Mass Cogitation

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.

Sure that isn’t any­thing new — humans want to be per­fect but can’t — but fig­ur­ing out why this is the case, is the impor­tant part for me. Plen­ty of cultural/political/religious bebops and doowops are nev­er suf­fi­cient­ly explained but just tak­en for grant­ed. The dis­cov­ery of the impe­tus behind an adage is what I am look­ing for.

Adam and Eve ate the For­bid­den Fruit to become like God, that is what peo­ple appar­ent­ly still strive for, but can­not reach do to our imper­fec­tion. Not achiev­ing this goal is expect­ed and either cre­ates a greater desire to achieve it or a dis­sat­is­fac­tion that could be the cause of much of what is con­sid­ered evil in the world. We can­not be as we want to be so we take it out on oth­ers.

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