Eve, Our First Mother

The first three chapters of Genesis record God’s creation of the world, and Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God by eating the forbidden fruit. That first sin resulted in the loss of Paradise for all of humanity, but even in the face of rebellion and tragedy, God provided a way for humans to escape the prison of sin and death.

Before being expelled from the Garden of Eden, Eve was given a very special promise. God said to the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel." This statement is God’s pronounced judgment of the eventual defeat of the serpent.

This verse is considered the first annunciation of the gospel, the first promise of a savior, one who would defeat the power of sin by crushing the head of the serpent, a symbol of sin. The rest of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, is the gradual unfolding of salvation history to its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, who conquered sin with His death and resurrection. Since St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans that the “wages of sin is death,” then to destroy sin is to destroy death itself.

How did this come about? God ensures salvation through a descendant of Eve, with the cooperation of another woman, Mary. As Paul tells us in Galatians, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman.”

What do we know about Eve as mother? The name Eve is from a Hebrew word that means “living.” The man – Adam, who isn’t mentioned by name until the next chapter – “called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living.”

Like mothers today, Eve experienced both sorrow and joy from being blessed with children. She felt the heartache of loss as she suffered the death of one child, Abel, and estrangement from another, Cain. But she also knew the happiness of knowing her descendants would continue in righteousness with the blessing of an obedient child in Seth. As her children are born, Eve blesses the Lord for them. This tells us that, in spite of their sin and separation from God, in spite of their expulsion from Eden, our first parents continued to worship God and taught their children about their heavenly Father and the offering of sacrifices.

And so the example was set and passed down to us today: families together in worship, forming their children in God’s ways. This is the legacy of Eve, our first mother in faith.