![]() For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous. ![]() In conclusion, just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act, acquittal and life came to all. Our solidarity with Adam worked against us because of Adam’s sin, but our solidarity with Jesus will work in our favor because of Jesus’ obedience. All who are bound up with His perfect life through baptism, the sacraments, and holy living will be raised up to share His glory. In other words, Jesus Christ, the King of Hearts, inserted himself into the deck of the human race. Jesus lived a sinless life of sacrificial obedience, and all who are united in solidarity with Him will conquer death and be raised up to a level higher than Adam would have achieved had he never sinned in the first place. What, then, did God do about this? He sent his Son Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, to take on our human nature, to become one of us. We human beings are so bound up with one another that, when he sinned, the whole human race was somehow affected for the worse. I’ve ruined the whole deck! The casinos wouldn’t want a deck like that! It’s the same with Adam’s first sin. What have I done? Because all the cards are so entirely bound up with one another, I haven’t ruined just one card. Suppose I were to take one card-say the Ace of Spades-and put the smallest tear in it. We think, Hey, just because Adam sinned, why should I have to suffer?Ĭonsider, for a moment, a deck of cards. We often dismiss the notion of original sin as something superstitious or arbitrary. Here we have what the Church calls original sin. For…by the transgression of the one, death came to reign through that one… … hrough one transgression condemnation came upon all… …hrough the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners… Hrough one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned…. In his epistle to the Romans, the Apostle writes: Whatever we are sowing, even in a most hidden way, …we are reaping in public, subtly and sometimes not so subtly.” Now we can see why Saint Paul’s words in our Second Reading make perfect sense. Father Andrew Cusak, a widely respected psychologist, asserts that “the most closeted sinfulness of any human life comes out in every relational reality of that life. Here’s the second consequence: Because we human beings are so bound up with one another, every time I sin, the fallout of my sin will be like ripple effects that touch untold others. The mere number and variety-myriads upon myriads of men-and the uncountable ages, do not impede the vision of the Eternal and Omniscient God. God sees the whole race, every member of which He created, as one thing-somewhat as we see a family as one thing or even a man. It means, for one thing, that there is a certain mysterious solidarity to the human race. That is your kissing cousin a thousand times removed! We’re all one big family. Look around you for the most exotic-featured person you can find. You and I are all related by reason of our first parents. This is known as the doctrine of monogenism. As recently as 1950, Pope Pius XII declared in his encyclical, Humani Generis, that all human beings are the descendants of an original set of parents. Amazing! Science is now validating what the Church has always taught. Countless people have already sent their DNA samples to National Geographic’s Genographic Project, and in return they receive a record of their genetic ancestry all the way back to the beginning. Wells calls them, appropriately enough, Scientific Adam and Scientific Eve and says they lived in Africa some 250,000 years ago. I was recently surprised to learn that National Geographic’s geneticist Spencer Wells has argued convincingly that, based on markers in human DNA, all human beings are descended from a single set of parents! That’s right. ![]()
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