I often remind my family that we are bound to a common calendar and a common clock; within those confines we must all live and perform. None acquires a 367 day year or a 25 hour day. We can make light of the fact that there was a failure on our part to do something, or we can choose to divide our time and talent to accomplish the task. Ben Franklin once said, the person who becomes better at making excuses is seldom better at anything else. The bottom line is that we chose not to do what was good, or true, or right.

The image of G_d walking in the Garden in the cool of the evening has always intrigued me. How wonderful it must have been asking G_d about Creation during his evening walks and to receive an immediate answer. Adam and Eve were accustomed to that divine habit, but that one day their focus had turned away from the eternal, towards the temporary. The man and the woman possessed all that G_d had created. They lived in a Paradise which had but one caveat, that of faithful obedience.

There is no suggestion that G_d was checking up on them. Being all knowing would eliminate the need to investigate any changes in the garden. Yet not seeing the two, G_d calls out to Adam, “Where are you?” Clearly, the natural communion among G_d, Adam, and Eve had been changed. Eating the fruit of the tree had engulfed the man and his wife in equivocation. Woman and man were now armed with the same knowledge of good and evil as G_d. Their former state of ethical indifference was replaced with choices for everything. In the absence of control over the choices that would be made after that day in Eden, G_d prevented the pair from also eating of the Tree of Life; “…he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way….” Where they once saw only into each other’s hearts, they now found shame in their bodies. Where they once spoke only truth, they now sought to place blame for their disobedience. G_d details the consequences of their disobedience, but also alludes to the deeper redemption that will come.

In the cool of the evening, we can still walk and talk with G_d, although his answers may come a bit slower. We can still possess all that G_d created, while having only to follow the original expectation of Adam and Eve, faithful obedience plus one added requirement, that we love one another. We can get past the flaming sword, return to eat of the Tree of Life and enter into Eternal Life. All the baptized can, and without excuses or shame, offer our divine substance to the Creator. Knowledge and immortality are both desirable to mankind, but these are incompatible without the return to the order of all things by G_d, the return to full communion with G_d, and the return to life through His Son.

G_d of judgment and mercy, when we hide ourselves in shame, you seek us out in love. Grant us the fullness of your forgiveness, that as one Church, united by your grace, we may stand with Christ against the powers of evil. Amen.

Pax,
jbt