CCC 29 But this “intimate and vital bond of man to God” (GS 19 § 1) can be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected by man.1 Such attitudes can have different causes: revolt against evil in the world; religious ignorance or indifference; the cares and riches of this world; the scandal of bad example on the part of believers; currents of thought hostile to religion; finally, that attitude of sinful man which makes him hide from God out of fear and flee his call.2
CCC 55 This revelation was not broken off by our first parents’ sin. “After the fall, [God] buoyed them up with the hope of salvation, by promising redemption; and he has never ceased to show his solicitude for the human race. For he wishes to give eternal life to all those who seek salvation by patience in well-doing.”3
Even when he disobeyed you and lost your friendship you did not abandon him to the power of death. .. Again and again you offered a covenant to man.4
CCC 343 Man is the summit of the Creator’s work, as the inspired account expresses by clearly distinguishing the creation of man from that of the other creatures.5
CCC 397 Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of.6 All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.
CCC 399 Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness.7 They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image – that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.8
CCC 400 The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination.9 Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man.10 Because of man, creation is now subject “to its bondage to decay”.11 Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will “return to the ground”,12 for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history.13
CCC 410 After his fall, man was not abandoned by God. On the contrary, God calls him and in a mysterious way heralds the coming victory over evil and his restoration from his fall.14 This passage in Genesis is called the Protoevangelium (“first gospel”): the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer, of a battle between the serpent and the Woman, and of the final victory of a descendant of hers.
CCC 489 Throughout the Old Covenant the mission of many holy women prepared for that of Mary. At the very beginning there was Eve; despite her disobedience, she receives the promise of a posterity that will be victorious over the evil one, as well as the promise that she will be the mother of all the living.15 By virtue of this promise, Sarah conceives a son in spite of her old age.16 Against all human expectation God chooses those who were considered powerless and weak to show forth his faithfulness to his promises: Hannah, the mother of Samuel; Deborah; Ruth; Judith and Esther; and many other women.17 Mary “stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from him. After a long period of waiting the times are fulfilled in her, the exalted Daughter of Sion, and the new plan of salvation is established.”18
CCC 1607 According to faith the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman. Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations;19 their mutual attraction, the Creator’s own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust;20 and the beautiful vocation of man and woman to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth was burdened by the pain of childbirth and the toil of work.21
CCC 1736 Every act directly willed is imputable to its author:
Thus the Lord asked Eve after the sin in the garden: “What is this that you have done?”22 He asked Cain the same question.23 The prophet Nathan questioned David in the same way after he committed adultery with the wife of Uriah and had him murdered.24
An action can be indirectly voluntary when it results from negligence regarding something one should have known or done: for example, an accident arising from ignorance of traffic laws.
CCC 2427 Human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth, both with and for one another.25 Hence work is a duty: “If any one will not work, let him not eat.”26 Work honors the Creator’s gifts and the talents received from him. It can also be redemptive. By enduring the hardship of work27 in union with Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth and the one crucified on Calvary, man collaborates in a certain fashion with the Son of God in his redemptive work. He shows himself to be a disciple of Christ by carrying the cross, daily, in the work he is called to accomplish.28 Work can be a means of sanctification and a way of animating earthly realities with the Spirit of Christ.
CCC 2515 Etymologically, “concupiscence” can refer to any intense form of human desire. Christian theology has given it a particular meaning: the movement of the sensitive appetite contrary to the operation of the human reason. The apostle St. Paul identifies it with the rebellion of the “flesh” against the “spirit.”29 Concupiscence stems from the disobedience of the first sin. It unsettles man’s moral faculties and, without being in itself an offense, inclines man to commit sins.30
CCC 2568 In the Old Testament, the revelation of prayer comes between the fall and the restoration of man, that is, between God’s sorrowful call to his first children: “Where are you?. .. What is this that you have done?”31 and the response of God’s only Son on coming into the world: “Lo, I have come to do your will, O God.”32 Prayer is bound up with human history, for it is the relationship with God in historical events.
CCC 2795 The symbol of the heavens refers us back to the mystery of the covenant we are living when we pray to our Father. He is in heaven, his dwelling place; the Father’s house is our homeland. Sin has exiled us from the land of the covenant,33 but conversion of heart enables us to return to the Father, to heaven.34 In Christ, then, heaven and earth are reconciled,35 for the Son alone “descended from heaven” and causes us to ascend there with him, by his Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension.36
1 GS 19 § 1.
2 Cf. GS 19-21; Mt 13:22; Gen 3:8-10; Jon 1:3.
3 DV 3; cf. Gen 3:15; Rom 2:6-7.
4 Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer IV, 118.
5 Cf. Gen 1-26.
6 Cf. Gen 3:1-11; Rom 5:19.
7 Cf. Rom 3:23.
8 Cf. Gen 3:5-10.
9 Cf. Gen 3:7-16.
10 Cf. Gen 3:17,19.
11 Rom 8:21.
12 Gen 3:19; cf. 2:17.
13 Cf. Rom 5:12.
14 Cf. Gen 3:9,15.
15 Cf. Gen 3:15, 20.
16 Cf. Gen 18:10-14; 21:1-2.
17 Cf. I Cor 1:17; I Sam 1.
18 LG 55.
19 Cf. Gen 3:12.
20 Cf. Gen 2:22; 3:16b.
21 Cf. Gen 1:28; 3:16-19.
22 Gen 3:13.
23 Cf. Gen 4:10.
24 Cf. 2 Sam 12:7-15.
25 Cf. Gen 1:28; GS 34; CA 31.
26 2 Thess 3:10; Cf. 1 Thess 4:11.
27 Cf. Gen 3:14-19.
28 Cf. LE 27.
29 Cf. Gal 5:16, 17, 24; Eph 2:3.
30 Cf. Gen 3:11; Council of Trent: DS 1515.
31 Gen 3:9, 13.
32 Heb 10:5-7.
33 Cf. Gen 3.
34 Jer 3:19-4:1a; Lk 15:18, 21.
35 Cf. Isa 45:8; Ps 85:12.
36 Jn 3:13; 12:32; 14 2-3; 16:28; 20:17; Eph 4:9-10; Heb 1:3; 2:13.