Today we discussed sin and how sin entered the world. We reviewed that God created the world and everything in it in order to share his love with his creation. After he created the planets, the earth and all of the animals, he formed man. He created man out of the dust of the earth and breathed life into him. I explained that the breath that God breathed into man was the soul. I explained that when every human person is created, we each receive a soul. We each have a body and a soul and when we die, our soul separates from our body and returns to God if we have led a life in union with God.
I read the story of Adam and Eve from a children's Bible and explained the creation of Adam and Eve. After God created man, he created a woman to be a helper to him, and together they were to take care of the earth. God also planted within the Garden a tree of good and evil and a tree of everlasting life, and God instructed Adam to never eat the fruit of these trees lest he should die. Adam and Eve were created for eternal life and were to share their life with God and live with him in the Garden forever. Everything that they needed was provided to them in the Garden of Eden. Their only instruction was to not eat of the fruit of the trees of good and evil or of the tree of everlasting life.
I backtracked a little bit and discussed Angels and in the beginning, God also created Angels. Angels are pure spirit and God revealed his plan of creating man to his angels and there are 9 choirs of angels with Seraphim being the highest choir, and there was one angel who was the brightest and most beautiful of all of the angels in the Seraphim and that was an angel called Lucifer. When God revealed to Lucifer and his angels that God was going to create man and that man would be very special to God, Lucifer became very jealous and did not like God's plan and he turned against God and convinced other angels to turn against God too. Lucifer was very cunning. When this happened, Lucifer and his angels were cast out of heaven and we see his presence in the Garden of Eden through the serpent that tempts Adam and Eve in Genesis. Lucifer's main objective is to convince man to turn away from God so that God's plan may be thwarted. He is still trying to accomplish this plan today.
We see the serpent in the Garden of Eden tempting Eve by tempting her into believing and implying that God was being selfish by asking Adam and Eve to not eat of the trees of good and evil and everlasting life. Through the lies of the serpent Adam and Eve did eat of the tree of good and evil and by doing this, sin entered the world.
Adam and Eve now acquired feelings of fear and shame. When they heard God walking through the Garden of Eden, they hid from him because of their sin and their shame. When God saw that Adam and Eve were afraid, he asked if they had eaten from the tree of good and evil.
I explained to the children that God knew that Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree, and he was asking them if they had eaten from the tree of good and evil to give Adam and Eve the opportunity to tell the truth and reconcile themselves with God (a foreshadowing of the Sacrament of Reconciliation), but because Adam and Eve were now in a sinful state of being, pride filled their souls and they blamed each other for their sin instead of reconciling themselves with God. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent.
We talked about sin and that we sin when we choose to do things that are not pleasing to God and are actually offensive to God like disobeying our parents, lying, cheating, stealing etc. God created Adam and Eve out of love to be sinless and to be in the image and likeness of God who is love, but when they disobeyed God, they caused sin to enter the world. Because of their sin, God cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden as an act of love. If Adam and Eve had stayed in the Garden of Eden, they probably would have eaten from the tree of everlasting life because of their now weakened nature, and if that had happened Adam and Eve would have been in a permanent state of sin and separated from God forever. God wants us to be sinless so that we can enjoy everlasting life with him, so to protect Adam and Eve, he cast them out of the Garden of Eden and we will see how God will send his only begotten son to win the battle over sin and death for us by his sacrifice on the cross so that we will attain everlasting life with God.
We opened the class with the Hail Mary and closed the class with the Our Father. Please continue to say these prayers with your children through the week.
PAX,
Laura
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