This is one of my favorite Sundays!! The Great Fast begins this evening and today is Forgiveness Sunday, and also the Sunday in which we remember Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden. “From paradise didst Thou drive our forefather Adam, who had broken Thy commandment, O Christ; but, O Compassionate One, Thou didst cause to dwell therein the thief who confessed Thee on the cross, crying out: “Remember me, O Savior, in Thy kingdom!” (Beatitudes Verses)
As I prepared for this Sunday, I was reminded of some of the “bad boys” that were expelled from school back in the day. Fortunately, I was not that misbehaved or at least, I wasn’t caught! But upon truthful reflection, I have always not been the best at following all the rules!
Having visited the principal’s office once or twice, just to drop off papers for my teacher of course, and having participated in shop class where we tested, designed and built the vice-principal’s wooden paddles to have the most aerodynamic shape and proper surface application on someone’s hind-quarters and to also resist breakage, I have seen and felt the consequences for some of my choices! Yes, my hard head has to feel!!
And then too I would have to say I have been somewhat of a follower. I have been influenced by folks at school, triple-dog dared, and at work, church, family, and even news and social media outlets. Some of my goals have been shaped by these influences, and I have not always chosen wisely.
With the beginning of lent, I will need to greatly limit my time spent listening to the half-truths being broadcast on the news and social media outlets. After all, most of this noise is being controlled by billionaires trying to become wealthier and have more power. And we gullible sheep keep getting pushed ever so slowly closer and closer to the edge of a cliff with their manipulation of facts. I will however try to continue keeping up with the birthdays and important dates of my close, ever so close 2400 friends.
And then for the best way to begin lent, we will start with our Monday Vesper service today after Trapeza. It is our Lenten Forgiveness Service that we will serve before you leave the church today. Last week I reminded you that prostrations are not normally done on Sunday, because we focus Sunday on the Great Resurrection, with a few exceptions like the Sunday of the Cross. But rather than leaving for a few hours and returning this evening, we will stay and begin our Lenten service after trapeza. Also, prostrations are much easier if we don’t stuff too many blinis in our bellies!! And your priests do look forward to asking your forgiveness for the irritations we have caused and the many failings we have had serving you this past year.
Our Saint Cosmos instructs us: “If you want cure your soul, you need four things. The first is to forgive your enemies. The second is to confess thoroughly. The third is to blame yourself. The fourth is to resolve to sin no more. If we wish to be saved, we must always blame ourselves and not attribute our wrong acts to others. And God, Who is most compassionate, will forgive us.” (Modern Orthodox Saints I, St. Cosmas Aitolos).Dr. Constantine Cavarnos., INSTITUTE FOR BYZANTINE AND MODERN GREEK STUDIES., Belmont, Massachusetts., pp.81-94) Do we try that blaming thing in our marriages, blaming ourselves?
We all want salvation for ourselves and our love ones and we realize that we are not in the Garden! It looks like we have all been expelled!! Our beloved Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko wrote: “Adam and Eve were supposed to increase and multiply and develop and deify creation. But instead they didn’t; they fell, they rebelled, and found themselves cast out weeping. But we know that if we were with them, we would have done the same, because we sin anyway. St. Simeon says, “They ate of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but we eat of the body and the blood of Christ at the holy Eucharist.” And he says, “When the body and blood of Christ is still in our mouth, we leave the church and we sin. It’s like the people of Israel, who were led out of Egypt and fed by manna, and while the manna of God was in their mouth, they blasphemed and worshiped the idols and did wickedness. So no human being gets off the hook; no human being can blame anyone else. Each one of us stands on our feet. However it is true that we are not Adam and Eve and we are already, as it says in the psalms, “conceived in iniquities; in sins our mother conceived us,” not that the act of conception is a sin, but that we’re born into a world already broken, already apostasized, already rebellious.
If you put it in the other symbols of the season, you could say: we’re born in Babylon; we are not born in Jerusalem. We’re born in the pig pen; we’re not born in the father’s house. We have to be taken back to Jerusalem, taken back to the father’s house, taken back to Paradise. And we believe that that’s what Jesus had done for us, and that’s what we are celebrating during Lent and Holy Week and especially the Holy Pascha. We are celebrating the fact that God sent his Son to be the real final last Adam who does not sin. We are celebrating the fact that he has searched us out and found us: in the pig pen, in the far country, outside Paradise. And he forgives us and he cleanses us and he washes us and he refreshes us and renews us and restores us and resurrects us from the dead and takes us home to the house of the father, takes us home to the heavenly Jerusalem, takes us home to the paradise on high.”
Fr. Gabriel Weller 3-2-2025
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