The First Reading from today’s Mass on the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time is a rather interesting one from a sober Catholic perspective:

Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24…

(italics mine)

“God did not make death,
nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
For he fashioned all things that they might have being;
and the creatures of the world are wholesome,
and there is not a destructive drug among them
nor any domain of the netherworld on earth,
for justice is undying.
For God formed man to be imperishable;
the image of his own nature he made him.
But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world,
and they who belong to his company experience it.”

Courtesy: USCCB

God does not desire for us to perish. But perish we do, as a consequence of our actions. But it wasn’t supposed to be that way.

The things of the earth were not supposed to be destructive in nature, God created everything and called it “good.” (Genesis, Chapter 1). Life wasn’t drudgery and full of pain; that didn’t set in until our Rebellion (Genesis, Chapter 3). That Rebellion, when our First Parents were duped by Satan in to thinking that they can be “like gods” and decide for themselves what is “good” and “evil” is when “death entered the world.”

Literal death, but also other “deaths,” anything that devalued and destroyed life. Disease, addictions, pain, suffering…

Despite the beliefs of certain Protestant Fundamentalists, there’s nothing wrong with drinking alcohol. Abusing it, yes. But merely consuming it, no – if done in moderation. Many things done in moderation become sinful when abused. That is inherent in sin, which is the abuse and misuse of the good things God gave us: our minds, bodies and stuff about us. Just like what our First Parents did, and their Original Sin is replicated quite often today when people disregard God’s Laws and make their own…

You don’t have to suffer from addiction… you can be free of it…

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