Original sin was a sin of pride: Adam and Eve wanted to be like gods. Dying to the life of grace was the consequence.
43.- We begin to live the life of grace with the sacrament of Baptism.
43.1. When we are born to natural life, we are born dead to the life of grace, because we are born with original sin. Original sin is washed away by Baptism. Baptism is like a second birth: a birth to supernatural life.
God created our first parents in the state of grace. As a sign of his sovereignty, God gave them a commandment so that, by fulfilling it, they would show their acceptance. Yielding to the temptation of the devil, they disobeyed. “Since the proper end of the precept was to test obedience, we cannot measure the gravity of the fault by the exterior action in which it is manifested”(546). “Man, created by God in righteousness, nevertheless, at the very beginning of history, at the prompting of the devil, abused his freedom and set himself against God”(547).
This sin of disobedience was original sin, so called because it was the first sin committed on earth, at the beginnings of humanity, and it is the origin of many others. Original sin is the root of the other sins of men. The reality of original sin is a dogma of faith(548).
By this sin of disobedience, our first parents lost grace for themselves and for us, their children. Just as the children of a man who ruins himself at roulette lose everything. If a monarch grants a noble title to a family on the condition that the head of the family not make himself unworthy of such a grace, who can protest if, after an act of ingratitude by that head of the family, the monarch withdraws the title from the whole family? The Council of Trent, the most momentous council in the entire history of the Church, defines as a matter of faith that original sin is transmitted from generation to generation, by inheritance(549).
43.2. We are not responsible for original sin because it is not our personal sin; but we inherit it at birth.
That is why original sin is called “sin” in an analogous sense: it is a sin “contracted,” not “committed”; it is a state, not an act.
By virtue of the law of Adam’s solidarity with all humanity, since he is its physical-juridical head, he deprives us of the extraordinary gifts that God had originally granted to Adam so that he might pass them on to his descendants.
“Just as there would have been solidarity between Adam and his descendants if he had been faithful, so too there is solidarity in his rebellion”(550). The great disaster of Adam’s sin was that it dragged down all human nature with it. In the same way that, if Adam had committed suicide before having children, he would have deprived the whole human race of life, so by his sin he deprives us of grace. It was a spiritual suicide.
We should not protest because we suffer the consequences of Adam’s sin. Would we have known how to preserve these gifts? Are not our personal sins proof that we too would have prevaricated?
Original sin was a sin of pride. The sin of Adam and Eve is a very frequent sin today. Self-sufficient men and women, independent, rebellious against every norm, order or command, even if it comes from the Pope. For them only what they think and what they want has value. They submit to no one. They want to be like gods. That was the sin of Adam and Eve.
3. Before they sinned, the devil told our first parents that if they sinned they would be like gods. They sinned and realized the devil’s deception. In this way the devil achieved what he intended: to cast Adam down from his privileged state. The devil is the father of lies. Eve was seduced by him. Whoever sins gives himself over to the spirit of falsehood.
To the extent that we are sinners, we are liars, for sin is the abandonment of the truth, which is God, for a lie.
The devil also deceives us in temptations by presenting sin to us as very attractive, and afterward we are always disillusioned, with an empty soul and wanting more. For sin never satisfies. But the devil gets what he wants: to chain us to hell.
The devil tempts us by inducing us to evil, because he envies us, since we can attain the heaven that he lost through his own fault.
All the devil’s temptations can be overcome with God’s help. The devil is like a chained dog: he can bark, but he can only bite the one who comes near him.
In the state of original sin man lacks the grace and friendship of God, and his freedom is weakened and inclined to evil; we cannot be completely masters of ourselves and of our actions.
This life of grace that begins with Baptism needs to breathe so as not to suffocate. Just as the life of the body, if it has no air to breathe, also suffocates. Saint Augustine says that the breathing of the life of the soul is prayer.
Author: Fr. Jorge Loring
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(546) – BIRNGRUBER: Teología Dogmática para Seglares, no. 16. Ed. Litúrgica Española. Barcelona
(547) – Second Vatican Council: Gaudium et Spes: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, no. 13
(548) – DENZINGER: Magisterio para la Iglesia, no. 787-792. Ed. Herder. Barcelona
(549) – DENZINGER: Magisterio de la Iglesia, no. 790, and DS, 1512s. Ed. Herder. Barcelona.
(550) – EDWARD LEEN, C.S.Sp: ¿Por qué la cruz? 1st, VIII. Ed. Rialp. Madrid
