VATICAN - Prayers for Lent - Act of Faith (5)

Vatican City (Fides Service) - God, Creator and Father gives his commandments to his children. After creating man and woman in his own image a likeness God put them in the Garden of Eden where he used to visit them and speak with them (Genesis 1, 26), «at the breezy time of the day » (Genesis 2, 8). God the Creator, is also God the Father who gives his children instructions to respect the order he has created in the world and in the human person, he warns them of the dangers of a purely material life since man is body and soul, body and spirit («…Yahweh God shaped man from the soil of the ground and blew the breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living being», a living soul, as the eminent French Biblical scholar Father Trinquet underlined,- Genesis 2, 7b).
In the Garden of Eden God gave his first commandment: « Then Yahweh God gave the man this command, "You are free to eat of all the trees in the garden. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat; for, the day you eat of that, you are doomed to die."» (Genesis 2, 16-17).
We all know what happened: temptation by the Evil One, the fall, the first sin and the consequence death («For dust you are and to dust you shall return."» - Genesis 3, 19b). And man was expelled from the Earthly Paradise: « He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the great winged creatures and the fiery flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.» (verses 23 24a).
God’s children failed to respect God’s instructions: because of their pride and disobedience they were doomed to unhappiness, since they wanted to be equal to God and make their own a privilege which belongs to God the Creator alone: to know what is good and what is bad and to act accordingly, a claim to moral independence, and doing this they rejected their status as creatures. «… be like gods, knowing good from evil» the evil serpent had promised (Genesis 3, 4c), «the perverse and impure being » as we used to sing in our profession of faith when we renewed our Baptismal promises («Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realised that they were naked.»). For God created man incorruptible, and to the image of his own likeness he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world» (Wisdom 2, 23-24).Man’s greatness and man’s fall … still terribly true … «Domine, usquequo»: Lord. For how long? (To be continued) (J.M.) (Agenzia Fides 22/3/2007, righe 30, parole 435)