(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)
Last week we recalled the anniversary of this infallible teaching of our faith and celebrated Mary’s Immaculate Conception. First we reflected in the readings on Adam and Eve, who were given free rein in the garden with only one restriction — not to eat of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:17). God is all-good. As we read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment…. For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God” ( 1776).
All good comes from God. Evil is the absence of good — the absence of God. The symbolism in the garden of good and evil is one which reserves the establishment of a good to God and God alone. With full knowledge of right and wrong — good and evil — Eve, and afterwards, Adam, by taking of the fruit from that tree, placed themselves above God. Thus, Eve, along with Adam, committed the first sin. This sin caused profound ramifications for all generations. Again, as the Catechism states: “Besides the personal sin of Adam and Eve, original sin describes the fallen state of human nature which affects every person born into the world, from which Christ, the ‘new Adam,’ came to redeem us (396-412)” (p. 890). It required the coming of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, to redeem the human race from the effects of that sin by his death on the cross.
Eve’s saying “no” to God led to Mary’s “yes.” Mary was selected, above all other women, to be the Mother of Our Redeemer. She is the New Eve, conceived without original sin. After all, doesn’t it make sense for an all-perfect God to bring the mother of His Son into the world without blemish? The Church celebrates the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25 and Christmas nine months later. The Church honors Mary’s Immaculate Conception nine months before celebrating her birth on Sept. 8.
Today I invite you to reflect on the profound implications of Eve’s eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I cannot help but relate the sin of our first parents to the rampant destruction of life in our society as a result of abortion. Moreover, the debate has begun within our government and elsewhere over the cloning of the human person.
Abortion has a devastating impact on our local Diocesan Church. The number one leading cause of death within our diocese — and within our state — is abortion. Permit me to give some statistics. In 1999, 46.1 percent of deaths (over 27,000) were due to abortion within the Arlington (Virginia) Diocese. In jurisdictions which permit abortion facilities the number was much higher. In Alexandria, the percentage of deaths due to abortion was 82.2 percent. The number was 81.1 percent in Manassas. Falls Church, where I will go after Mass to pray the rosary, which currently is home to at least two abortion facilities, has 99.1 percent of its deaths due to abortion (Virginia Center for Health Statistics). How many people who would have become government leaders, scientists, educators, physicians, inventors, musicians, policemen, firemen, pilots, secretaries, priests and religious were indiscriminately snuffed out at the beginning of their lives due to abortion?
God intends that human life come into the world by the procreative act of a man and a woman in union with Him in holy Matrimony. How astonishing it is that our society completely disregards this by permitting couples to conceive their children in a laboratory via in vitro fertilization; and by permitting couples to abort their newly conceived children at any time after conception via chemical birth control, the morning-after pill and other “emergency contraceptives,” RU-486, and chemical and surgical abortions, in order to include the late-term abortions.
And now, people are tampering with the very basics of human existence by attempting once again to be like God by cloning human beings. A Massachusetts company claims that it is making swift progress toward cloning long-lived embryos and then destroying them to extract the embryonic stem cells. Members of the leadership of the United States Senate are stalling the passage of the prohibition against cloning that was passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year. One member of the Senate, the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health, Senator Tom Harkin, stated last week at a hearing that he had no problem with the cloning of human embryos as long as they were then destroyed by extracting the embryonic stems cells for further research. How does this differ from the use of human research subjects by the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s?
Our Holy Father cautions that we must take “the greatest care…of those who are not in a condition to defend themselves” (Vatican Press Office 11/27/01). When man takes into his own hands the creative acts of God or the destruction of the creative acts of God, he is acting as God, and will succumb to the same fall as Eve and Adam in the Garden.
So let us turn to Our Blessed Mother, the New Eve, asking for her intercession in this time of crisis. Mary has been bestowed with many titles and honors. She is the Queen of Heaven and Earth, Mother of the Church, Purist of Virgins, Virgin Most Chaste, Gate of Heaven, and Refuge of Sinners. She is the Patroness of our beloved country, these United States of America.
O Mary, in time of need, help us by your prayers to live in the presence of your Son without sin.
O Mary, may we pray to you as our Holy Father prayed to you in The Gospel of Life: “Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of Life with honesty and love to the people of our time. Obtain for them the grace to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new….” (105).
Yes, o Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee! Amen!
