"When You Lift Up the Son of Man"

In the first reading today from Numbers 21:4-9 there is the story of the Israelites complaining in the desert about their lack of food and water and accusing God that He brought them into the desert to kill them. God was taking care of them but not in the way that they wanted; their patience was worn out, and they called God a murderer, essentially. They accused God of being Satan. God responds by sending them seraph serpents to bite and kill them.

Since they called God Satan, He showed them what Satan would do to them. In the Garden of Eden, Satan came as a serpent and as the murderer of the human race; God sends images of the evil one to do what he does, and so they are bit and many die. The antidote to these venomous snakes is to look on a bronze serpent mounted on a pole. When they look at an image of what they called God and so repent of what they had done, they are healed.

In the gospel from John 8:21-30, Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and says to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always to what is pleasing to him” (8:28-29). The communion antiphon comes from John 12:32: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself, says the Lord.”

Jesus is the fulfillment of the bronze serpent mounted on a pole that brought healing. Jesus’ skin was most likely bronze in color, and He was mounted on a tree for the healing of the nations. How does the bronze serpent help us to understand what Jesus did? The Israelites were hungry, thirsty, tired, bored and fed-up with all the ceaseless wandering in the desert. They accused God of seeking their destruction, and in so doing, they were essentially calling Him Satan.

In John 8:25 when the Pharisees asked Jesus who He was, He responded saying, “What I told you from the beginning.” The words “serpent” and “beginning” bring us back to the beginning of the Bible to Genesis 1-3. According to my theory, the man and the woman were hungry and thirsty for a child, the child God implicitly promised when He said to be fruitful and multiply. Since He commanded them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, i.e. not have sexual relations, they were in a metaphorical lifeless desert. They got fed up waiting for the promised child, much like Abraham and Sarah did with Isaac, and they listened and obeyed the voice of the serpent who promised them life. He promised them that they would be like God; they primarily knew God to be the Creator and giver of life, and so they, too, wanted to be like Him and give life by making a man.

By looking at the bronze serpent the Israelites could see what they had called God. What can you and I see when we look upon our crucified Lord? On the one hand, we can see that the man and the woman and you and I rely upon our own strength for our life instead of trusting in God. The man and the woman were tested to trust in God for their life and fruitfulness, but they chose to utilize the strength of their bodies, contrary to God’s singular command, in order to give life and have a baby. They were saying that it was by their bodies that they would have and give life. Looking at Jesus on the crucifix, we know that they who loose their life are given life, and they who let their bodies die who will rise again.

The man and the woman did not trust God’s command and did not believe that He would take care of them in their desert. They did not believe that He had their best interest at heart. It made no sense to them that they should be fruitful and multiply and yet not have sexual relations, so God must be playing a cruel trick on them and He was not to be trusted. The serpent was trustworthy, they thought, and by clinging to life and utilizing the generative powers of their bodies they would have life.

Jesus’ crucified body on the tree signals that it is in trusting God to the point of death that one has life. He gave birth to the Church when His heart was pierced and blood and water flowed out just like at a birth, and so He shows that life and birth come primarily through a circumcised and trusting heart. The heart, i.e. the tree of life, is that through which we trust in God and so have life.

In the passage quoted above Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man.” He does not say the Son of God but the Son of Man. Jesus is the Son of Man, i.e. the Son of Adam. Because of the man’s faithless, uncircumcised heart of stone, all humanity fell, and the actual result of the act which was the Fall was Cain. We are all sons of man, but we are made to be sons of God; that is why the Son of God became a Son of Man. On the crucifix we also see the Son of Man; we see the humanity that was the result of Adam’s sin (not that Jesus had original sin).

Gazing on the crucifix and meditating on the Passion of Our Lord, we learn to what extent God goes to redeem us. We see His boundless love. We learn that it is not by our strength that we have life but by obedience to every word which comes from God. We learn that it is the loving, trusting and obedient heart that is the tree of life. We learn that we need to get rid of our old faithless heart given to us by Adam, and that we need the new heart of Jesus which we receive when we are baptized into Jesus’ death and every time we receive Him in Holy Communion. We learn that God provides to the one who puts his trust in Him as we wander throughout this desert. The crucifix and the Passion are the antidote to everything, to every sin which ails us; the crucified and risen heart of Jesus which we receive in the Eucharist is the tree of life, our new trusting heart, and the healing for the nations from the bite of the serpent. With Jesus' heart within us, we can say with Him: "I always do what is pleasing to Him."

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Why The Trees Aren't Reversed

I received a comment containing a question from 2.29.08. Here is the question: "I am not familiar with your theory (although I'd like to be) but I'm curious to know why the trees' representations aren't reversed -- The tree of life being our power and ability to conceive children and the tree of knowledge being the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God."

God put us on this earth, but He made us for heaven. We spend a very short time here on earth; it is but a brief stop on the journey to our true and everlasting homeland. We have eternal life only through our love, trust and obedience of God; we begin our eternal life here on earth by our union with Him; if we don't, then there is no eternal life in heaven for us when we die. Life, in the fullest sense of the word, is only given to us insofar as we are united to God, and our unity with God only happens via a heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. The heart is the channel through which we receive God's life. God's life is the life of our soul, and we have nothing, we are nothing, we have no life if we don't have God dwelling within us.

Having children is a wonderful reality and a marvelous gift from God. Raising children is one of the best God-given ways that He shows us and provides the arena for us to learn how to love, to learn how to be a self-sacrificing lover. One of the best adult educations is raising children; I remember Scott Hahn having a plaque in his office saying: "The best adult education--children." As much a blessing as having children is, it is not what gives us supernatural or everlasting life. The children we do have need to be born again in baptism for they are born spiritually dead without sanctifying grace. What really matters in the end is God's life in our soul, and that life only comes from the tree of life: the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. Marriage and children are a God-given calling to lead us and help us on our way to heaven, but there is no help in them if our heart is separated from God.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is our ability to have children because this is what served as the test of faith that God established for our first parents. Why it is given this name I haven't fully digested yet. I think there are a number of viable possibilities for why it has this name. For now, I am not going to get into this question.

Mary fulfilled the test of faith that the woman (after the Fall named Eve, mother) failed. Mary ate fully of her tree of life and trusted in God when it did not make sense. I have discussed Mary's test in a few other places. Because she ate of her tree of life, God provided her with a Son. He is no ordinary son, and God also gives all humanity to Mary as her children. Mary trusted God to provide her with children virginally, and God made her the greatest mother of all time. So Mary did have children through her tree of life, but only after she passed her crucifixion of her greatest earthly desire. Mary does not rely on her own abilities to provide life; rather, she trusts wholly in God, and He satisfies her greatest desires and infinitely more so. God is such a good God who wants us to be fully alive and our deepest desires abundantly fulfilled to overflowing. If we place ourselves entirely in His hands, we will be blessed beyond measure.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Hosea 14: "From Me Comes Your Fruit"

The last chapter of the Book of the Prophet Hosea, the first reading for Mass today, is one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Hosea, under God’s direction, marries a harlot named Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim. God had said to Hosea, “Go again, love a woman who is beloved of a paramour and is an adulteress; even as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods” (Hosea 3:1). Hosea is to do what God does: love an unfaithful wife. Each of us sins, and so we are an unfaithful wife to God, but that does not extinguish God’s love for us. God hates our sin and calls us back to Himself; when we turn back to Him through God’s unrelenting tenacity, “in that day, says the Lord, you will call me, ‘My husband’ ” (Hosea 2:16).

The final chapter of this amazing book of the Bible goes like this:

Thus says the LORD: return, O Israel, to the LORD, your God; you have collapsed through your guilt. Take with you words, and return to the LORD; say to him, “Forgive all iniquity, and receive what is good, that we may render as offerings the bullocks from our stalls. Assyria will not save us, nor shall we have horses to mount; we shall say no more, ‘Our god,’ to the work of our hands; for in you the orphan finds compassion.” I will heal their defection, says the LORD, I will love them freely; for my wrath is turned away from them. I will be like the dew for Israel: he shall blossom like the lily; he shall strike root like the Lebanon cedar, and put forth his shoots. His splendor shall be like the olive tree and his fragrance like the Lebanon cedar. Again they shall dwell in his shade and raise grain; they shall blossom like the vine, and his fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim! What more has he to do with idols? I have humbled him, but I will prosper him. “I am like a verdant cypress tree”– because of me you bear fruit! Let him who is wise understand these things; let him who is prudent know them. Straight are the paths of the LORD, in them the just walk, but sinners stumble in them (Hosea 14:2-10).

And so the words of the prophet come to an end. If we understand what he is saying here, according to him, we will have wisdom. What is that wisdom? It is primarily this: “I am like a verdant cypress tree—because of me you bear fruit!” The RSVCE states it as such: “I am like an evergreen cypress, from me comes your fruit.” God is merciful and forgiving, and He will forgive and heal us if we are humble and turn to Him. We will be destroyed if we persist in our disobedience and separation from Him. Turning to Him and giving ourselves entirely into His hands, we will become like a lily, an olive tree, a Lebanon cedar, a blossoming vine, and the wine of Lebanon, God is like a tree who is always green, and from Him comes our fruit.

God makes us fruitful. We bear fruit through God’s power and grace. This is true on at least two levels. On the one hand, God is the one who provides children, and on the other hand, He is also the one who gives us the grace to do anything good that we do. Bearing babies is one way we bear fruit, and the other way we bear fruit is through all the good that we do. Both are fruit, and they were symbolized by the two trees in the Garden of Eden: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life symbolizes the heart which loves, trusts and obeys God; therefore, it is the tree which always does the good, and so it is united to God, the source of all life. The tree of knowledge of good and evil, according to my theory, is our power and ability to conceive children.

What we need to learn is, and where wisdom is found is in this passage here: God provides. He makes us fruitful. He is the source of life and children, and He is the source of goodness and every good action. In the Blessed Virgin Mary, these two forms of providing fruit are fulfilled. God makes Mary filled with His life and a plenitude of virtue and trust in Him; that trust in God within her heart is rewarded with the most exalted reality: God gave Mary His own Son to conceive, bear, and raise as her own Son. God provides life and virtue, and He provides His very own Son to be Mary’s Son.

What that means for you and me is that, on the one hand, we need to realize that anything good that we have ever, are doing, or will ever do is because God has given us the grace to do so. On the other hand, we need to realize that children are a gift from Him, and they are not to be shunned as a burden or sought after regardless of the means (i.e. in vitro fertilization) as if we had a right to them. We are to welcome and thank God for our gifts, both our virtues and our children.

God is Father. One of the primary roles of a father is to provide for his children. Unless we become like children, we cannot enter the kingdom of God because children are totally dependant upon their parents. God wants us to be totally dependant upon Him and upon His provision for us. This does not mean that He wants us to be childish or big babies. Parents don’t want their children to be helpless, hopeless, childish brats. We need to be strong and mature, all the while knowing that our strength and life and love come from Him. He wants us to trust Him, to cling to Him, to rely on Him for everything, to call Him “Father,” or “Abba” or “Dad.”

The danger of being “rich” in any way whether it is regarding money or fame, intelligence or abilities, beauty or health, family or friends, the danger of riches is that we tend to forget that we need God and that every good that we have is His gift. We are like the fickle, self-absorbed friend who only calls when he needs something; we tend to only remember Him when we are in trouble and we need something from God. No one likes to be treated like a sugar daddy or a slot machine or a fast food restaurant or a spa or an amusement park or an ATM machine or a witch doctor. God doesn’t let Himself be used like that for He isn’t an object for our use. He is a person (three to be exact), and He wants to be in the most intimate relationship with us; He is meant to be our husband, and so He is jealous for our love. He is the very best of husbands, and only in giving ourselves totally to Him are we truly happy and satisfied. Nothing else quenches the infinite longings of our soul because that is how He fashioned us. As Saint Augustine said, “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Each of Us is the Woman at the Well

I have been meditating on John 4 the past several days. At the beginning of this chapter, Jesus is passing through Samaria on His way to Galilee when He stops to rest at the city’s well about noon. A woman comes there to get some water, and Jesus, being thirsty, asks her for a drink. She is stupefied by the fact that a Jewish man is talking with her, and He replies, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10).

Wells in the Old Testament were the places that the patriarchs often met the woman they would marry, so there is a marital undertone throughout this passage by the well of Jacob. The Samaritans were some of the most hated people to the Jews since they were the unfaithful remnant of the ten northern tribes of Israel after they had been mostly wiped out by Assyria in 722 B.C. and partially repopulated with foreigners. Samaria, for the most part, was what was left of Israel while the Jews remained strong down south in Judea. The Jews and Samaritans simply didn’t talk to one another if they could help it.

So here was Jesus, a Jew, talking to a Samaritan and a woman at that. She could not believe it. Jesus tells her that if she knew that she was speaking to God, and if she knew the good gifts God wants to give, she would ask Him to give her living water. She asks Him how He is going to get the water, and He responds, “…whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Jesus doesn’t answer her question, but He further clarifies the water He is talking about: the living water that He gives becomes in the one who receives it a spring of water which leads to eternal life.

The conversation moves toward the woman’s husband; she currently has no husband. She has had five, and the one she is with now, she has not married. This has a double meaning since the Samaritans had had five rulers, or husbands, too. Both the woman and the Samaritans were looking for ultimate, lasting happiness in their husbands, but they had not found it. Now Jesus, True Husband of Souls, meets her at the place of meeting a spouse, and offers to give her His life which we call grace and which is symbolized by living water.

His disciples come back from going to buy food and are amazed that Jesus is talking to this woman. The woman left her water jar to go and tell other Samaritans that she had found the Christ. “Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying, ‘Rabbi, eat.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat of which you do not know.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Has any one brought him food?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work’ ” (John 4:31-34).

This is the passage I want to look at most closely. When Jesus says to His disciples, “I have food to eat of which you do not know,” He is making a linguistic reference back to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. Jesus has food to eat of which they do not know, and in a similar manner, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not to be eaten: in both instances, there is food and not knowing or not eating. Jesus refers to the tree of life when He says, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.” The tree of life is the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God; in other words, it is to do the will of God and accomplish the task given by Him.

The Samaritan woman at the well, unfaithful and sinful, symbolizes every one of us. Even though we are unworthy, Jesus is thirsty and seeks us out. He thirsts for our love, and asks us for a drink; He asks us: “Will you marry me?” On our own, we have nothing to give Him, but we can ask Him, and He will pour out His life into our hearts, making them springs of living water. In the middle of each day as we go about our mundane tasks, Jesus asks us if we will satisfy His thirst. We do so when we give our entire self to Him in love and trust and do what He commands, even and especially in the little ways.

Jesus seeks to be our husband and to give us the gift of God, which is God’s very life. To receive this most awesome gift, we have to ask for it just as the Samaritan woman did. Jesus is eager to give His life to us if we ask Him for it; He does not force His life upon us. When we receive His life in our souls, it becomes a spring of living water and leads us to eternal life.

A while later, Jesus went back to Jerusalem for the feast of Tabernacles and said the same thing that He had said to the woman at the well. “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, ‘If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’ ’ ” (John 7: 37-38). When we love, trust, and obey God, our heart becomes a tree of life which flows with living water and bears fruit ever month of the year.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Temptation of Christ was the Temptation of Adam

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.
All rights reserved.rom

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple

It is late at night, so it is Sunday now; however, it still feels like today, Saturday, and not tomorrow, Sunday, because I am still awake. All day I’ve wanted to write about the feast of Saturday: the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. For a good while, I’ve suspected there is some connection of my theory with the need to present one’s children in the temple and redeem them. Why does one need to present and redeem one’s newly-born child?

The first instance of this mentioned in the Bible comes from Exodus 13:11-16, right after the Passover and the Exodus, which states: “And when the LORD brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your fathers, and shall give it to you, you shall set apart to the LORD all that first opens the womb. All the firstlings of your cattle that are males shall be the LORD’s. Every firstling of an ass you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every first-born of man among your sons you shall redeem. And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘By strength of hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of bondage. For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the LORD slew all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both the first-born of man and the first-born of cattle. Therefore I sacrifice to the LORD all the males that first open the womb; but all the first-born of my sons I redeem.’ It shall be as a mark on your hand or frontlets between your eyes; for by a strong hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt.”

All first-born male cattle are sacrificed to God; a first-born ass can be redeemed with the sacrifice of a lamb instead or it can be sacrificed itself; all first-born sons need to be redeemed. It does not say how our sons are to be redeemed here; we will find that out in a later passage. God passed over all Israel’s first born in Egypt as He set them free, so now they need to sacrifice or redeem all the first-born.

A woman needs to be purified after she gives birth; she needs to wait forty days for having a boy and eighty days for having a girl. The presentation of a baby in the temple is also about the woman being purified after birth. Here we find out with what a child is redeemed. “And when the days of her purifying are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the door of the tent of meeting a lamb a year old for a burnt offering, and a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering, and he shall offer it before the LORD, and make atonement for her; then she shall be clean from the flow of her blood. This is the law for her who bears a child, either male or female. And if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she shall be clean” (Leviticus 12: 6-8).

A baby was to be redeemed with the sacrifice of a lamb as a burnt offering. A young pigeon or a turtledove was also sacrificed for a sin offering. The poor do not need to sacrifice a lamb; rather, they are allowed to bring a pair of turtledoves or pigeons for both of these sacrifices—the burnt offering and the sin offering.

We also find out that man’s redemption price is five shekels of silver. “Everything that opens the womb of all flesh, whether man or beast, which they offer to the LORD, shall be yours; nevertheless the first-born of man you shall redeem, and the firstling of unclean beasts you shall redeem. And their redemption price (at a month old you shall redeem them) you shall fix at five shekels in silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, which is twenty gerahs” (Numbers 18: 15-16).

So here is what I am thinking right now about all of this:

My theory is: The man and the woman in the Garden of Eden sought after a child of their own, they wanted to be creative like God and make a man, and so they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is they had relations, and they conceived and had Cain. Since they had children in a manner contrary to God’s command, the children they bore were children of men, not children of God, so they were born without God’s life in them, which we call sanctifying grace, and their passions were disordered, which we call original sin.

Abraham is given a similar test as the man and the woman, and after ten years of waiting for his promised son, Abraham sins and has relations with Hagar, his wife’s servant. Twenty-five years later, they finally give birth to their own son, Isaac. Since they never really passed the test, God tested Abraham again and told him to sacrifice Isaac. As Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac, God stops him, and Isaac is passed over for the ram caught by the horns of its head in a thorn bush.

Because of Abraham and Isaac’s faithfulness, God swears by Himself to make his descendants a blessing to all nations. It was because of this covenant God makes here that about five hundred years later the Israelites are redeemed and set free from Egypt. The first and foundational Passover was Isaac, and the second was the Passover of all the first-born from Egypt. Because of God’s redeeming work of freeing Israel from Egypt, for all their descendants afterward they need to present and redeem all children shortly after they are born.

Due to the fear of death, the fear of not having children, sin entered the world. The second reading for the Presentation is from Hebrews 2: 14-18. “Since the children share in blood and flesh, Jesus likewise shared in them, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the Devil, and free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life” (2: 14-15). It was the fear of death that led humanity into slavery; it is Jesus’ death which destroys this fear and power of death.

Jesus destroys the power of death by dying on the cross; we participate in His death by our baptism since by baptism we die with Christ and are raised up with Him in His resurrection. In the Old Covenant, children had to be redeemed shortly after birth; in the New Covenant, children are redeemed shortly after birth in baptism. Now instead of redeeming our children with the sacrifice of a lamb or a pigeon or turtledove, our kids are redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb. This turns our sons of men into children of God, and the original problem from the beginning is fixed. The specific antidote to the Fall is found first of all in Jesus’ crucifixion, death and resurrection and secondly in our participation in those saving deeds most notably through baptism and Holy Eucharist.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Barrenness is Death

The first reading of the first weekday of Ordinary Time comes from the first verses of the first Book of Samuel. The book starts with the mother of the great priest and prophet, Samuel, in great distress. She is unable to have children, and there is precious little that matters to Hannah if she cannot give birth to a child. Hannah is one of two wives to her husband, and “Her rival, to upset her, turned it into a constant reproach to her that the LORD had left her barren. This went on year after year; each time they made their pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the LORD, Peninnah would approach her, and Hannah would weep and refuse to eat” (1 Samuel 1:6). The other wife, Peninnah, rubbed it in that Hannah could not have a baby.

One point here is that children are considered a blessing in the Bible. In today’s world and culture, which is a culture of death, children are often considered a curse. This is the exact opposite of the mindset of the Bible. Children are always a blessing and gift from God, even if the manner by which they came about was evil or the timing of their arrival does not fit into our schedule.

The other side of children being a blessing is that, in the Old Testament, being barren is considered a curse. Barrenness is tantamount to death. Not passing on life, not having children, is to die and leave none of your life (children) behind. It is death. Virginity was not esteemed, and the inability to have children was a curse and reproach. There was little worse for a woman than to not have children.

Why do I make this point? I think it ties in with my main theory. The first man and woman feared death, and that is why thy sinned. The death they feared was not so much their own physical death, but it was their fear of not having a child. Not trusting in God and seeking to gain their life, to get a child, they disobeyed God and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, they had relations and conceived Cain, meaning “gotten.” They got the life they were seeking, and he turned out to be death.

It is the fear of death which leads to a life of bondage; Jesus took on our human nature so “that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Hebrews 2:14-15). Life comes via the tree of life; the tree of life is our heart, and insofar as we trust, love and obey God, we have life. Barrenness is, in many respects, death, and God does want us to be fruitful and full of life. However, the point is that, ultimately, life comes as a gift from God, not from ourselves or our abilities. We have to love and trust Him for that life; the fear of death keeps us separated from Him. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Guardian Angel: Protector of the Heart

In an earlier entry I talked about how the Garden of Eden actually refers to the man and the woman, for they are God’s garden of delight (which is what eden means). God gives us many gifts and abilities, but He gives us two in particular; He refers to these abilities as trees: one is the tree of life, and the other is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life is the heart, and it is symbolized by the river that separates into four rivers.

The tree of life is the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. The tree of life is the tree of life because when we love, trust and obey God, we have life. After the Fall, God sends an angel to protect the tree of life. I state that the angel is not given to keep us from the tree of life but to keep our hearts protected from disobedience and doubt. The woman was made from the man’s rib, and so she was made to encourage the man to stay faithful to God. She did the exact opposite of what she was made for, and the result is the “death” of humanity. Now we need a helper more than ever in our weakened state, and so God sends us each our own guardian angel. Genesis 3:24 which states, “at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life,” relates the giving of the guardian angel to protect our heart and keep us faithful.

That is how I understand that passage. Not long ago, I was reading Saint Josemaria Escriva’s book, The Forge, when I came upon entry 412:
“Custody of the heart. That priest used to pray: ‘Jesus, may my poor heart be an enclosed garden; may my poor heart be a paradise where you live; may my Guardian Angel watch over it with a sword of fire and use it to purify every affection before it comes into me. Jesus, with the divine seal of your Cross, seal my poor heart’.”

Many of the same elements of what I think about Genesis 3:24 are present in this paragraph. The founder of Opus Dei does not call the heart a tree here, but he does call it a garden and a paradise which is guarded by our Guardian Angel with a sword of fire. The center of our garden is our heart; the temple’s center was the holy of holies: the temple is a symbol of our body, and the holy of holies is a symbol of our heart. What are gardens for but to bear good fruit, and what are temples for but to worship God? We bear good fruit when our gardens and temples are protected from scavengers on the one side, and when it consists of good dirt which gets healthy amounts of water and sun on the other. We have to keep away from sin, be steeped in humility, drink deeply of God’s grace, and bask in the warmth of his divine love, seen most clearly in Mass and Eucharistic Adoration.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Quest for a Baby Part Three

God promised Abraham a child when he was seventy-five but did not give him a son until he was 100. When Abraham was eighty-five he listened to the voice of his wife who encouraged him to have relations with her maid. Ishmael was the result. Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian maid, was the mother. Abraham does indeed have a son, but this is not the son that God had promised. This is the son that Abraham gets by his own efforts and contrary to the plan God had: to give him a baby through his wife.

This is a re-enactment of the original baby quest with Adam and Eve. They wanted a child and to fulfill God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, but God told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which is not to have marital relations. Adam listened to the voice of his wife, and viola, Cain was conceived. They realize they were naked, and the woman’s pain in bearing children is increased. The man’s ability to plant good things in the ground is diminished for he just planted his seed (semen) into the ground (his wife), and it brought forth a thorn and thistle: Cain.

Ishmael was conceived when Abraham was eighty-five, and he was born when Abraham was eighty-six. Thirteen years later, God talks with Abraham and once again promises to make him and his wife the parents of child which will lead to a vast multitude of generations to follow. God makes a new covenant with him and requires for the first time that all the males be circumcised. All newborns will be circumcised at eight days old, and anyone who wants to be a part of the family of God will need to be circumcised before he is considered so.

Then, God again promises to give a baby to Abraham and his wife. “Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’ And Abraham said to God, ‘O that Ishmael might live in thy sight!’” (Genesis 17:17-18). Abraham still wants God to fulfill His promise of many descendants through Ishmael; in the end, Ishmael is not even considered Abraham’s son; Isaac is Abraham’s only son. Isaac means laughter, and that name was given to him because both his parents laughed when they heard that God was going to give them a baby.

God still blessed and multiplied Ishmael who is a major patriarch of the Islamic religion, for Middle-Eastern Muslims trace their genealogy back to him. Ishmael was circumcised when he was thirteen years old, which was the custom of the Egyptians as a right of passage into manhood. By circumcising him at thirteen, it signifies that he is an Egyptian, born of an Egyptian slave, and not a true member of the household of Abraham. “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise.” (Galatians 4:22-23).

Paul continues saying, “Now we, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now. But what does the scripture say? ‘Cast out the slave and her son; for the son of the slave shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.’ So, brethren, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman” (Galatians 4:28-31). Gob blesses Ishmael, but he does not become a member of God’s people. He is a slave with a slave’s mentality, and even today the Islamic religion is one where they see themselves as slaves and God as supreme master. It is blasphemy for them to call God “Father.”

Because Abraham relied on the power of his flesh to conceive a son and not on the promise God had given him, God punishes him in the flesh and the exact part of the flesh. He relied on his sexual organ to give life, and so now that organ needs to be cut around as a penance and reminder that life comes from God. It would have been no easy thing to be circumcised at age ninety-nine, yet so Abraham was. Because Abraham did not trust in his heart that God would be faithful to accomplish what He promised, Abraham turned to Hagar. Because he did not eat of his tree of life, he turned instead to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

What is the significance of circumcision? It says in Deuteronomy 10:16: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.” There seems to be some connection between circumcision and the heart. At the end of Deuteronomy, there is a very interesting passage about circumcision of the heart:

“And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live…. And you shall again obey the voice of the LORD, and keep all his commandments which I command you this day. The LORD your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your body…and in the fruit of your ground; for the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law, if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (30:6-10).

Circumcision of the heart is loving and turning to God with all one’s heart, and it is obeying all His commands. God delights (Eden) in us and prospers our work and the fruit of our bodies (children). Abraham failed his test when he did not wait upon the Lord just as Adam gave up waiting, too. They stopped waiting and trusting in God and so took matters into their own hands to gain life; they tried to save their life and so lost it.

Paul talks a good deal about circumcision in both his letter to Rome and Galatia. In Romans he says: “For he is not a real Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal” (2:28-29). Real circumcision is an internal, spiritual matter of the heart. Circumcision is a sign of what needs to happen to our hearts.

Our tendency is to turn our trust from God and put it in our abilities, especially our ability to generate children; God gives circumcision to remind us that it is not by our strength and might that we have life; life is given to those who eat of the tree of life, to those who trust in God. Life does not come from the goods of the earth but from God and His commands to us, as Jesus said during His temptation: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4).
The tree of life is the heart because it is only by means of a trusting, loving and obedient heart that we have life: this is a circumcised heart. Our hearts need to be circumcised because at the Fall they turned from God and became dead and stony. We need new hearts of flesh, a circumcised heart. Jesus gives us his pierced heart which loves and obeys unto death when we receive the sacraments of baptism and the Holy Eucharist.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

My Invitation to You

I lost my keys. Have you ever lost yours? There is not much one can do when the keys are lost. You cannot get into your home; you cannot drive your car; you can not get into your office. The key is everything, and…it is nothing. We only think of our keys when we cannot find them. Otherwise, there is really nothing special about keys (no offense all you locksmiths). Don’t worry, I didn’t really lose my keys; I was just saying that for dramatic effect.

The hinge or heart of my theory, as I’ve stated many other places, is that the tree of life is the heart and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is sexual relations; the garden of Eden is the garden of delight, and it refers to the man and the woman first and foremost. God made us, His garden of delight, with the ability to bear fruit in two ways: begetting and bearing children (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) and by a heart that loves, trusts, and obeys God. He told them to be fruitful and multiply and then told them not to have marital relations. That was their test of faith. Mary had the same test, and she passed.

A main part of the hinge of my theory has to do with sex. Sex, as I’ve said many times before, is the greatest of this world’s goods. It is a symbol of the ultimate supernatural good: the union of Christ and His Church. It seems that a common pitfall for people when considering this theory is that I say God commanded Adam and Eve not to have marital relations. It seems that for a lot of people, when they hear this theory, their gut reaction is to dismiss it or attack it as being against marital relations and the teachings of the Church. I understand that reaction. I don’t think those who have that response understand what I am saying, but I do see that the theory is rather easily misunderstood by some.

My point tonight is that most of what I say has very little to do with sex, per se. I certainly talk about it a fair amount, but there is so much more that I have to say. Mostly, I talk about it insofar as it is discussed in the Bible as I make sense of the Biblical story. The point about sex being the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is part of the key to understanding everything else. That theory is a key: necessary to drive the car, but not all that impressive by itself. Driving the car is the thing. I invite you to give yourself some time pondering this theory I propose, and see if it makes sense, sheds light, and puts the pieces of the puzzle together of the Bible, the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and your life. It did for me and has continued, these past fifteen years, to clarify and make sense of thousands of points about life, love and the gospel.

In other words, my focus is not on sex but on the fact that God created us from the beginning to be His spouse. Even today, He is calling each of us to the most intimate of communion with Himself. He wants all of us and is dying to give us all of Himself; having died for us, He is dying for us to enter into Himself and His death and resurrection and so have life abundantly. He is our spouse, and united to Him we bear much fruit and give glory to God.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Sex is Good

Over the past fifteen years that I have been pondering this theory and meditating upon it, I have shared it with many people, both priests and religious, theologians and lawyers, moms and dads, young and old, single and married, laity and consecrated virgins, writers and publishers, highly educated and not so much, and just about anyone who seemed willing to listen. There has been one main concern mentioned by two of these people, and that was the theory sounds a bit Manichean or that the body and sex is bad.

I understand this concern, but this would be a misunderstanding of the theory. I think that a closer look at the theory will show that my theory would fall apart if sex were bad. On my post of 11/15/07, I talked about how the tree of the knowledge of good and evil must be good for good people to have chosen it. In itself, it must have been a good tree; the man and woman had no inclination toward evil and no disordered passions, so choosing an evil would not have been appealing to them. The deception of the serpent was not getting them to think that the tree was good, but it was getting them to distrust God and to think that disobeying His singular command would be good for them. God had given them an extremely difficult trial of faith, and instead of trusting in Him and eating of the tree of life, they trusted in themselves for life and received death.

What I want to highlight today is that sex is good. It is the highest good of the created order. To be more precise, I mean marital relations or sex between spouses. Any sexual activity outside of marital relations open to life is intrinsically disordered and evil, but the marital embrace open to life is a beautiful and holy reality. It is the symbol of God’s relationship to man. God wants the most intimate union with humanity, and He created the marital embrace to symbolize that heavenly reality. Of course sex is not bad; it is holy and is the most awesome activity of this world. Part of its greatness comes because of it symbolism of Christ and His Church. The reality that sex is a symbol of, will only be fully realized in Heaven with God (although in mystical marriage, some of that reality is given).

Now for those partaking of immoral sexual behavior, which is anything outside of marriage that is open to life, of course that behavior is bad. It is not the sex that is bad, but it is the use of that sex that is bad. A knife is not bad; in and of itself it is good; morally, it is neither good nor bad. If the knife is used to make dinner, it is used well. If the knife is used to murder an innocent person, it is used badly and in an evil manner. Sex is far better than an object like a knife, as I said above, but even the best of things can certainly be used for evil or used in an evil manner.

Sex is meant to be used under very precise and exacting circumstances because it is so good and so powerful. To use some more analogies, it is like dynamite or nuclear power; used in the correct manner, time and place, it brings a fuller life; used in the wrong way, time or place, it brings mass destruction. Sex is like that, too. It always has been like that.

Adam and Eve were tested by God as well as were Abraham and Isaac. Each one of us is tested throughout our lives; many tests are small, and a few are large. The test of virginity (which is what I think Adam and Eve’s test was as well as Mary and Joseph’s) is still a common test today. Every priest and sister and nun has passed through that test. Married couples and singles are all called to chastity, and that is a test and a trial, too. In our sex-crazed society, purity in marriage is a challenge; singles are called to live celibate lives until and if ever they get married: that is a struggle. Many voices today say that it is not even possible or healthy to keep sex only for married couples open to life; certainly, then, this is a test. Things haven’t changed much, and it is in our faithful living according to what God wants (summarized in the Ten Commandments and the two Great Commandments of Jesus), that we please Him and are fully alive.

Mistreating sex as just another appetite to be satiated whenever and with whomever I please, only brings loneliness, separation, sickness, misery, destruction and death. The irony is that those who claim Christianity teaches that sex is evil or bad or dirty, are the ones who treat sex as no big deal; they are the ones who degrade sex and make it like simply blowing one’s nose. It is like using fine china as a Frisbee, or a rose as a hammer, or a Ferrari as a bulldozer. It turns people into objects for use, for pleasure. It degrades humanity. Treating sex as sacred personalizes people and gives them great dignity. The proper use and respect of sex breeds deep and lasting joy, peace and life; without such reverence in the face of such a mystery, there is only discord, divorce, disease and death.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

"Wretched Man That I Am!"

Tonight at my monthly evening of recollection, the priest speaker, Father Charles, talked about concupiscence. That got me thinking. My understanding of concupiscence is it is the result of original sin which weakens our will, darkens our intellect, and disorders our passions, with an emphasis on disordered passions. Saint Paul explains his own struggle with concupiscence in the letter to the Romans that could be summarized with the saying: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

There he says in 7:15-25: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

All of us can relate to that. The question I want to address tonight is why did concupiscence or the flesh come together with the Fall? Does God superimpose concupiscence onto us because our first parents fell? We had no responsibility in their sin, so why do we and billions of others through history have to pay for their stupid deed? Baptism takes away original sin, so why doesn’t it take away concupiscence? Since we don’t feel original sin but we do feel the effects of concupiscence, it seems that nothing much even happens when we get baptized. Baptism doesn’t seem to be very effective in undoing the Fall for it doesn’t seem to cause a change in me.

Let us look to the book in the Bible called The Wisdom of Solomon 11:15-26 where the author is talking about the Egyptians and the plagues God sent upon them. Remember, the plagues were the destruction of all the gods of Egypt by the True God. They worshipped those false gods, so God either killed those gods or swamped them with them: “In return for their foolish and wicked thoughts, which led them astray to worship irrational serpents and worthless animals, thou didst send upon them a multitude of irrational creatures to punish them, that they might learn that one is punished by the very things by which he sins. For thy all-powerful hand, which created the world out of formless matter, did not lack the means to send upon them a multitude of bears, or bold lions, or newly created unknown beasts full of rage, or such as breathe out fiery breath, or belch forth a thick pall of smoke, or flash terrible sparks from their eyes; not only could their damage exterminate men, but the mere sight of them could kill by fright. Even apart from these, men could fall at a single breath when pursued by justice and scattered by the breath of thy power. But thou hast arranged all things by measure and number and weight. For it is always in thy power to show great strength, and who can withstand the might of thy arm? Because the whole world before thee is like a speck that tips the scales, and like a drop of morning dew that falls upon the ground. But thou art merciful to all, for thou canst do all things, and thou dost overlook men’s sins, that they may repent. For thou lovest all things that exist, and hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made, for thou wouldst not have made anything if thou hadst hated it. How would anything have endured if thou hadst not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by thee have been preserved? Thou sparest all things, for they are thine, O Lord who lovest the living.

Pardon me for the lengthy quote. The main part of the passage is, “that they might learn that one is punished by the very things by which he sins.” My theory is that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God commanded our first parents not to eat was sexual relations; there was nothing wrong with it in and of itself, but he was asking them to forgo the greatest of earthly goods as a trial of faith. If that is true, the woman sought a child to fulfill God’s command to be fruitful and multiply but on her own terms. She sought the man as husband and physical father of the child, rejecting God as Husband and Father, and so her punishment is that now she has man as her husband; she got what she wanted. Many women can relate at times that they are “stuck” with their husbands who don’t cherish them as they seek to be cherished.

The man used his body as the source for fulfilling God’s command to be fruitful and multiply. His disobedience utilized his body, which was made good, but since he sinned with his body, now his body is master over him. It is my understanding, being a man and from what I hear and read, that men have a much more difficult time living a pure and chaste life; not being a woman it is hard to compare, but there are many studies showing the sex-crazed mentality of men, especially those who live by their basest passions. With men, apart from God’s help, the question is not so much what sexual sins would they commit, but what ones wouldn’t they. Men’s master has become his body. Therein lies the primary battlefield. One only needs a cursory understanding of the garbage rampant on the internet of the mutual degradation of men’s and women’s bodies to get an idea of what happens when men are ruled by their bodies.

Concupiscence, then, is not something superimposed by God upon the human race due to the Fall. It came as the natural consequence of choosing who our master would be and being sons of men. As sons of God we would have been perfectly ordered and grace-filled, but as temporal sons of men we have disordered bodies of death. That’s ok. The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men might become the sons of God to quote Saint Athanasius. We have hard hearts and disobedient bodies, but in baptism we are given new hearts and are made a new creation. It is still a struggle, but we have hope. It is still a struggle, but it is in the very struggle itself that we draw closer to God and cling to Him for help and life. Paul said it well in his letter to the Philippians 2:12-13: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.

Adam and Eve Trust in the Serpent

In the attempt to write at least a little each day, I will give you one thought tonight. Chapter three begins with the serpent trying to break the trust and faith the woman had in God. He really doesn't say much: "Did God say, "You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" After the woman responds, he says, "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." That's it. He starts by overstating God's singular command to prohibit any tree, implying that God is overbearing and not really interested in what is good for the man and woman. He concludes by directly contradicting God's warning of death and says that they will increase in wisdom by eating of the tree.

After seeing the desireableness of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and forgetting about God's command not to eat because He is not all that trustworthy, the woman eats of the tree. It does not take much to get the woman to turn away from God. The primary reason that the serpent did not have to do all that much is that she was under an incredible test: she was told to be fruitful and multiply and yet remain a virgin. She wanted a child very badly; she wanted to make a man as God had made a man; she wanted to be like God.

God wanted her to eat of the tree of life so that she could pass this test; to pass this test she would have to believe that remaining a virgin was the best thing for her and the way to life. But virginity means no children, and no children means death. She looked death in the face, and through fear of death, she forsook the command of God and betrayed her husband all of which began with a kiss in the garden. (The new Adam, Jesus, is also betrayed in a garden with a kiss by one dear to Him.) She wanted to get a child, so when that child was born she named him "gotten;" we know him as Cain. In trying to save her life, in trying to fulfill the command of God to be fruitful and multiply on her own terms, she made a covenant with death.

Understanding all of this is an immense help to more clearly and perfectly understand all that Jesus did; ultimately, I want to understand better why Jesus died on the cross and gives us Himself in Holy Communion, etc., and that is what much of this blog will be about. Both Testaments are needed to understand the other, and if when we read the Old Testament our hearts are not burning within us, then we do not understand what it is saying. I hope to help set that blaze upon the earth.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2007.

MY MAIN THEORY--THE HEART OF WHAT I AM SAYING

Immediately following the first mention of the tree of life in Genesis Two, God tells us about the four rivers. This is a symbolic geographical representation of our physical heart. After discussing the heart, the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is given for the first time. The very next thing God does is seek a suitable partner/helper; none of the beasts of the field or birds of the air would do. Then God takes one of the man's ribs, makes it into the woman, and presents her to the man as the sought-after helper for the man who responds "At last." The pattern I see here is: mention the tree of life followed by a presentation of the four rivers and worshipping and obeying; mention of not eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil followed by the presentation of the woman. There seems to be a connection between this second tree and the woman.

If man is God's Eden/delight, with a garden planted in the east/front of the man, the first tree in our fronts is the heart/tree of life. By worshipping, obeying, trusting, and loving God with our hearts, we bear good fruit in the good things we do. How else do humans bear fruit? What else could be a tree planted in our front in the middle that would be a source of production? What is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Is it possible to know? If we don't know yet after thousands of years, why would we find out now?

I think it is possible to know; not with an absolute, certitude and with a perfect logical syllogism, but there are many clues that point to what it is, and many realities make sense and fit together once it is understood. It is as I think Cardinal Newman said something such as: it is so based on 10,000 convergences; nothing directly spells it out, but almost everything points to the reality being thus.

So what do I think the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is, and what does the woman have to do with it? I think it is an idiom referring to sexual knowledge, i.e. intercourse. Marital relations, it could be argued, is the greatest natural good of this world; it is so good and great that Paul says it is a great mystery referring to the relationship between Christ and His Church (Eph). The test God is giving the man and the woman is two seemingly contradictory commands: be fruitful and multiply and do not have marital relations. This does not seem to make sense: presto, we have our grand trial of faith and the bypassing of the intellect. All that is left is to see if they will eat of the tree of life and believe that what God has commanded them is good for them. Of course, they did not trust.

I will explain my thoughts on this much much more, but for now I want to draw your attention to Mary, the New Eve. I think she underwent the very same test. After explaining her test as I see it, I will call it a night and give you more to ponder soon.

Mary's Test
I'll try to make this brief. The first principle to understand is that when God makes us to be something, that is what we will be good at and that is what we will desire. Among other things, God made me to be a husband, a father and a teacher, and it is those things which I desire. God made her to be the mother of His Son and the mother of the Church; as such, she was created as the most exalted mother of all human history. Being created to be the most exalted mother means that she would have desired to be a mother more than any person who has ever or will ever exist.

The second principle of my understanding of Mary is that she consecrated herself as a perpetual virgin and arranged with Joseph that they would remain virgins perpetually in their marriage. The reason I think this together with the Chuch Fathers is that her response to the Angel Gabriel does not make sense unless this were the case. In the first chapter of Luke, Gabriel says to Mary that she will conceive and he uses five other future tenses when telling her what will happen in the future. He does not say or imply that this will happen right now.

Mary replies, "How shall this be, since I have no husband." She says this when she was already betrothed to Joseph; in many respects what they understood as betrothal, we would understand as marriage. In fact, if they wanted to end the betrothal, a certificate of divorce was required. It was perfectly normal to get pregnant during this time; that is why Mary does not get into any trouble being only betrothed and pregnant. The only significant difference between betrothal and marriage was that the bride had not permanently moved in with her husband yet. Even if she just had to wait until they were officially married, then she could conceive just fine and would expect to do so. It makes no sense for her to say she will not be able to conceive a son since she will not have a husband. She already has a husband! She has just made a life-long commitment never to have sexual relations.

This was the test then: she who longed to be a mother more than anyone ever to exist, knew that God was asking her to commit herself to Him as a perpetual virgin. In her heart she was told to be fruitful and multiply while at the same time not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For the people of the Old Testament, not having children was tantamount to death. One was considered cursed if barren. There was little worse in this life than to not pass life on to ones offspring. In Mary's acceptance of virginity, she would have thought that she had given up her greatest desire (other than union with God):children. Her acceptance of virginity was her crucifixion.

The Annunciation is Mary's Reward, Not Her Test
As soon as Mary and Joseph agreed and permanently decided to never have relations, then the angel Gabriel payed his visit. In offering Mary to be the Mother of God, there was nothing more pleasing to her in all creation. Her hesitation was that she did not understand how it was going to happen because she knew God wanted her to remain a virgin. As soon as she knew that God would provide the Son, she said yes. Never in the history of man was there ever such a joyous and receptive yes as that amen at the Annunciation. Her greatest desire had just been granted.

Mary's test was sacrificing that which was most dear to her on this earth, and her reward was getting that very thing but multiplied infinitely. The first Eve tried to gain her life by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and received death and a son named Cain. The New Eve lost her life for love of God and gave up that which she held most dear and was given the very Son of God as a reward for passing the most difficult test in man's history.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil Must Have Been Good

The only point I am going to make tonight is that the tree must have been good. God told them not to eat of a good tree. If it were in any way bad, the man and woman would not have been attracted to it. They were only attracted to the good; they only wanted the good. The crux of the test was believing that abstaining from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was good for them, for why would God command them not to eat of a good tree? If God truly was looking out for the man and woman's best interest, why would He forbid them to eat of a good tree?

I would suggest that it wasn't just a good tree but the best tree. It was the greatest of all natural goods on this earth. Now the case is stronger: why would God forbid us to eat of the best tree? That is something that does not make sense; all they are left with is the decision to trust in God or not to trust. Faced with that scenario, they turned their hearts from God and trusted in the wisdom of the serpent. They did not eat of the tree of life, i.e. they did not have faith in God and so obey Him. Instead, they hardened their hearts and ate the good tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

What is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

Tonight, I have time for a few questions I want you to think about. If God is setting the stage to give the man and woman a test of faith where the test goes beyond the abilities of human intellect, what textual clues do we have that could help predict what the content of the test will concern. The first and most obvious element of the test is the command in Gen. 2:17: "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."

On the surface of it, that does not seem like that momentous of a trial of faith. Big deal, only one tree among all the trees that we cannot eat. They had no other laws to worry about at all, only one. One insignificant law, one "Thou shalt not" to keep in mind. On top of that, they had not suffered the results of original sin yet so their minds were stronger and clearer and their wills were naturally inclined to the good; they were endowed with sanctifying grace, and their minds and wills worked in a perfect harmony; they suffered not from sickness or death.

In many respects, it is a wonder that they could even sin at all. Today we have the Ten Commandments together with a seemingly endless list of things we are not supposed to do and another long list of things we are supposed to do. Not only that, we suffer under the burden of original sin with our darkened intellects, our weakened wills and our inclination to do evil. It should be no surpise at all when I or you sin. And many of us are able to eke out a humble, ordinary, holy life. Considering all of this, it is a wonder that our first parents sinned, at least when we only look at the surface and not understand their test. My point here is that the test had to be one doozie of a trial to get these beautiful and grace-filled people to fall.

The other textual clue that I want to look at for a minute is that they actually have one other command: "Be fruitful and multiply" (1:28) From my reading of Genesis one and two, there are no other commands. We have one negative one and one positive command in our narrative. Since this is a test that bypasses their intellects, I would think it would make sense that God would give the man and woman (she does not receive the name Eve, mother of the living, until after the Fall) two commands which seem to contradict the other. God gives them two commands, and the first one flies in the face of the second so that, from the point of view of the humans, what God is asking does not make sense. They are left with the choice: do we believe in God and what He has commanded or do we choose for ourselves what we see to be the good?

I don't think I will do much more preperatory work before revealing what the tree of knowledge of good and evil is, but you never know. You'll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

More thoughts on the Tree of Life

Yesterday I talked about how chapter two is a close-up view of mankind, particularly as a home for God. There are two important trees in the midst or middle of the garden of man. The first one, which they should eat from, is the tree of life. This is a symbol of the heart of man, the place where he loves, trusts and obeys God. The heart is then symbolically physically represented by the four rivers of water in Eden.

There is a very interesting passage about the heart in the Gospel of John 7:38, "He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water'." No where does scripture mention this. It could be an indirect reference to Ezekiel 47; I am inclined to think that Jesus is referring back to Genesis 2. He who believes in God has a heart out of which flows living water, i.e. his faith gives life to those around him, and he bears the fruit of good works. Those who eat of the tree of life believe in God and so have the obedience of faith (see Romans) that trusts God especially when life is hard and does not seem to make sense.

A living faith is a believing heart that endures in time of trouble. The presentation of the tree of life implicitly signifies that a time of trial is at hand. The tree of life is needed when a battle with death is about to ensue. Immediately after the tree of life is presented in Gen. 2: 10-15, flowing with a perfect logic, God announces His singular command: "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." God has arranged a test to see and know if the man will eat of the tree of life, if he will believe with his heart even when it does not seem to make sense.

Why does God test us? He has a problem. To put it mildly, He is so awesome and perfect and beautiful and powerful and alive and wise. Even among mortals, the extremely beautiful, wealthy and powerful have a similar problem: they do not always knows who is their true friend and who just wants what they have. God has this problem infinitely more. He also wants to preserve our freedom so that we are not just a bunch of robots who have to love Him. He wants us to freely choose to give Him our love. So He hides, and He gives those who want to draw near to Him tests to strengthen our trust in Him. Sometimes He gives incredibly difficult tests that supersede our intellect so that all we can use to pass the test is our loving trust of His command. He wants us to eat of the tree of life.

The question remains: so then what is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...? Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.

Genesis 2

I am skipping many important items, but in the interest of getting to the main point, I will pass over them for the time being.

Man is the Garden of Eden
Immediately after the man is created, God's breath is breathed into him, and he becomes a living being, it is then that the Garden of Eden is introduced. The word "Eden" simply means "delight." The word "east" also means "in front of." From many places in scripture, we know that God delights in man; also considering Genesis1:26, we know that God made man to be His spouse.
What all this means is that the man is the garden of eden, for he is God's garden of delight. God planted a garden in the front of His delight; hence, man is oriented in a frontal manner. Many trees (abilities) were planted in the front of man, together with two extremely important trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These two trees are the two primary ways we bear fruit as humans.

The Tree of Life
Immediately after introducing these two trees we have this obscure and seemingly nonsensical explanation of a river which splits into four rivers. The problem with this scenario is that rivers do the exact opposite; many rivers flow into one, not vice versa. This is no river, commonly understood. It symbolizes something else. It symbolizes the heart. The four chambers of the heart are physically represented by the four rivers. The tree of life is the heart.
What does it mean to eat of the tree of life? The very next verse tells us that God has done all this so that man could "till and keep" the garden. The word for till is also the word for work and for the work of worship; the word for keep may also be understood in the sense of keeping the commandments or obedience. Thus, the tree of life is for worshipping (in the full sense of the word which includes sacrifice) and obeying God. That is precisely what our hearts are for; we love God and we have the obedience of faith in Him by means of our trusting and loving hearts.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil will have to wait, at least until tomorrow.
Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.