Evening Sermon: Lessons from the World that Perished

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

We should give thanks to God for the great sublimity of our evening sacrifice.  But, undoubtedly, the objection will immediately be raised, “Ah, but Father, it is not as great as the Mass.” Yes, indeed, it is not as great as the Mass, and attendance at the evening sacrifice is not as great as attendance at the Mass, but does that mean that the Church can do without this solemn service that closes the day? Can the Church do without the sorrow for sin and the return to God in repentance?

     Sorrow for sin and return to God in repentance—this is the meaning of the evening sacrifice.  Yesterday, we talked about Adam our first father weeping before the closed gates of Paradise.  We contemplated the orderly and beautiful world that God had created, as it is described in Psalm 103, but we also reflected upon the fact that Adam (representative of our fallen human nature) is exiled from that orderly world that God had intended.  In the Church’s Lenten book, the Triodion, we hear Adam himself say again and again expressions of his sorrow for sin, as he stands weeping outside, far from the presence of God.  At times, his expressions echo the words used later by his first-born son Cain: My punishment is too heavy to bear!

     Perhaps we as a culture have become very distant from sorrow.  Perhaps we do not really understand sadness any longer.  Perhaps because we are surrounded by sufficiency we have lost the power of longing, the ardour of desire.  If this is so, then we should mourn the passing of sorrow in our lives, for nothing is more useful than sorrow.  We should not be able to hear the words of the 103^rd Psalm without a longing in our hearts for the world that is there described—the world that perished because of sin.  The fact that we commemorate it everyday in the context of the evening sacrifice is a reminder and an incentive for us to revive in our hearts that longing, desire and sorrow.  The words of the Triodion, although they have nothing to do with the Nativity Fast, are a perfect meditation in conjunction with the Evening Psalm:

O beloved Paradise, beauty of Springtime and divinely created abode, unending joy and delight, the glory of all the just, the enchantment of the prophets and the dwelling-place of the saints, by the rustling of your leaves, implore the Creator of the universe to open the gates that I have closed by my fault; let me partake of the Tree of Life and share the joy that I once found in you.

Adam sat before Paradise, sighing and weeping over his nakedness: Alas! I was seduced by craftiness and stripped naked, and I am now separated from glory. Alas! In my simplicity, I was naked; but now I do not know what to do. O Paradise, never again shall I taste your joy; never again shall I see the Lord, my Creator and my God, for I must return to the earth from which I was taken. O merciful God, I cry out to You: I have fallen: have mercy on me.