Tuesday in the 29th Week of Ordinary Time, October 21, 2025

Romans 5, 12, 15, 17-19, 20-21

Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned. If by that one person’s transgression the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many. For if, by the transgression of the one, death came to reign through that one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. In conclusion, just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act acquittal and life came to all. For just as through the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one the many will be made righteous. Where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through justification for eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We continue to reflect on the passages of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans used for the First Reading this month.

St. Paul presents the fundamental idea of the Christian teaching on humanity in these verses, that of original sin and grace. In order to understand what Paul means here we must understand the Hebrew thinking about man.  Core to this thinking is the relationship between a man and his descendants: he is in them, and they are in him — not in an abstract or symbolic way, but in a very real, concrete way.  Thus Exodus 34, 7 describes God as one who “render# the iniquity of the fathers to the children, and to the grandchildren unto the third and fourth generation.”  And in Matthew 23, 29-30 the Lord Jesus addresses the Jews and says, “If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the Prophets.Wherefore you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of them that killed the Prophets.” The guilt of the fathers follows into their children, unless the children explicitly reject and condemn their parents, cutting themselves off from them.

And so the human race was bound up organically in Adam and Eve so that Paul can say, “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned.”  This shocks us in the modern Western world with our devotion to the principle of indivualism and “personal autonomy”, but for most of history this understanding of the human race as a collective body prevailed in much of the world.  It was only beginning in the 1500’s that it was challenged.

We might question the fairness of this arrangement by Almighty God, but the pot cannot complain to the potter: “Woe to him who strives with his Maker, an earthen vessel with the potter! Does the clay say to him who fashions it, What are you making? or Your work has no handles? Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ or to a woman, With what are you in travail? Thus says the Lord the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker: Will you question me about my children, or command me concerning the work of my hands?”  

God, from all eternity, destined the human race for blessedness. Foreseeing that “the work of his hands” would rebel against him, God crested the human race in such a way that it could be saved. And so he created us as he did, in the original Adam (whom God subsequently made into the unity of Adam and Eve). And so as we sinned in Old Adam, so we are saved by the New Adam, the Son of God who became incarnate and poured grace into this new (or, “renewed” Body of which he made himself the Head.  He poured into us grace, whereas the Old Adam had poured into us death. And in this, Jesus Christ did not pour a mere sufficiency of life and grace into us, but a super-abundance: “For if, by the transgression of the one, death came to reign through that one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.”

“Just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act acquittal and life came to all.” The sacrificial Death of Jesus on the Cross cancels out the death that Adam and Eve’s sin handed on to their children: the Innocent One died for the guilty so that now we “also might reign through justification for eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”