God had said to the man and the woman: “You know all the laws and the mysteries of creation. But do not infringe on My right of being the Creator of man. My love will suffice for the propagation of the human race and it will spread among you and will excite the new Adams of the race without any lust of the senses but with purely charitable pulsations. I have given you everything. I am only keeping for Myself this mystery of the formation of man”.
17.5 Satan wanted to deprive man of this intellectual virginity and with his venomous tongue he blandished and caressed Eve’s limbs and eyes, exciting reflections and a perspicacity which they did not have before, because malice had not yet intoxicated them.
She “saw”. And seeing, she wanted to try. Her flesh was aroused. Oh! If she had called to God! If she had hurried to Him saying: “Father! I am sick. The Serpent has caressed me and I am upset”. The Father would have purified and healed her with His breath, which could have infused new innocence into her as it had infused life. And it would have made her forget the snake’s poison, even more it would have filled her with a disgust for the Serpent, as it happens in those who bear an instinctive dislike for diseases of which they have just been cured. But Eve does not go to the Father. Eve goes back to the Serpent. The sensation is a sweet one for her. “Seeing that the fruit of the tree was good to eat and pleasing and agreeable to the eye, she took it and ate it”.
And “she understood”. Now Malice was inside her and was gnawing at her intestines. She saw with new eyes and heard with new ears the habits and voices of beasts. And she craved for them with insane greed.
17.6 She began the sin by herself. She accomplished it with her companion. That is why a heavier sentence is laid on woman. Because of her, man has become rebellious towards God and has become acquainted with lewdness and death. Because of her, he was no longer capable of dominating his three reigns: the reign of the spirit, because he allowed the spirit to disobey God; the moral reign, because he allowed passions to master him; the reign of the flesh, because he lowered it down to the instinctive level of beasts. “The Serpent seduced me” says Eve. “The woman offered me the fruit and I ate of it” says Adam. And the triple greed has ruled the three dominions since then.
17.7 Only Grace can relax the hold of this ruthless monster. And if Grace is alive, thoroughly alive, and kept more and more alive by the goodwill of a faithful son, it will succeed in strangling the monster and will no longer have anything to fear. It will not be afraid of internal tyrants, which are the flesh and passions; neither will it be afraid of external tyrants, these are the world and the mighty ones on the earth. It will dread neither persecutions nor death. It is as Paul the Apostle says: “I fear none of these things, neither do I care for my life more than I care for myself, provided I carry out the mission and the ministry the Lord Jesus gave me, and that was to bear witness to the Good News of God’s Grace”.