Saints Adam and Eve
Christmas Eve is the traditional commemoration of Adam and Eve, our first parents – I don’t think there’s any etymological connection between Eve and Eve, the first derived from ye Olde English ǣfnung, which means towards sunset, the end of the day. The name Eve is an English transliteration of her Hebrew name given by God, חווה, Hawwah, which means ‘living one’, or ‘source of life’, as she was the mother of all the living. Eve’s name is not far from the sacred name God says of Himself to Moses from the burning bush.
Adam, אָדָם Hebrew, has a more lowly derivation, related to the word for ‘earth’ or ‘dust’. For from out of the very stuff of the ground, he was made.
Together, they were the progenitors of all mankind. It may be a bit odd to think of them as saints, since they committed what we now know as the ‘original sin’, which infects all of us. We now come into this world without the grace of God, with darkened intellects, prone to ignorance, with weak wills and disordered passions disposing us to concupiscence and all manner of sin. Who will save me from this body of death! cried Saint Paul.
We should recall that we were not made this way. Adam and Eve were created in the state of grace and perfection, with all the praeternatural gifts – immortality, impassibility, agility, fullness of knowledge, original justice, in perfect harmony with God, with each other, with themselves and with all of creation. They were far more perfect than we are, spiritually and physically. If there’s evolution, there’s also devolution.
This harmony was smashed to smithereens by their rebellion against the Father-God Who had made them in His love. Like the Devil, who tempted them, our first parents wanted to be ‘like God’ – a good in itself, which God would have bestowed in due time – but ‘without God, before God, and not in accordance with God’ – a very bad thing in itself (cf, CCC, #398, and Saint Maximus the Confessor).
Yet, as we sing at the Exultet at Easter, we see this as a ‘happy fault’ – felix culpa – which gained for us so great a Redeemer.
Adam and Eve repented, and did suitable penance for their long lives to atone for what they had done. All the ‘sweat of the brow’ and ‘pains in childbirth’ and, of course, struggling with their faults and weaknesses. But it is for this very reason that God has mercy on us, forgives us our sins ‘seventy times seven times’, right up to we breathe our last.
And for this very reason also that He sent His Son into our world on a crisp winter eve, in the hidden village of Bethlehem, far away from the pomp and circumstance of this passing world. Only the hidden people – angels and shepherds – saw the greatest event in the history of the world, God-become-Man, the World-made-Flesh, the new divine Adam borne of the new sinless Eve, the very Incarnation of the Creator, the Alpha and the Omega of all time and history.
So Venite, adoremus, dear reader, and live as He would have us live, so we may gain eternal life with Him.
May it be a very merry Christmas, for one and for all.
Carney’s Amoral Majority
After five defections – euphemistically described as ‘crossing the floor’ – and three by-elections, Mark Carney and his Liberals how have their coveted majority. One wonders what bowls of pottage were offered in back-room deals. In the archaic monarchical system that is the Dominion of Canada, this majority allows the newly-minted Prime Minister to rule[…]Continue reading→
Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress
This was the title given to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, by Pope Benedict XVI, when he canonized her on October 28th, 2012, along with six others, in Saint Peter’ Square (she had been beatified by Pope John Paul II back in 1980). With Saint Joseph as our protector, along with the Canadian martyrs, we seem to[…]Continue reading→
Remembering Father Alphonse de Valk
(Today marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Father Alphonse de Valk, C.S.B., a faithful, courageous and indefatigable Basilian priest, pro-life-and-family apostle, and the founder of Catholic Insight magazine. Here is what we wrote those on his entering into eternity five years ago, as we continue to remember him in our prayers and thoughts)[…]Continue reading→
A Tale of Two Benedicts
A grace-filled Holy Week to all our readers! As we await and prepare for the Resurrection about to dawn upon us, we might keep in mind two Benedicts: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, requiescat in pace, elected on this day in 2005; and today’s commemoration of the mystic pilgrim, Benedict Joseph Labre, who died on this[…]Continue reading→
My Name is Bernadette
April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam and Suffering Joyfully
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam (1380 – 1433) was one of the countless and glorious ‘victim souls’ in the history of the Church, those whose lives are filled with suffering, often of an unimaginable intensity, but who suffer joyfully. She was a fifteen-year old Dutch girl, out skating one day, when she fell and broke one[…]Continue reading→
The Glorious Martyrdoms of Martin and Maximus
As we enter into Eastertide, we recall on this 13th of April Pope Saint Martin I (+655), one of the noblest, if most tragic, of the successors of Saint Peter. Born in Umbria, Italy, he was of noble lineage, with great intelligence combined with charity and love of the poor and the Church. While still[…]Continue reading→
Divine Mercy Sunday – An Echo of Every Mass
Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe’… ‘My Lord and my God!’ (Jn. 20:18)). Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, and as we celebrate the end of the Easter Octave, we contemplate the wounded side of our Saviour, the Church’s source of life. On Good Friday in the[…]Continue reading→
Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów
We celebrate Saint Stanislaus today (+ April 11, 1079), in light of this Easter Octave, a bishop and martyr who accepted the episcopacy only at the direct order of Pope Alexander II. He proved a wise and courageous leader of his flock, put to death by his own king, Boleslaus, for rebuking the monarch’s ‘immoral[…]Continue reading→
Saint Gemma Galgani
On this April 11th, in 1903 – the same year that the Italian Guiseppe Sarto was elected Pope later that summer as Pius X – a lovely, young Italian woman died, by the name of Gemma Galgani. She lived a brief life of 24 years, as did a number of other young saints, including Pier[…]Continue reading→