Jesus, The New Adam

As we begin this season of repentance, we yearn for the dawn of Easter morning where our salvation is obtained. The Church in her wisdom knows that in order to begin to understand the radical significance of Easter we first must begin to understand why it was needed in the first place, how it affects us and how we are to respond. Our readings today from Genesis and St. Paul’s letter to the Romans lay out succinctly the reasons why we need salvation and the means by which we may obtain them.

The passage from Genesis tells us about the fall of Adam and Eve. However, to understand this fully, we must go back even further to the beginning of creation. We know that in the beginning God created all that is, and that includes the Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven who we join our voices in praise with. God created the Angels as intelligent, immortal and spiritual beings that rejoiced in the praise of God and served Him. Sadly, right from the get-go, a host of them fell behind a leader, the Devil, who chose themselves over God, and rejected Him. Jesus spoke of this to his disciples and told them “I saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” (Luke 10:18) The Devil and his followers fell from the heavens and have ever since tempted God’s greatest creation, man, to follow their decision to choose the self over the Loving rule of God and to join them in their wretched fallen state.

This is the lead up to story we encounter in Genesis. Just as the Angels where created as beings that are to rejoice in God’s love, mankind was created as God’s most perfect creation, made to rejoice in God’s love and share in the eternal multiplication of this love. True love involves the choice to love, not the coercion to love. God gave us the choice to love him fully or to reject Him, so that our relationship with him would be one of pure self giving love.

The Devil in the form of the serpent beheld creatures made in the perfect image of God, who glorified God and shared in His love and hated them in his heart. Determined that these beloved creatures should share his fate of selfishness and outward loathing, the Devil comes to tempt us with His lies.

Adam and Eve, our first parents live in a place where all is provided for them, but it comes with some rules. We are not to eat of the tree in the middle of the Garden, for God tells us that if we do, we shall die. The Devil comes to our parents breathing lies and tells Eve that eating the tree will not make us die, but will make us like God. We all know that there is nothing that can make man become God, and we know from the world around us that death certainly exists. As Jesus has taught us, the Devil is “a liar and the father of lies”. (John 8:44) Eve bought into this lie, as did Adam, and they both ate from the forbidden tree. In this moment mankind made a choice. We will not always serve God. When we believe it serves our purpose, we will serve ourselves first, thinking we know more than God. Yes, the Devil tempted, but the choice was made by Adam and Eve on their own of their own free will. That is Fall of Man, when we decided to put ourselves first, believing we understood the ways of creation better than the Creator.

This decision made at the prompting of the Devil had everlasting effects on all people that followed our first parents. The choice of the creation made in the Lord’s image had a catastrophic effect on all of us. Adam and Eve passed on their proclivity to sin along with the stain of that first sin on to all who have followed them. Their decision to choose themselves over God let loose a form of death that can eternally separate us from God into the world and gave the Devil power in this new fallen world, as we had proven to him and his fallen angels that we were fertile ground for temptation. He decided to forever tempt us to follow his choices so we could share in his fate, because misery loves company.

The Old Testament shows the effects of the Fall on all humanity. Far from being people who love each other unconditionally, we were now a creature that has the remarkable ability to hurt and destroy all that surrounds us. God keeps on giving us new ways in that we may turn ourselves around and follow him fully, and we keep finding ways to make bad decisions and follow only our own prideful desires instead of the Lord’s.

Yet being the beloved creation of God, He could not stand to let us persist in this state of an utterly broken relationship. The Wisdom of Solomon tells us that “God did not make death, nor does he delight in the destruction of the living. For He created all things that they may exist.” (Wisdom 1:13-14 NETS) Even though we are the ones that removed ourselves from the perfect relationship with God and opened up the way for full spiritual death, God knew it was only He who could undo this action.

In the fullness of time, God brought about the means of our redemption. Just as free will was the tool used by the Devil to tempt us, the gift of free will would be the means by which our redemption would begin. Just as Eve spoke to the Fallen Angel and began the undoing of mankind, the Blessed Virgin Mary spoke to an Angel and began the redemption of mankind. The Angel Gabriel came to her and told her that she would conceive the Son of the Most High. At this moment all creation came to a screeching halt before a humble young woman in a far off town. Free will gave the Blessed Virgin Mary the ability to say “No, I will not have any part in this!” However, she chose the opposite and said “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:39) In an answer that must have infuriated the Devil she chose God’s will over her own, knowing that the Creator knows best how to take care of the creation.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, acting in the reverse role of Eve cooperates with God so that He may bring forth the new Adam. The birth of Jesus, fully human, fully man, allowed for the undoing of the fall. As St. Paul tells us in the reading from Romans: “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation of all, so one man’s act of righteousness lead to justification and life for all.” (Romans 5:18)

The sin of an individual human is undone by a perfect human. The act of prideful disobedience is undone by an act of ultimate submission: Christ’s self emptying birth into a mankind enslaved to sin and eternal death and Christ’s obedience to the will of fallen man, even to the point of death so that death itself may be conquered.

This is the Good News in Jesus Christ: by union to Him by Baptism we are freed from the power of everlasting death and reconciled to God so that we may see, hear and feel him more clearly.

Even though we now have access to this new relationship with Christ and have a pathway to everlasting life with and in God, it is not all done and over with. None of these benefits of Christ are reckoned to us as a right once we are united with Jesus in Baptism. Just as God allowed us to exercise our free will both to fall from grace and to accept a pathway back into it, that freedom of choice is still there for us. Our free will is guaranteed until the end our life, and the choice to choose God or to choose ourselves always stands before us.

The Temptation that Jesus faced in the desert is the fate of all mankind. We are still subject to temptation, both by the devil and by our sinful desire to make ourselves a little god over and above the Lord. Thanks be to God that He showers us with grace so that we may resists these temptations!

During this season of Lent, we are given the opportunity to remember both the original Fall that needed to be undone by Christ and it’s continued effected on us. Each and everyone one of us can see ourselves in our first parents in some way. It’s easy to think that given such a blatant order like “don’t eat from that tree” would be easily followed by us in if we were in their place, but each of us is capable of the same mistake. Regardless of what each of our individual temptations are, it will always boil down to what each in every sin really is: the desire to put ourselves before God.

In this season of preparation and penitence I invite you to take stock of your life. Look at all things going on in it and ask of each of them if they are of God’s will or your own. Spend time contemplating your own life, but also spend time contemplating what you can do to help those around you. Pray for your brothers and sisters that they may serve God’s will only; and that they may have God’s strength, grace and peace. I promise you that if you pray for others, if you help people out in some way, you will begin to see Christ in them and you will begin to better understand God’s will for you in your life.

I will pray for all of you in the midst of the hard work of Lent, and I hope that you in turn will pray for me. Do this hard work of Lent, but always remember that Easter morning will dawn soon, even if it seems far off from today.