Thought for the Day – 13 February – The Temporal Consequences of Adam’s Sin

Thought for the Day – 13 February – Meditations with Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900)

Meditations on “The Great Truths”
From “The Devout Year”
By Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900)

13th Day – The Temporal Consequences of Adam’s Sin

In Adam, all die.
(1 Cor xv:22)

No sooner had this first sin been consummated, than a blight fell upon the world. It had become the devil’s empire, for he had made Adam. its king, his slave!
What are the consequences to the inhabitants of the world?

+1. Adam and Eve were cast out of Paradise, never again to enter. Their peace was gone, there was confusion within them, concupiscence fought against reason. Pain and sorrow came upon them and disease and death. For nine hundred years, they toiled painfully in weariness upon the earth and after their death, had to wait three thousand years more, before they were admitted to the heavenly Paradise.
And all for one sin!

+2. The effects of their sin were not limited to themselves alone.
All their descendants inherited from them, an inheritance of woe. All the wars, famines, pestilences, all the broken hearts, all the wretched lives of millions, had their source in this one sin.
How almost infinite are the consequences of sin!
Yet, I think so little of my sins and of the punishment I shall have to pay for them!

+3. If we would behold the full malice of Adam’s sin, we must stand beneath the Cross and watch our God dying in unutterable anguish.
It was sin which nailed Him to the Cross.
It was sin which forced from Him, His agonising cry – “My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
Pray for a horror of sin, corresponding to its intensity of evil.