In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Today we see the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Even though it was not in the reading today, it has certainly been in the hymnography yesterday, and this morning. The expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise is connected with their being distracted from paying complete, and whole attention to their relationship of love between them, and their Creator, and instead, listening to a distracting voice that suggested they might have some advantages if they did, in fact, eat the fruit of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Tempter was suggesting to them that they would gain superior knowledge somehow; they would become like God, Himself. You see what sort of terrible suggestions he was sowing. He carefully poisoned them, and they listened. They swallowed the poison. Knowledge, knowledge of good and evil is all right in its place when you’re in a position where you know what to do with it, I suppose. It’s possible that the Lord would have given them the blessing to take the fruit of this tree in due course, but they were too immature to cut this tree, and live. We see from the story of the Fall exactly what happened.

Knowledge is still very much our downfall in our day. We are swimming in knowledge; in fact, we are drowning in knowledge in our day. We know so many details about so many things, and we have access to more information than we can ever digest with our super-duper technology. However, what understanding do we have of this knowledge? Knowledge is just facts, you can say – all sorts of information. However, information that is not somehow processed, focussed, directed, and meaningful, is just a bunch of noise. All these facts are very noisy, indeed. Our lives are just overloaded with facts: interesting tidbits of information that we keep getting all the time. They come in magazines; they come on the television; they come on the radio; they come as computer spam – all sorts of lovely, interesting, quaint pieces of information. Do I need to know all this stuff? No, I don’t, not really. When I need to know something for a purpose (not just because I am curious, but for the good of all of us) then I can find out what I need to know.

Adam and Eve fell from simple curiosity and distraction. This curiosity and distraction turned their hearts from the Lord, closed a door to the Lord, turned them in on themselves. What was their first reaction after they ate the fruit? Immediately they became afraid. They had not ever in their lives until then known fear. Where does fear come from? Big Red down below. It’s his favourite weapon with you, and with me. Fear brings confusion. If we are suffering in our lives from fear, and confusion, you can be sure that we are at the mercy of Big Red down below, and he is very much at work, because fear, confusion, division, turmoil – all these things are characteristic of his behaviour, his work. When we submit to it all, it’s very much to his satisfaction.

It’s important for us to remember these lessons. Adam and Eve were created, and all of us have been created for communion in love with our Creator, with the Lord. The Lord has patience. He is bent over backwards, you could say, waiting for us to wake up, waiting for us to listen to Him, waiting for us to co-operate with Him. In the times and the moments when we do, in fact, co-operate with Him, wonders do occur. The stopping of tidal waves and forest fires by St Herman, is a simple example of that. And it’s not just St Herman who is an example of this. There are many saints in the course of human history who have lived in co-operation with the Lord. Through their prayers, through their simple, obedient boldness, they have embraced the simple love of Adam and Eve, in fact. It’s a love in harmony with the Lord that saves lives, and saves creation, too, and restores creation.

People often say that the world is in a mess. No-one can deny that we are in a mess. Some people say that half a dozen to a dozen real praying believers in the whole world at any one time are responsible for keeping the whole thing from falling in, and I can probably accept that. I don’t think that they are all alone, because many other people are praying, too. These particular persons are hidden from us, too. These particular persons throughout the world who are so in love with the Lord, and who are so obedient to Him, are helping us to survive through their prayers. Together, wonderful things still do occur. When we are living in harmony with the Lord, weather can be moderated; earthquakes can be mitigated; wars can even be stopped. We have to learn again how properly to pray in harmony, in love with the Lord.

What is the foundation of this? It is forgiveness. The Lord says to us – the very first thing in the Gospel today – that it is important for us to forgive those against whom we have something, or anyone who hurts us; to forgive anyone or everyone about everything, because He says (as it were): If you won’t forgive people who hurt you, then I won’t forgive you when you ask Me to forgive you (cf. Mark 11:26). That’s what He says. It’s really serious. The foundation of our Christian life is all rooted in this forgiveness. It’s crucially important for you, and for me, to be paying attention to our lives every day, listening to our hearts every day to see: is there someone that is not forgiven? That non-forgiveness continues to sow poison in my heart, and continues to paralyse my life. It continues to hurt other people, too, because it clouds my judgement. It clouds my reactions to other people when they are inter-relating with me. It poisons everything. Even if there is only one person or one situation in my life that remains unforgiven, it still makes everything cloudy, and messy. It’s really important that if we do nothing else great in our lives that we, in harmony with the Lord, find the way to forgive everyone everything in our lives. When we do, in the Lord, forgive everyone everything, finally we become free. We become truly free. We become free to be our real selves. We find our real selves in a loving relationship with the Lord, and we exercise this real self in loving relationships with human beings, and with creation, in healthy, loving relationships that are full of selfless love.

Therefore, needless to say, we have to forgive. How do you do this? St Silouan of Mount Athos is a person of this last century who has told us simply how to do this, and that is by saying this simple prayer: “Lord have mercy” over and over and over again for any person or anything or any situation that requires forgiveness. When we are saying: “Lord have mercy” as Archimandrite Sophrony says, it’s actually a statement of the Gospel all by itself. We are confessing that the Lord is the Lord, and we are asking Him to have mercy on me, and on the person or the situation, everyone, everything, whoever. When we are saying: “Have mercy” we are not saying to Him: Spare us from Your wrath (because that’s what we think that this usually means in English). However, it doesn’t mean that. Even in old, historic English it shouldn’t mean that. The word “mercy” comes from the Latin word “misericordia” which is more like “compassion”. The French still has this word “miséricorde”, and other languages have this understanding of the Lord’s love embedded in the word that they are using. For example, in Greek they say “Kyrie eleison”. In this “eleison” in Greek, and in Coptic (because they use the same word, too), they are asking the Lord to pour oil, the oil of His love on me, on the other person, on the situation. The root word for “oil” is involved in the word “eleison”. I have also come to understand that you can also find the same sort of concept in the Slavonic “pomilui”or in the Romanian “milueste”. There’s a sense of the Lord’s compassion in this word, and that’s what we English people need to recover. We English people need to recover in our comprehension what our words really mean, and we have to use our words in the right way. This is part of the baptising of our language. The Romanian language was baptised almost 2000 years ago, and Slavonic as well, and Greek even more.

We have to let the Lord baptise our language, too. It will show forth very much in our proper using of this word “mercy”. If we want to ask God to spare us, we can say: Spare us. When we ask Him to have mercy we have to mean we’re asking the Lord to pour the oil of His love on me, and on the other person. St Silouan said, and so did Archimandrite Sophrony, that when we are doing this, we are capable of making no judgement whatsoever about the situation – we condemn not the other person, and we don’t say bad things about ourselves. We only acknowledge that we are in need of the Lord’s love, compassion, and His healing. (By the way, even though Archimandrite Sophrony is not yet officially a saint, he should be.) When we are saying: “Lord have mercy”, we are asking that He do exactly that: be His loving, healing Self to us all. St Silouan, and Archimandrite Sophrony say that when this prayer passes through us to the other person, it passes through our heart, and opens our heart to this mercy from the Lord. It enables the other person to have some possibility to accept the same mercy. It’s always up to the other person in the end, freely to accept or to reject this mercy. The Lord does not force Himself, but this prayer enables the possibility.

Moreover, on top of all of that, people are finding over and over again, that when they are saying this prayer in this way, even though there may not be such a big change in the other person or the situation (because sometimes you can’t change the situation), the poison from that situation is removed from the heart. The Lord takes the poison out of the situation in the past that is so painful. He also takes away the poison of the memory of the wrongdoing from another person. He extracts the poison, the more we say this prayer, so that the pain and the death sown in our hearts by the anger, and the bitterness that we feel towards other people sometimes is dissipated, and finally is taken away altogether, so that there is no remaining poison. I can remember the event, but it does not any longer poison me. I can remember the wrong, but it does not any longer poison me. Instead, I feel sorry for the person who wronged me. That’s the direction. When you come to the point of remembering a situation or a person or an event or whatever, and it no longer automatically stirs up this anger, no longer stirs up this disturbance or depression or darkness or whatever else, then you will know that you have actually, with God’s mercy, been able to forgive, because the Lord has co-operated, and listened to you, healed your heart, and healed your memory.

Sometimes, when something is particularly painful and particularly stubborn in our lives, it, and the pain do not easily or quickly go away. It is important for us to offer this pain and suffering repeatedly to the Lord. It is important to supplement our supplication with taking holy water, and anointing with oil, through which the Lord does convey His healing love to our souls, and bodies. The Lord gives us the tangible reassurances and sacraments because He does love us. It is not His will that we should be stumbling about, sick, and crippled all our lives. He really does want us to be healthy in every way.

Let us ask the Lord to give us the Grace, and the outpouring of His love today anew so that we will be able to take courage, and apply this basic, little prayer that He has given us: “Kyrie eleison; Lord, have mercy; Doamne milueste; Seigneur, sois miséricordieux”. Through this simple prayer, let the Lord heal our hearts, and keep our hearts always healed, whole, and in clear, unblocked, loving communion with Him so that in everything, being co-workers with Him, we will be able to glorify Him in everything that we do and say in our lives, together with His Father, who is from everlasting, and His all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America