Fallen

Why are we all so perplexed

By diseases, viruses and plagues?

By the chaos of life, the paradox, the violence?

Has it not been explained for years uncounted?

The Fall of our fathers

The sin of our first parents

For which only they bear true guilt

Yet still a Fall we all partake

For just as all have sinned

All share in the Fall of Adam and Eve

The Tempter began it in his deceptions

Making food into poison

Clothing into disguise

Love into deceit and trust into folly

Who else could corrupt the good work of God

Turning His rational, ordered Creation

Into a pit of convolution and indifference?

Naught can be understood that we do

Without thought of original sin

The lies and violence of children

The rebellion and promiscuity of teens

The hubris and ambition of adults

The vanity and despair of the aged

The anger of men, the permissions of women

The brutality of ages past

And the brutality of ages present

Humanity has never changed, nor will it

Until the end of this age

There is no cure for original sin

No ideology, no chemical, no plan

Nothing can remove that taint of sin from our souls

That weakness and confusion in our flesh

Yet it can be ignored and forgotten just as any truth can

Relegated to the "Prefer Not To See" File

To the depths of our hardened hearts and tear-ringed eyes

But even voluntary ignorance cannot cure

The sin of our first parents

Is God not cruel to abandon us to this fate

To let children succumb to disease unwarranted

To create people knowing they will sin inevitably

To curse the innocent with the consequences of the sins of the guilty?

We ask these things, as we always have, as we all do

Only the fool or the fanatic does not ask such things

And only the few choose to see

That it could be no other way

Adam and Eve were not elected

They held no rank or office

Yet as human beings, with one nature, one soul

One humanity we all share

Free beings, yet bound inevitably by the limitations of all creatures

Adam and Eve sinned as any other would have

As we all do

None could have seen through the lies of Satan

But we must understand, we must see

That the Fall was not God's failure

Nor something that slipped by His hand

No, it is the Happy Fall

The Fortunate Sin

For there is no greater glory than the victory of good amidst evil

Even true innocence and original purity are naught

Beside the glory and magnificence of the Resurrection of Christ

The good is never more highlighted than in the shadow of dark

How could Christ have attained this Resurrection without His Crucifixion?

And who could have caused such a death but man himself?

Could God have simply made Christ and humanity Resurrected from the beginning

Without need for any sin or pain?

God is omnipotent, but He is also the Truth

And He cannot contradict Himself

There can be no Resurrection without sin and death to precede it

But our suffering is not meaningless, without reason or purposes

God allowed sin, as He now allows suffering

As the example of Job stands for all to see

Not for His glory, which depends on nothing but Himself

But for love of man, made in His image, in the likeness of His Son

The Savior of the World

Only when seen in the light of Christ

In the dark garden of His suffering, death and Resurrection

Can any part of our life be understood, much less our own sufferings

Whether our own fault or another's

In enduring all pain, temptation, torture, ridicule and abandonment even by His friends

Without committing sin

Christ suffered - and conquered suffering

In enduring a brutal, humiliating death at the hands of all mankind

For the sake of our sins

Christ died - and conquered death

In His Divinity, His Love, His Truth, His Humanity, His Heroic Martyrdom, His Faith

Through the power of the Holy Spirit

Christ was Resurrected, thereby insuring uncountable worth and purpose to all human life

From conception to natural death

And ensuring eternal Beatitude

In Resurrection with Him

He asks only that we suffer as He did, without sin

That we die as He did, in faith

And that we love and serve God with all our heart, all our mind and all our strength

In the grace of the mercy and forgiveness of God

Administered by His Most Holy Church

In Her Divine Liturgy

And Holy Sacraments

With Christ the Great Eucharist

Do not see your brothers and sisters

As evildoers, annoyances or sources of frustration

Do not hate or judge any

Including yourself

Do not hate in others what you hate in yourself

No - love yourself, as you should love others

See our community in the Fall, our shared weakness, our tragic state, our struggles

And pity your brothers and sisters

Suffer-with them in kind compassion and all mercy

As members of one Body

And sharers in one Divine Inheritance.

I pray that all may see

The truth of original sin

The blessing of wisdom to see its truth

And the gift of God, to whom nothing is without purpose, nothing without good use

And through Him even the gravest sins in the world

Are merely pathways to eternal perfection

In His most holy Kingdom

And that all may live as Christ lived

Without confusion, without doubt, without perfectionism

In truth and love

With strength and diligence

By the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, all the angels, saints and blesseds

Amen.