This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
Some may find the story of Adam and Eve’s first sin simple and unsophisticated. But though the language may be simple, the nuances of this account are anything but unsophisticated.
The act of Adam and Eve in response to the serpent’s half-truths–for the Father of Lies speaks not pure falsehoods, but half-truths to lure us to sin–their act appears hardly worthy of the collapse of all nature into a twisted taint. After all, objectively speaking, all they did was eat some fruit. Forbidden or not, how could this be so incredibly consequential?
On the contrary, objectively speaking, the essence of their act was not the consumption of fruit. It was outright, conscious, willful disobedience to God’s command.
The account is anything but unsophisticated because it captures a dichotomy that occurs with our personal sin as well. We are so quick to trivialize our sin. Why not sleep with her, even before marriage, if I love her? What can one little white fib do? Will God really condemn me for missing one Sunday Mass? Etc.
What we fail to recognize is the profound gravity of disobeying the Creator of all, when He has laid out for us His will. Never mind that much of what He forbids can openly be seen to be destructive to our nature. Disobedience to the Omnipotent brings about a cataclysmic fracture in the order of things. Hence, from the mere picking and eating of a fruit, all humankind has suffered a grave contortion of our instincts. Physical nature itself bears the scars.
For it was not the mere picking and eating of a fruit. It was disobedience to Him to whom absolute obedience is owed absolutely.
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to take everything away from you, if He must, but to preserve uncompromised your obedience to His Father. Ask Him to preserve you in an obedience that mirrors His, which impelled Him to accept willingly the most difficult fate ever visited upon human flesh.
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