Thinking Outside the Garden

Since the abortion from Eden, human beings have had a fallen state. The loss of orginal innocence, original justice, and original unity. While Adam and Eve walked with God, they were in a protective womb which allowed them to grow in their relationship with Him and be nourished by every good thing of Creation placed in Eden for their use. They were forbidden only one thing, to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, God told them that they were not to "know" evil in the sense of intimate union with it.

Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation of the serpent who has a story of its own abortion from heaven--heaven being another womb in which the angels were spiritually nourished and protected so they could grow in their love of God. Recall the passage in Isaiah 14:19 where in the RSV translation the king of Babylon is compared to an abortion, "but you are cast out...like a loathed untimely birth." Also the words of Christ in Luke 10:18, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from the sky!"

Our intellect is now dulled and concupiscence impairs our wills. The basic desire to do good remains, but the ability to discern what is good and to control our thoughts and impulses is greatly reduced. In Baptism we receive the new life of spiritually adopted children of God. The guilt of original sin is forgiven though the effects can remain.

In the womb of the Church, our mother, we again receive the nourishment and protection of the "Garden" in which a new Tree of Life gives forth every good fruit for our benefit. All the sacraments but in particular the Eucharist is our source and summit, our beginning and our end, our Alpha and our Omega...Jesus Christ.

Augustine said that before the Blessed Virgin Mary conceived Jesus in her womb, she conceived him in her heart. "And Mary pondered all these things in her heart" (Luke 2:19,52). In the womb of Mary, our mother, we find the silent Word waiting for us to join Him in the soil of humility from which the New Adam was formed. We poor banished (aborted) children of Eve, find our life, our sweetness and our hope. We find protection and nourishment in this valley of tears until one day we look upon the Blessed Fruit of Mary's Womb Jesus. (Be patient this is coming together to a point soon.)

The kind of thinking Mary did by pondering was more than intellectual. It was a deep contemplation of the very Life of God which dwelt within her in perfection by a singular grace of her own Immaculate Conception. Through Baptism we are given freedom from sin to live as God's children. Through the pondering and deep contemplation of God's Life within us and His love for us, the presence of Christ comes to live and grow within the wombs of our hearts in a stronger and fuller way. We then say with Paul in Galations that "now not I, but Christ lives within me."

All the baffling things which happen to us in our lives only come to make sense in the Light of Faith. A deep intimate knowing of God our Spouse, brings about the Living Jesus in us and us living in Jesus. Thinking outside the new Garden, the Church leads to heretical thinking and the corresponding manifestations of sin.
Contemplating the Word of God within the context of the Living Tradition of the Liturgy and the Church's teaching authority preserves our lives and nourishes us.

Thinking outside the Garden has only and always led to our destruction.