For if by the transgression of the one, the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.
The passage above, from today’s second reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, above compares and contrasts the actions of Adam doomed us all to death which is undone by Jesus Christ, which restores our path to Heaven.
I can’t think of a personal story to compare to this. The closest I could think of was not a personal event but a world event: the tearing down of the Berlin Wall at the end of the 1980s which was part of the symbolic end of the Cold War that started in the 1940s. The end of that war eased the fear of a seemingly constant fear of imminent nuclear attack. The end of that war ended decades of ever increasing amounts of money and resources into making and preparing for war.
Another example that came to my mind, not in my lifetime, was the end of slavery in the United States at the end of the Civil War. That undid an injustice from when the country was formed nearly one hundred years before and from when the first colonies of the Americas were built on the back of slaves four hundred years before.
The examples I could think of pale in comparison to Adam and Jesus. The Cold War spanned across five decades. Slavery in the United States spanned almost one hundred years and in the Americas for four hundred years. The span of time between Adam and Jesus is estimated to be around four thousand years!
I am in awe thinking of what Jesus has done for all of us! With the grace of God, Jesus paid the price so that every person in the four thousand years between Adam and Jesus’ time on Earth could experience eternal life in Heaven. And Jesus did the same for every person on Earth in the two thousand years and beyond since Jesus died, was resurrected, and ascended to Heaven. On this First Sunday of Lent, we are called to remember Adam’s original sin, examine our sins and our less-than-heavenly characteristics, and appreciate what Jesus has done for us.
This past week, I was in a Zoom meeting with some co-workers. We were asked to check in to let others know how were were feeling using a weather report metaphor. I shared that I was sunny and partly cloudy; partly cloudy because of the deaths in the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, because of the war in Ukraine, because of the too-many recent mass shootings in our country. One of my co-workers commented, appreciating how I could still be sunny even with all the cloudy things that I had listed. Thinking about it after the meeting, I believe my faith is what keeps me hopeful. Knowing what God has given us, witnessing my confirmation class serve at Saint Anthony’s Dining Room last week, seeing and hearing acts of kindness and service around my community, all these things keep me hopeful and sunny.
I pray that you strengthen your faith this Lent so that you always have something to keep you hopeful and sunny.
--Alfred Readings at USCCB.org Living the Word resource First Reading: Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7 Psalm: 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17 Second Reading: Romans 5:12-19 Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11
