THE DIALECTICAL JOURNEY


MONDAY, SIXTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Gen 4:1-15,25; Ps 50:1,8,16-17,20-21; Mk 8:11-13

Walking the Dialectical Path of Good and Evil

The story of the man and the woman outside the Garden of Eden takes a different tone. God remained with them nevertheless but removed a bit from their daily activities. By their disobedience of God’s word, he let them live their lives but never absent in and around the. Their choice demands that God allow them to know good and evil. It is a dialectical path they have chosen to travel henceforth. The path is different from what God planned for them in the Garden of Eden, the path of comprehension of goodness and the fullness of life in him. To experience evil, they had to walk without understanding and in the error of their daily choices, which would cause them pain, loneliness, and death sometimes. To acquire good and the knowledge of truth, they must suffer for it and reach out to God, who is the source of all goodness. Thus, ignorance or incomplete knowledge, weakness of the will to make the right moral choices, and undue attraction to sensual and physical goods characterise the path of knowledge of good and evil. All these would result in many false starts.

God’s presence and light remained with them, but they must make a concerted effort to enter and stay in his divine presence. We read about these situations in the story of Cain and Abel. “Time passed and Cain brought some of the produce of the soil as an offering to the Lord, while Abel for his part brought the first-born of his flock and some of their fat as well. The Lord looked with favour on Abel and his offering. But he did not look with favour on Cain and his offering, and Cain was very angry and downcast.” Sin mastered him because of this wrong disposition arising from ignorance and poverty of moral virtues. The Lord admonished him to overcome his situation: “If you are well disposed, ought you not to lift your head? But if you are ill-disposed, is not sin at the door like a crouching beast hungering for you, which you must master?” We overcome our ill disposition by lifting our heads to God in prayer to ask for forgiveness of sins and grace to act well. By prayer, we move from darkness of ignorance and sin to goodness of repentance and the grace of living according to the will of God. Because Cain failed to follow the admonition God gave him, he killed his brother Abel. He moved from darkness into deeper darkness. The more sins, the more the burden we carry.

No matter how deep we have walked into the darkness of evil and sin, the Lord never abandons us; he never abandoned Cain. Cain continued to run from God’s presence, which continued to guide and protect him from those who would want to harm him. Walking the dialectical path of good and evil, the word of God continues to call us to account for our rationality, the image of God in us, so that we may not get lost in darkness and death. The Incarnation of His Son is the ultimate demonstration of God’s relentless effort to rehabilitate us in his presence and have us follow him willingly. Like Cain and the Pharisees in the gospel, we continue to resist his loving and beckoning presence with our stubborn refusal to believe his word and goodwill towards us. “The Pharisees came up and started a discussion with Jesus; they demanded of him a sign from heaven, to test him. And with a sigh that came straight from the heart he said, ‘Why does this generation demand a sign? I tell you solemnly, no sign shall be given to this generation.’” The presence of the word of God is enough sign of God’s presence with us. Even now, the word of God makes the Garden of Eden present to us, even something more than the Garden, for it is the life of God within our reach. Faith in the Word changes our dialectical path into one that leads to fullness of life and light.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to understand how you abide in our hearts when we sincerely lift our hearts to you in repentance and prayer, so that enlightened by that understanding we may walk the path of your word and become a dwelling pleasing to you. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. 

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