CLOTHING OUR NAKEDNESS

A SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION

When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, it could very well have spelled doom and damnation not only for them but for all of us.  The fruit they ate was taken from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – before that terrible day, it’s not that our first parents didn’t know the difference between good and evil and just did whatever they wanted whenever they felt like it.  It’s rather that everything they did was good, because up to that point they had passed the test of their free will, by willingly obeying God and not eating of the forbidden fruit.

We can only imagine that sickening thud which was the first ever human pang of conscience. And what a pang that must have been! These two most perfect of human beings, born not of other wicked men, but created to be the closest image of God’s own perfection, they now, suddenly, realized that out of dust were they made, and unto dust they would return.  In a thunderclap of understanding, they knew that they had betrayed their Creator, and in the process, ruined their own lives, and any prospect of happiness, in this life or beyond, for their children and their children’s children.

When God created Adam and Eve, the second chapter of Genesis describes them as being “naked, but they were not ashamed.”  They had not yet eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and were perfectly content to run around in their garden without any clothes on, just as innocent babies do today.  But the sudden awareness of their own conscience, which they experienced on eating the forbidden fruit, now gnawed at them, and they reacted.

They had just committed the most terrible sin we can imagine, betraying the God who had created them free from suffering and death, and condemning themselves and their children potentially to an eternity of suffering.  And what did they do to try and appease their consciences?  When their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked, they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. Then they hid themselves from God. When God finds them, Adam explains: “I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

So the very first hint that man ever had of the difference between good and evil appeared to him in the form of immodesty.  What had been the innocent nakedness of a child now became something else entirely. In one split second the world loses its innocence, and becomes a place of sinful guilt.

Our first mother, Eve, was the first to know this difference between good and evil, and it was she who introduced this knowledge to her husband Adam, and thus to the rest of us, the poor, banished, children of Eve.  It would now require another Mother, one who was conceived completely innocent, stainless, and immaculate; one who had not inherited the awful guilt of knowing both good and evil, but who remained pure and sinless throughout her entire life.  Our Queen conceived without original sin, given to us by Christ himself from the gibbet of the cross, Blessed Mary, Virgin and Mother, Mother of Christ, Mother of God, she would now replace the poor, wretched Eve and be the Mother of all mankind.

Thus it was that God promised to Adam, on the very day he committed his original sin, that he would put enmity between him and the woman, and between Adam’s seed and the woman’s seed.  And although the serpent would bruise Adam’s heel, she would crush its head.  The heels of Adam and all his descendants would indeed be bruised by Satan from that day forth, but already in promise, the devil’s head was crushed by our Mother Mary.  For surely it was this new Mother of all mankind, this Mother of Eve herself even, who had already enlightened our first parents in their first taste of guilt and sorrow.  Surely it was Holy Mary who inspired them to try and hide their sin by their first virtuous reaction of clothing themselves so they would no longer be naked.  Surely it is still today our own Blessed Mother, who clothes our nakedness when we would otherwise stand before God, our sinfulness open for him to behold.

Without our Mother Mary, who wraps her own veil around us, how would we dare approach to the Holy of Holies in the Blessed Sacrament?  But her beloved Son gave to her this role of Protectress, and it is the first duty of her motherhood.  When her own Son was born in a cold midnight stable, in the bleak midwinter, wasn’t the very first thing she did to wrap him up in swaddling clothes and place him in the soft, warm straw of the manger?  And will she not wrap us in the comforting bands of innocence after we commit sin after sin against her little Child?

Alas, there seem to be no depths to the iniquities man is prepared to commit.  And surely we deserve the original fate of Adam and Eve’s original sin, that upon our death, we should return unto the dust from which we were created?  Surely, there is nothing we can do to raise us above the stench of our wickedness?  And yet, there is our Mother.  If it were not for this one Spotless Creature, our Blessed Lady, who herself never tasted of our sinfulness, and who never tires of protecting us from the wrath of her Son, we would be doomed.  So how thankful must we be for this greatest gift of God, who gave her to be our Mother, and who today wraps us in the swaddling bands of forgiveness.  

And because Blessed Mary alone never knew sin, she alone can clothe our nakedness, and raise us above our sin.  Because she never knew sin, she alone can herself rise above the corruption that is due to sin.  To her alone can these words never be said: “Remember man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”  For she alone, by not tasting sin, has not deserved to taste of the punishment due to sin. So she alone would be free from bodily corruption, and at the end of her life, she alone was chosen to rise immediately, body and soul, into the heavenly bliss prepared for her by her Son.  

Today we celebrate that great event.  And as we cast our minds on that day when our blessed Mother was taken up, body and soul, into heaven, let us thank our loving God for giving us such a gift as she. Then let us thank her for raising us above the multitude of our offences, for clothing our nakedness, so that God might turn his countenance towards us, that his people may rejoice and be raised by him into the bliss of his eternal kingdom.