The 2015 movie, The Age of Adeline, stars the actress Blake Lively. In the film, Lively plays Adeline Bowman. Adeline was born in 1908 having been married then losing her husband in a construction accident. At the age of 29, a year after her husband’s death, Adeline gets into a car accident with her vehicle plummeting into a freezing lake. Adeline dies as a result of the crash but her vehicle is struck by lightening resulting in a transformation that causes Adeline to no longer age. She remains at 29 years of age for the next several decades having friends and romantic relationships come and go. The only stable force in her life is the daughter that she had had before the accident. Her daughter ages to the point of appearing to be Adeline’s grandmother. The oddity of her situation forces her to change names and geography on a regular basis to avoid inevitable questions, misunderstandings and government intrusion.
While most would be jealous of this accidental brush with immortality, Adeline is less than enthusiastic. At one point she bemoans the fate of never being able to grow old with another person. She strikes up a relationship with Ellis and falls deeply for him. It turns out that Ellis’ Father was a past serious love interest of Adeline’s and he discovers her secret, forcing her to leave without explaining things to Ellis. As she is driving away she is struck by a truck and drives off into a ravine and she must be revived with a heart defibrillator. Which causes, unbeknownst to her, a reversion to her normal self. She decides to remain with Ellis and a year later she notices something she has never seen in her 107 years…a grey hair. When Ellis asks her if she is OK, she responds with a smile and the word “perfect”.
In today’s first reading from the book of Genesis we read a very familiar story. One that is the foundation for all that we experience in this life. It is the story of “The Fall”. Of Adam and Eve disobeying God’s command to not eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve is tricked by the serpent (Satan) to eat the fruit when the serpent convinces her that God merely wanted her and her husband not to attain knowledge that will make them equals with God. And that they will surely not die as God warned them. Eve takes the bait then talks Adam into the same disobedience. Their decision leads to several consequences:
- Eve will experience pain in child birth
- Adam will have to scrape the earth to grow food
- They will experience death
- They will have to leave the Garden of Eden and, worse than all this,
- They no longer will live in harmony and relationship with God
There will be enmity between the woman and the serpent. He will strike at her heel but she, AND HER SEED, will crush the serpent’s head. A clear reference to Mary as the New Eve and her son, Jesus, the Messiah.
Which leads us to this one of the more “head-scratching” quotes in the Bible:
Then the LORD God said: “See! The man has become like one of us,
knowing what is good and what is evil!
Therefore, he must not be allowed to put out his hand
to take fruit from the tree of life also,
and thus eat of it and live forever.”
What? Man should not be like “one of us”? Why would God not want man to know the difference between Good and Evil? In addition to having knowledge of Good and Evil, man now has free will to choose between between them. But without the temporal knowledge of the short and long term consequences of these choices. Some choices lead to sin and sin leads to misery. And if man is destined for misery after his disobedience to God, a compassionate God would not wish to have the creatures He created out of love to have to suffer this fate for all eternity.
In addition, we know that God has a plan. He will be sending His Son to save humanity from their sins and help to return them to the relationship with Him that He intended for him from the beginning. To allow disobedient Adam and Eve, who will suffer in their lives, to do so into eternity as a result of eating from the Tree of Life, would be cruel and unusual punishment. So He banishes the couple from Eden and puts angels in place to guard the entrance to the garden.
Adeline discovered what God knew. That there is no benefit to being Physically alive while being Spiritually dead. And we see God’s compassion in the Gospel today in the form of Jesus feeding the 4,000. BTW, this appears to be a second mass feeding in the Gospels. The feeding of the 5,000 occurred in Galilee… a traditionally Jewish region. The feeding of the 4,000 took place in the region of Decapolis, on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. A traditionally Gentile region. When Jesus see the crowds with nothing to eat He tells His disciples:
“My heart is moved with pity for the crowd,
because they have been with me now for three days
and have nothing to eat.
If I send them away hungry to their homes,
they will collapse on the way,
and some of them have come a great distance.”
Immortal life sounds like a wonderful fantasy. It is what many of us pursue when we search for the best diet, the best healthcare and the latest wonder drug. But eternal life, without eternal life with God, is not the life He intended for us. To just live without a life infused with God’s graces is merely existence. As Adeline’s observes, [just living] is “not the same as growing old together”. May we all grow old into eternity with Our Lord and Our Savior.
