knowing what is good and what is evil!
Instead of looking to God for happiness we choose to decide for ourselves what can make us happy. We ignore the good he has for us. We take the evil and call it good. The fruit looks shiny and appealing and delicious. Never mind that God tells us that it won't make us happy. We succumb to the lie that we should be able to decide these things for ourselves. We should be able to impose our own will on reality. Too bad it doesn't work.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter (cf. Isa. 5:20).
It would not be generous to leave us in this state forever. It would not be a mercy for us to eat from the fruit of the tree of life also. We are made to find our happiness in God himself. The world is good and there is much joy and pleasure to be found in it when it is used according to God's purposes. But when insist on choosing our own goods and exulting the creation above the creator we do not find satisfaction.
A merely natural life will not satisfy us. Even at the heights of the human vocation there is a lacking that cries out for more. Even with the exulted dignity of being the mother of all the living Eve must still come to terms with the imperfection and incompleteness which marks creation apart from God.
“I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing;
in pain shall you bring forth children.
Yet your urge shall be for your husband,
and he shall be your master.”
It is not just Eve, all of creation cries out for something more, for something better, and for things to be set right.
"For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now" (cf. Rom. 8:22).
He makes man to guard the garden and till the soil. But without God in the highest place everything is now disordered. Man can no longer find the fulfillment in his vocation which he is meant to find.
Cursed be the ground because of you!
In toil shall you eat its yield
all the days of your life.
But we certainly try to find our happiness and fulfillment in these things. Even those of us who should know better often fall into this trap. This is why we ask:
Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
He turns man back to dust, not to destroy him, not to punish him, but to prevent him from making the mistake of setting his hope on the things below. He teaches us, "Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth" (cf. Col. 3:2).
He teaches us that the bread from earth will never satisfy us. He says, "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life" (cf. Joh. 6:27). He himself is the only source of this food. We must set our minds on the bread from heaven.
They ate and were satisfied.
They picked up the fragments left over–seven baskets.
The effects of the fall seem harsh. But when we remember that they are ordered to ensure that we find the full happiness which God intends we can accept them and even be thankful for them. Jesus knows we are hungry. And he longs to satisfy us. Only he himself can do this, because "from everlasting to everlasting you are God."
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