Our Loss of Innocence

Today's reading from Genesis takes us back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It tells the story of the very first sin. This reading is also the story of every sin, about every person's loss of innocence.

We have all experience the same things as Adam and Eve at some point in our life. There is a time of clear conscience. Then comes a time of temptation; the urge to taste the forbidden; to experience the unknown; and to grasp for the illusion of maturity.

The promise of temptation was that we would become god-like, somehow more mature and we gave in. It promised one thing and delivered something else and we experience the fall. We came to see how fragile, suggestible, limited, weak and how easily tempted we are as our sin distanced us from the God we knew so well.

We have all experience the innocence of the Garden, the temptation and taste of forbidden fruit and then the fall when we realized that we were naked and in need of grace. The fall is just not a moment in Genesis but in everyday life.

Lent therefore is a time, when we face the temptations of consumption, the temptations of instant spirituality and the temptations of power and control. In these temptations that come to us in our everyday life, we can fail like Adam and Eve or know victory in Christ.

Temptations will never go away. They are a part of life and are found everywhere, even in Paradise. They travel with us wherever we go. Victory over temptation is not found everywhere but comes only in Jesus Christ. The result of a serious Lent is a deeper union with the victorious and Risen Christ.