“Adam sat outside Paradise,
And, lamenting over his nakedness, he wept…”1
On the last Sunday before Lent the Church reminds us of the 
Sermon on the Remembrance of Adam’s Exile from ParadiseThe Lord God bestowed free will upon Adam, as He also has upon you and me. This is a very great but also very responsible gift. As a test of free will, as a confirmation of faithfulness to the Father, in Paradise grew the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of course it was also intended for man, but the Lord foretold that the time had not yet come for young Adam to know about good and evil.
“>expulsion of our ancestors Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. At the same time, in the service a special emphasis is placed on Adam’s reflection—that is, the response that was born in his soul after the loss of his Father and his Father’s house. Remorse, inconsolable lamentation and longing for the lost Fatherland are the legacy that Adam left to all of his descendants. A legacy that we should understand well in order to comprehend the processes that sometimes occur within ourselves…
Not long ago someone who is close to me puzzled me with a question, which was preceded by a short story:
“One day I was in my car on business. The weather was gloomy, and I felt sad, although things were not going bad in my life. I was driving through the places I’ve known since childhood, and suddenly I decided to drive up to the kindergarten where I had spent three years of my life thirty-five years ago. I stopped, walked up to the door of the kindergarten, and then, quite unexpectedly, something unimaginable happened to me. It was as if some warm, gentle wave had covered my heart, and if I were a woman, tears would have streamed down my face. I’m not used to crying, but my eyes were wet, and I had a lump in my throat.
“Yes, I know you can call it nostalgia. But, as it seems to me, nostalgia is usually associated with a lot of fond impressions and memories of the past. But I didn’t have any special, especially fond memories and impressions about that kindergarten. More than that, my childhood can hardly be called happy. Nevertheless, at that time I just felt like Adam who had just been banished from Paradise, weeping and ready to sacrifice anything if only to get back there.
“From that day on, whenever I am sick at heart, I try to go to my kindergarten, or at least bring its image to mind, and every time the ‘clouds’ in me disperse. But I have a question: What is it? Why does something that in reality is only a distant past, which will never come back to me, have such an impact on my soul?”
Adam’s yearning for Paradise… Nothing could alleviate it and fill his soul with joy: neither the promise of the coming Messiah, nor the boundless virgin nature, nor the many centuries of life on earth with his beloved wife and children. And so this yearning remained joyless and hopeless for Adam and his descendants, until it finally resounded: The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (Mt. 10:7). Christ came and filled with hope the souls of Adam’s descendants pining for Paradise: “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Work hard, children, and I will give you back what you crave for!”
However, the very longing for the Heavenly Fatherland, even if dissolved by hope, is still left to us so as to be the inner driving force that will direct us to the only right goal—the Kingdom. It was left to us as a gift, without which our treasure, and therefore our heart, would never have risen up from the earth.
How does this salvific yearning manifest itself in our lives? Fundamentally, it is nothing but a strong desire living in the inmost recesses of our hearts to return to our Fatherland, to our Father, accompanied by a clear idea that this Fatherland is beyond the earth. This feeling is akin to that of a homesick emigrant, or a prisoner who lives solely by the hope of freedom. But it is more painful, and accompanied by the feeling that genuine peace for the troubled soul can only be found there. With this feeling, a Christian cools down to everything earthly and would not hesitate to abandon everything if only to return Home as soon as possible. But in this feeling there is also the awareness that the Christian is still not ready to return. And from this awareness comes prayer to God to give him more time for repentance.
This yearning can be clothed in and communicated to us in images of our past. For some, these may be memories of their childhood, similar in their emotional coloring to those felt by my above-mentioned friend. In others this longing awakens when they look back at trials that they went through a long time ago, because then they felt the presence of the Father especially keenly. And it is given to others through the experience of homesickness, missing their homeland given during preparation for return.
In any of its manifestations, it is precisely God’s gift to man, given so that he would not forget where the goal of his deepest aspirations really is, and cannot confuse it with anything else, which is quite possible. Without understanding this longing, which people, like many other things, have inherited from Adam, and without knowing about its purpose, you can waste all its potential in pursuit of countless false goals, as is confirmed by all the diversity of experience in and around us.
The King and Psalmist David figuratively likens Adam’s longing for Paradise to the lamentation of the Jews By the Rivers of Babylon: Commentary on Psalm 136From its very first verses, the hymn “By the Rivers of Babylon” reveals the whole meaning of Great Lent. We are in captivity to sin—“by the rivers of Babylon.” Like the Jews, we have to lay mirth aside and reflect upon our sins and remember Zion—the Heavenly Kingdom, or the Heavenly Jerusalem.
“>by the rivers of Babylon during the Babylonian Captivity. In Psalm 136, which is sung at the services of the weeks preceding Lent, he speaks of the longing for the Fatherland that the God-chosen people experienced during the period of Captivity. But at the same time, he mysteriously depicts the yearning of Adam’s descendants for the Heavenly Fatherland. “By the waters of Babylon”—that is, in a place of exile, seemingly filled with some “water” without which we cannot live, we still “sit down and weep”. But when? “When we remember Zion” (cf. Ps. 136:1); when we remember that our Fatherland is far away. In the moments of this lament, “they that carried us away captive”—that is, all our thoughts and intentions directed at earthly well-being, will ask us: Sing us one of the songs of Zion (Ps. 136:3)!
Rejoice! After all, you already have everything needed for unclouded happiness, and much more awaits you! Here is water that is full of everything necessary for this happiness!
But we answer them: How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? (Ps. 136:4). How can we find our true happiness when we are in a strange land? The “Lord’s song”—the fullness of happiness of the soul returning to the Father’s house—is not intended for a strange land, and therefore it is inappropriate there. It is unbecoming and unworthy to strive for unclouded happiness in a strange land, because it was prepared for us in our Motherland. And the following warning is addressed to those who do not understand this:
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my throat, if I remember thee not; if I set not Jerusalem above all other, as the head of my joy (Ps. 136:5–6).
If I forget my Fatherland, if I do not base all my hopes and labors on my return to my Homeland, then all of my deeds and words will be worthless. It’s all in vain if it doesn’t bring me closer to returning! Nevertheless, our thoughts and intentions that lead us away from this main goal are merely the “babbling of infants”, and therefore the Psalmist calls to “dash” them “against the rock” of faith (cf. Ps. 136:9).
We weep by the “rivers of Babylon.” This weeping is an inevitable manifestation of the yearning that we are speaking about today. Before Adam wept for the slain Abel, he had wept for Paradise lost, and, in a sense, this second weeping is the source of all weeping of Adam’s descendants. Why? It is the beginning of weeping in general, which contains an indication of the cause of all weeping—the darkness of sin and, as a result, the loss of the Fatherland. Therefore, weeping is our natural and unavoidable condition far from our Fatherland.
“Cry and weep,” St. Dimitry of Rostov, the Chrysostom of the Western Russian LandsIn many ways, the archpastor of Rostov was a unique personality and deserves careful attention, just as does the complex era in which he lived and worked.
“>St. Dimitry of Rostov says. “For you have nothing truer in this age than weeping and you will find nothing more needful than weeping. Is your life not worthy of weeping? Does not your sojourn in the world deserve lamentation?… All the saints lamented and wept throughout their lives… So you also, always cry in this vale of tears.”
Why does St. Dimitry call weeping the most needful thing? Isn’t crying just a bitter sign of sorrow or pain? Not at all! True, we cry for loss, but, by the grace of God, loss returns also by weeping when it comes to the gift of God—the return of the Fatherland! Dissolving our weeping for Paradise lost with joy, the Lord announced: Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted (Mt. 5:4). St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) teaches: “Consolation mysteriously lives in tears, and joy—in weeping.” But what kind of crying and tears are we talking about? Not about any, because, “Some people are particularly prone to tears by nature and shed tears at every good opportunity; such tears are called natural. There are also sinful tears, which are shed for sinful motives.”2
Natural tears include all those that are caused by suffering and pain that we face in this world.
But we are not talking about these tears when we have a goal before us that can be achieved through tears. While natural and sinful tears are only manifestations of our natural weakness and impotence, there are also tears of a different kind that testify to a strong soul and attract comfort and forgiveness. Tears, through which “a heartfelt feeling of repentance, saving sorrow for sinfulness and the diverse, numerous infirmities of man” is manifested.3 However, according to St. Ignatius, any weeping is useful that is “dissolved in trust in God. It comforts the soul and softens the heart, opening it to all holy and spiritual impressions…”
In search of an answer to the question asked by my close friend who told me his story, I came to the conclusion that this story is a vivid manifestation in his soul of the yearning for the lost Fatherland, which we inherit from our forefather Adam. Perhaps he had begun to forget about it and become too attached to earthly success, or perhaps for some other reason the Lord purified this gift in his soul so that he could think seriously about it and reconsider his purpose in life. Why, in his case, was it done with the help of childhood impressions? I presume it’s because, although he doesn’t regard his childhood as happy, childhood is a time when a person is in many ways like the primordial Adam because of his purity. And in fact, his life is unclouded thanks to the “wings” of his parents.
And yet Adam didn’t weep only for Paradise lost. In the hymns of Cheesefare Sunday it is said that he lamented over his nakedness, for the Garden of Eden had clothed him from the outside and filled him from the inside. And this lament, along with the longing for Paradise lost, is the immortal legacy that our forefather left behind for us as a guide to attaining our Heavenly Fatherland.
Source: Orthodox Christianity
