Pagnol Taught Me

Before I read French writer Marcel Pagnol’s novel “My Mother’s Castle” (Le Château de ma Mère), I had no idea that the snake eats at widely spaced intervals (Pagnol says: “once a month”, page 75). This is an ignorance that has been entrenched in me by my distancing myself from all that pertains to the animal world. Pagnol took me back to the event of the fall of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3). How can an animal (the serpent), which does not eat much, use food to seduce Man? The Book of Genesis talks about the cunningness of the serpent. It is a revelation of the power of evil or of the evil one that, in his quest to bring us down, strikes us only in our vulnerabilities. The Book of Genesis says that, after being seduced by the serpent to eat of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, Eve “saw it good for food…”. Pagnol taught me that Man, in order to prevail against the "serpent", must protect himself from every deadly temptation. A serpent that does not eat, can only be prevailed against by a human being, who has been convinced by God, during Lent and out of it, that His Word is good for food, in order for him to live by obeying it!