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Not Just an Apple

Apple

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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Why Create for Spoilage?

Moldy Bread

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.


Imagine the writer of the first reading from the book of Genesis, who penned his work centuries before the birth of Christ. At first he seems so different from you and me–no electronics, no convenient transportation, no media.

But as we read his description of creation, we see that his experiences are not so different–in some ways, perhaps better than ours. We dream of spending time outdoors, in the fields among flowers, in the sea–these are the things of which this author writes, the things of his experience. In some senses, it would appear that the stuff of his day-to-day is the stuff of our dreams.

And in his description of these elements, we hear about things intimate and familiar to us, things that we experience with the same perception of beauty and sense of awe that he did.

And because it is the moment of creation that he describes, everything appears so fresh, so untainted, so innocent. We almost wonder: Would God have gone to all this trouble, if he had known what was coming–if he had known, for example, of the people we see in today’s gospel, utterly desperate with infirmity? If He had foreseen the full misery caused by sin?

And yet, the Lord and origin of this immensely beautiful creation did in fact foresee; He did know how sin and evil would twist, contort, and putrefy the beauty that He had created. And yet, He did not hesitate.

For as much as we appreciate the beauty of creation, there is one reality that we do not fully appreciate in all its splendor and crowning glory: The beauty, and transforming power, of Redemption. It is because of Redemption that He moved forward.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus for faith in the restorative power of His Redemption, even though we do not yet see that power fully play out here on earth. Ask Him to see all with such acute eyes of faith that His redemptive work appears to your heart as vividly as the physical world appears to your eyes.

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