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Brookline Carmel Bulletin
November 13, 1960
Cogitatio Sancta
(Holy
Meditation)
(The
Supernatural Point of View)
At their creation, Adam and Eve left the hands of God in a truly marvelous state, that of Original Justice. Special prerogatives were theirs. In the natural order they possessed the Preternatural Gifts: immunity from sickness, pain and death plus the complete subordination of their lower nature (senses, passions, emotions) to the higher (intellect and will). To crown these gifts God adorned their souls with Sanctifying Grace, the Theological Virtues and the infused Moral Virtues. Their higher nature was thereby completely subordinated to God. Imagine the indescribable peace and happiness that was theirs! Integrity and harmony within and without! Lords of the visible universe! Living on terms of loving intimacy with God who came often to walk with them and converse with them! Who wouldn’t envy them? And who isn’t stupefied to think that they lost all this?
Yes,
we are all amazed, but we mustn’t be incredulous. That they were capable of losing such bliss is a logical
consequence of their free will and the nature of the Theological Virtue of
Faith. Faith is necessarily
obscure. It doesn’t give us understanding. It enables us to accept as true that which
we don’t and can’t understand. We
accept it as true on the authority of the one revealing it (God). And so, great as their intellects were –
exceedingly keen and penetrating, incapable of logical error, party to a vast
fund of knowledge that fit them for their role as Parents of the Human Family –
Adam and Eve were still subject to error concerning Divine Realities. The Nature of God, Sanctifying Grace, Divine
Indwelling, and the Beatific Vision – all are unfathomable mysteries to the
human intellect. In particular, it
cannot comprehend how it is that the means God has provided can lead us to our
supernatural destiny. In regard to
supernatural truths, then, human beings will never be immune to deception; it
will always be possible to lead them astray.
We
know, alas, that that is exactly what happened to Adam and Eve. Our first parents chose to believe
Satan. Acting on his suggestion, they
disobeyed the command of God; they committed the first, the Original Sin. By it they fell from the state of Original
Justice and plunged themselves into a condition of deplorable misery. Henceforth all children would be born into
the same sad state. All evil, tragedy,
suffering that the human race ever has and ever will endure can be directly
attributed to that sin. By disobeying
God, Adam and Eve lost the gift of Sanctifying Grace. No longer were they His children, nor His friends. A whole chain of disastrous effects
followed. Intellect and will were no
longer subordinate to God. Man became
thoroughly egoistic. By nature he tends
to place himself before all else. He
would be the center of the universe around which all, including God, should
revolve. Lost to Mankind were the
Preternatural Gifts. Physical
suffering, death became its lot. Gone,
too, was the sweet peace, the harmony and integrity human nature had enjoyed
both within and without. The senses,
passions and emotions divorced themselves from reason; from now on they would
follow their own fickle course, as if they existed of themselves, by
themselves, and for themselves alone.
Externally, man’s dominion over his surroundings would be, at best, an
uneasy one. And he would have to fight
hard and fight continually to maintain even that.
Theologians,
therefore, speak of human nature as being wounded. As a result of Original Sin it has sustained our wounds: Malice in the Will, Ignorance in the
Intellect, Concupiscence and Weakness in the Appetites. Malice is that accursed propensity in Man to
find his delight in evil and sin.
Because of the wound of Ignorance our likes and dislikes, our tastes and
our prejudices are able to introduce error into our reasoning processes and to
blind the intellect to falsehood.
Concupiscence inclines us to indulge ourselves in every delight and
pleasure of sense. Weakness causes us
to flee in the face of pain and difficulty, to shrink from undertaking arduous
enterprises. These wounds, if not
cured, eventually destroy the soul.
When they are allowed to become the mainspring of a man’s every action
they estrange the soul from God and set is at enmity with God forever.
This
is, then, the picture of the man to be sanctified from the supernatural point
of view. Such is his state of soul
before he begins the long difficult path to spiritual perfection. These are the obstacles to be overcome. But when the goal, Sanctity, shall have been
attained, then these wounds are perfectly healed. Then a saintly man shall enjoy a state of soul akin to Original
Justice. He will enjoy all that Adam
and Eve did before the fall, with the exception of immunity from pain and
death.
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