When we look at the world around us, we see that something
is just not right. People grow old and
die. Arguments break out between family
members. Every sort of lying, deceit,
deception and immorality happens on a daily basis. Fr. Hofer began his lecture by apologizing
for his tardiness and recounting his hellish 2 hour trip in traffic to get to
St Timothy, chalking up traffic to original sin. Think about all the evil in the world and you
get a real sense of original sin.
Original sin is a reality that we all live with on a daily
basis, but it wasn’t always this way.
Adam and Eve were created in original justice and enjoyed paradise in
the Garden of Eden. One can only wonder
why Adam committed the original sin. But
alas, the Original Sin is a truth of our Faith and the topic of discussion for
Thursday’s presentation by the ICC.
The scholastics, like St. Thomas Aquinas, considered
Original sin in two parts: Peccatum Originale Originans (Original Sin
originating) and second Peccatum Originale Originatum (Original Sin having been
originated). In other words, the
personal effect that original sin had on Adam and the effect that original sin
had on all creation.
Peccatum Orginale Originans, or the Original Sin
originating, speaks about the personal effects that original sin had on Adam
and Eve. As the Catechism of the
Catholic Church states “The tree of knowledge of good and evil symbolically
evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creation, must freely
recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his creator and subject
to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom”
(CCC 390). The tree tempted Adam and Eve
to decide for themselves what was good and evil rather than recognizing the
laws of creation and ultimately the law of God.
Adam and Eve no longer wanted to respect God and His laws; they wanted
to be like God. After their sin, they
shamefully hid themselves, recognizing their state and their sin. As a result of their sin, death became a part
of the human reality.
That leads us to the consideration of the result of original
sin on humanity as a whole (Pecattum Originale Originatum). The Catechism says “Following St. Paul, the
Church has always taught that the over whelming misery which oppress men and
their inclination toward evil and death cannot be understood apart from their
connection with Adam’s sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with
which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the ‘death of the soul’.” Original does not have the character of
personal fault. Rather it affects our
nature. Beyond the spiritual death of
the soul, the Catechism states “certain temporal consequence of sin remain in
the baptized such as suffering, illness, death and such frailties inherent in
life as weaknesses ofcharacter and so on as well as an inclination to sin that
Tradition call concupiscence…the tinder for sin” (CCC 1264).
Why would God allow us to suffer these effects? God will always bring a greater good out of
evil. Because of our sin, Christ became
our divine physician for our spiritual malady.
God created us perfect to enjoy paradise. But by allowing Adam to use his free will and
freedom to sin, God gives us something even better, redemption by the blood of
His only Son, the second person of the Blessed Trinity. The paradise that God created for Man was
good, but our reward for “fighting the good fight” is even better. At the Easter vigil, the Church joyfully
sings “O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”
Submitted by James Blankenship
