The shame and blame game: the anatomy of sin
Some books are worth reading over and over again. Karol Wojtyla’s–Pope John Paul ll’s– A Sign of Contradiction is one of those unique texts. Recently, I read A Sign of Contradiction for the third or maybe the fifth time.
The book compiles Wojtyla’s meditations for the March 1976 Lenten Retreat for Pope Pius VI, the papal household, and the cardinals and bishops of the Roman Curia. In the first several chapters, Archbishop Karol Wojtyla speaks and writes of Genesis as if it is exigent reality: unfolding now.
Yes, now, literally, on many levels. The first: paradise.
I’ll wager I’m not unique when I declare that I’ve heard the echoes of Eden. It’s a place of perfection where peace reigns. It isn’t actually sounds but rather their absence. As if you are one with the universe, suddenly all things feel connected to everything else. A complete whole with you exactly where you should be…you belong.
Throughout the description in Genesis, the heart can be heard beating. We have before us not a great builder of the world, a demiurge. We stand in the presence of the great heart! No cosmogony, no philosophical cosmology of the past, no cosmological theory of the present-day can express a truth like this truth. We can find it only in the inspired pages of Genesis, in the revelation of the love that pervades the whole earth to its core, in the revelation of the Fatherhood which gives creation its full meaning, together with the covenant which gives rise to the creation of man in the image of God…
Thus, from the dawn of history man is faced with a tree: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree which is a symbol of his human nature in that it is a sign of the limits implicit in his creaturely state and of the frontier which development of the human person may not cross…
I think it is true that today one cannot understand either Sartre or Marx without having first read and pondered deeply the first three chapters of Genesis. These are the key to understanding the world today, both its roots and its dramatic affirmations and denials.
A Sign of Contradiction
“Why did you do such a thing?“
God’s question to Adam and Eve repeats through the ages in each human heart.
The anatomy of sin
Years ago, I read the first three chapters of Genesis. And then read them again. And also a third time. I did this because I clearly remember when I’d thought it all nonsense. But reading with the eyes of faith I was so flabbergasted at the words, their magnificence and majesty that I wondered how I could possibly have believed a human mind had conjured them.
Just so, when a character from my latest novel was trying to make sense out of what is wholly irrational and perverse, she was counseled to do the same.
“How did a civilized, technologically advanced culture like ours degenerate to this … abyss of evil?” Although tears streamed down my face, I felt oddly calmer and cleaner.
Father Cavendish’s reply both attracted and shocked me. “The entire story of humanity is contained in Genesis,” he said. “Everything is explained there. Read the first three chapters, then read them again and again.” As he spoke, his expression softened, and his piercing gray eyes seemed to drill into my heart. “A former pope, Saint John Paul the Second, speaks of the ‘Great Heart’ that we hear beating behind these words in Genesis. I think you’re ready to hear His heartbeats, Kate.”
Plausible Liars
The enemy has one tactic: the shame and blame game: the anatomy of sin. Bishop Robert Barron’s reflection, What is Sin? refers to last Sunday’s Gospel reading. [Read Here} The third chapter of Genesis details the recently expelled from Heaven, Lucifer’s conversation with Eve. “The perspective here is stunning!”, declares Bishop Barron. “It is staggering how deeply the author perceives, under God’s inspiration, the nature of sin…”
“Where are you?”
He who “was arrayed in the apparel of sovereignty, and there was the crown of glory set upon his head, there was he made king, and priest, and prophet, there did God make him to sit upon his honourable throne, and there did God give him dominion over all creatures and things. And all the wild beasts, and all the cattle, and the feathered fowl were gathered together, and they passed before Adam…,”
The Book of the Cave of Treasures
replied, “I heard you in the garden and I was afraid.”
“Why did you do such a thing?”
But it doesn’t end there
“Adam, where are you?” hardly sounds like the thunderous voice of the Creator of the Universe. Monsignor Charles Pope observes that it sounds like a plaintive cry: “Adam and Eve, you’ve hidden your heart from me, why are you hiding?”
“Where is yor heart?”
It’s a question for each if us, believers or non.
Who is the object of our adoration?
What shame bursts out of our consciousness at the thought of confession?
And compels us to find someone to blame?
The Lord does not forsake Adam, Eve or us. He sets forth a crucial plan wherein one of Eve’s own progeny will rise to conquer Satan’s pride by his humble acceptance of the cross.
Adam, Eve and God’s Crucial Plan
Whatever your sins, never forget that God has a plan to save you. Let God find you as he calls out, “Where are you?” Let him help you to understand your heart. Finally, let him apply the crucial remedy, the cross. All he needs is your ongoing Yes!
