Cheesefare Sunday #
On the very threshold of Great Lent, the Church mentally returns us to the beginning of the world and humanity, recalling the expulsion of our first ancestors from the Garden of Eden, where they had been placed by the Creator.
The forefather Adam and the wife given to him by God as “bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh” (Gen. 2:23), his helper Eve, were deceived by the serpent, through whom the devil spoke to them. The serpent enticed them to taste the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which the Lord had forbidden them to eat. To more surely persuade the curious Eve to break the divine command, the serpent slandered God, saying: “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). But having believed this slander and transgressed the will of their gracious Creator, neither Eve nor her husband became like gods; rather, they merely came to know their own nakedness, shame, pangs of conscience, and a fear of punishment they had never before experienced.
The joy of an unburdened life, the contemplation of the beauty of God’s creation, the rapturous love and trust in the Creator—all were extinguished in an instant, replaced by fear, sorrow, despondency, and heavy forebodings. And the fact that, as the Bible relates, upon hearing “the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day… Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden” (Gen. 3:8), and that, when reproached for his disobedience, Adam immediately shifted the blame not only onto his companion but even onto the Lord Himself—“The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat” (Gen. 3:12)—demonstrates how easily and thoughtlessly man, created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), “made a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor” (Ps. 8:5), stained his soul with guile, how prideful self-will debased him, revealing him to be weak, fearful, and fainthearted.
Thus, having grievously fallen from the height of the divine image, man became incapable of fulfilling his purpose—to cultivate and keep the earthly paradise (Gen. 2:15), to be, as St. Gregory the Theologian said, a contemplator of Wisdom, a mystic of the heavenly, and a reverent king of the earth. Now, in accordance with his new fallen state, God pronounced judgment upon him:
“…Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Gen. 3:17–19)
Toil, sorrow, the pains of childbirth, fears, ceaseless cares for food, shelter, and safety, and finally, death, which sets the limit to every human earthly life—this became the lot of our race. Yet in this severe sentence, the merciful Creator did not take vengeance upon the sinner nor reject him forever. On the contrary, though God could have restored man to his former dignity by a mere act of His will, He desired not only such a restoration but something far greater: that human nature should be united with the divine in the person of His Eternal and Only-Begotten Son, and that men, renewed through holy baptism, should become children of God by grace (Rom. 8:14; Gal. 3:26; 4:7), receiving immeasurably more than what their forebears had lost.
For this great gift, the Lord prepared the human race over many centuries with providential care. As it is said in the prayer of the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great:
“For Thou didst not turn away to the end from the work of Thy hands, O Good One, nor didst Thou forget the work of Thy hands, but didst visit it in manifold ways, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. Thou didst send forth the prophets; Thou didst perform mighty works through Thy saints, who in every generation were well-pleasing unto Thee; Thou didst speak to us by the mouth of Thy servants the prophets, foretelling unto us the salvation to come; Thou gavest the Law as a help, appointed angels as guardians. And when the fullness of time was come, Thou spakest unto us in Thy Son Himself.”
The Holy Great Fast, which begins with the remembrance of the fall of our forefathers and ends with the radiant feast of Christ’s Resurrection, is an image of the entire history of man’s salvation. As we bear the struggle of fasting, we traverse the path of many millennia to meet Christ. According to St. Basil the Great, fasting “is coeval with humanity. Fasting was established in Paradise. For this was the first commandment given to Adam: ‘Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ye shall not eat’ (Gen. 2:17). And these words—‘ye shall not eat’—are a law of fasting and abstinence. Had Eve fasted and not tasted of the tree, we would have no need for this fast today. For ‘they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick’ (Matt. 9:12). We are wounded by sin—let us be healed by repentance; but repentance without fasting is ineffective… Since we did not fast, we were cast out of paradise. Let us fast now, that we may enter it again” (Homily on Fasting, First Homily).
Therefore, in the Church’s service for this day, the words of Adam, who bitterly wept for his transgression, are repeated: “O Merciful One, have mercy upon me who have fallen.” Together with him, we too must weep, for we have angered God a thousand times over by disobeying His saving will. Like our forefather, we have but one hope, one “Helper and Protector unto salvation”—God, who sent His Son as a sacrifice, the spotless “Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.” Having humbled the body through fasting, enlightened the eyes of the soul through prayerful vigilance, and washed away our countless transgressions with tears of repentance, may we be found worthy to receive “the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love,” and to meet in spiritual joy the day of the renewal of human nature, the day of victory over the devil, hell, and death—Holy Pascha, the Resurrection of Christ.
Stichera at the Stichovna (Verses) on Lord, I Have Cried, Glory…, Tone 6
Adam was cast out of Paradise because of food;
therefore, as he sat before it, he wept,
lamenting with a mournful voice and saying:
“Woe is me, O wretched one!
I transgressed but one commandment of the Master,
and I am deprived of all good things!
O most holy Paradise,
which wast planted for me and closed because of Eve,
beseech Him that made thee and fashioned me,
that I may once more be filled with thy blossoms.”
Then the Savior said unto him:
“I desire not the destruction of My creation,
but that it should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth,
for him that cometh unto Me, I will in nowise cast out.”
At Vespers of the Same Sunday, Stichera in Tone 4
Thy grace hath shone forth, O Lord,
it hath shone forth and illumined our souls.
Behold, now is the acceptable time,
behold, now is the time for repentance.
Let us cast off the works of darkness
and put on the armor of light,
that having sailed across the great sea of the Fast,
we may attain unto the third-day Resurrection
of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ,
who saveth our souls.