“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
Paradise Lost: I Have Seen the Fall of Man
The Genesis story of the Fall of Man is mirrored in the Nativity. Unlike Adam at the Tree of Knowledge, Jesus did not deem equality with God a thing to be grasped.
December 4, 2020 by Fr Gordon MacRae
The Genesis story of the Fall of Man is mirrored in the Nativity. Unlike Adam at the Tree of Knowledge, Jesus did not deem equality with God a thing to be grasped.
(Editor’s Note: The image atop this post is entitled “The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden” [1828 by Thomas Cole]. It reflects the events of Genesis 3:23-24.)
There is a cryptic quote from Jesus in the Gospel according to Saint Luke. The setting is the return of His disciples after they were sent out to heal the sick and rid the possessed of their demons. Upon encountering Jesus again (Luke 10:17-20) the disciples marveled, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” This was followed by one of the most mysterious and haunting statements of Jesus in the Gospel. “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). The mystery extends to the pre-existence of Jesus as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity Who thus was present within God at the very time of Creation.
Some years ago, a reader sent me an outstanding article from Crisis Magazine, “Who will Rescue the Lost Sheep of a Lonely Revolution?” by the outstanding writer, Anthony Esolen. It is an admonitory parable about the lost sheep of the Gospel and the once dead prodigal son of another famous parable. What exactly did Jesus mean by “lost” and “dead”?
Mr. Esolen raises questions about controversies I have taken up in past posts. One of them was “Thailand’s Once-Lost Son Was Flag Bearer for the Asian Apostolic Congress.” The story is reminiscent of the famous story in the Gospel of Luke (15:11-32) that we know as the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The parable ends with this admonition of the father in the story to his older son: “Be glad, for this brother of yours was dead and is now alive; he was lost, and is now found” (Luke 15:32). Anthony Esolen’s article linked above references the same parable, but makes a point missing from the current Synod on Synodality debate. It is a highly significant and most important critique for Catholics:
“That is why you came among us, to call sinners back to the fold. Not to pet and stroke them for being sinners, because that is what you mean by ‘lost,’ and what you mean by ‘dead’ when you ask us to consider the young man who had wandered into the far country. The father in your parable wanted his son alive, not dead.”
Over thirty years in prison (16 of them in the company of that Prodigal Son), I have seen first hand the fall of man and its effects on the lives of the lost. No good father serves them by inviting them home then leaving them lost, or worse, dead; deadened to the Spirit calling them out of the dark wood of error. Mr. Esolen has seen this too:
“…you say your hearts beat warmly for the poor. Prisoners are poor to the point of invisibility… Go and find out what the Lonely Revolution has done to them. Well may you plead for cleaner cells and better food for prisoners, and more merciful punishment. Why do you not plead for cleaner lives and better nourishment for their souls when they are young, before the doors of the prison shut upon them? Who speaks for them?”
Here in prison, writing from the East of Eden, I live alongside the daily consequences of the Fall of Man. It will take more than a Synod on Synodality to see the panoramic view I now see. Mr. Esolen challenges our shepherds: “Venturing forth into the margins, my leaders? … [Then] leave your parlors and come to the sheepfold.”
Adam in the Image of God
Adrift in controversy, we might do well this Advent to ponder the Genesis story of Creation and the Fall of Adam. I found some fascinating things there when I took a good long look. The story of Adam is filled with metaphor and symbolism that frames all that comes after it in the story of God’s intervention with human history.
Accounts of man created from the earth were common in Ancient Near Eastern texts that preceded the Book of Genesis. The Hebrew name for the first human is “ha-Adam” while the Hebrew for “made from earth” is “ha-Adama” which some have interpreted as “man from earth.” Thus Adam does not technically have a name in the Genesis account. It is simply “man.” His actions are on behalf of all.
As common as the story of man from the earth was in the texts of Ancient Near Eastern lore, the Biblical version has something found no where else. In Genesis (2:7) God formed man from the ground “and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” And not only life, but soul, life in the image and likeness of God. The Breath of God, or the Winds of God, is an element repeated in Sacred Scripture in a pattern I described in a Pentecost post, “Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost.”
God will set the man from earth in Eden. Then in the following verse in Genesis (2:8) God establishes in Eden the very instruments of man’s fall: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. So what exactly was Adam’s “Original Sin?”
When I wrote “Fr Georges Lemaître, the Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang” (Oh … go ahead and yawn!) I delved into the deeper meaning of the first words in Scripture spoken by God, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). Saint Augustine saw in that command the very moment God created the angelic realm, a sort of spiritual Big Bang. What is clear is that spiritual life was created first and the material world followed. For all we know — and, trust me, science knows no better — “Let there be light” was the spark that caused the Big Bang.
You might note that the creation of light preceded the creation of anything in the physical world that might generate light such as the Sun and the stars. Saint Augustine then considered the very next line in Genesis (1:4), “God separated the light from the darkness,” and saw in it the moment the angels fell and evil entered the cosmos. This is what Jesus described in the opening of this post: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). It was only then in the Genesis account that construction of the material universe got underway.
When God created a man from the earth, a precedent for “The Fall” had already taken place. God then took ha-adama, Adam, and commanded him (2:16) to eat freely of the bounty of Eden, “but of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you may not eat, for in the day you eat of it, you shall die.” Die not in the sense of physical death — for Adam lived on — but in the spiritual sense, the same sort of death from which the father of the famous parable described above receives his son “Your brother was dead, and now he is alive” (Luke 15:32).
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is what is called a “merism” in Scripture. It acts as a set of bookends which include all the volumes in between. Another example of a merism is in Psalm 139:2, “You know when I sit and when I stand.” In other words, “you know everything about me.” The Tree of Knowledge, therefore, is access to the knowledge of God, and Adam’s grasping for it is the height of hubris, of pride, of self-serving disobedience.
In the end, Adam opts for disobedience when faced with an opportunity that serves his own interests. From the perspective of human hindsight, man was just being man. In an alternate version found in Ezekiel (28:11-23), God said to the man:
“You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of splendor, and the guardian cherub drove you out.”
God’s clothing Adam and Eve — who are so named only after The Fall — before expelling them is a conciliatory gesture, an accommodation to their human limitations. Casting them out of Eden is not presented solely as God’s justice, but also God’s mercy to protect them from an even more catastrophic fall, “Lest he put forth his hand and take [grasp] also from the Tree of Life” (Genesis 3:22).
Though He Was in the Form of God …
The Church’s liturgy has always been conscious of the deep and essential spiritual link between the fall of Adam and the birth of Christ. For evidence, look no further than the Mass readings for the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. I also find a stunning reflection of the Eden story in a hymn from the very earliest Christian church — perhaps a liturgical hymn — with which Saint Paul demonstrates to the Church at Philippi the mission, purpose, and mind of Christ. “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also the interests of others. … Have this mind among yourselves which was in Christ Jesus:”
“Though he was in the form of God did not deem equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess to the glory of God the Father that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
— Philippians 2:3-11
The two accounts above — the story of Adam fallen from the image and likeness of God and expelled from Eden, and the story of Jesus in the form of God “being born in the likeness of men” — reflect the classic dualism of Plato. A Greek philosopher in the 3rd and 4th Century B.C., the essence of Plato’s thought was his theory of image and form. Forms or universalities in the spiritual realm had imperfect reflections in the material world.
Hence, Adam is in the image of God, and falls, but Christ is in the form of God and the image of man, and becomes our Salvation from the Fall of Adam. The verses recounted by Saint Paul in Philippians point to something of cosmic consequence for the story of the Fall of Man. Man, made from the earth in the image of God grasps at the Tree of Knowledge to be like God, and falls from grace at Eden. At Bethlehem, however, God Himself traces those steps in reverse. He takes the image and likeness of man, and accepts the ultimate cosmic sacrifice to end man’s spiritual death and restore us to Eden.
A reader once chastised me for writing in support of an alternate view of Pope Francis, and his gestures to extend the gaze of the Church to the peripheries of a broken world. It is a cautious enterprise in a self-righteous world in a fallen state. Without a clear mandate from the Holy Spirit, we could lose ourselves and our souls in such an effort. Anthony Esolen expresses the danger well in the Crisis article cited above:
“Who speaks for the penitent, trying to place his confidence in a Church that cuts his heart right out because she seems to take his sins less seriously than he does.”
We can bring no one to Christ that way, but the caution should not prevent the Church from her mission to reach into the ends of the earth, to save sinners, and not just revel with the self-proclaimed already saved. Ours is a mission extended to the fallen.
I have seen the Fall of Man. In prison I see it every day. The Magi of the Gospel also saw it, and thus came from East of Eden to extend to Him their gifts. “Upon a Midnight Not so Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear” is my own favorite Christmas post, and one I hope you will read and share in the coming weeks.
The Magi represent the known world coming to bend their knee in the presence of Christ in the form of God born in the likeness of men at Bethlehem. Even my own aching, wounded knee must bend at that!
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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank for reading and sharing this special Advent post. You might also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:
Christmas for Those Bowed Down by the Fatigue of this World
Christmas in the Land of Nod, East of Eden
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found
Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Christians.
Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Salvation.
“All who see me scoff at me. They mock me with parted lips; they wag their heads.”
During Holy Week one year, I wrote “Simon of Cyrene, the Scandal of the Cross, and Some Life Sight News.” It was about the man recruited by Roman soldiers to help carry the Cross of Christ. I have always been fascinated by Simon of Cyrene, but truth be told, I have no doubt that I would react with his same spontaneous revulsion if fate had me walking in his sandals that day past Mount Calvary.
Some BTSW readers might wish for a different version, but I cannot write that I would have heroically thrust the Cross of Christ upon my own back. Please rid yourselves of any such delusion. Like most of you, I have had to be dragged kicking and screaming into just about every grace I have ever endured. The only hero at Calvary was Christ. The only person worth following up that hill — up ANY hill — is Christ. I follow Him with the same burdens and trepidation and thorns in my side as you do. So don’t follow me. Follow Him.
This Holy Week, one of many behind these stone walls, has caused me to use a wider angle lens as I examine the events of that day on Mount Calvary as the Evangelists described them. This year, it is Dismas who stands out. Dismas is the name tradition gives to the man crucified to the right of the Lord, and upon whom is bestowed a dubious title: the “Good Thief.”
As I pondered the plight of Dismas at Calvary, my mind rolled some old footage, an instant replay of the day I was sent to prison — the day I felt the least priestly of all the days of my priesthood.
It was the mocking that was the worst. Upon my arrival at prison after trial late in 1994, I was fingerprinted, photographed, stripped naked, showered, and unceremoniously deloused. I didn’t bother worrying about what the food might be like, or whether I could ever sleep in such a place. I was worried only about being mocked, but there was no escaping it. As I was led from place to place in chains and restraints, my few belongings and bedding stuffed into a plastic trash bag dragged along behind me, I was greeted by a foot-stomping chant of prisoners prepped for my arrival: “Kill the priest! Kill the priest! Kill the priest!” It went on into the night. It was maddening.
It’s odd that I also remember being conscious, on that first day, of the plight of the two prisoners who had the misfortune of being sentenced on the same day I was. They are long gone now, sentenced back then to just a few years in prison. But I remember the walk from the courthouse in Keene, New Hampshire to a prison-bound van, being led in chains and restraints on the “perp-walk” past rolling news cameras. A microphone was shoved in my face: “Did you do it, Father? Are you guilty?”
You may have even witnessed some of that scene as the news footage was recently hauled out of mothballs for a WMUR-TV news clip about my new appeal. Quickly led toward the van back then, I tripped on the first step and started to fall, but the strong hands of two guards on my chains dragged me to my feet again. I climbed into the van, into an empty middle seat, and felt a pang of sorrow for the other two convicted criminals — one in the seat in front of me, and the other behind.
“Just my %¢$#@*& luck!” the one in front scowled as the cameras snapped a few shots through the van windows. I heard a groan from the one behind as he realized he might vicariously make the evening news. “No talking!” barked a guard as the van rolled off for the 90 minute ride to prison. I never saw those two men again, but as we were led through the prison door, the one behind me muttered something barely audible: “Be strong, Father.”
Revolutionary Outlaws
It was the last gesture of consolation I would hear for a long, long time. It was the last time I heard my priesthood referred to with anything but contempt for years to come. Still, to this very day, it is not Christ with whom I identify at Calvary, but Simon of Cyrene. As I wrote in “Simon of Cyrene and the Scandal of the Cross“:
“That man, Simon, is me . . . I have tried to be an Alter Christus, as priesthood requires, but on our shared road to Calvary, I relate far more to Simon of Cyrene. I pick up my own crosses reluctantly, with resentment at first, and I have to walk behind Christ for a long, long time before anything in me compels me to carry willingly what fate has saddled me with . . . I long ago had to settle for emulating Simon of Cyrene, compelled to bear the Cross in Christ’s shadow.”
So though we never hear from Simon of Cyrene again once his deed is done, I’m going to imagine that he remained there. He must have, really. How could he have willingly left? I’m going to imagine that he remained there and heard the exchange between Christ and the criminals crucified to His left and His right, and took comfort in what he heard. I heard Dismas in the young man who whispered “Be strong, Father.” But I heard him with the ears of Simon of Cyrene.
Like a Thief in the Night
Like the Magi I wrote of in “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear,” the name tradition gives to the Penitent Thief appears nowhere in Sacred Scripture. Dismas is named in a Fourth Century apocryphal manuscript called the “Acts of Pilate.” The text is similar to, and likely borrowed from, Saint Luke’s Gospel:
“And one of the robbers who were hanged, by name Gestas, said to him: ‘If you are the Christ, free yourself and us.’ And Dismas rebuked him, saying: ‘Do you not even fear God, who is in this condemnation? For we justly and deservedly received these things we endure, but he has done no evil.’”
What the Evangelists tell us of those crucified with Christ is limited. In Saint Matthew’s Gospel (27:38) the two men are simply “thieves.” In Saint Mark’s Gospel (15:27), they are also thieves, and all four Gospels describe their being crucified “one on the left and one on the right” of Jesus. Saint Mark also links them to Barabbas, guilty of murder and insurrection. The Gospel of Saint John does the same, but also identifies Barabbas as a robber. The Greek word used to identify the two thieves crucified with Jesus is a broader term than just “thief.” Its meaning would be more akin to “plunderer,” part of a roving band caught and given a death penalty under Roman law.
Only Saint Luke’s Gospel infers that the two thieves might have been a part of the Way of the Cross in which Saint Luke includes others: Simon of Cyrene carrying Jesus’ cross, and some women with whom Jesus spoke along the way. We are left to wonder what the two criminals witnessed, what interaction Simon of Cyrene might have had with them, and what they deduced from Simon being drafted to help carry the Cross of a scourged and vilified Christ.
In all of the Gospel presentations of events at Golgotha, Jesus was mocked. It is likely that he was at first mocked by both men to be crucified with him as the Gospel of St. Mark describes. But Saint Luke carefully portrays the change of heart within Dismas in his own final hour. The sense is that Dismas had no quibble with the Roman justice that had befallen him. It seems no more than what he always expected if caught:
“One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ ”
The Flight into Egypt
The name, “Dismas” comes from the Greek for either “sunset” or “death.” In an unsubstantiated legend that circulated in the Middle Ages, in a document known as the “Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,” this encounter from atop Calvary was not the first Gestas and Dismas had with Jesus. In the legend, they were a part of a band of robbers who held up the Holy Family during the Flight into Egypt after the Magi departed in Saint Matthews Gospel (Matthew 2:13-15).
This legendary encounter in the Egyptian desert is also mentioned by Saint Augustine and Saint John Chrysostom who, having heard the same legend, described Dismas as a desert nomad, guilty of many crimes including the crime of fratricide, the murder of his own brother. This particular part of the legend, as you will see below, may have great symbolic meaning for salvation history.
In the legend, Saint Joseph, warned away from Herod by an angel (Matthew 2:13-15), opted for the danger posed by brigands over the danger posed by Herod’s pursuit. Fleeing with Mary and the child into the desert toward Egypt, they were confronted by a band of robbers led by Gestas and a young Dismas. The Holy Family looked like an unlikely target having fled in a hurry, and with very few possessions. When the robbers searched them, however, they were astonished to find expensive gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh — the Gifts of the Magi. However, in the legend Dismas was deeply affected by the infant, and stopped the robbery by offering a bribe to Gestas. Upon departing, the young Dismas was reported to have said:
“0 most blessed of children, if ever a time should come when I should crave thy mercy, remember me and forget not what has passed this day.”
Paradise Found
The most fascinating part of the exchange between Jesus and Dismas from their respective crosses in Saint Luke’s Gospel is an echo of that legendary exchange in the desert 33 years earlier — or perhaps the other way around:
“‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingly power.’ And he said to him, ‘Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”
The word, “Paradise” used by Saint Luke is the Persian word, “Paradeisos” rarely used in Greek. It appears only three times in the New Testament. The first is that statement of Jesus to Dismas from the Cross in Luke 23:43. The second is in Saint Paul’s description of the place he was taken to momentarily in his conversion experience in Second Corinthians 12:3 — which I described in “The Conversion of Saint Paul and the Cost of Discipleship.” The third is the heavenly paradise that awaits the souls of the just in the Book of Revelation (2:7).
In the Old Testament, the word “Paradeisos” appears only in descriptions of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:8, and in the banishment of Cain after the murder of his brother, Abel:
“Cain left the presence of the Lord and wandered in the Land of Nod, East of Eden.”
Elsewhere, the word appears only in the prophets (Isaiah 51:3 and Ezekiel 36:35) as they foretold a messianic return one day to the blissful conditions of Eden — to the condition restored when God issues a pardon to man.
If the Genesis story of Cain being banished to wander “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden” is the symbolic beginning of our human alienation from God — the banishment from Eden marking an end to the State of Grace and Paradise Lost — then the Dismas profession of faith in Christ’s mercy is symbolic of Eden restored — Paradise Regained.
From the Cross, Jesus promised Dismas both a return to spiritual Eden and a restoration of the condition of spiritual adoption that existed before the Fall of Man. It’s easy to see why legends spread by the Church Fathers involved Dismas guilty of the crime of fratricide just as was Cain.
A portion of the cross upon which Dismas is said to have died alongside Christ is preserved at the Church of Santa Croce in Rome. It’s one of the Church’s most treasured relics. Catholic apologist, Jim Blackburn has proposed an intriguing twist on the exchange on the Cross between Christ and Saint Dismas. In “Dismissing the Dismas Case,” an article in the superb Catholic Answers Magazine Jim Blackburn reminded me that the Greek in which Saint Luke’s Gospel was written contains no punctuation. Punctuation had to be added in translation. Traditionally, we understand Christ’s statement to the man on the cross to his right to be:
“Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
The sentence has been used by some non-Catholics (and a few Catholics) to discount a Scriptural basis for Purgatory. How could Purgatory be as necessary as I described it to be in “The Holy Longing” when even a notorious criminal is given immediate admission to Paradise? Ever the insightful thinker, Jim Blackburn proposed a simple replacement of the comma giving the verse an entirely different meaning:
“Truly I say to you today, you will be with me in Paradise.”
Whatever the timeline, the essential point could not be clearer. The door to Divine Mercy was opened by the events of that day, and the man crucified to the right of the Lord, by a simple act of faith and repentance and reliance on Divine Mercy, was shown a glimpse of Paradise Regained.
The gift of Paradise Regained left the cross of Dismas on Mount Calvary. It leaves all of our crosses there. Just as Cain set in motion our wandering “In the Land of Nod, East of Eden,” Dismas was given a new view from his cross, a view beyond death, away from the East of Eden, across the Undiscovered Country, toward eternal home.
Saint Dismas, pray for us.