December 24, Feast of Adam and Eve

December 24, Feast of Adam and Eve

Did you know that Adam and Eve are recognized as Saints? That today is the feast day of Adam and Eve? They have been celebrated in the Roman Martyrology on this day for many centuries. By this fact alone, we know that they repented of their sin and became saints. So each of us alive today has at least TWO ancestors who are saints!

There are many remarkable things about Sts. Adam and Eve, and much about them, I am sure, we will discover only in eternity. They are primarily known as those who gave to the world Original Sin ... by those of us who still truly believe. They are (sadly!) treated as mythical figures or at least with a lot less seriousness than is warranted. Through them, we first learn of the seriousness of sin. That a just and all-holy God cannot tolerate it. But through them, we also learn of the mercy of God - through the Promise He gave to God in the Garden, that He would send a Savior, we first learn of the Woman who will crush the head of the Serpent.

We learn that even when we incur the wrath of God, that although there are serious consequences, we can repent and ultimately gain eternal beatitude, unimaginable happiness with Him in Heaven.

As we approach the Feast of the Birth of our Savior, the moment when, "at midnight, in the piercing cold" our Savior is born of the Virgin Mary, we honor our First Parents - those two saints who waited the longest for the coming of the Messiah. Now, in the morning He will arrive! We celebrate the First Coming, now 2,000 years in the past, His coming in the morning into our hearts, and His coming to judge the living and the dead on the last day. Let us honor these great saints who, despite their great fall and its terrible consequences is called by Mother Church at Easter time a "happy fault" (O felix culpa!) sung by the Church at the Pascal Proclamation.

We pray TO Sts. Adam and Eve for the souls who languish in Purgatory. Did you know that even above All Souls Day, Christmas Day is the day on which the most souls are released from Purgatory? Is there any more appropriate patron of the Holy Souls in Purgatory than Adam and Eve, who languished longer than anyone in the Limbo of the Fathers, many centuries and millenia waiting for the promised Messiah? So today and tomorrow, let us, along with the many festivities of Christmas that we rightly celebrate, have a remembrance of the Holy Souls in Purgatory who languish there still. Who knows? Perhaps even some of our loved ones may be there. Let us pray for them, and let us ask Sts. Adam and Eve to intercede for them.

Let us also pray to them for ourselves. I well imagine that few pray to Sts. Adam and Eve, understandably. Yet they are our First Parents, and we received our earthly existence through them. Let us pray for our sorry world, for the Church all in disrepair and disarray. Let us ask them to place in our hearts a fire, a longing for the Messiah, come once on Christmas, again in the hearts of the Faithful every day spiritually in countless ways. They repented and lived a godly life having admitted finally their sad mistake. Let us pray for repentance of our loved ones and for all who are in need this Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

December 24, Feast of Adam and Eve

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