Adam and Eve, where are you?

Adam, where are you? God's question, addressed to man in paradise after original sin, goes very deep. Where are you? Of course, God knew where Adam was. It was not, therefore, about Adam's whereabouts. This question is first and foremost an appeal; the words: Where are you, first of all tear out a total preoccupied desire to carry out your own plans. It must be said that we are strongly marked by "wishful thinking", that is, by looking and judging what confirms our desires.

The power of wanting it to be the way we want it to be is enormous, and I think everyone succumbs to it to some extent and in different ways. We know from the monastic tradition that the fight against thoughts guided by one's own preferences is the basic task of a monk."Wishful thinking" is the result of yielding to the temptation of these "thoughts." It encloses us in its own subjectivity, which it seeks to confirm with external arguments.

Where are you? This question tries to take us out of this confinement and puts us in an open perspective. Of course, you can answer them by sticking to your closure. Then, however, the answer takes the form of self-justification. "I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid." ... "The woman whom you put here with me - she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it." (Gene 3:10.12).

God's question is disturbing: where are you? What is this road you are walking, where does it lead? What are you doing, what is the point of it? It is a call to come out of hiding, to stand in the truth. In other words: look where you are existentially, where are you going, who are you becoming? If you try to explain yourself, i.e., that you have something to hide, you run away somewhere, you do not accept the truth. Come out of hiding and become yourself.

Each of us goes a certain way. Where are we now? Is this really the way I have to go? We need such questions. They become a chance for us to get out of our confinement. In order to truly take them up and respond to them, one must distance oneself and one's experiences and try to look at oneself from the outside. Here, however, we are faced with fear. We are afraid of exposing our weakness, our sin. If that happens, we try to defend ourselves.

No one and nothing can give us the perspective that God gives and a look at ourselves with Him. The description from the book of Genesis gives the course of a kind of investigation, and then the sentence that God pronounces. This is what it looks like in the eyes of a man who has sinned and is afraid, who has not yet come out of his hiding place. He had not understood anything yet. He misunderstands God's love for him and perceives God's action in terms of punishing justice.

It will take millennia of education to discover the truth about Divine Mercy. Unfortunately, the simple gesture that man experiences was not enough. After the judgment "The LORD God made for the man and his wife garments of skin, with which he clothed them" ( Gen 3:21). It was a gesture of fatherly love. Such a gesture was also the expulsion of man from paradise, so that the state of inauthentic existence would not be perpetuated and would not remain something unchangeable. Working by “the sweat of your brow” has become a chance for man to discover God and his love. This is what happened to the "prodigal son" and perhaps in the perspective of this parable of the Lord Jesus we must read the meaning of our expulsion from paradise. Unfortunately, we often do not understand this, seeing only the punishing hand of God. We do not see the father's longing for his son that the parable of the Lord Jesus shows.

Our view obscures subjectivism. We all know the proverb: everyone judges according to himself. It is precisely the projection onto God of what is in our heart that does not allow us to see otherwise. And here we need something that leads us out of the closure in the circle of our own thoughts. Where are you, Adam and Eve? This question remains a wonderful opportunity for us. This question remains a great opportunity for us to discover ourselves and our vocation and our dignity as man and woman.

Thought from Saint Faustina: My Jesus, You know that from my earliest years I have wanted to become a great saint; that is to say, I have wanted to love You with a love so great that there would be no soul who has hitherto loved You so. At first these desires of mine were kept secret, and only Jesus knew of them. But today I cannot contain them within my heart; I would like to cry out to the whole world, "Love God, because He is good and great is His mercy!" (Diary 1372)

Until tomorrow

fr. george