AT THE CROSSROADS

This bulletin article was sent to me by lay member Tony Llorens. It was written by Fr. Ben Alforque, MSC.

We resume our prayerful running commentary and reflection on the Catechism of the Catholic Church on The Stages of God’s Self-Revelation: (CCC, 55) This revelation was not broken off by our first parents' sin. "After the fall, [God] buoyed them up with the hope of salvation, by promising redemption; and he has never ceased to show his solicitude for the human race. For he wishes to give eternal life to all those who seek salvation by patience in well-doing."
Gen 2,4b-3,24 is probably an older creation narrative adapted by the Yahwist tradition in the time of King Solomon (968-928 BCE). In contrast, we know that Gen 1,1-2,4a was written by the Priestly tradition. It used a creation hymn to highlight the unique supreme power of the living God over all creatures that are truly mere instruments of His self-revelation. It depicted all of humankind, in its capacity to procreate and in its power to invent, as created in His own image. But this time, an older author was recalled, the so called Yahwist tradition, which, according to biblical exegetes, came from the Southern Kingdom of Judah, who called God by the traditional appellation: YHWH. What is the focus of this dramatic narrative by the Yahwist author? The lot of the human condition today, with its interplay of life and death, of suffering and well-being, of joy and sadness, of sickness and health, of successes and failures, can be traced back to its roots: that historic “Fall of our first parents” and God’s immediate promise of redemption.

How did it happen? The Yahwist tradition presented a dramatic story. It showed God as fully engaged in the drama of human life here on earth. God walked and conversed with humanity. He created our first parents from out of the dust of the ground and breath from His very own person. That made nature, the land and the air, one with human life, and human life one with God. That made humanity too the bridge between the breath and life of God and the fragility and mortality of material reality. Humanity was created as man and woman, with the woman taken from the rib of the man who exclaimed: “This indeed is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” This explains the Hebrew ish (man) and isha (woman) as essentially one, a unity of equals that subverted the traditional patriarchal dominance of man over woman. “Therefore, the man leaves his family and cleaves to his wife”: from the faith-perspective, marriage and family are not ordinary human social and legal institutions that are culturally determined, but are intrinsically part of God’s plan and, therefore, they do possess a divine purpose. And this first humanity was placed in the Garden of Eden, which, in Hebrew means, a place of dainty, of wholeness, of perfection, if one may. And there was the prohibition of God: not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This prohibition of God gave birth to the radical freedom of humanity, a freedom not just to choose one from among the many, but a real fundamental moral choice between good and evil.

Life was just so good, as long as it lasted. But how was it shattered?- Fr. Ben Alforque, MSC