There´s Act II in this great Theodrama:
The Fall.
Now ... I say we begin with grace, we begin with being, we begin with creation
but, if we forget Act II, the story is not effectively told.
If we forget Act II we have no real credibility.
G.K. Chesterton said this:
"We´re all in the same boat...
... and we´re all seasick."
haha...isn't that good?
We all know it!
I have been just been laying out this lyrical approach to creation,
wonderful connection, love, non violence, generosity, science and faith, intermingled
and you say, yeah that's great, but where do you ever see that?
I mean, we know, we know from our sin
that it's been compromised.
You know, one of the marks of a bad story
the story that modernity often tells us, is that we´re perfectable.
We are not sinners, we can just make ourself perfect through the mind or through the will.
Bible says no.
The great Tradition says no.
Sin has compromised us.
Sin has not destroyed, but has compromised what God intends for us.
Ok
What´s sin?
What is sin?
Is a good Lenten meditation for us
Go back to Genesis!
You got free reign in the garden.
Eat of all the trees you want.
Save one.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
John Paul II's readong of this is very good I thought
John Paul said:
"The one thing we can´t do, if we want to flourish according to God´s will
is, we cannot apporpiate to ourselves
the criterion of good and evil."
The one thing we can´t do, is to appropiate to ourselves the prerogative of determining good and evil.
Rather, we must receive that always from God.
What´s sin?
Turning oneself into God.
Appropriating the Divine Life rather than receiving it.
Listen, Christians.
What is the Divine Life?
It is a gift.
It exists in gift form.
God is the one who gives.
The Father gives to the Son, the Son gives back to the Father.
The Spirit is the mutual giving of Father and Son,
that´s all what God is- gift giving.
Therefore, do you want the Divine Life in You?
Then you can´t have it!
You can't grab it, you can't appropriate it,
but rather you must always have it on the fly.
Here's what I mean-
As you receive it,
remember ADORATIO, you´re mouth to mouth with God,
you´re breathing in the Divine Life,
but as you receive it,
you give it.
As it comes in, it goes out.
Then paradoxically, only then, do you really have it.
Only then, does it truly grows in you.
Remember that great story of the widow of Zarephath, it'sin the Elijah cycle.
Elijah comes upon the widow and her son.
He says: "Give me something to eat"...
during a time of drought.
She says, we've got enough for one last meal for me and my son
and Elijah says to her: make me a cake!
haha...that's right out of Mel Brooks.
I just told you, I am dying, we've got one meal left for the two of us,
yeah, make me a cake.
Of course, in the story, the oil and flour do not run out.
Oh! The Bible tells the story over and over and over again.
You want the Divine Life in you?
Give it away.
And then you get more.
And then give that away...and you get more!
It becomes, finally a fountain bubbling up in you to Eternal Life.
Look at the woman at the well, coming every day to drink and to drink and to drink and to drink, to receive, to take.
Jesus wants to give her Living Water
What´s sin?
It's the appropriation of the Divine Life.
Taking it, having it, making it my own.
The prodigal son: Father give me my share of inheritance that is coming to me.
Me, me, me, give it to me, let me have it.
Where does that younger son go?
In the Greek of the New Testament he goes into the Chora Makra.
We tend to say to a "distant country," but you know what that means, literally, it means
into the "great emptiness."
That´s a great symbol of sin.
Whenever I say to God, give me, give me, it's mine, I appropriate.
Then I, "ipso facto" wander into the "great emptiness."
Oh, If only you knew, says the father, that everything I have is yours.
Receive the Divine Life... and give it away!
You know what´s a very good example of sin?
Again, I´m not picking on either our culture or on the Supreme Court, because we sinners all express our sins.
Go back to 1992.
The decision of the US Supreme Court in the matter of Casey v. Planned Parenthood.
It was an abortion related case but the finding went way beyond the abortion issue.
Here's what the Justice said:
"It belongs to the very nature of liberty
to define the meaning of one´s own existence
of the world, of the universe, and of life."
Huh, how about that?
That's all.
That's what the Bible means by sin.
I appropriate, I make my own, I decide what life means.
Uh uh. No.
You receive the Divine Life as a gift and then you give it away.
What happen because of this?
Oh, read the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis.
You see it beautifully laid out in symbolic detail
exactly what happesn when we appropriate the Divine Life.
Hatred, violence, division,
rivalry, jealousy, fratricide, homicide.
All the forms of human disfunction follow from this basic problem.
That is Act II of the drama.
Woe to us if we forget it.
Here is a great line from Blaise Pascal,
the 17th century Catholic philosopher, he said:
"The one who will would make himself into an angel,
makes himself into a beast."
Read the history of the 20th century under that rubric.
Boy, did Pascal have it!
The minute we thinks we´re not sinners,
the minute we think we don´t have this problem,
that´s when we turn ourselves into beasts.
Acknowledging Act II is very important.