Week 5 of Ordinary Time
February 15, 2019
Gen 3: 1-8Don Bosco Cristo Rey Staff Retreat, Washington Retreat House
The
Greek myth of Pandora’s box explains how all the evils known to humanity got
loosed upon us, perhaps in spite of the intentions of the gods. That unleashing of evil was the result of a
deliberate human choice.
Genesis
ch. 3, the infamous story of “the Fall,” presents a similar myth—this one
faulting members of both sexes, again by a deliberate choice. Unlike the Greek myth, the story in Genesis
is divine revelation—not merely a human explanation for the presence of evil,
both natural evils and moral evils, but also a truth that the Holy Spirit lays
before us concerning the presence of evil in the world.
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| The Fall of Humanity (Michelangelo) |
And
the eyes of both are opened (3:7).
Unlike the ears and the mouth of the man Jesus cures in the gospel (Mark
7:31-37), opening his ears to the wisdom of God’s word, his mouth for the
praise of the good things Christ does for us, the eyes of the man and the woman
in the garden are opened to their own shame, i.e., to their sin, and by
implication, to a new world of disorder, chaos, and ruin in creation—which will
be spoken of in the following verses of ch. 3 and, indeed, in subsequent
chapters of Genesis until God begins his saving intervention by calling Abraham
out of Chaldea and into the Promised Land (Gen 12:1)—Abraham, the man of faith
who believes in God’s promise, acts in obedience to God’s word, and cooperates
in God’s plan to begin our redemption.
Some
of us—I won’t call anyone out—are old enuf to remember Flip Wilson, a comedian whose
famous line about his failings was, “The devil made me do it.” In the next verses of Genesis, which we’ll
read at Mass tomorrow, that’s mankind’s excuse when God confronts them in the
garden: the snake tricked me into eating
the fruit (3:13). God, of course,
doesn’t bite—doesn’t fall for the excuse but holds them responsible for their
free choice.
On
a day of recollection like ours, one of our tasks—it’s a challenge—is to look
into our choices; or, more specifically, into our relationship with God as
revealed in our choices. There are
words, actions, and omissions that shame us, or ought to. We may be tempted into bad choices by other
people: pressure from family, friends,
TV ads, or poll numbers, which is the oldest excuse known to humanity: “The woman whom you put here with me—she gave
me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it” (Gen 3:12); or tempted by those
passions we all know well—pride, sloth, lust, gluttony, envy, anger, and
avarice; or tempted by the devil speaking to our hearts as he tempted Jesus
himself. The choice of doing good or
evil, of speaking good or evil, of failing to speak or act when we ought
to—this is our choice. We can’t use Flip
Wilson’s excuse that the devil made us do it.
When I do wrong, it’s because I choose to, like the woman and the man in
Eden.
But
I can also choose good. I can be a
person of faith like Abraham, who set in motion more good for the universe than
he could ever have dreamed of. More than
Abraham, Christian teaching has always held up to our gaze the woman called the
“new Eve,” the woman who said to God’s messenger, “I’m the Lord’s humble
servant. Let it be done to me as you
say.” (Luke 1:38) That was a redeeming
moment for the human race, as the 1st Eve’s choice to seek knowledge of evil
was a damning moment. Each of us has the
power to imitate the obedience and humility of the Virgin Mary as a servant of
the Lord. And when we do that as people
of faith, we allow Jesus into our hearts as surely as she allowed him into her
womb, and we can give birth to Jesus, in a manner of speaking—more than a
manner of speaking, for it’s a mystery of our faith too—by making him present
in our attitudes, words, and deeds. The
choice is ours.
God
bless you.
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