The first reading for Mass on the first Sunday of Lent this year, taken from Genesis 3, deals with the creation of human beings and their subsequent fall from friendship with God. Like a baseball coach who compels even his veterans to re-learn the basics of the game every spring, the Church invites us, during the spring training of Lent, to re-visit the spiritual fundamentals. And they are on no clearer display than in this great archetypal story.
We hear that "The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life." The God of the Bible never despises matter, for He created it, and everything that He made is good. Our bodies are indeed made from the earth, from the lowly stuff of atoms, molecules, and minerals. It is of singular importance to realize that sin is not a function of matter, not the consequence of our embodied nature. God exults in our physicality, and so should we. But we are more than mere matter, for God blew into us a life akin to His own and ordered to Him: minds that seek absolute truth, and wills that desire goodness itself, and souls that will not rest until they come into the presence of the fullness of beauty.
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