FIVE BAD MISTAKES

 A SERMON FOR SEXAGESIMA SUNDAY

One of the unfortunate consequences of Adam and Eve’s original sin is that our fallen human nature has some very unpleasant tendencies to prefer to do what’s wrong rather than what’s right.  We do those things which we ought not to do, and we leave undone those things which we ought to do.  And then we lose our soul.  So why on earth do we do these things in the first place? 

The reason is clear.  What did the serpent tempt Eve to do?  There was only one thing that the devil wanted Eve to do.  After all, God had given them only one single law, that out of the hundreds of different fruits he had given them in their Garden of Eden, there was one, just one, that they must not eat.  If they did eat of this fruit, they would die.  God gave them this one prohibition, and he told them ahead of time what the punishment would be if they broke this one commandment.  They had been warned.

But the serpent, it says in the Book of Genesis, “was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.”  Note, he doesn’t push Eve right away to eat the fruit—he was too subtle for that.  Instead, he simply plants a thought in her head.  We see now why her first mistake was to listen to the devil in the first place: because when she thinks about what he had so subtly pointed out to her, she now, not surprisingly, asks herself “How come I can’t do this one thing?  Why not?  Eve probably let this question simmer in her mind for days, maybe even weeks, as the temptation to question God kept recurring.  Eventually, it became an obsession and she felt she had to take it a step further. 

So she now makes her second great mistake by responding to the devil.  She explains to the Father of Lies, with the best answer she could come up with, that “If we eat this fruit, God told us we shall surely die.”  And the serpent’s answer was swift and decisive as he planted his venomous fangs into Eve with his come-back to her objection.  “No you won’t,” he says, “You won’t die.  And not only will you not die, but “your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”  And Eve, who had made the first mistake of listening to what the devil had to say, who had made her second mistake by talking back to him, now makes her third and most grievous error.  She believes him.

You can see from this response by the serpent to Eve why he was known as the most subtle of all the beasts of the field that God had planted in the Garden of Eden.  He mixes in just enough truth in his lies that we’re tempted to believe what he says.  He tells Eve, “Ye shall surely not die.”  True or false?  Did Eve die?  Physically, she did not die.  Her body lived on long after she ate of the forbidden fruit.  But what about her soul?  That first sin, original sin, was an extremely serious sin, what we now call a “mortal” sin.  Mortal, because it kills the soul.  And Eve’s soul, once she took that first bite, was quite, quite dead! 

“Ye shall not surely not die,” was only part of the serpent’s lie.  He goes on: “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened.”  Eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and yes, you will know the difference between good and evil.”  Again, true.  From that time on, man has known this difference between good and evil.  But although the devil had inserted this truth into his response, he failed to mention that this knowledge was not going to be to their benefit but to their downfall.  And instead of telling Eve that inconvenient truth, instead he tells her a blatant lie: “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”  And any resistance Eve was maintaining to the temptations of the devil fell apart.  The idea that she and Adam would benefit from disobeying God, the idea that she and Adam would be raised to the same level as the God who created them, was just too good to be true.  She would soon learn that it was neither good nor true.  But by then it was too late.

Her fourth mistake was the worst so far.  She committed that original sin and yielded to the serpent’s temptation.  She took her bite of the forbidden fruit, she suddenly knew right from wrong, and immediately she knew she had done wrong.  She no longer possessed that beautiful innocence and sanctifying grace that God had bestowed on her as she was created out of Adam’s rib.  From now on, she would be constantly tempted to abuse the free will God had given her, using it to offend God even more.  And she wasted no time in doing precisely that.  No longer innocent, but now crafty like the serpent who had tempted her, she gathers her little basket of the forbidden fruit and proceeds to tempt Adam to commit the same sin she had been tempted by the serpent to commit.  Her fifth mistake was to corrupt others.  But it was not her last mistake.  From that moment on, she and her descendants have been making one “mistake” after another.  We’ve never stopped, not even after the incarnation of the Son of God and his work of Redemption to save our miserable souls.  Adam and Eve were given everything, everything they needed to live a beautiful life in their earthly paradise, everything they, and we, their descendants, could have wished for was granted to them.  Just one simple little rule—don’t do this one thing.  Don’t eat this one fruit.  And that’s where the devil inserted his cloven hoof and forced the door open.  Subtly, very subtly with a great deal of very pleasant-sounding truth, but with the lie hidden in that truth, the malicious lie that completely subverted all the good he promised.

Should we expect anything else from the devil today?  Of course not—what worked for him then has been working ever since.  When we’re tempted, it’s because there’s a “perceived good” in what we’re being tempted to do.  We think there will be benefits to be had from committing our sins.  We steal so that we can have something we otherwise would have to pay for.  We miss Mass on Sunday so that we can do something else we’d rather do—sleeping, visiting our family, watching football, whatever.  We sin because we’re attracted to the perceived benefit we think we’ll get from sinning.  Whether it’s riches or pleasure there’s always something “good” that hides the enormity of the offence against God we’re being tempted to commit.

So don’t make the same mistakes that Eve made.  First of all, never, ever listen to the devil, don’t entertain those evil thoughts and desires that pop up now again—that’s just playing around with the devil by thinking about all the “nice things” to be gained by sinning.  If you take this first step of not playing with the devil, you don’t need to worry about making the second and the third mistakes and so on.  But if you do get that far, stop yourself there before you make Eve’s second mistake.  Before you start weighing up in your mind whether to commit the sin or not.  This is simply telling the devil that, yes, you’re aware of the benefits, but you’re not supposed to do this thing, whatever it is.  The devil has plenty of additional reasons to pile on as to why you should, and this is where he mixes in the lie amidst all the truths.  Even then, it’s not too late.  But it’s imperative that you don’t then make the third mistake of believing him.  If you do, it’s all over because then there would be nothing left to hold you back from the fourth mistake of yielding completely to the temptation.

Regrettably, there are many people who have even taken things so far as to make the fifth mistake.  In other words, they fall so deeply into sin that they justify it in their own heads and want nothing more than to tempt other people to commit the same sin so they’re no longer alone in their defiance of God and his law.  We see this in such institutions as the so-called Gay Pride movement and the pro-abortion lobby.  We even find it in the conciliar Church of Vatican II.  How else can we explain its leader’s frenzied attempts to abolish the Holy Mass.  He has made all the mistakes of Eve and then some.  Now he wants to spread his errors, to teach and even force people to abandon the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the other sacrosanct beliefs and practices of the Mystical Body of Christ.

To avoid following in the footsteps of our first parents, we have to stop the devil in his tracks, before the temptation becomes so big great that we’re unable to fight it off anymore.  The simplest way we can stay spiritually healthy and save your soul is by not making Eve’s first mistake.  Don’t entertain any thought which you know the devil wants you to be thinking about.  Believe me, he’s ready to jump in and take advantage of our wandering mind at a moment’s notice.  Don’t give him the chance!