The
Lord, coming into his own creation in visible form, was sustained by
his own creation which he himself sustains in being. His obedience on
the tree of the cross reversed the disobedience at the tree in Eden;
the good news of the truth announced by an angel to Mary, a virgin
subject to a husband, undid the evil lie that seduced Eve, a virgin
espoused to a husband.
Eve
in the GardenAs Eve was seduced by the word of an angel and so fled
from God after disobeying his word, Mary in her turn was given the
good news by the word of an angel, and bore God in obedience to his
word. As Eve was seduced into disobedience to God, so Mary was
persuaded into obedience to God; thus the Virgin Mary became the
advocate of the virgin Eve.
Christ
gathered all things into one, by gathering them into himself. He
declared war against our enemy, crushed him who at the beginning had
taken us captive in Adam, and trampled on his head, in accordance
with God’s words to the serpent in Genesis: I will put enmity
between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he
shall lie in wait for your head, and you shall lie in wait for his
heel.
The
one lying in wait for the serpent’s head is the one who was born in
the likeness of Adam from the woman, the Virgin. This is the seed
spoken of by Paul in the letter to the Galatians: The law of works
was in force until the seed should come to whom the- promise was
made.
Mary
Crushin the SerpentHe shows this even more clearly in the same letter
when he says: When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son,
born of a woman. The enemy would not have been defeated fairly if his
vanquisher had not been born of a woman, because it was through a
woman that he had gained mastery over man in the beginning, and set
himself up as man’s adversary.
That
is why the Lord proclaims himself the Son of Man, the one who renews
in himself that first man from whom the race born of woman was
formed; as by a man’s defeat our race fell into the bondage of
death, so by a man’s victory we were to rise again to life.
--
Saint Irenaeus of Lyons from
Against Heresies
