Him protect you against your own stupidity, you of course sin, and obviously you will get critically hurt. You will probably die. This is similar to what Adam did. Adam was created without sin and unaffected by death and sickness; he had a great dignity and was the very first human created. He took all that dignity, all that height, and threw it down by his sin. He disobeyed God’s singular prohibition; that is as smart as jumping off a cliff, and it has the same consequence—death. He, the father of the human family, becomes the father of death by his stupid sin. One other thing, Adam was made as a temple of God, and by his sin he threw himself down from such a dignity as temple of God; he was made from dirt, but he was made to be God's temple; he forsook being God's temple and choose to be dirt.
Lastly, Jesus was offered all the kingdoms of the world if He prostrated Himself before Satan. This, too, has parallels to what Adam did, according to my theory. If the Fall was having relations with his wife, the woman, then they both would have been prostrate on the ground, as it were. They did it through the wisdom of the serpent, and by trusting in him, they were choosing to worship him instead of God. That, then, covers the falling prostrate and worshipping Satan. What about the having the kingdoms of the world? What are kingdoms made up of? People. If there are no people, there certainly are no kingdoms. There wouldn’t even be a state, city, town, village or hamlet. Adam, hungry for a child, could have also been promised as part of his temptation to be the father of all the people of the earth. By his trust of and obedience to the wisdom of the serpent, if my theory is correct, Adam did become the father of all the earth and in that manner possess all the kingdoms of the earth. Everyone on the earth is a son of Adam, a son of man. So the Son of Man came to undo what Adam had done, making the sons of men into sons of God.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
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