Please read the passage before the homily.
Last week, Sirach told us that we have the power and ability to keep the commandments. Today’s passage shows us that from the beginning we have made choices that were contrary to our own good. Although we persist in calling the man and the woman, Adam and Eve, we could just as easily call them our own names. Adam and Eve, You and I, were placed in this Garden of Eden by God after God had breathed into our nostrils the breath of life.
That dirty, rotten, snake in the grass tempts us, asking if God really tells us, not do certain things? “Oh yes”, we reply, but the devil has us on his line to explain what God really had in mind and we can do it our way.
The devil’s counsel is that God wants to put us off, to refrain us from evil and then at the last minute make a big joke of it, how we fell for “the do Good now and and get a reward later, with a later that never comes.” So we fall for the devil’s line. Then we find that it was the devil that was lying to us, not God.
So here we are, contemplating our own sinfulness as we reflect on the first woman and man. So perhaps we should refect on the temptations of the Christ and see in him our call to be without sin, Yes Lent is a time for rebuilding. We Will be polishing up the living stones thst make up the Church and Ppreparing to add new and choice stones trough Baptism to the Church as well.
The failure of the first man and first woman was not a failure that was devastating. It is said that God made them loincloths, thereby giving them way of walking again with God in the cool of the evening. Through one person sin entered intoi the wor;d. Through a different one person, grace entered the world. Now throughnthat person’s grace we are being called to spread that grace throughout our world so that we and all others can walk with God in the cool of the evening.
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