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AND THE tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But he answered, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." [Mt 4:3-4]

Artist: Victor Luciano Rebuffo

(1903 - 1983)

Buenos Aires, Argentina

FRAGRANT OFFERING [1]

GARDEN OF HUMANITY

1. When God purged sin from Eden, the garden forfeited the intimate presence of man, its loveliest flower. It forfeited as well the graced presence of two prototypical human beings in communion with God. Through painful labor, Eden birthed Adam and Eve into a larger world. God's perfect garden gave way to the wilderness of shattered human hearts.

2. Entering a strange and harsh exile, Adam carried seed for procreation and responsibility for survival. He became the seedling, the tender shoot, the plantlet, which God cultivated in a vast new arena, at once flawed and hostile. Adam tilled the soil. Eve birthed children. The root and branch of budding humanity survived, although under markedly different conditions than those of Eden.

BEWILDERED PROPHETS

3. The forbidden fruit bequeathed more than uncommon taste. Adam and Eve carried with them the sting of sin and divine rebuke. Sin wrecked their vital affiliation with God, each other, and the sacred character of their individual souls. God commanded them to depart the perfect order and tranquil life of the Garden.

4. Safeguarded by the cherubim's sword of fire, the Tree of Knowledge was never again molested. [cf. Gen 3:22-24] What the Tree represented, however, was not confined to the garden. Revealed truth entered society, with Adam and Eve as its bewildered prophets. But God's formal commitment to the community of man would wait until righteous Abraham and his descendents.

BEING AND KNOWING

5. The Tree of Knowledge was not reserved exclusively in the sanctuary of Eden. In the midst of the garden, stood the second and more magnificent Tree of Life. [cf. Gen 2:9] Its fruit, if tasted, would confer upon man the charism of living forever. [cf. Gen 3:22] The apostle John observed this tree in his vision of the heavenly Jerusalem:

THEN HE showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. [Rev 22:1-2, 14; cf. Rev 2:7]

The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil denote twin archetypes cultivated in a single spiritual reality: From the beginning, God chooses to dwell in the midst of his human creatures. Though enigmatic in the Genesis text, Life and Knowledge are not to be construed as dualities of God. By means of twofold symbolism, the Genesis account interprets the being and knowledge of God. The trees signify the perfect unity of God, in whom being and knowing are one.

SATAN'S INTENT

6. The Genesis allegory proposes that the perfect union of life and truth within God is nevertheless hierarchical: Each tree is distinct from, and yet dependent upon the other to complete its meaning. Satan tempted Eve with the fruit of Knowledge rather than the fruit of Life.

7. Truth and life are constitutive of a sacred order, a divine unity containing within itself the principle of harmonious relationship. Truth serves Life. Knowing serves being. Hence, Satan's intent was manifest: To destroy life, the eternity of which is constituent of the essence of God, one must first corrupt the truth.

LAW CANNOT SAVE

8. Adam and Eve, whose egotism despoiled Eden with pervasive disorder, posed a further threat to the sanctity of the Tree of Life. They had degraded themselves. Their relationship with God was damaged permanently. They could no longer be trusted. Nonetheless, God did not dramatize punishment when he banished Adam and Eve from the shelter of the Garden.

9. He intervened decisively to assure that the Tree of Divine Life remained inviolate, and that the immortality which it represented, remained unscathed by creaturely aggression. Unquestionably, God gifted man with stewardship over the created world. His dominion was bounded by the land, sea, and air of earth. Yet, from the beginning, God denied his human creation supremacy over divine mystery; man's suzerainty terminated before the Trees of Life and Knowledge.

KNOWN AS HEBREWS

10. Further, the divine injunction regarding the Tree would continue forever. God warned man to eschew any form of trespass: "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die." [Gen 3:3] God's sole dominion over sacred knowing, instituted in the garden, was unmistakable: Man could struggle to interpret Divine Truth, but God would never permit him to determine it.

11. In the course of salvation history, God entered into relationship with a particular people, slaves, to whom he makes his presence known "in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye". [Deu 32:10] Through his prophet Moses, God entered into a covenant relationship with a people, known in history as Hebrews.

LIGHT OF THE LAW

12. He delivered them from captivity to principalities and powers (in this situation, Egypt) and "against the world rulers of this present darkness". [Eph 6:10] He revealed himself by mediated signs and wonders. The form of God's truth, as Moses informed the people, is stern and proscriptive. It was engraved by the finger of God on stone tablets. [cf. Ex 31:18] God formalized Divine Truth in the heart of man's new society in the form of his Law.

13. It functioned as Israel's reference and compass. Similarly, God placed his elect squarely in the midst of the garden of humanity. As Truth stood in service of Life in Eden, so God's Law enhanced Israel's well-being in a suffering world. Fidelity to God's Law brought life and prosperity to God's people. The light of the Law, shining as through a dark glass [cf. 1Cor 13:12], reassured them that they continued in relationship with God, however tenuous and strained.

SHOCKING EPISODES

14. Fruit of an aberrant harvest, the Knowledge of Good and Evil proved a bitter remedy for God's elect. Though a divine good, the Law was ineffective. The Law demanded of Israel a right relationship with God, but it neither animated the soul of Israelite society nor that of any individual within it. It obliged Israel to guarantee its conservation and protection. Man's creaturely interpretation of the Law, distorted by willful disobedience, was utterly insufficient for the task.

15. Throughout its history, Israel experienced shocking episodes of intellectual and spiritual disintegration. God's Law, while heralding the preservation and defense of life, could not give or save life. Harsh and severe, the Law relentlessly charged every individual in the garden of humanity with the sin of Adam and Eve. It exposed one's personal transgressions against God's objective truth and order and judged all persons worthy of the consequence of death.

VEIL OF THE LAW

16. Thus the breach between man and God widened. Israel was crushed by an intellectual and spiritual yoke beyond its capacity to bear. Sinful patriarchs and prophets were themselves powerless to husband the law to fruition. Repeatedly, man distorted and corrupted the truth. All too often, he attempted to replace God's Word with his own anti-witness. He set himself against the Law as an anti-sign.

17. The veil of the law [cf. 2Cor 3:12-14] hindered Israel from discerning the Divine Order which it represented. Still less was Israel able to commune meaningfully with the person of God. While the Law modeled God's fearful holiness, it had the effect of obscuring the personhood of God from his people. The Law was incapable of walking with man "in the garden in the cool of the day". [Gen 3:8]

DIVINE-HUMAN MEDIATOR

18. From the blemished, though marvelous garden of humanity, there emerged a saviour. In an acceptable time [cf. Psa 69:13], the Father sent his only begotten Son into the world to be born of a woman. In Christ, the eternal Logos (Gk. word, reason), was incarnated the sacred realities of divine being and knowing. Man received a divine-human mediator who restored the sacred order and his place within it:

JESUS SAID to (Thomas), "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him....

HE WHO has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father?' Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.

BELIEVE ME that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves." [Jn 14:6-11]

Thus Christ stands at the center of Israel and the world: "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them." [Mt. 5:17] Jesus incarnated what the Law signified, the hierarchical sacred life and order shared by the three divine persons of the Triune God. The Son of God perfected the Law's mission. Whereas the Law caused every member of humanity's garden to fall under the iron yoke of sin, Christ unveiled the order of divine grace in which he will crown man with glory and honor. [cf. Heb 2:6-7; cf. Psa 8]

MAN'S PARTICULAR NATIVITY

19. When abiding in his natural state, the human creature displays an obvious, although imperfect beauty.God invites the natural man to ennoble his existence, to acquire a privileged place in his Kingdom. Christ restores to his followers their rightful inheritance: the creation story of Genesis in Sacred Scripture. The Holy Spirit gives the faithful follower the spiritual faculties to contemplate the momentous birth of the cosmos and the hidden mystery of humanity's genesis.

20. In so doing, man enters into the mystery of his own particular nativity in God's plan of salvation. This higher level of human existence and dignity is a sharing in the divine life of the Creator--not equality with Christ who was fully human and fully God, not a sanctity or holiness that would rival or surpass God, but rather a glory that God has willed especially for man.

FREEING THE LAW ITSELF

21. Nevertheless, the divinity reserved for man allows him to participate fully in the divine truth and life. When all things are brought to perfection and unity through Christ [cf. 1Cor 15:28], man will behold the face of God. This wonderful knowledge will bring him to eternal life. Through the sacramental grace of baptism, man is cleansed of the ancient offense once and for all time.

22. The Law, too, is a beneficiary of redemption. In the past, the Law forged a new link in sin's unbreakable chain for each and every transgression of the human person. Christ breaks the chain. He frees the Law itself from solemn captivity, emancipating it from the grim task of cataloging and judging human transgression. No longer shall the Law condemn man as a holocaust to sin.

FRAGRANT OFFERING

23. Jesus, called to "proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound" [Isa 61:1b; cf. Isa 58:6], shattered the tyranny of sin. The yoke of man's burden was smashed. [cf. Isa 9:4] Through Christ--the revelation and revealer, the instrument and the authority, the knowledge and the life, the person and the affiliation--man is consummated as a pure and fragrant offering pleasing to the Father. [cf. Eph 5:1-2] He is set free.

^[1] Cycle A /First Sunday of Lent /Gen 2:7-9, 3:1-7 /Rom 5:12-19 /Mt 4:1-11.