We are living through unusual and odd times and it is important to try to see things clearly. We have to try and discern the events, which have so much affected our day-to-day life.
We are flooded with information, sometimes with conflicting accounts and analyses and we must make sense of it all.
Well, we have a strong frame of reference in our Catholic faith.
Let us look at three important points given to us in the Holy Scriptures:
- If we read carefully the account of the creation of the world, (Genesis chapter 1), at the end of each day “God saw that it was good”; however, after the creation of the sixth day “God saw that all was very good!”. Here is the key: the world is made good, actually very good!
- Going on to the third chapter of Genesis we read about the Fall of the first people, and the verses 16-19 depict a sad state of affairs: God said to the woman: I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.. and to the man he says: …By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food…
- This is how the Gospel according to Mark starts: The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (Mk. 1,1)
Here we have the unfolding of the drama that accompanies our life on this beautiful earth, pain and toil in a fundamentally good world.
The Original Sin is a mysterious act, tasting the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it is lost in the mists of history. Lost only in the technical meaning of the word, for the original sin is present in the memory of humanity, but most importantly it still is a part of the reality of our experience.
The coming of Christ cancels the dire effects of the original sin and it goes well beyond the earthly paradise of Adam and Eve before the Fall. The world is re-created through Jesus Christ. Every Sunday we affirm in the Creed “I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father…..Through him all things were made….” This sentence, according to the intention of the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 325 is a reference to the recreation and restoration of the world through the Passion and Resurrection of the Incarnate Son of God.
Christ, the light of the world, has saved the world. The paradox however remains, that although we who believe in Him and follow Him are saved, we still have to live our every day life in this environment stained by sin, yet redeemed in Christ. This is the mystery and the tension of Christian life: we live redeemed through, with and in Christ, yet we must strive against the sin which comes from ourselves or from elsewhere. The Church has preserved the teachings of the Lord and has been given the authority to guide and to bring us to close union with the Lord, and through Him to the Life of the most Holy Trinity.
Sin and death are defeated. Time is on our side and we are given all means to escape the misery of a life without purpose, without God, without Love.
As Saint Paul says: All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world, or life or death or the present or the future–all are yours, and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s. (! Cor. 3, 21,22)
Open Reflections 