Month: August 2003

I don’t often feel the need to say this, but Mass was great today. A soloist was in from Chica­go and she sang both Ave Maria and Panis Angeli­cus. It was quite the treat to have both of those sung at the same Mass, and sung well. The homi­ly was pret­ty inter­est­ing too, Fr. Roc­ca chose to speak about dis­sat­is­fac­tion as the byprod­uct of orig­i­nal sin.

This made me think a bit. If you read the sto­ry of Adam and Eve as fact instead of myth then it is pos­si­ble to reach some inter­est­ing con­clu­sions with­in the par­a­digm. But first, when I refer to the cre­ation sto­ries, and much of Gen­e­sis as myth, I am not attack­ing the verac­i­ty or impor­tance of the vers­es, but instead speak­ing about them as the prod­uct of a divine inspi­ra­tion through imper­fect hands, or from an anthro­po­log­i­cal per­spec­tive as sem­i­nal texts that hold the basic val­ues of a cul­tur­al sys­tem.

Thus, to get back what I con­clud­ed from the homi­ly- in the Adam and Eve as fact par­a­digm — peo­ple are always desirous of dis­sat­is­fied because we are inher­ent­ly imper­fect in body and soul, but we strive for per­fec­tion.
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