Transcript

As one cardinal theologian put it, the doctrine, the Church's teaching on Original Sin has been in the shop for at least a generation, and will probably remain there for another generation or two.

Because, to the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been a book in English written about the Church's teaching on Original Sin as privation.

as being deprived of what our first parents had and then forfeit it.

You know, the Protestant view that original sin is being depraved, being born with this hereditary guilt, you know, it makes it seem as though, you know, because our parents sin, we are therefore guilty.

And I would say 9 out of 10, maybe 99 out of 100 Catholics would say that.

But it really is an inheritance of guilt as much as it is a disinheritance of divine life.

Our first parents don't transmit their guilt and depravity.

They transmit their privation.

They had it, they lost it.

We get human life devoid of divine life.

We are disinherited.

We are dispossessed.

And only then do you get the inner logic of the Church's teaching And then it all falls into place.

Then what Paul is saying in Romans 5, which seems so incomprehensible to most commentators, you know, you'd think he'd say that sin came to all men and so all men died.

But he says death came to all men inasmuch as all sinned.

And so the death that he's talking about, well, involves physical death at the end of your life, but involves the spiritual death at the moment of conception.

And I mean, this is also what David is talking about.

In sin, my mother conceived me.

There in Psalm 51, he's aware of the fact that I got human life that's natural when I was conceived, but I didn't get divine life that's supernatural because even marital intercourse between two saints is not going to transmit the life of the eternal Trinity.

And so the mysteries that are right below the surface are so interconnected that only when we understand What Jesus did, do we really understand what Adam failed to do?

You know, the Catechism is clear that there is no doctrine of original sin in Judaism, because sanctifying grace, the eternal life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, isn't restored until the new Adam does what Adam should have done to undo what he did.

It's like, you don't know what you've got until it's gone, but you don't know what you've got and lost until it's restored.

And then you're like, that was a death.

And the serpent was telling a lie about a lower kind of death that you could avoid by eating, but you would end up with worldly wisdom and not divine.

Human life, but not divine life.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, as you're talking about that, Scott, it just reminds me that, you know, many movies and many novels will begin with an opening scene in which something's stolen or there's some injustice done.

And then the rest of the story is trying to right that wrong.

Right.

And this is the Bible.

You know, it begins with the opening scene.

where the Holy Spirit, divine life, is lost by the actions of Adam and Eve.

And then the rest of the Bible is a story of how do we get that breath of life back?

How do we get that Holy Spirit back?

David is an important figure in that whole drama of restoring that, because in 1 Samuel 16, when he's anointed by Samuel, the Holy Spirit rushes on him from that day forward.

He's this rare individual in the Old Testament that has this stable possession of the Holy Spirit.

that enables him to write the Psalms, which we can still sing today because they're Spirit-inspired, because he, like us, enjoyed the presence of the Holy Spirit.

The most frequently quoted Old Testament book in the New is the Psalms.

Absolutely.

They're on the lips of our Lord.

Absolutely.

And he goes through a kind of Adamic fall in Psalm 51, etc. But we look for, you know, one better than David.

We look for the better son of David.

We look for the new Adam.

This is, of course, what's being described in Romans.

The death and life, as you point out in the second reading, are really the divine death and life.

And divine life, of course, is nothing other than communion in the Holy Spirit.

And look at the opening of our Gospel here.

At that time, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert.

And what happened just prior to this?

Well, it was the baptism.

the descent of the Holy Spirit infilling Christ.

Of course, he had the Spirit already, so it was a mystery.

But this filling up of the Christ with the Spirit.

So he is the new Adam in whom the Holy Spirit has been rejoined to human nature, and he's able then to overcome this temptation.

But this is a practical aspect too, Scott, because here at the beginning of Lent, you know, At the beginning of Lent, we almost all want to sing the Volga Bolt Man.

Woe is us, we have to fast.

It's a big downer.

Ash Wednesday, the first Sunday.

But some of that attitude is because we try to do this in our own strength.

We think, oh, I have to try real hard to be good.

And oh, I'm going to abstain from this.

And we forget about calling upon divine power which has been given us through the sacraments.

But this is why we're coming to Mass on this Sunday, is to be renewed in the divine power.

And even though it's Lent, it's not like the Holy Spirit stops coming to us through the Eucharist during this penitential season.

But again, Lent is a great practice time where we learn to put to death the deeds of the body, as St. Paul will say in Romans chapter 8. But we don't put to death the deeds of the body through our own power.

No, it's through the Holy Spirit put to death the deeds of the body.

That's the secret of the Christian life.