Wednesday of the
Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
(Genesis 2:4b-9.15-17; Mark 7:14-23)
Today’s first reading is taken from the so-called second
account of creation. Genesis has already
given an ordered account of how the universe and everything in it came to
be. Now it provides a personal story to
assist humans in knowing the glories and pitfalls of life.
The gospel today seemingly moves in a direction opposite
to that of the first reading. Where it
relays how Jesus “declared all things clean,” the first reading shows the Lord
God prohibiting a specific food. The human
is not to eat of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” People have speculated on what kind of food
the tree bears for millennia.
To the best of our understanding the food of the forbidden
tree does not provide true knowledge of good and evil. Rather it gives us only a semblance of
it. True knowledge of good and evil –
what we know as wisdom -- comes mostly from listening to what God tells us. By contrast, eating of the tree of knowledge
is to think of oneself as wise without God.
It is to say, “I don’t need God to know what is good for me and what is
bad for me; I can determine that for myself.”
This, of course, is the essence of pride. In the gospel Jesus tells his disciples what
is truly good and bad. Eating any of the
food that God provides – prudently, for sure – is good. Evil comes from a heart set on self-satisfaction.
