Tag: Adam and Eve

February 15, 2025 – Saturday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021525.cfm)

Is it easy to own our failures and mistakes and take the responsibility for the consequences? The general behavior in us, as human beings because of social and cultural influences around us, is to appear clean and infallible. Mistakes and failures are mostly viewed negatively. In our upbringing, our experiences tell us that committing to a mistake or failure would bring us painful and sometimes shameful consequences.

As a result, when we commit a mistake or failure, instead of acknowledging it immediately, we would try to deviate and make a lot of reasons to explain that it is not our fault but caused by something outside of us. We would make reasonable explanation that it was out of our control. But worst, we could also dare to blame others for the failure that happened.

This is the very situation that happened in today’s story in the Book of Genesis. Hence, the man must have pointed his judging finger to the woman who gave him the fruit. “No, not me! It was her! She gave me the fruit!”

Yet, the woman also responded to deny the accusation of her husband, “Not me either. It was the serpent!” See, both of them denied the responsibility of eating the fruit and realizing that they were naked. Both succumbed to the blame-game to deny full responsibility of their disobedience and disrespect to God’s commandment.

Nevertheless, what was really the issue in this story? Was it because of eating a desirable fruit? Was it because of the presence of the serpent that tempted them? Or the presence of evil around them?

Both of them, the woman and the man, were tempted not just because the fruit was desirable to eat. The fruit was only a symbol of a greater temptation. The cunning serpent, engaged the woman in a conversation by asking, “Did God really say that you will die?”

The question was an opening of the serpent’s temptation for both man and woman to believe that they can become like gods. This means that the temptation was in believing that they will be in complete control of everything. They must have believed too that they did not have everything in paradise, that God deprived them of many things. The unquenchable desire to have everything must have consumed them. They can only have everything when they too will become like gods.

However, the moment they tasted the fruit and came to know what is good and what is evil, they too realized their smallness and nothingness before God. This was the reason why they hid from the Lord God. They knew that they have sinned and that sin led them to fear. Fear is filled with guilt and shame.

This is the reason why Adam and Eve were hiding. Their nakedness tells us of their guilt and shame. Yet, their guilt never made them to take the responsibility that they have sinned. As a result, they became trapped in the cycle of blaming. Adam blamed Eve. And Eve blamed the Serpent. And perhaps, we today, might also blame God for putting the serpent among them.

Because of this, the intimacy between man, woman, and God was shattered. In the same way, man and woman lost their closeness with God. It was them who distanced from God. Thus, sin, without acknowledgment makes us hide yet, it leads to destruction and to death.

But remember, this is also how God intervenes. God calls us. In the garden, God’s words, “Where are you?” were not of condemnation but of invitation to come closer. God continues to search us not to destroy us but to renew us, to recreate us, to give us the fullness of God’s grace and presence.

This is how the Gospel of Mark tells us now of the heart of Jesus. Jesus felt the hunger of the people. Jesus felt their need to be filled and be satisfied. The heart of Jesus was surely, so close to the people. The Gospel said, the “heart of Jesus is moved with pity.” This is love that redeems and saves.

For that reason, Jesus wants his disciples to learn from that kind of love. It was love that gives even when there is nothing left for us. It was a complete dependence on God’s generosity. That was how the miracle happened, as Jesus was moved with pity and so the disciples too and all those people around them.

Therefore, let us allow the Lord to find us today as we humbly acknowledge our failures rather than blame others. Let us also learn from the heart of Jesus, that we may too be moved with pity so that God’s grace will truly fill and satisfy our every longing and desire. Hinaut pa.