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Genesis: 3:9-15, 20
After Adam had eaten of the tree, the LORD God called to him and asked him, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself.”
Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked?
You have eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!”
The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with me— she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”
The LORD God then asked the woman, “Why did you do such a thing?”
The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.”
Then the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you shall be banned from all the wild creatures; On your belly shall you crawl, and dirt shall you eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers;
He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.”
The man called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living.
The Word of the Lord.
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In the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve break their communion with God through an act of eating.
As Satan the serpent slithers in the Garden of Eden, he convinces Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge, which she then shares with Adam, as we heard in our first reading.
This act of disobedience breaks the commandment given by God to Adam:
“You are free to eat from any of the trees in the garden, except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it, you shall die.”
Christians understand this to be the origin of sin – and by extension the evil that is still present in our world. Once humanity’s relationship with God was severed, “all hell broke loose,” as it were.
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How is this rupture meant to be restored? How do we re-enter into communion with God?
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In John’s Gospel, Jesus gives us a new commandment, echoing that of Eden:
“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (John 6: 51, 53).
Just as Adam and Eve lost communion with God through a disobedient act of eating, so we are brought back into relationship with God through an obedient act of eating.
Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge.
In the Eucharist, we eat from the Cross, the tree of life.
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What are we to do with such a great gift?
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Saint Augustine said, “Become what you consume.”
Be the hands, the face, the voice of Christ in the world through acts of prayer, charity, and self-sacrifice.
What might that look like for me – to become what I consume – today?
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Image credits: (1) The Eucharist, St. Mary’s Catholic Church (2) Scott Smith Blog (3) Catholic Answers