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From: Genesis 3:9-15, 20

Temptation and the First Sin (Continuation)

[9] But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"
[10] And he said, "I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was
afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." [11] He said, "Who told you
that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to
eat?" [12] The man said, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave
me fruit of the tree, and I ate." [13] Then the Lord God said to the woman,
"What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent beguiled me,
and I ate." [14] The Lord said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly
you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. [15] I will
put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he
shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

[20] The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all
living.

Commentary:

3:7-13. This passage begins the description of the effects of the original
sin. Man and woman have come to know evil, and it shows, initially, in a
most direct way--in their own bodies. The inner harmony described in
Genesis 2:25 is broken, and concupiscence rears its head. Their friendship
with God is also broken, and they flee from his presence, to avoid their
nakedness being seen. As if his Creator could not see them! The harmony
between man and woman is also fractured: he puts the blame on her, and she
puts it on the serpent. But all three share in the responsibility, and
therefore all three are going to pay the penalty.

"The harmony in which they found themselves, thanks to original justice, is
now destroyed: the control of the soul's spiritual faculties over the body
is shattered: the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions (cf.
Gen 3:7-16), their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination.
Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and
hostile to man (cf. Gen 3:17, 19). Because of man, creation is now subject
'to its bondage to decay' (Rom 8:21). Finally, the consequence explicitly
foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will 'return to the
ground' (Gen 3:19), for out of it he was taken. 'Death makes its entrance
into human history' (cf. Roman 5:12)" ("Catechism of the Catholic Church",
400).

3:14-15. The punishment God imposes on the serpent includes confrontation
between woman and the serpent, between mankind and evil, with the promise
that man will come out on top. That is why this passage is called the
"Proto-gospel": it is the first announcement to mankind of the good news of
the Redeemer-Messiah. Clearly, a bruise to the head is deadly, whereas a
bruise to the heel is curable.

As the Second Vatican Council teaches, "God, who creates and conserves all
things by his Word, (cf. In 1:3), provides men with constant evidence of
himself in created realities (cf. Rom 1:19-20). And furthermore, wishing to
open up the way to heavenly salvation, by promising redemption (cf. Gen
3:15); and he has never ceased to take care of the human race. For he wishes
to give eternal life to all those who seek salvation by patience in
well-doing (cf. Rom 2:6-7)" ("Dei Verbum", 3).

Victory over the devil will be brought about by a descendant of the woman,
the Messiah. The Church has always read these verses as being messianic,
referring to Jesus Christ; and it was seen in the woman the mother of the
promised Savior; the Virgin Mary is the new Eve. "The earliest documents, as
they are read in the Church and are understood in the light of a further and
full revelation, bring the figure of a woman, Mother of the Redeemer, into a
gradually clearer light. Considered in this light, she is already
prophetically foreshadowed in the promise of victory over the serpent which
was given to our first parents after their fall into sin (cf. Gen 3:15)
[...]. Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert with Irenaeus in
their preaching: 'the knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's
obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by
her faith' (St Irenaeus, "Adv. haer." 3, 22, 4) Comparing Mary with Eve,
they call her 'Mother of the living' (St Epiphanius, "Adv. haer. Panarium"
78, 18) and frequently claim: 'death through Eve, life through Mary' (St
Jerome, "Epistula" 22, 21; etc.)" (Vatican II, "Lumen Gentium", 55-56).

So, woman is going to have a key role in that victory over the devil. In his
Latin translation of the Bible, the "Vulgate", St Jerome in fact reads the
relevant passage as "she [the woman] shall bruise your head". That woman is
the Blessed Virgin, the new Eve and the mother of the Redeemer, who shares
(by anticipation and pre-eminently) in the victory of her Son. Sin never
left its mark on her, and the Church proclaims her as the Immaculate
Conception.

St Thomas explains that the reason why God did not prevent the first man
from sinning was because 'God allows evils to be done in order to draw forth
some greater good. Thus St Paul says, 'Where sin increased, grace abounded
all the more' (Rom 5:20); and the "Exultet" sings, '0 happy fault,...which
gained for us so great a Redeemer'" ("Summa Theologiae", 3, 1, 3 and 3; cf.
"Catechism of the Catholic Church", 412).

Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.

From: Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12

Hymn of Praise

[3] Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly
places, [4] even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. [5] He destined
us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the
purpose of his will, [6] to the praise of his glorious grace which he
freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

[11] In him, according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all
things according to the counsel of his will, [12] we who first hoped
in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of
his glory.

Commentary:

3-14. Verses 3-14 are a hymn of praise to God for the plan of salvation
he has devised and brought to fulfillment in benefit of men and all
creation. It is written in a liturgical style of rhythmic prose,
similar to that in Colossians 1:15-20. In the Greek it is one long
complex sentence full of relative pronouns and clauses which give it a
designed unity; we can, however, distinguish two main sections.

The first (v. 3-10), divided into four stanzas, describes the blessings
contained in God's salvific plan; St Paul terms this plan the "mystery"
of God's will. The section begins by praising God for his eternal
design, a plan, pre-dating creation, to call us to the Church, to form
a community of saints (first stanza: vv. 3f) and receive the grace of
being children of God through Jesus Christ (second stanza: vv. 5f). It
then reflects on Christ's work of redemption which brings this eternal
plan of God to fulfillment (third stanza: vv. 7f). This section reaches
its climax in the fourth stanza (vv. 9f) which proclaims Christ as Lord
of all creation, thereby revealing the full development of God's
salvific plan.

The second section, which divides into two stanzas, deals with the
application of this plan--first to the Jews (fifth stanza: vv. 11f) and
then to the Gentiles, who are also called to share what God has
promised: Jews and Gentiles join to form a single people, the Church
(sixth stanza: vv. 13f).

Hymns in praise of God, or "eulogies", occur in many parts of Sacred
Scripture (cf. Ps 8; Ps 19; Dan 2:20-23; Lk 1:46-54, 68-78; etc.); they
praise the Lord for the wonders of creation or for spectacular
interventions on behalf of his people. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, St
Paul here praises God the Father for all Christ's saving work, which
extends from God's original plan which he made before he created the
world, right up to the very end of time and the recapitulation of all
things in Christ.

We too should always have this same attitude of praise of the Lord.
"Our entire life on earth should take the form of praise of God, for
the never-ending joy of our future life consists in praising God, and
no one can become fit for that future life unless he train himself to
render that praise now" (St Augustine, "Enarrationes in Psalmos",
148).

Praise is in fact the most appropriate attitude for man to have towards
God: "How can you dare use that spark of divine intelligence--your
mind--in anything but in giving glory to your Lord?" ([St] J. Escriva, "The
Way", 782).

3. St Paul blesses God as Father of our Lord Jesus Christ because it is
through Christ that all God's blessings and gifts reach us. God's
actions in favor of man are actions of all three divine Persons; the
divine plan which the Apostle considers here has its origin in the
Blessed Trinity; it is eternal. "These three Persons are not to be
considered separable," the Eleventh Council of Toledo teaches, "since
we believe that not one of them existed or at any time effected
anything before the other, after the other, or without the other. For
in existence and operation they are found to be inseparable" ("De
Trinitate" Creed, "Dz-Sch", 531).

In the implementation of this divine plan of salvation, the work of
Redemption is attributed to the Son and that of sanctification to the
Holy Spirit. "To help us grasp in some measure this unfathomable
mystery, we might imagine the Blessed Trinity taking counsel together
in their uninterrupted intimate relationship of infinite love. As a
result of their eternal decision, the only-begotten Son of God the
Father takes on our human condition and bears the burden of our
wretchedness and sorrows, to end up sewn with nails to a piece of wood"
([St] J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 95).

St Paul describes as "spiritual blessings" all the gifts which the
implementation of God's plan implies, gifts which are distributed by
the Holy Spirit. When he speaks of them as being "in the heavenly
places" and "in Christ", he is saying that through Christ who has risen
from the dead and ascended on high we too have been inserted into the
world of God (cf. 1:20; 2:6).

When man describes God as "blessed" it means he recognizes God's
greatness and goodness, and rejoices over the divine gifts he has
received (cf. Lk 1:46, 68). Here is what St Thomas Aquinas has to say
about the meaning of this passage: "The Apostle says, 'Benedictus'
[Blessed be the God ...], that is, may I, and you, and everyone bless
him, with our heart, our mouth, our actions--praising him as God and as
Father, for he is God because of his essence and Father because of his
power to generate" ("Commentary on Eph.", 1, 6).

Sacred Scripture very often invites us to praise God our Lord (cf. Ps
8:19; 33; 46-48; etc.); this is not a matter only of verbal praise: our
actions should prove that we mean what we say: "He who does good with
his hands praises the Lord, and he who confesses the Lord with his
mouth praises the Lord. Praise him by your actions" (St Augustine,
"Enarrationes in Psalmos", 91, 2).

4. As the hymn develops, the Apostle details each of the blessings
contained in God's eternal plan. The first of these is his choice,
before the foundation of the world, of those who would become part of
the Church. The word he uses, translated here as "chose", is the same
one as used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to refer to
God's election of Israel. The Church, the new people of God, is
constituted by assembling in and around Christ those who have been
chosen and called to holiness. This implies that although the Church
was founded by Christ at a particular point in history, its origin goes
right back to the eternal divine plan. 'The eternal Father, in
accordance with the utterly gratuitous and mysterious design of his
wisdom and goodness,... 'predestined (the elect) to be conformed to
the image of his Son in order that he might be the first-born among
many brethren' (Rom 8:29). He determined to call together in a holy
Church those who believe in Christ. Already present in figure at the
beginning of the world, this Church was prepared in marvelous fashion
in the history of the people of Israel and in the Old Alliance.
Established in this last age of the world, and made manifest in the
outpouring of the Spirit, it will be brought to glorious completion at
the end of time" (Vatican II, "Lumen Gentium", 2).

God's choice seeks to have us become "holy and blameless before him".
In the same way as in the Old Testament a victim offered to God had to
be unblemished, blameless (cf. Gen 17:1), the blameless holiness to
which God has destined us admits of no imperfection. By the very fact
of being baptized we are made holy (cf. note on 1: 1), and during our
lifetime we try to grow holier with the help of God; however, complete
holiness is something we shall attain only in heaven.

The holiness with which we have been endowed is an undeserved gift from
God: it is not a reward for any merit on our part: even before we were
created God chose us to be his: "'He chose us in him before the
foundation of the world, that we should be holy.' I know that such
thoughts don't fill you with pride or lead you to think yourself better
than others. That choice, the root of your vocation, should be the
basis of your humility. Do we build monuments to an artist's
paintbrush? Granted the brush had a part in creating masterpieces, but
we give credit only to the painter. We Christians are nothing more than
instruments in the hands of the Creator of the world, the Redeemer of
all men" ([St] J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 1).

"He destined us in love": the loving initiative is God's. "If God has
honored us with countless gifts it is thanks to his love, not to our
merits. Our fervor, our strength, our faith and our unity are the
fruit of God's benevolence and our response to his goodness" (St John
Chrysostom, "Hom. on Eph, ad loc".).

God's election of Christians and their vocation to holiness, as also
the gift of divine filiation, reveals that God is Love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8);
we have become partakers of God's very nature (cf. 2 Pet 1:4), sharers,
that is, in the love of God.

"He destined us in love", therefore, also includes the Christian's love
of God and of others: charity is a sharing in God's own love; it is the
essence of holiness, the Christian's law; nothing has any value if it
is not inspired by charity (cf. 1 Cor 13:1-3).

5. The Apostle goes on to explore the further implications of God's
eternal plan: those chosen to form part of the Church have been given a
second blessing, as it were, by being predestined to be adoptive
children of God. 'The state of this people is that of the dignity and
freedom of the sons of God, in whose hearts the Holy Spirit dwells as
in a temple" (Vatican II, "Lumen Gentium, 9).

This predestination to which the Apostle refers means that God
determined from all eternity that the members of the new people of God
should attain holiness through his gift of adoptive sonship. It is
God's desire that all be saved (cf. 1 Tim 2:4) and he gives each person
the means necessary for obtaining eternal life. Therefore, no one is
predestined to damnation (cf. Third Council of Valence, "De
Praedestinatione", can. 3).

The source of the Christian's divine sonship is Jesus Christ. God's
only Son, one in substance with the Father, took on human nature in
order to make us sons and daughters of God by adoption (cf. Rom 8:15,
29; 9:4; Gal 4:5). This is why every member of the Church can say: "See
what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of
God; and so we are" (1 Jn 3:1).

What is involved here is not simply formal adoption, which is something
external and does not affect the very person of the child. Divine
adoption affects man's entire being, it inserts him into God's own
life; for Baptism makes us truly his children, partakers of the divine
nature (cf. 2 Pet 1:4). Divine sonship is therefore the greatest of
the gifts God bestows on man during his life on earth. It is indeed
right to exclaim "Blessed be God" (v. 3) when one reflects on this
great gift: it is right for children openly to acknowledge their father
and show their love for him.

Divine filiation has many rich effects as far as the spiritual life is
concerned. "A child of God treats the Lord as his Father. He is not
obsequious and servile; he is not merely formal and well-mannered: he
is completely sincere and trusting. God is not shocked by what we do.
Our infidelities do not wear him out. our Father in heaven pardons any
offense when his child returns to him, when he repents and asks for
pardon. The Lord is such a good father that he anticipates our desire
to be pardoned and comes forward to us, opening his arms laden with
grace" ([St] J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 64). See the notes on Jn
1:12.

6. The gift of divine filiation is the greatest _expression of the glory
of God (cf. note on 1:17 below), because it reveals the full extent of
God's love for man. St Paul stresses what the purpose of this eternal
divine plan is--to promote "the praise of his glorious grace". God's
glory has been made manifest through his merciful love, which has led
him to make us his children in accordance with the eternal purpose of
his will. This eternal design "flows from 'fountain-like love', the
love of God the Father [...]. God in his great and merciful kindness
freely creates us and, moreover, graciously calls us to share in his
life and glory. He generously pours out, and never ceases to pour out,
his divine goodness, so that he who is Creator of all things might at
last become 'everything to everyone' (1 Cor 15:28), thus simultaneously
assuring his own glory and our happiness" (Vatican II, "Ad Gentes",
2).

The grace which St Paul speaks of here and which manifests the glory of
God refers first to the fact that God's blessings are totally unmerited
by us and include the grace-conferring gifts of holiness and divine
filiation.

"In the Beloved": the Old Testament stresses again and again that God
loves his people and that Israel is that cherished people (cf. Deut
33:12; is 5:1, 7; 1 Mac 6:11; etc.). In the New Testament Christians
are called "beloved by God" (1 Thess 1:4; cf. Col 3:12). However, there
is only one "Beloved", strictly speaking, Jesus Christ our Lord--as God
revealed from the bright cloud at the Transfiguration: "This is my
beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" (Mt 17:5). The Son of his
love has obtained man's redemption and brought forgiveness of sins (cf.
Col 1:13ff), and it is through his grace that we become pleasing to
God, lovable by him with the same love with which he loves his Son. At
the Last Supper, Jesus asked his Father for this very thing--"so that
the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as
thou hast loved me" (Jn 17:23). "Notice", St John Chrysostom points
out, "that Paul does not say that this grace has been given us for no
purpose but that it has been given us to make us pleasing and lovable
in his eyes, now that we are purified of our sins" ("Hom. on Eph, ad
loc.").

11-14. The Apostle now contemplates a further divine blessing--the
implementation of the "mystery" through the Redemption wrought by
Christ: God calls the Jews (vv. 11f) and the Gentiles (v. 13)
together, to form a single people (v. 14). Paul first refers to the
Jewish people, of which he himself is a member, which is why he uses
the term "we" (v. 12). He then speaks of the Gentile Christians and
refers to them as "you" (v. 13).

11-12. The Jewish people's expectations have been fulfilled in Christ:
he has brought the Kingdom of God and the messianic gifts, designed in
the first instance for Israel as its inheritance (cf. Mt 4:17; 12:28;
Lk 4:16-22). God's intention in selecting Israel was to form a people
of his own (cf. Ex 19:5) that would glorify him and proclaim to the
nations its hope in a coming Messiah. "God, with loving concern
contemplating, and making preparation for, the salvation of the whole
human race, in a singular undertaking chose for himself a people to
whom he would entrust his promises. By his covenant with Abraham (cf.
Gen 15:18) and, through Moses, with the race of Israel (cf. Ex 24:8),
he did acquire a people for himself, and to them he revealed himself in
words and deeds as the one, true, living God, so that Israel might
experience the ways of God with men. Moreover, by listening to the
voice of God speaking to them through the prophets, they had steadily
to understand his ways more fully and more clearly, and make them more
widely known among the nations (cf. Ps 21:28-9; 95:1-3; Is 2:1-4; Jer
3:17)" (Vatican II, "Dei Verbum", 14).

St Paul emphasizes that even before the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the just of the Old Testament acted in line with their belief
in the promised Messiah (cf. Gal 3:11; Rom 1:17); not only did they
look forward to his coming but their hope was nourished by faith in
Christ as a result of their acceptance of God's promise. As later
examples of this same faith we might mention Zechariah and Elizabeth;
Simeon and Anna; and, above all, St Joseph. St Joseph's faith was
"full, confident, complete", Monsignor Escriva comments. "It expressed
itself in an effective dedication to the will of God and an intelligent
obedience. With faith went love. His faith nurtured his love of God,
who was fulfilling the promises made to Abraham, Jacob and Moses, and
his affection for Mary his wife and his fatherly affection for Jesus.
This faith, hope and love would further the great mission which God
was beginning in the world through, among others, a carpenter in
Galilee--the redemption of mankind" ("Christ Is Passing By", 42).