“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.” – Genesis 3:1-6
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created for Glory
This was the reading at Mass this weekend. In so many ways, this post is kind of like my last post – you know the hurt is coming. You know the woman eats from the tree, but every time I hear this reading I want the end to come out differently, I want Adam to stop her, I want her to just not listen to the darn serpent. And yet she does, she eats, and she gives the fruit to her husband. Why doesn’t the woman trust the Lord? Why does she believe the serpent? She was created for more, made in the image and likeness of God.
As I thought about this reading and continued to try and figure out why the woman ate of the tree, and for that matter, why we sin, I recalled a brilliant thought of one of my favorite college professors.
“We sin not because we are human, but because we are acting as less than we were created to be” – Father Chris Kirchgessner, O.S.B.
It drives me nuts when people (and I, too, have been guilty of saying this) say that we sin because we are human, or that it is in our nature to sin. It is not! God did not create us to sin, He created us to love Him and be in relationship with Him! We sin because we are acting as less than we were created to be – we were created for GLORY.
The woman eats of the fruit because she didn’t fully trust in the Lord, she thought that somehow He was holding out on her. God doesn’t hold out on us – we hold out on Him. We think that He doesn’t care about our problems, our issues. We sin when we fail to act and to be the persons that God created us to be – a reflection of Himself, of His glory, of His love.
So this lent, let us love, let us strive all the more to act and to truly be the person that God created us to be, a person of glory, a person who points not to ourselves, but to the love and mercy of the God who saves.
