10th Sunday in OT 2024

In this reading, we learn about the consequences of sin and how it affects our relationship with God. God asks Adam where he is, not because He doesn't know, but to make Adam reflect on his actions and the cost of sin. Sin leads to a fear of God's presence and a turning inward on oneself. Adam and Eve blame each other and God for their actions, refusing to take responsibility. The cure for sin is God's mercy and forgiveness, offered in the sacrament of reconciliation. By doing God's will and desiring it above all else, we can restore our relationship with Him and experience peace and trust. In our first reading, we hear about the awful consequences of sin. We hear God address Adam after he has fallen by asking him a question, by calling out, saying, where are you? God being God, he's obviously not confused about Adam's physical location. Rather, the question is meant for Adam to do some self-reflecting, for him to understand what he has just done, for him to have an awareness of what sin is, of what it has cost him. So another way we can look at this question, which is kind of contained all within that and much more, would be, you have removed yourself from my presence, the place of innocence, joy, peace, happiness, satisfaction, safety, the place where you knew who I was and who you were in relationship to me. Now that you've declared your independence from me, where does that leave you? Where are you? Where are you going? You are lost, adrift, without meaning or purpose, because you have rejected my will and substituted your own will for my will, and that's led to a fear, mistrust, suspicion, a warping of the mind and will. And so all of that is meant to call to mind much more with that question that God poses to Adam. Then notice also the self-awareness that Adam now has. He is aware of his nakedness. So he was naked before, and the scripture tells us that both he and Eve were naked, but they were without shame, and so he had no fear, no shame in God's presence. The kind of fear that we want in our lives is a filial fear, so the fear that a son has for his father in a good way, like the wonder, the awe, the respect that a child has towards a loving father, delighting in the father's strength and protection, and in the father's goodness towards him. After the fall, Adam's fear has changed from that filial, that loving fear, that awe, that respect, that wonder of God, to servile fear. It's the fear that a slave has towards a tyrannical, wicked, and cruel master, and that's what sin always does for us, right? It warps our mind and our understanding of who God is. So a child, in his loving relationship with the father, doesn't want to hide from the father. He wants his father to know where he is, he wants to be in the father's presence, but a slave is terrified of a wicked master's presence, of being noticed by him. He wants to hide, he doesn't want to be seen. So we can ask, well, something changed here, and it wasn't God, God isn't the one who changed. We did, Adam and Eve did. So now instead of that loving trust, respect, and awe, there's that shame, that self-consciousness, that fear in God's presence. When you and I, as human beings, are most fully alive is when we are focused on God and on others, on doing the father's will, when we are forgetful of self, and sin by its very nature causes a turning inward, a turning in on oneself, a focus and obsession with oneself, and that we're now the measure of reality, and that always leaves us feeling unsure, uncertain in the presence of God and the presence of others, because we are the measure of reality, God is, and so that happens every single time that we sin, and that we're happiest when we're least aware of ourselves, when we're caught up in something beyond ourselves. We're designed to give ourselves away and love to God and others, and again, sin causes us to turn away from Him, and to collapse in on ourselves. Another aspect of sin, another effect of sin, is we start to blame others, so we could say with both of these, there's shame and blame, so shame in God's presence, but then also wanting to blame others for our own actions, and we don't want the attention of God on our sinful actions, so we seek to shift God's gaze to something or someone else, so notice how quickly Adam blames not only Eve, but also blames God, and he said, well, the woman you put here with me in the garden, she gave me the fruit, so God, you're the one who put her here with me, and then she's the one that gave me the fruit, completely absolving himself, glossing over any of his own responsibility, and then when God turns His attention to Eve, Eve quickly blames the serpent, right, well, the serpent tempted me, he tricked me into it, wanting to put the blame on the devil, and the devil certainly did tempt her and trick her into it, but we have free choice, right, the devil can tempt us, demons can tempt us, but they don't control our free will. It's our choice to say yes or no to those temptations, so neither Adam or Eve wants to accept the responsibility for their sin, they're turning away from God, and I would just say, right, fellow sinners, right, we're all in this boat, we're all fellow sinners, but that's our tendency, too, that when we sin, when I sin, the first thought that we often have is, well, it was that person, or that group, or that situation, or it was something else other than my own choice that made me do, you know, fill in the blank, whatever that sin might be, and there's that human tendency to refuse responsibility before God for our sinful decisions, and this can ultimately lead to ultimate death, right, spiritual death, if we refuse to be healed of this, right, if we remain outside of God's will for our life. That's ultimately hell, right, choosing our wills over God's will forever for all of eternity. That's ultimately the everlasting sin against the Holy Spirit that Jesus speaks about in our gospel. I just want to make a kind of quick explanation about this, because sometimes people can be worried that, well, maybe I had a bad or evil thought or wicked thought about the Holy Spirit, does that mean I'm guilty of an everlasting sin that can't be forgiven? That's not what it means. St. John Paul II had a beautiful explanation about this. He said that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit does not properly consist in offending against the Holy Spirit in words, it consists rather in the refusal to accept the salvation which God offers to man through the Holy Spirit, working through the power of the cross. It is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a right to persist in evil in any sin at all, and who thus rejects redemption. That's what St. John Paul II is saying there, is that we commit that everlasting sin when we say, well, God, thanks for no thanks, I don't need your love, I don't need your mercy, I'm perfectly fine the way I am, and I have a right to do evil, I have a right to persist in sin. Who are you to tell me what to do? It's that image again that we can have of God being that evil, tyrannical, cruel master that's just out to get us, or to try to make our lives difficult. And so that's the danger of that particular sin, that we persist and insist on our right to have evil in our lives, without repentance. So all that's kind of the bad news, right? So the good news is also the cure for this is also found in our readings as well, that God has his great mercy towards us. So even in Genesis, at the end of that first reading, we hear God's plan to crush the serpent's head, that the serpent will strike at the heel of the offspring of the woman, but the offspring will strike at the serpent's head, that even though we are wounded by sin, God will ultimately bring about victory. We heard in our psalm response, Psalm 130, if you, O Lord, mark iniquities, Lord, who can stand, for with you is found forgiveness, that you may be revered. So that the psalmist has this understanding that if God were to mark up all of our sins and hold us to that, in strict justice, without any mercy, he says, well, who could stand? Nobody could. Right? We all are deserving of hell. But God doesn't treat us in that way. He treats us as that loving Father that simply wants his sons and his daughters to come back, to come back to that relationship. So the forgiveness is offered if we want it. And we certainly see that mercy offered to us in the sacrament of reconciliation. I think that's one of the most beautiful things about the sacrament of reconciliation of confession, is that when we go into confession, what do we not do, or at least what are we not supposed to do? We don't make excuses for our sin. We come before the priests, say, bless me, Father, for I have sinned, and then we just state simply and directly, here's what I've done since my last confession. We don't make excuses, we don't try to hide from it, we just say, this is what I've done, God forgive me, God give me mercy, grant me the grace to do better. And we get to hear those beautiful words of absolution from the priests, that we are absolved from all of our sins, that the Lord welcomes us back with great joy and great love. It's a beautiful spiritual aspect, but I think also psychologically, too, it's important for us to be able to state, to hear our faults, for us to claim our faults and our sins out loud, and then to be absolved, to receive freedom from that. The other part of this cure that goes along with confession and the rest of the sacraments are is doing the will of God, desiring the will of God before everything else in our lives. We hear Jesus in our Gospels say that whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. And so when I desire his will before everything else, in a way it's an undoing, in a certain sense, of original sin in my life. Adam and Eve chose themselves, and that's what's caused them to be lost, and to be put in competition with God and with one another. And every time we sin, we choose ourselves over God. Every time we sin, we get more lost, more confused, more ashamed, more uncertain of ourselves, more uncertain of God. Again, we fear that attention of the God who we used to delight in. But when we do God's will, when we desire His will more than anything else, when we try to bring our wills, our crooked wills, straight into line with His, we then allow God's purpose and plan for our lives to be the most important thing, we experience a deep peace, a deep abiding union with Him, a deep trust. We don't fear the attention or the look of our Heavenly Father anymore. We then are restored, in a sense, in that relationship to, as a trusting son looks on his loving father. And then when our will is bent towards God, that can be hard and difficult, that is the work of a lifetime. We will often experience suffering because of that, again, from ourselves or from the world, the flesh, the devil. But we also get to experience the great blessing that St. Paul speaks about in our second reading. Again, when we bring our wills more in line with God's will, St. Paul says, Therefore we are not discouraged. Rather, although our outer self is wasting away, again, we're going to experience that opposition of suffering in life. He says, Our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen, but to what is unseen. For what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal. And this takes place every single time we come to Jesus in the Eucharist. What we see is the appearance of bread, but what is unseen is Jesus' presence in the Holy Eucharist, body, blood, soul, and divinity, and that is what is eternal. And so we receive that glory of God every time we come to the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. And so as we receive Him in the Eucharist today, let's ask Jesus that our wills might be straightened, they might be bent towards His, towards our Heavenly Father, so we can experience the true joy of living fully in the Heavenly Father's presence.