Original Sin: The Adam in All of Us

The first reading at Mass this week is from the beginning of The Beginning, that is, from the Book of Genesis. Today we reached the sad story of the original sin, the story, as Pope John Paul put it, of the temptation and sin against God's fatherhood; the rejection of God as good Father. The serpent offered our first parents the brightly colored water (there was no Kool-Aid yet) of a lie about God and themselves: that they were in competition; that God was holding out on them; that God was secretly threatened by the possibility of their full flourishing, and that all they had to do to be his equals was, you know...

Currently for my evening spiritual reading I am slowly making my way through a book on St Paul's insights on life in Christ. It's slow going because the book, by Father Giuseppe Forlai (of the Pauline Institute of Jesus the Priest) is in Italian--and I do my spiritual reading at night, so the old brain isn't exactly firing on all cylinders. (Plus my Italian vocabulary, cobbled together from reading the sermons of Blessed James Alberione, is heavy in old-fashioned pious language, while Father Forlai speaks and writes a very contemporary Italian--I keep a sheet of paper next to the book to write down words I need to look up.) Anyway, last night I came across just the perfect commentary on today's first reading, so I wanted to share it with you in a very rough translation (emphases are mine).

(Context: Father had gone to a public high school to give a talk about freedom, one of St Paul's favorite themes. When he mentioned the problem of sin limiting our human freedom, one of the students challenged him: You Catholics always bring up sin! It's just an excuse for you to claim that we need a savior... Father Forlai commented, at least to the reader, that everyday experience tells us that we live in a fallen world and that we contribute to that fallen state.)

Adam and I are connected. If we substitute the word “humanity” for Adam things might be a bit clearer. If I do wrong, this shows that humanity is capable of wrongdoing;  if humanity (for example a nation, a group, an organization) commits crimes, that's signifies that in them I too might have the capacity of doing the same evil, even if I find it revolting. This is not to say that I will commit it, but simply that I could be capable of committing it. We are interdependent in good and in evil, beyond the centuries that separate one generation from another. Whatever one says about it, I too am Adam; I keep that original evil alive in me: by sinning I give my assent to the evil that has preceded me.