Redemption - Thoughts During This Easter Season

A redeemer is one who pays a price to regain something lost. And what a price our Savior paid for saving the world from original sin and the actual sins of men since Eden and forever in the future. We are reminded of the chief sufferings of Christ in the Sorrowful Mystery of the Holy Rosary: the agony in the garden; the scourging at the pillar; the crowing with thorns; the carrying of the cross; the crucifixion and death.

In order for this redemption to be effective – for both the past and the future – it had to be “a sacrifice of infinite merit and infinite completion of which can only be done by an infinite being.” And with such humility was this sacrifice carried out.  Not once did Our Lord lose control of his emotions.

To fully understand this event, we must fully and completely open our hearts to understand the need for this redemption. The gates to Heaven had been closed because of what happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve bought the biggest lie of all: that God doesn’t love us completely and unconditionally.

We know what was lost in Eden by the curses that Adam and Eve were not going to forebear:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel."

"I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children.”

“Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master."

"Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat...”

“For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return."

Each of these curses tell us what it was that Adam and Eve did NOT have to worry about before this all happened: no enmity between Satan and them; no childbearing pains; no hardship with labor to feed themselves; no exploitation of women by men; no immortality. This was what was lost in Eden. This is what Jesus came to restore.