Memorial of Saint Scholastica, virgin
(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 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.
o the best of our understanding, the forbidden
fruit 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.
