Mary is often said to be the new Eve. The mother of all humanity, Eve chose the lesser over the greater, and sin and death came into the world. The Mother of God and of all Christians, Mary chose the greater over the lesser and life came into the world in the person of her son. Through one came damnation; through one came salvation. Why was there such a great difference? Both were filled with the grace of God; neither were subject to Original Sin. How is that one chose ill and the other chose well?

It occurred to me today that Eve’s sin was not sin as we experience it today. Thanks to Original Sin, our desires and appetites are disordered: we see the greater thing, but we desire, we hunger for, the lesser thing, and all too often we choose it, despite knowing full well that we shouldn’t. My wife’s Chocolate-Peanut butter-Butterscotch Rice Krispie treats are to die for–and that’s just what I’ll do if I keep eating them. I know better, but I want just another one, and all too often I eat it. And then another, and another….

But Eve was not subject to this kind of disordered appetite. Free from concupiscence, she was much better able than we are to choose what her reason told her was good. Unlike us, she had no desire to choose the lesser over the greater. So why did she fall?

And the answer is simple: she was misled. The serpent, father of lies, persuaded her that the lesser was the greater: that the fruit was both good for food, and would bring knowledge (both good things in and of themselves). It was with the full assent of her intellect, I imagine, that she chose to eat the fruit she had been commanded not to eat. The serpent had taught her, and now she knew “better”.

It was a lie; and in her innocence Eve had no experience of lies or of liars. It has been said that the knowledge of good and evil that the serpent promised was truly only the knowledge of evil, which is to say the knowledge of the serpent’s guile and its lies–and knowledge of her own failure. (Tradition records that Eve repented, and was not taken in again; the Eastern Orthodox churches revere her as a saint to this day.)

Eve was not stupid; she was not evil; but she was naive, and she believed a lie. Often, no doubt, we do the same. But not always–and hey, is that another Krispie Treat over there?

The Church tells us that Mary was born without Original Sin, that by the grace of Christ she was preserved from all stain of sin from the moment of her conception in her mother’s womb. Like Eve, then, her appetites were not at war with her intellect. Given that she knew the greater, she was not drawn by her desires to choose the lesser. And here we come to the big difference between Eve and Mary. Mary was young, and unstained; but she was not naive. Two-thousand years of Hebrew history came to a point in her. She knew the history of her forebears, and the consequences that came to Adam and Eve and to the tribes of Israel from choosing the lesser over the greater. She knew what sin was, not from inside, granted, but from outside. She knew what was due to God as her creator, and the natural consequences that came from spurning Him.

God put thousands of years of care into leading one branch of Adam and Eve’s descendants to the point where one human being, one young daughter of Eve, could be given the gift of holiness and would know enough to trust in Him and not squander it. All of human history comes down to that moment: when through Gabriel, God told Mary that she would bear a son; and choosing the greater part over the lesser part, she replied “Fiat voluntas tua: let it be done to me according to thy will.”

Our Lady, Mother of Virtue, pray for us.