Our Paradise Squandered -The Sin of Adam
In 1906 father William Doyle, an Irish Jesuit went on his yearly ignition retreat. When he had finished. He wrote this in his diary dated, the 25th of November
“In a few, very few years, my name will be forgotten. What would people think of me if they knew me as I know myself, my pride and desire for praise.
My thinking un-charitable thoughts about others, my fear of humiliation. And the imperfect way I have lived in the society of Jesus, the sins I have committed.
The scandal given the terrible harm, done to others by making them tepid, breaking rules, et cetera.
My resolution’s broken in an hour. The many faults not corrected after 16 years, years of religious life. “In spite of all this, I deceive myself that I am pleasing God.”
But then he writes after his colloquy, his resolution: Attaining humility.
“ I will strive to get great contempt for myself, to think little of myself and despise myself and to pray and desire that others do the same. I have nothing which God has not given me. I can do nothing without God’s grace and help.”
You’re listening to the meditation and mental prayer podcast, Catholics talking to God. And this episode, our meditation will center on the sin of Adam and the just justice of God. According to the exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
For just one sin of Lucifer’s, God punishes him. God casts Satan out of heaven.
“ Nine days they fell; confounded Chaos roared,
And felt tenfold confusion in their fall
Hell at last,Yawning received them whole, and on them closed,
Hell their fit habitation fraught with fire
Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain… John Milton
For one sin of Adam’s God punished him. God cast him out of paradise.
Now look, are we blind? Can’t we see for every one sin of ours, God punishes us, every one. mortal sin. God will cast us into hell. That is perfect justice.
Saint Ignatius always refers to sin as the malice of sin. And this malice is hatred of God. Justice is one of God attributes and this is part of our DNA as we are made and the image and likeness of God.
Our authority system here on earth mirrors, that of Gods, our courts of justice mirror, the of the courts of heaven. We instinctively know how to do justice. It’s like God’s signature on us as His work of art. So let’s stop kidding ourselves and see ourselves for how we really stand before God here on earth before it’s too late.
And we die and find ourselves, in the real reality standing before God’s justice. Remember what’s St Paul says: He warns the Hebrews.
“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,”
We are painfully aware of how St Teresa of Avila was shown the prison. The devil had waiting for her in hell. Should she fall into his power.
So how did this dangerous state of affairs come about?
Let’s have a look at how St Ignatius presents it in his exercises.
He begins in Genesis chapter 1: 26, and he reminds us that the Trinity made the decision to make man quote,
“let us make man. And God created, man, in his own image. God formed the body of man with his hands.
And animated it with the breath of his mouth and the Lord formed man of the slime of the earth and breathed into his face, the breath of life. That’s Genesis 2:7.
So with a word, God created, man. He spoke and they were made in Genesis we read that God created man to his own image. Now, in my opinion, this is one of the most important verses in the scriptures.
We are each the image of God. How beautiful is that? Why can’t we realize this terrible truth? In every moment we live on earth, why can’t we hold on to our purity of heart and leave un-soiled the beauty and purity of our soul, which is the image of God. When the son of God took on human flesh, he had a human soul made in the image of God, just like us, how close we are to God, the father. How close to Jesus Christ.
I believe that this is why in the midst of the sorrow of our sins committed against the most high God, we can dare to lift up our face to Jesus and ask for help. He was one of us. He chose to be one of us.
In case we get carried away with our own importance in the whole area of the image of God, we need to realise that this image of God is not God. You’d be surprised how many people go wandering down the wrong road with that concept.
So the image of God is not a mirror image in that God has many more attributes than we can even comprehend. It’s more like an image in a photograph. A photograph tells you a limited number of things some person.
God made us in His image, we are spirit and we have free will. Our intellect and will in this regard are explained in great depth by St. Thomas Aquinas. Adam, before he sinned.
St Ignatius asks his retreatants to consider how excellent Adam was in both body and soul while he was still on intimate terms with God. In Sirach chapter 17:6, we read, “He created in them, the science of the spirit. He filled their hearts with wisdom and showed them both good and evil.”
He filled their hearts with wisdom. In essence that wisdom is a part of that image of God in which we’re made, but it needs to be expanded within us. And that’s one of the things that mental prayer does. It gives us a deeper wisdom of God.
It helps the wisdom already placed there by the image of God to become more perfect.
Let’s look at the description of where Adam lived before the fall for that, we go to Genesis 2:15
“and the Lord God took man and put him into the paradise of pleasure to dress it. And to keep it. So we know that Adam had a beautiful place to live in Sirach chapter 17:3,4. we read that God, “gave him the number of his days and time and gave him power over all things that are upon the earth. He put the fear of him upon all flesh and he had dominion over everything.
Adam’s relationship with God.
Well, in Sirach 17, 10 and 11, we read, “He made an everlasting covenant with them and he showed them His justice and judgments and their eyes saw the majesty of his glory and their ears heard his glorious voice. And he said to them, be aware of all iniquity”
In Psalm 8 we hear the Psalmist say to God,
“Thou hast made him a little less the the angels thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, and has set him over the works of thy hands, thou has subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen. Moreover, the beasts also of the fields, the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea. Oh Lord, our God. how admirable is thy name in all the earth,”
But man threw it all away. “Man when he was an honour, did not understand. He has been compared to senseless beasts and made like to them.”
When we consider the sin of Adam, we understand how imprudent he was in believing the lies of Satan.
Adam was seduced by sensuality. When the fruit was offered to him, the Bible tells us that Adam and Eve, “saw that it was good to eat and fair to the eyes.” So when we think of our own sins, we realise the major ones were sins of the senses.
It should have been easy for Adam to stay faithful to God and be obedient to God’s instructions. Adam was so close to God and knew God so well.
And of course it should be even more easy for us to, to remain faithful to God’s laws. We have the teaching of our faith and the knowledge of the great sacrifice Christ bore for us on Calvary. We also have the grace of the sacraments. So it should be easy for us. We have a touchstone for holiness in our lives.
When I personally remember my sins and accept that in committing them, it was total contempt of God. I get such a shock.
God surrounded Adam with every beauty and all the benefits of creation, but Adam acted as if he just didn’t care. It was very serious. So many people, think that God is too merciful to chastise them for their sin. Others say, God will forgive their particular sin, which they keep hidden or do not want to give up.
Personally, I insulate myself from the shocking truth. And often I’ve been known to imagine God, as far away in heaven, getting on with his own stuff, oblivious to my behaviour. You see, I deliberately blind myself.
Adam and Eve suffered from spiritual blindness as they refused to see the terrible dilemma they were getting themselves into.
In Genesis 3: 4,5, we read. “And the serpent said to the woman, no, you shall not die the death for God knows in that day. soever you shall eat, thereof, your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as gods knowing good and evil.”
Their eyes were only opened after they had followed Satan’s lies and rejected the whole good God,
Adam and Eve were deliberately spiritually blind. When Satan approached them, when the serpent came to them.
If you want a clearer insight into this situation, you should read Anne Catherine Emerich:s visions of the fall.
It’s very intriguing when she describes the serpent, because it’s not on its belly at the time it’s standing up and Eva likes it. The grit just fond of it. So after being blind, their eyes were open to see lies and the fact that they had rejected the all good God in Genesis three, verse seven, like it’s very sad.
It says, and the eyes of them were both opened. How often in the past have we been deceived, but we convinced ourselves that our sin was not as bad as people would make out if they knew about it. That God was so good, he would not punish us.
Adam after his sin.
Before he sinned, Adam had a beautiful mind, a mind full of peace and contentment conversing with God and feeling God’s love.
Now that he sinned his peace was gone. He was filled with anguish. His mind was filled with doubts. His wisdom had gone and his intellect was dimmed; tribulation came upon him. He would have to face sorrows and sickness and all the troubles of the mind and the body.
“Be ye perfect”. See, that is what Jesus meant.
Get rid of all that dross that will be burned away in purgatory. Tried by fire, get rid of it here and now. In mental prayer.
We know all this, there is no teaching here that I’ve spoken about, that we haven’t read or heard preached, but Jesus, says we must be perfect. We’ve got to go that extra mile and like the layers of the onion peel, our attachment to our own will until we arrive at the core, where only God’s will is in mental prayer.
We are going into that core into God whose presence twelves in the core of us. If we never do mental prayer, that core will always be there because without it, we would cease to exist and mental prayer, the layers of the onion, so to speak are slowly changed in two layers of understanding, knowledge, obedience, humility, and personal friendship with God.
Don’t be discouraged if your prayer life is filled with snatched moments of decades of the rosary here and there, short prayers before the Eucharist on a Sunday. Or those times when you deliberately drop your pen, as you’re getting into the car so that you can go down on your knees to retrieve it. And while down there send up an adoration to God, all these moments are saint Teresa of Avila moments.
Remember what she said to her nuns? Even if you only throw your focus of your mind to Jesus for an instant, that is mental prayer.
Like Adam and Eve, we are constantly tempted and lied to by Lucifer. Lucifer still has a relationship with God. He hasn’t lost his angel ship. That is what’s so terrible about this enemy of ours.
Lucifer is still able to challenge God in word and action. He is still able to war against God. And the spoils of his battles are the souls of human beings.
Will he win my soul? Will he win your soul?
It’s it’s very intriguing when she describes the serpent, because it’s not on its belly at the time it’s standing up and Eva likes it. The grit just fond of it. So after being blind, their eyes were open to see lies and the fact that they had rejected the all good God in Genesis three, verse seven, like it’s very sad.
It says, and the eyes of them were both opened. Hi, often the past have we been deceived, but we convinced ourselves that our sin was not as bad as people would make out. If they knew that God was so good, he would not punish us. Adam after his sin, before he sinned, Adam had a beautiful mind, a mind full of peace and contentment conversing with God and feeling God’s love.
No that his send his peace was gone. He was filled with anguish. His mind was filled with diets. His wisdom had gone and his intellect. With dimmed tribulation came upon him. He would have to face sorrows and sickness and all the troubles of the mind and the body be ye perfect. See, that is what Jesus meant.
Get rid of all that dross that will be burned away in purgatory. Tried by fire, get rid of it here and now. In mental prayer. We know all this, there is the teaching here that I’ve spoken about, that we haven’t read or heard preach, but in a vein Jesus, we must be perfect. We’ve got to go that extra mile and like the layers of the onion on peel, our attachment to our own will until we arrive at the core, we’re only God’s will is in mental prayer.
We are going into that core into God whose presence twelves in the core of us. If we never do mental prayer, that core will always be there because without it, we would cease to exist and mental prayer, the layers of the onion, so to speak are slowly changed in two layers of understanding, knowledge, obedience, humility, and personal friendship with God, don’t be discouraged.
If your prayer life is filled with snatch moments of decades of the rosary here and there, short prayers before the Eucharist on a Sunday. Or those times when you deliberately drop your pen, as you’re getting into the car so that you can go down on your knees to retrieve it. And while down in there send up an adoration to God, all these moments are centuries of Avila moments.
Remember what she said to her number? Even if you only throw your focus through your mind to Jesus for an instant, that is mental prayer. Like Adam and Eve, we are constantly tempted and lied to by Lucifer. Lucifer still has a relationship with God. He hasn’t lost his angel ship. That is, what’s so terrible about this enemy of ours.
Lucifer is still able to challenge God in word and action. He is still able to war against God. And the spoils of his battles are the souls of human beings. Will he win my soul when he, when you were so.
