Homily on the Commemoration of Adam's Expulsion
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
Today, on Forgiveness Sunday, our Church remembers the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. From the Paradise of sweetness in which we dwelt, from that beautiful Garden where we were with God. Where we could draw infinite knowledge from the infinite mind of God, and from His infinite strength we drew infinite power, from His life we drew our eternal life. From His joy we drew our eternal joy. But we were expelled from there in Adam and Eve, for we are all blood descendants of the first man. Our entire nature is the nature of Adam and Eve, which was expelled from Paradise. We remember how we were deprived of blessedness as a result of the sin of the first people. But if you pay attention to the order in which sin unfolded, you will see that nothing has changed since then.
When we prepare people for Holy Baptism, we rehearse the meaning of each episode of the exile from Paradise. I think it would be good for us to repeat this. The first woman walks through Paradise and approaches the Tree of Knowledge. According to ancient tradition, this tree was not an apple tree, as many believe, but a fig tree. It was not for nothing that our Lord cursed the fig tree in order to wither the tree of sin. So, she approaches the tree forbidden by God, because God did not want us to know good and evil at that moment. God does not want us to try to be our own judges of good and evil, to try to determine for ourselves what is good and what is bad. God wanted us to act based on His point of view, not on our own, which is limited in knowledge and understanding.
And so, hanging on this tree, there hangs a serpent, and within it is the rebellious first angel, Lucifer, who, out of envy, wanted to destroy man just as he himself had perished by turning away from God. He wanted to lead the first man into his rebellion. And so he turns to the woman, wanting through her, as the weakest vessel, to seduce Adam as well. And he says the following: "Is it true that God said that you cannot eat from any tree in Paradise?" (Gen. 3:1). These very words already reveal that the devil is trying to sow doubt in the Divine mind. But it is sheer madness to claim that one cannot eat anything; how can a person live if he eats nothing? In other words, the devil is trying to reduce the commandment he heard to absurdity, to stupidity, trying to distort it.
What is the devil trying to do now? He's trying to convince people of the harm of fasting. He says that if you fast, you'll become exhausted; not only will your cellulite disappear, but you'll become so emaciated that you won't be able to walk at all. You'll lose your mind, become pale shadows, and so on. If we accept this logic, it becomes incomprehensible how we exist today, if our ancestors observed four fasts, Wednesdays, and Fridays, every year. The principle of reductio ad absurdum is characteristic of devilish logic. And this principle is directed primarily against God! It makes us think that God's commandment is meaningless, stupid, and impossible to fulfill. Do you see what the devil is thinking? And now the devil is saying exactly this: that God's commandment cannot be fulfilled; that we are sinful people, so why should we keep all the commandments? It's not for us, it's not about our lives. But if we do it little by little, you might even fulfill all the commandments. This is the devil's logic. And Adam's wife (the future Eve) made the first mistake. She said that "we cannot eat or touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but we can eat all the other fruits" (Gen. 3:2-3). Here, in fact, three errors can be seen.
The first mistake. Woman was created to be her husband's helper, not an independent subject. She should be united with her husband; they should be one in love. She decided to do everything herself, to determine everything herself, to direct the actions of others herself. Someone told me how his wife was indignant that he wasn't her helper. You see, what an interesting logic: it's not the wife who helps her husband, but the husband who helps his wife. It's an inverted logic, stemming from the first woman, who decided that she could handle the situation herself, without a husband or God.
The second mistake. She spoke to the slanderer. It is written in Scripture: “I have not known the evil one who turns away from me” (Psalm 100:4). When an evil thought came to me, I didn't acknowledge it, but banished it. You can't talk to evil. When someone slanders God, you must drive them away. But here she revealed a simplicity that is worse than theft. This is a case of someone trying to do everything themselves without God, thinking it's just ignorance. In reality, sin lies not only in ignorance but also in the unwillingness to know and fulfill God's will.
The third mistake. She added to God's words. God didn't say not to touch the tree. The essence of the commandment wasn't simply that one couldn't touch a specific material object. The essence of the commandment was that man wasn't allowed to violate God's will. Man had to fulfill His very simple wish out of love for God. Agree, for example, to eat from ten thousand trees and refuse to eat from a single tree. It's not that difficult. It's a sign of love, a sign of man's trust in the Lord God. She decided to turn this sign of love, this sign of trust in God, this sign of obedience, into a magical fruit: it mustn't be touched because it's poisoned, enchanted, and touching it would be deadly. She made the commandment more stringent, distorting its essence. Thus, she gave birth to all the heresies that have appeared since. When a person thinks he's acting out of zeal for God, but in fact, he's distorting God's truth. Just as fanatics kill and think that by this they glorify God, this is an example of such a heresy, which was born of the wickedness of the first woman.
After this, the devil saw that he had captured her attention. And the devil always does this with us: a thought comes to us that seems good, but common sense tells us not to do it. Although, where will we get common sense if our minds are sick with anger, fornication, hatred, malice, irritation, condemnation? This is as absurd as if a leper said that his body is healthy. In the same way, the devil tries to draw us in with the help of so-called common sense, but in fact, following his own false, spurious logic, and thus tries to deceive us, to draw us into his destruction.
After this, the devil moves on to a direct attack, a direct slander against the Lord God. He says that you will not die, “but God knows that when you eat of this tree, you will be like gods. Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). What's interesting is that almost everything he says is true. Later, we'll see that almost everything will come true, maybe even everything, but not as people thought. This is the devil's whole point: he speaks almost the truth, but a small amount of falsehood twists that truth inside out. Imagine saying a long sentence and changing a few letters, and the meaning of the sentence changes dramatically. That's how the devil distorts everything with his slander.
He directly slanders God, saying that God spoke this way because He was jealous that God doesn't want to make people immortal, that He wants to destroy them. The devil still says this, that God is cruel, that God won't forgive you, and so on. Or as people say, taking the devil's thought for their own, that I've committed so many sins, I can't believe that God will forgive me. These are the devil's exact quotes when a person says, "You won't be forgiven; you're such a bastard that it's impossible to forgive you. They did you in vain, and you're living in vain in this world." The most terrible thing is that people accept these thoughts as their own — the thoughts of their enemy, their murderer, their hater. The devil says that you must be gods without God, that you must achieve deification yourself, with the help of a magic apple.
The devil teaches practically every sin, teaches evil deeds. His slogans are: “You will be happy without God! You will be powerful without God! Knowledge is power! You will be master of all.” In the 19th century, the devil sang the following song: “No one will give us deliverance, not a god, not a king, not a hero. We will achieve liberation with our own hands.” This quote is a slight paraphrase of the devil’s speech, which was spoken in Paradise: you yourselves will become gods, without God, without anyone or anyone’s help, decide everything for yourself. And now the devil sings to us that you must believe in yourself! You must rely on yourself! A great sin, a great misfortune for a person, is when they do not believe in themselves. This is what he spoke to Eve in the Garden, and she, in her foolishness, listened, looked at the tree and saw three things.
First, that the tree is good for food, i.e., she wanted pleasure independent of God, like drug addicts, drunkards, fornicators, gluttons, and other similar people.
Second, it's beautiful to the eyes. This is the lust of the eyes that the Apostle John speaks of. This is beauty that doesn't depend on God. It's so beautiful, it's so sublime, it's so wise and wonderful to go against God! Many people say, "Well, this is such wisdom, how can it not be from God?"
Third. It is desirable. Because it gives knowledge. The pride of life, as John the Theologian says. She wanted to rule, she wanted to know in order to rule. She wanted to be above her husband, as we learn further from God's curse. She wanted man to rule over everything and push God into a corner. To banish God from her life.
And she took the fruit from the tree and ate it, to fulfill these three things: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. She gave some to her husband, and he also ate, because he had chosen his wife over God. Nowadays, people say, "Choose: either me or the Church." Many choose someone else. And that other person, first of all, betrays them; this is a practice dating back to the Garden of Eden. If a person sets such a condition, they must choose the Church, they must choose Almighty God. Whether you choose to go or not, it's your own business. And as a result, as the devil promised, their eyes were opened, and they saw that they were naked. They saw that God's grace had abandoned them. They saw that they had become mortal, as God had promised them. They saw that they were now going against all of creation, which had become hostile to them, because all creation is submissive to God, but they were disobedient. And as a result, nothing good came of it. God called them to repentance, but they hid from Him in the bushes. And then Adam, when he heard the voice of God walking in Paradise, and, hiding from Him in the bushes, did not answer when God called him: "Adam, where are you?" (Gen. 3:9), he tried to deceive the Omniscient God, hid from the Omnipresent God. And then, when God asked directly, “Have you eaten from the tree from which I told you not to eat?” (Gen. 3:11), Adam began to do as people do now: he began to say, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave it to me, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). This is an example of complete anti-repentance.
The wife also began to blame the demon, the serpent, saying that “the serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Gen. 3:13). Just as today, people say, "The devil made me do it; it wasn't me." And so, seeing that man was incurable, God cursed the serpent, the devil within him, commanding him to feed on the sins of men, crawling on the earth, feeding on the dust of the ground, and promising that his power would eventually be destroyed. He cursed the woman, commanding her to suffer severe morning sickness during pregnancy, to suffer during childbirth, to be submissive to her husband, so that he would rule over her, not she over him. And that her desire for her husband would be mindless, as in the animal kingdom. It's clear why. Those who wanted to be "above" are treated "below," i.e., at a lower level. The wife wanted to be above her husband, so she submits to him. This is done according to the principle: when a branch bends in the wrong direction, it is turned back. And finally, the terrible words were spoken to Adam: “You will eat your bread in the sweat of your brow, your work will never be a joy to you, the earth will hinder you, it will grow thorns and thistles, the body will give birth to diseases and passions” (Gen. 3:17–19).
And the worst thing is that this will continue until you return to the ground from which you were taken, because “you are dust and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:19). You will return entirely to the earth. And the human body returns to the earth, and the soul goes there too. The human soul goes to the earth after the Fall, to a realm of darkness called hades. This is the curse that God placed on man so that man would not be consumed by the rays of God. Now they ask, why do people go to hades? The unbaptized, for example. This is a sign that God spares even them, because before the face of God they would flare up and burn like moths from the Glory of God, which they are unable to bear. So God isolates them in places underground, so that whoever wants to correct himself can correct himself, and whoever does not want to will remain there forever. And after this, God says: "Adam became like one of us" ((Gen. 3:22) Remember, the devil promised, he knows good and evil; he decides for himself what he likes and what he dislikes; what is good and what is bad. He is his own master, his own sovereign. Therefore, lest he stretch out his hand and take from the Tree of Life and live forever, lest he become an immortal devil on earth, just as the devil is immortal, and smite the earth into hell. Therefore, the Lord God drove out Adam and his wife, who was named Eve, that is, "life," because she is the mother of all living; he clothed them in garments of skins so that they would not communicate with the spirit world. He expelled them from Paradise and sent them back to the earth from which they were taken.
By abandoning fasting, people sinned, and sin entered into us. And people sin precisely according to this pattern, which was implanted within them after the fall of the first humans. It's like a broken record that has been spinning for 7,500 years. And only Christ gives us liberation. Christ, who fasted for 40 days to conquer the devil, just as he conquered Adam. So that, just as Adam sinned by breaking the fast, so too we might return to God by observing fasting. Not only physical fasting, but first and foremost spiritual fasting, fasting in virtue, when a person, for the sake of God, rejects all evil deeds and lives in virtue.
Therefore, the Church reminds us of what happened to the first people, so that we may all return to the desired Fatherland, so that we may return to our true homeland, which is located in God's Paradise. Where four beautiful rivers still flow, mysteriously nourishing our earthly rivers, where people live, returned there by Jesus Christ, our Savior, through His death. And we can return there; the way back is open to us, and the Cherubim, guarding Paradise, retreat at the sight of us if they see in us the image of Jesus Christ. As Saint John the Theologian said, the Cherubim was placed at the gates of Paradise and still stands there, watching intently upon those entering Paradise. He does not look, as Saint John the Theologian said, at how many deeds someone has done, or whether this or that person is good; he looks at whether a person has become like Christ the Savior in spirit, whether they resemble Him, whether they live like the new, last Adam — Jesus Christ — or like the first, old Adam, who sinned and was expelled from Paradise. And if a person resembles the second, the last Adam — Jesus our Lord — then the doors of Paradise open and our souls will enter there, and the day will come when our bodies too will reenter, resurrected, revived, transformed, purified, into the Kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world. May God help us in this through His grace, His mercy, which we may assimilate through fasting and prayer.
God's mercy be with you. May the Lord remember you!
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
