Week 2 - The Entrance of the Fig Leaves

Week 2 - The Entrance of the Fig Leaves

“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Matthew 5:8

“Man can full discover himself only in a sincere giving of himself.” GS 24

“Love is our origin, our vocation, our end.” Christopher West


The Bad News…and the Good News:
1. Bad news = falling from grace, and experiencing bad relationships
2. Good News = Christ
a. “Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins.” CCC 2336
b. Christ came to re-inflate our tires!
3. History, in this sense, begins with the entrance of the fig leaves – that is, the dawn of sin.

A Closer Look at Original Sin
1. Original sin has dramatically influenced our experience of sexuality.
2. Original sin was more than Adam and Eve eating an apple, it was their questioning of God’s gift.
3. Human sexuality, as we soon will see, played a crucial part in the attack and fall of humanity. In fact, Satan’s primary target in an attempt to lead humanity away from the love of God was and is the body.
4. The serpent subtly appears in Genesis 3:1 as the most cunning of all the animals. The term arum for cunning means subtle and is a play on the word arom or naked.
5. This play on words indicates Satan’s “subtle” plan was to attack their nakedness.
Why would Satan’s first attack on humanity be against their nakedness?
6. Because the naked body reveals our call to love
7. Our bodies reveal who God is!
8. Satan attacked the naked body for the same reason terrorists attacked the WTC and the Coalition forces attacked Saddam’s Palaces. Each target was a clear sign/symbol of something greater.
9. Satan’s plan was to attack Adam and Eve’s nakedness because nakedness revealed so much about them as persons, primarily their reason and purpose for existence – LOVE
10. Love, above all else, is what Satan hates most – the love between God and humanity and between man and woman.

The Sneaky Little Devil…
1. The deepest yearning we have is to share in the life and love of God, in other words, to be “like God”
2. From the beginning God gave man and woman a share in his life and love as a free gift.
a. God initiated the gift of himself as “bridegroom” and humanity (male and female) were open to receive the gift as “bride.”
b. Man and woman were able to re-image this same ¬¬exchange of Love through their own marital giving and receiving and experience the awesome results
3. In response to this free gift of himself to humanity, God asked that they not eat from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” If they were to eat of it, they would cut themselves off from the gift of life and love – they would die
Genesis 2:16-17
4. Enter the deceiver!
5. First, Satan places doubt in Eve’s head by asking her “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” Genesis 3:1
6. Satan is the father of lies, and shortly after placing doubt in the woman’s head he tells his first lie, a lie that would separate all of mankind from God: “You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, who knows what is good and what is bad.” Genesis 3:4
7. Note: the two different kinds of deaths God and Satan were referring to:
a. God: spiritual death
b. Satan: physical death
8. Satan causes Adam and Eve to doubt the Fatherhood of God and the gifts He has given to them. Satan says that “you will not die,” but you will become ¬like God. He’s selling them something they already have! They are already made in the image and likeness of God! They are already like Him.
9. Satan is saying that God doesn’t love you, He’s holding out on you, He doesn’t want you to be like Him, He’s not your Father…
10. Satan causes Adam and Eve to think that since God is holding out on them, they have to take for themselves what will bring them happiness.

“So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Genesis 3:6

Attacking the Bride
1. Why did Satan choose to attack Eve first? Is this some ploy by the biblical author to say that women are “bad?” NO!!!
2. Eve, as woman, physically embodies the call that humanity has to receive God’s love and bear fruit, to bring “life” into the world
3. Satan approaches the one who represents all of us as being the “Bride” of Christ in our receptivity to God’s gift – women
Where was Adam?
4. Adam’s job was to protect the garden, to protect his bride
5. Song of Songs 4:12 “You are an enclosed garden, my sister, my bride, an enclosed garden…”
6. Just as Eve initially doubted God’s love, Adam failed to live up to call to lay down his life to protect what was entrusted to him
7. Think with the mind of Satan: if you wanted to prevent people from receiving God’s love, where would you go?
8. Wouldn’t your perfect attack be to devalue, shame, disgrace, twist, corrupt, and demean the body and the sexual union of a husband and a wife because it is the fundamental revelation of God?
9. Satan’s attack isn’t murder and death – it’s even scarier. It’s a degradation of life and love. His attack comes through Cosmo, Playboy, sexual jokes, contraception, prostitution abortion, and the games men and women play with each other

The Result of Sin
1. Shame. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” Genesis 3:7
2. Here we find the first result of sin: shame.
3. Why were they ashamed? Adam and Eve died spiritually.
4. By rejecting the love of God, the Spirit He breathed into them at their creation, the spirit in them died. Without the love of God in their hearts they are unable to love as God loves…you can’t give what you don’t have
5. Their sexual desires (along with their thinking) became inverted
6. Lust now controls their desires…Lust = the absence of love
7. “Man is ashamed of his body because of lust. In fact, he is ashamed not so much of his body as precisely of lust.” May 28, 1980
8. They no longer sought to make a gift of themselves to each other, but rather sought personal gratification through the use of the opposite sex

“Therefore, God handed them over to impurity, through the lust of their hearts for the mutual degradation of their bodies. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie…therefore, God handed them over to their degrading passions.”
Romans 1:24-26

9. Man and woman now use each other for their own selfish desires.
a. Men’s fallen desire is physical – men use “love” to get sex
b. Women’s fallen desire is emotional – women use sex to get “love”
c. Where do we see this?

The Fall: What Happens Next?
1. Women: Genesis 3:16
2. Men: Genesis 3:17-19
3. From the fall of man to our current age, the “battle of the sexes” has been the greatest war waged
4. The enemy of God does not want us to be in communion with one another! He wants us to use each other for sexual and emotional reasons, to play dramatic games with each other, to be pitted against each other, to think the other has ulterior motives…
5. “Love is a battlefield…”

From Tree to Shining Tree
1. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers.” Genesis 3:16
2. We know that Satan’s attack did not win in the end, because Good Friday is not the end of our Holy Week celebrations.
3. Christianity would not exist if it were not for the victory over death culminated on the first Easter Sunday.
“And if Christ has not been raised, then empty is our preaching; empty too your faith.” 1 Corinthians 15:14
4. Jesus Christ has won for us new life! Redemption!
“Just as through one transgression condemnation came to all, so through one righteous act acquittal and life came to all.” Romans 5:18
5. Jesus came to breathe on humanity the breath of life lost in original sin.
“And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” John 20:22
6. This breath of life, the Holy Spirit, re-inspires us as persons restoring the relations between God and one another by restoring our ability to love.
7. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ we have received a perfect education in love – we are once again fully capable of reaching our fullest potential through the love he has given and exemplified…all he asks of us is this:

“This is my commandment; love one another as I love you.” John 15:12



The devil may try to use the hurts of life, and sometimes our own mistakes – to make you feel it is impossible that Jesus really loves you…This is a danger for all of us. And so sad, because it is completely the opposite of what Jesus is really wanting, waiting to tell you. Not only that He loves you, but even more – He longs for you. He misses you when you don’t come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don’t feel worthy. When not accepted by others, even by yourself sometimes, He is the one who always accepts you. Only believe – you are precious to Him. Bring all you are suffering to His feet – only open your heart to be loved by Him as you are. He will do the rest.
Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta


It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.
Pope John Paul II, World Youth Day, Rome 2000