Monday, November 3, 2008 (No. 36)
Taste and See
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve can have every thing they want except one thing. God forbids them “to eat” (or even touch) the fruit from one particular tree.
So the snake tempts Adam and Eve “to eat” this one thing by saying:
“[God] knows that when you eat it,
you will be like God and know what
is good and what is bad.” …
As soon as they had eaten it, they
were given understanding and realized
that they were naked. (Genesis 3:5,7)
There is much that can be said about this, but Mark Link, in Path Through Scripture, points out one key to understanding the story of the fall of man and woman is to understand the meaning and symbolism in the word “eating”. To eat is to know.
“Adam and Eve learned what ‘evil’ was by becoming evil. They did evil. They ‘tasted’ it. Since they were good and became evil, they now ‘know’ the difference between good and evil.”
Going back to being purely good was no longer possible for Adam and Eve. The devil knew this and figured that it foiled God’s plan.
Jump forward a few thousand years to Jesus Christ, the New Adam, the One who makes all things new, to the Last Supper, to The Cross on Good Friday, to the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. In a sense of reverse parallelism, Jesus offers His very own body and blood in the form of the Eucharist, the bread and wine of Holy Communion, for us to eat, for us to know goodness. Since we know evil through our sin, we know Good through Jesus. To eat is to know.
And since we tend to forget easily, we need to go back Sunday after Sunday. (Preferably daily.)
Taste and see that the LORD is good. (Psalm 34:8)
Our Lady of Mercy, pray for us.
