I’m not sure when I fell in love with the Book of Genesis. It wasn’t when I was little, and it certainly wasn’t when I was a teen. I guess it was a gradual process as I listened to it read at community prayer, year after year. That’s when it began to dawn on me that there was more to the story than I had thought. Genesis is a font of wisdom, intended to give insight into the meaning of our lives.
This last Sunday we heard read at Mass a passage that has become a favorite of mine. Genesis 3 tells the tale of forbidden fruit, and with only a little bit of prodding does God pry out the truth from Adam and Eve. Actually, God didn’t get the whole truth, because they couched their responses in blame-deflecting fibs. Adam claimed it was the woman who took advantage of his God-given gullibility. Eve for her part uttered the line that has made her famous: “The snake made me do it.” All the while the serpent said not a word. He knew what he was about, and he was good at his job.
What’s striking about all this is the calm that pervades the story. Nobody got mad. No harsh words were exchanged. Adam and Eve had tried to shift the blame to God — for faulty construction and deception. But the mistake was clearly theirs, and they had overlooked one gift that God had given them — free will.
What they chose to ignore was the fundamental purpose in their lives. God had created them to walk in his ways, symbolized by the daily walks in the Garden of Eden. Curiosity had gotten the better of them, however, and they had chosen a detour. Sadly, they thought they could deflect attention away from their mistake by blaming God for hiding attractive options from them. But they had only fooled themselves.
The key take-away from Genesis is that we are created to walk with God — daily. Adam and Eve had chosen a lesser good, and they hoped that a good excuse might distract God. The Genesis account was meant to explain why we sometimes choose to do the same sort of thing. It explains that for a very long time now Adam and Eve’s original sin has not been so original.
God is quick to forgive, however, and the invitation to walk daily in the metaphorical Garden of Eden is still out there. But the choice is ours. What will we choose to do with that today?
NOTES
+From June 3rd to the 7th we made our annual retreat at Saint John’s Abbey. Our director was Fr. Cyprian Consiglio of the Camaldolese Benedictine priory of Big Sur in California. The Camaldolese are an Italian branch of Benedictines that emphasizes the hermit way of life. I guess standing in front of so many monks got the better of him, and at the end of the second day he was diagnosed with covid. He gave the rest of our retreat conferences via zoom from the confines of his guest room in the monastery.
+One evening this week, as I sat reading, I glanced up and caught a glimpse of the light streaming through my window. It was absolutely stunning, as the photo at top suggests. The three photos below it show a sculpture (ca. 1520) designed to hang in mid-air, with images on both sides, housed at the Schuntzen Museum in Cologne. I include it in light of the book on saints and levitation that we are reading at dinner in the refectory.