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Original Sin... 

"My children upon earth, you are complete descendants from the Eternal Father. You descended from the first created beings upon earth, known to you as Adam and Eve. As such you have been created in the image of your God, and as such you must go forth upon earth in your lifetime, being a credit to the Eternal Father." - Our Lady of the Roses, June 18, 1979


Original Sin

When our first Parents, Adam and Eve, failed in obedience to God, death and suffering entered the world. Not only that, but mankind was then deprived of sanctifying grace at conception (the sole exception being the blessed Virgin Mary), and now suffers from ignorance in the intellect, malice in the will, and disordered emotions (concupiscence).  The Church has always taught that the universal suffering that affects mankind cannot be explained or understood apart from the doctrine of original sin. The original sin of Adam and Eve (that was a personal sin for them), is passed on to all their descendants. Human nature is now transmitted in a fallen state; for the descendants of Adam and Eve, it is a fallen state that has been contracted, a state and not an act.

Importance of the doctrine of original sin
The brokenness of mankind is apparent in the sin, universal sufferings and contradictions that are part of our daily lives. Yet there are those who would deny the Church’s teaching on original sin in an attempt to further discredit the whole of Christ’s teachings and His Church. The foundational importance of the doctrine of original sin is quite well understood by
G. R. Bozarth: 

Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus' earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the Son of God. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing. (quoted in Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics, Dr. Duane T. Gish, 30). 


For us, original sin is a deprivation of justice, not of personal sin

For us, the children of Adam and Eve, original sin does not mean a personal fault, but rather a deprivation of original holiness and justice (without sanctifying grace); man is no longer created in a state of sanctifying grace, as were Adam and Eve.

The Council of Trent calls original sin a "privation of justice that each child contracts at its conception" (Sess. VI, cap. iii).  Also, St. Anselm writes: "the sin of Adam was one thing but the sin of children at their birth is quite another, the former was the cause, the latter is the effect" (De conceptu virginali, xxvi). According to St. Augustine, "There can be no sin that is not voluntary, the learned and the ignorant admit this evident truth" (De vera relig., xiv, 27). For us, original sin is not an act but a state, a privation.  This helps to answer the common misconception that non-believers accuse the Church of, that of attributing personal sin to the children of Adam and Eve for original sin. This is not so. As was mentioned above, original sin in the children of Adam and Eve is “a state and not an act.” There can be no sin properly so-called without free will participation. For us, original sin is called “sin” only by way of analogy, as St. Thomas explains (In II Sent., dist. xxv, Q. i, a. 2, ad 2um). And this follows from the principle: "Free will is essentially incommunicable."

Original holiness and justice was a gift, not a right
It would be heretical and against Church teaching to assert that participation in the divine life of the Trinity (through sanctifying grace) is a right. Rather, this was a gift to our first Parents, Adam and Eve. Had they remained faithful to God, they would have transmitted to their descendants a state of integrity, original holiness, as well as the gifts of being exempt from suffering and death. But as this was a gift, it would be wrong to complain that the condition of this gift being passed to us (the fidelity of Adam and Eve) was somehow unfair.  One cannot claim a right to what is being given as a gift.

Baptism restores us to holiness
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the "stain" of original sin is defined as "the privation of grace" (Summa I-II:109:7; Summa III:87:2, ad 3). Baptism is necessary to restore us to God’s friendship and sanctifying grace, but the weakness of human nature remains, even after baptism. Through His Church, Christ, the divine Physician, has left us with His healing grace through the Sacraments and through prayer.  

Darkened intellect
It is important to recognize that our capacity to make correct judgments has been wounded.  That is, the effects of original sin have darkened our intellect making the discovery of truth more difficult. We are so easily swayed by what caters to our fallen nature that we often choose the path of least resistance and do not sufficiently search for the truth as we should. With a swollen pride, we overestimate our ability to arrive at the truth and arrogantly make ourselves the measure of all things. All this helps to explain why Christ established a teaching Church that we might attain certainty about the truth in all that pertains to our salvation. The Church teaches us that our ultimate happiness is not in this world, but in the next. This life is but a pilgrimage, a “a vale of tears.” Also, it is impossible by human means alone to reach this heavenly goal; only by our cooperation with God’s grace is this possible.

It is painfully apparent that most of the world is on the wrong path, and that the majority of people have been seduced by anti-Christian errors that have become the ruling point of their lives. They have been spiritually blinded. St. Augustine recalled his life of sin in his book, Confessions, where he writes, “And this is why I lost you, because you will not be possessed together with a lie” (Confessions, Bk. X, Chap. 41). Certainly today many have succumbed to a multitude of lies and errors, but these errors soon manifest their shallowness and emptiness. As Dietrich von Hildebrand states: 

For all subjection to illusions, and in particular, all misconceptions of our situation relative to God, necessarily imply a privation of freedom. (Transformation in Christ)

Weakened will: power of bad habit
It is not enough that we know the truth, but we must then put it into practice in our daily lives. That is why the Bible says, “He became, to all that obey Him, the cause of eternal salvation” (Heb. 5:9). But even after baptism we continue to suffer from the weakness in our nature, and this includes weakness in our will. St. Paul complained, “For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do… I find then a law, that when I have a will to do good, evil is present within me. For I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man: but I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my members” (Rom. 7:19,21-23). 

Adam and Eve before the Fall had loving obedience in the wills, and did not suffer from the effects mentioned by St. Paul. But they lost this gift when they disobeyed and were banished from the Garden. Now mankind continually struggles to submit their wills to God and lawful authority, and it is evident that the cry of "I will not serve" is a hallmark of fallen humanity. We need to remember Christ's words: “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them: he it is that loveth me” (John 14:21).  Love has been defined as a "union of wills." If we say that we love God and do not keep the Commandments, we are deceiving ourselves. As St. John writes, "He who saith that he knoweth Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him" (1 John 2:4). 

Furthermore, the force of evil habit cannot be underestimated, when bad habit has been engrained into us as a vice, deforming our will.  St. Augustine tells us, “I hesitated to die to death and live to life; inveterate evil had more power over me than the novelty of good….” (Confessions, Bk. VIII, Chap. 12).  He also writes: 

From a perverse will, in sooth, lust is formed, and while obedience is yielded to lust, custom is formed; and when no resistance is offered to custom, necessity is formed; and by means of these links, woven one into the other (when I called them a 'chain') a hard slavery held me fast bound. But the new will which had begun to arise in me, that I might worship Thee freely, O my God, and desire to enjoy Thee, was not as yet capable of overcoming the former will, which had become so strong by habit. And so my two wills, one the old, and the other the new, the former carnal, the latter spiritual, were at war between themselves, and by their discord caused distraction to my mind; and the worse will, which was habitual to me, had more power over me than the better, to which I was not accustomed. (Confessions, VIII, 5,2)

St. Augustine, by the grace of God, overcame his sinful lifestyle and became one of the greatest saints in the history of the Church. May we, like St. Augustine, humbly recognize the extent of our weakness, and accept with gratitude the remedies given by Christ in His Church. 

"You are all descendants from the creation of the Eternal Father, Adam and Eve. And as such you face the trials, you face the punishments, as they did; for there is a reward for holiness and purity and piety and following the Commandments of your God. And then, My children, there is also a deficit in reward by your banishment to the abyss, eternal damnation forever with Lucifer." - Our Lady of the Roses, August 14, 1979

Directives from Heaven...  https://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm

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