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OF LENT, TEMPTATION, AND MYSTERIOUS PASSAGE ON ADAM AND EVE: WHAT WAS THE APPLE IN THE GARDEN?

Last week (2/12/-2/13/15) the readings at daily Mass had much to do with Adam, Eve, and the Garden. It's always an intriguing part of the Bible on which to reflect. Full of mystery.

What exactly was the sin? What was the apple? What got them sent from a paradise on earth, causing original sin?

We know it came from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil." We know they had been forbidden from eating it. We know they had been tricked by the serpent.

We know it brought shame.

We know it was an attempt to infringe on the realm of God.

Is it (the "knowledge") a reference to information culled from occult sources, such as through psychics, witchcraft, astrology, the New Age? That's what some believe.

Is it forbidden sexuality? Is that why there was such shame? Before the Garden, perhaps there was no lust; nakedness was not noticeable; there was no shame or titillation.

Is it the arrogance of human knowledge (set against God's Wisdom)? This is worthy of special consideration. How we try to be omniscient!

There are scholars who say the expression, upon closer translation, connotes not so much knowledge of "good and evil" as knowledge of "everything." Still others think it represents the mixing of good and evil (which up till then, perhaps, had been distinctly separate). Or: was it just a matter of: disobedience? (No doubt, in large part, the latter.)

Indeed, the Bible doesn't even specify that it was an apple (and in some translations doesn't use the word "fruit," for that matter, though the New American does; a fig? A pomegranate?).

It was "food" from the tree and Eve found the tree both pleasant to look at and promising of knowledge.

Aren't these at the root of many modern temptations?

What is evil often takes us away (2 Corinthians 11:13) from simplicity. And humility. And obedience. And innocence. Remember: Scripture says that rebellion is as witchcraft (1 Samuel 15:23). Here we have a biblical secret. So the apple does have to do with forbidden powers.

Attempting to be like God -- that is, reach His stature -- is the high sin of Lucifer (who tried to ascend the throne).

We attempt to do this by replacing religion with science, the Confessional with the psychiatrist's couch, His food with plants we have engineered genetically.

Ironic it is that last week, too, at the same time as those Mass readings, were accounts in the news of government approval for the first genetically-modified apples.

Apples! (We don't make this stuff up). "Gene-altered apples get U.S. approval," was the headline in The New York Times. "The government on Friday approved the commercial planting of genetically engineered apples that are resistant to turning brown when sliced or bruised," the article began (2/13/15).

What the serpent had to offer opened the eyes of Adam and Eve, but in the wrong way. They thought they were seeing anew but were actually being blinded. The more steeped they were in what originates from the devil (which is also the arrogance of man), the less they could truly see.

It is only the Holy Spirit Who truly takes away the "scales" and lets us see what it truly there. What the devil reveals is always a mirage, reality with a twist, a circus mirror.

Through its choices, humanity -- Eve and Adam -- went from the Garden of Eden to the desert: the barren land that Christ then took to, many centuries later, for forty days, in order to redeem us.

He too was tempted, but rejected the devil.

He was totally obedient.

It came full circle, on that desert.

Forty days...

Notes James 1:14-15: "But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death."

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