Recapitulation

Christ's whole life is a mystery of recapitulation. All Jesus did, said and suffered had for its aim restoring fallen man to his original vocationThe quote, taken from paragraph 518 of the Catechism, reminds us that Christ came to recapitulate the life of Adam, undoing what Adam did wrong and completing what Adam left undone. Since we are imitators of Christ, we, too, must recapitulate the major events of Scripture in our lives to join him in glory. All other studies of Scripture I have done thus far have focused on the literal sense. This study switches to the moral reading and considers important recapitulative elements of Scripture.In this lecture, we consider the Garden of Eden as a fruitful pattern of the human soul:The structure of Eden is a pattern for the structure of our soulThe river flowing through it hints at the mission God entrusts withThe vision of Ezekiel about the second temple serves to further the imagery and helps us understand how a baptized soul differs from an unbaptized soul, and what is our mission in life.The slides for this talk can be downloaded here.