29th Week after Pentecost. Holy Fathers 1-1-12

Man is created of the dust of the earth and a soul, which consists of the image and likeness of God.

The body is subject to the law of causality; the soul has freedom of choice and the task of taking after God. But Adam violated God's commandment and instead of taking after God through obedience and virtue, decided he wanted instead to become God himself. But he found himself naked, and sensing his guilt, tried to hide and fled from God.

God already knew of his fall, and, wishing to bring him to repentance, called him, “Adam, where are you?”

The entire history of the human race is a flight from God.

As a result of the fall, passions filled the body. So that a person could resist passions, his soul was endowed with a conscience, through which God kept calling, “Adam, where are you? Come back to your creator.”

But people remained deaf. And in order to silence their conscience, they created gods in the image of themselves and brought them sacrifices.

Humans come with the idea of God built in, but serving God requires spiritual sacrifice, expressed through piety. But people often prefer to live in sin. This happened in times past and continues today. Sin crowds out the feeling of God. This leads to fleeing from God. Long ago this resulted in idol worship.

The Holy Fathers are those people who did not flee from God, but rather sought Him: Through faith they subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, Quenched the violence of fire (Hebrews 11, 33-34).

The geneology of the Savior, i.e., the Holy Fathers, is the history of God's calling people back to Him through the Fathers, “Adam, where art thou (Genesis 3,9)?”

Finally, the Lord descended to earth as a God-infant and again searched for Adam: “Where art though, Adam?” We will soon celebrate this event.

Fleeing from God happens in our day as well via the theory of evolution, whereby man is only the highest stage in a chain of mechanical development.

When we sin, we flee from God. When we repent, we return to God.

In the manner of the Holy Fathers, we shall seek God, in order to inherit salvation, for which the Lord was born as a baby. Amen.