has been darkened. The will, which was designed to love and serve God and help neighbour, has been weakened and easily turns against God and against fellow humans. Furthermore, Adam and Eve lost entirely the preternatural gifts: now they had to learn everything (having lost infused knowledge), they had to die (having lost immortality) and they had to deal with disordered desires (loss of immunity from concupiscence). This fundamental refusal of God has since perpetuated down through the centuries in all forms of sin. Sometimes people think Adam and Eve were just like us; poor Eve ate the apple because she was hungry, and God was just cruel to throw them out of paradise for that. Perhaps you yourself have sometimes thought this. It is very important to understand that the punishment which followed upon Original Sin was not cruel, nor was it unfair, but perfectly just. You see, Adam and Eve, with their superior intellects and infused knowledge, knowingly committed that sin and knew the consequences. They knew that God sustained their life and every action, and that without God, they could not even exist. They knew that to disobey God and eat the fruit would be a mortal sin, that is, give death to the soul and separate them from God. And yet, with full knowledge of this, they chose to slap God in the face. They knew that, by this act, they were turning the order of creation upside down, ‘ And the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of pleasure, to till the earth from which he was taken.’ Genesis 3:23 29
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