The following in an excerpt from “Eros of Orthodoxy,” translated by Fr. Nicholas Palis and written by Mr. Pantelis Paschou.
In the hymnography of the Sunday of the Cheeseater or of Cheesefare is a form which connotes the beginning of feasts for the Christian. This feast refers to the first event, which occurred when life on earth began, with the exile of the first created ones from Paradise and their exile on earth. This drama of all earth’s men is described in the most compunctionate troparions. That is, because the separation of Adam from God and from Paradise doesn’t end with him. Adam’s fall and exile threw us–all of his descendants–on the earth of toils and tears, in the field of grief and crying, in a place where its most characteristic and certain mark is death. All of us men are genuine inheritors of all the consequences of the transgression and disobedience of our Birthgiver Adam.
This is not the place to more extensively analyze the sin of Adam’s disobedience of God’s command, who told them to eat of all the fruits of all the trees, except for two: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. Nor can we now take up these matters: where was paradise, exactly what was the tree etc. The important thing for us is that Adam didn’t obey God’s command, and obeying the instigation of satan, he fell in temptation and sin, eating the fruit of the forbidden tree of Paradise. And that immediately after the sin he received consciousness of his nakedness. While at first, neither he nor Eve sensed their nakedness. Nor–this is the horrible thing that occurs in the continuation–did they repent when God asked them to, giving them the opportunity to confess their sin of disobedience. But in order to hide their bodily nakedness, they covered themselves with fig leaves, and appeared trembling before their Creator.
This consciousness of nakedness and sin continues to beat down on all of us, after every disobedience of God’s commands. We have all totally soiled God’s garment and we have ripped it up by continuously going through the thorns of sin. For this reason we make Adam also cover our nakedness with our clothes. The majority do not delve into the matter of clothes. And most strive to have expensive, new showy clothes. However for the mature Christian–in the drama of Adam’s expulsion from Paradise–there is nothing plainer than this. Seeing the clothes he wears to think of the Paradise he lost. This is also why the sacred Chrysostom says: “let the wearing of clothes, become a continuous reminder to us of the fall from good things and of the teaching of punishment, which the human race received because of the disobedience.
With great wisdom the Holy Fathers also placed here the remembrance of Adam’s exile from Paradise before the door of Great Lent. Before the fast begins, the Orthodox Church shows us the icon of Adam, who because he disobeyed the divine command of fasting, was kicked out of the Garden of Eden “Adam was thrown out of Paradise, by eating. So sitting opposite this, he wailed and cried out, in a pitiful voice, and said. O Woe, what have I the wretch done! I disobeyed one command, that of the Master, and am deprived of all good things!” Behold the cause of the drama of the exile of Adam: the transgression of the command to fast. “Because–says Saint Nicephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos–we suffered so many things because Adam did not fast once, its remembrance is now placed before the entrance to Holy Lent. So that remembering how much evil not fasting brought about, we may hasten gladly to accept and keep the fast, so that where Adam missed the goal of Theosis, we in other words must succeed in this mourning and fasting and humbling ourselves till God visits us. For without these, we cannot easily receive what we lost.
But fasting is not only a form, which Christians must indifferently keep. It is a God-ordained bond–as is very clearly shown in the exile of the first-created ones.–very beneficial and necessary for our salvation. There are many reasons why even religiously indifferent people impose fasting as necessary for every man. We’ll leave out pedagogical, economical, hygienic, social and remaining reasons, to say a few words for the spiritual reasons that impose real fasting. And every Christian must have this in mind that fasting must not only be a physical but also spiritual: “fasting bodily brethren let us also fast spiritually. Let us loosen every bond with unrighteousness”. Thus fasting, becomes a bit which restrains us from every sin: not only physical, but spiritual as well. And the emphasis which the Holy Fathers give to spiritual fasting is characteristic without which the physical fast has absolutely no value and remains a hypocritical and pharisaic form. The phrase of Abba Yperechios is epigrammatic “it is good to eat meat and drink wine, and not eat our brethren’s flesh in slanders”. Fasting–and it is stressed together both by the Holy Fathers and the compunctionate hymnography of those days stress this–is the atmosphere with the appropriate climate, where the spiritual struggles of the Christian may become more systematic for the cleansing of the passions and the gaining of virtues. “Let us gladly begin the time of fasting, putting ourselves under spiritual struggles” “The time has come the beginning of spiritual struggles, the victory over demons, the alarmed restraint, the propriety of angels, for boldness towards God”.
Immense and frightful seem the pits, which open for those who don’t fast and who, with the help of gluttony and of satan, daily fall into these without the gluttonous people realizing it. Whoever does not fast fills his heart with fornicating thoughts that soon will lead him to fornication itself. He becomes hardhearted. He sleeps insatiably, and there for sure the familiar daughters of gluttony find him, such as the following: sluggishness, talking too much, brazen impudence, foul talk, loquacity, argumentative, evil, haughtiness, wildness, quarrelsomeness, blindness, and many other things. Fasting however does not let the Christian who perfectly fasts, i.e. physically and spiritually, fall into these pits. “Fasting, says Saint John of the Ladder, “is a violence which man willfully does, and upsets his nature, and hungers and thirsts, with forced toil, in order to be cleansed from its evil opinions, and a sword which cuts off and prevents the neck from sweet and tasty foods. An herb that quenches bodily fires and desire. Which kicks out evil thoughts from the soul and frees it from disgusting dreams and polluted imaginings. And it makes it stay calm and unconfused in prayer, and be enlightened by God and guard its mind. And to have its eyes open and to be awe-inspired, and sigh and cry with tears and humility. And to totally crush the heart, and cease from loquacity, and be calm with quietness, and be obedient and not oversleep. And to keep his body healthy, because just as doctors certify, fasting is the mother of health. It brings forth purity, and kicks out sins and opens the door of Paradise,” from which Adam was “kicked out” because he didn’t fast.
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