Today we commemorate the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise. On the one hand, this is a sorrowful occasion; it is not without reason that we recall Adam’s lament before the holy gates of his lost homeland. However, on a deeper level, the casting out of paradise was not so much a punishment as a mercy: God’s punishment of Adam ensured that sin would not exist forever, but would be finite, limited by temporality and mortality. More than this, the expulsion from paradise was for Adam – and is for us – a prompting to repentance. Because we feel our deprivation, we are led toward an understanding of who we are, sinners in need of mercy. Finally, the expulsion from paradise was merely a first step in a larger plan of salvation. When Adam was cast out – indeed, when Adam was first formed from the dust – the Last Adam, Christ, was already prepared to come and fulfill the commandment that Adam had failed to keep. Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, by his Passion and Resurrection, restores humanity to paradise and to an even more perfect and profound relationship with God than Adam once experienced in the beginning.
Home / Work of the Church / Reflections in Christ / Metropolitan Tikhon /