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PATROLOGOS edutainment

They didn't even finish trying of the forbidden fruit the fraudulent pleasure, and behold the terrible consequences of their transgression. «Then they were opened the eyes of both of them and they knew, that they were naked». 

The sin, which they committed, expelled that innocence and purity, with which God had decorated their souls. And now they both became cunning. 

A new spirit and a new condition rushed into their souls. A spirit of cunningness and defection. And with the new eyes, which this new condition opened in them, they see, that they are naked, and they are ashamed. 

They could see it also before, but they wouldn't feel no shame. Their innocence was used like some garment woven by God, with which was covered their nakedness. Their purity would not allow any cunning thought not even to come close in their mind. 

And if they were naked, if one could see the other totally naked, their souls however were predisposed as if they were the souls of harmless and guileless infants, which in all naivety they play together, without one to concern itself with the nakedness of the other. 

They see, that they are naked. And this is a sign, that it has now changed their psychological condition. 

For the innocence to abandon them and that pure naivety, which they previously had, their souls got perverted and they lost their extraordinary features, their righteous callings, the wonderful graces, with which the grace of the Holy Spirit had endowed them. They got naked also in the soul the protoplast transgressors. 

They got naked. They primarily lost the peace and the serenity of the good conscience. The feeling that they are guilty and that they violated the commandment of the Creator, started like a calcined nail to pierce their heart and to expel the joy and the repose from there, and to pour the poison of bitterness and of the agitation in their depths. 

They got naked. All the heavenly seeds of virtue, which God had planted in their souls, for the purpose that Adam and Eve with their own free will and option of choice would cultivate them and would develop, these seeds were burned. 

A new sowing took place in their hearts, a sowing, which was made by the poison of disobedience, a sowing, which halted the benevolent inclinations towards the virtue and towards the good which until now they were feeling the hearts of the protoplasts, and enslaved their volitions towards the evil. 

They begin now to feel that other law of the sin, which dominates over our flesh and which law that is opposed to the law of our mind, the law of virtue, and forces us many times as if we were prisoners to be dragged towards evil, without even wanting it. 

They got naked. And they got deprived of that grace, which their souls was receiving from their continuous communication with the Spirit of God. 

And as they are embarrassed one of the other, likewise and much more incomparably more they are now not only embarrassed, but they are also afraid of God. And for this reason after a while they will hide themselves, without daring, the wretched, to stare towards the face of the Creator. 

Poor Adam! Where were you and what have you become! What you had and what you missed! In what peaceful place you used to live, and in what condition of distress and sorrows have you slipped! 

Shame therefore and embarrassment is taking over the protoplasts. Ah, that sin, my brother, it always brings with it as some inevitable consequence the shame and the embarrassment. 

Whatever sin you commit, it is inevitable that a moment will come, that you will look at it and you will be ashamed. People will ask you about this sinful act of yours and your tongue will be tied not being able to utter a word. 

Blessed are those who feel that shame on time, during a time period, when they can still fix of their misplaced act the miserable consequences. Happy are those who experience this shame for their salvation and correction and repentance. 

Because there exist some others, my reader, who so much they have been perverted by the sin, so that not only they are not ashamed, when they commit it, but they also foolishly boast and they are recklessly showing off for their sinful actions. 

Alas! The turn will also come for these people, when they will feel the most terrible and the most agonizing shame. 

During that dreadful day, when the hidden of each one of us will manifest themselves, how much shame for those, who haven't repented for those? 

Then there will not exist senseless people and fools to applaud their illegal works. There will not be heard the broad laughters of the accomplices and transgressors. 

There will only be present some chosen people, saint and pure, the world of the angels and of all the saints, who will turn their modest and holy faces away from the disgusting images of the various transgressions of the judged world of the sinners. 

«And they got to know that they were naked». What a criminal and what a lier was devil proven to be! He promised them, that their eyes would open. And indeed they opened. They opened, but not as he had represented to them. 

They opened not in order for them to become gods, as the devil had represented to them. They opened in order for them to see their nakedness. They opened to their opprobrium, for the affliction and the agitation of their souls, not for their honor and for their benefit. 

This way, my Christian, the devil deceives us too. With what bright colors he is painting inside our mind and in our fantasy the image of the sin. 

Man, do not pay attention to him. Do not listen to him. Close your eyes. Shake your head; turn in other directions to beneficial thoughts your intellect, in order to be driven away from you this alluring fantasy, which the devil is submitting to you. 

He hides death inside. And that lier is presenting to you, that he encloses life. He gives birth to dishonesty and opprobrium. And he is seeking to persuade you, that he will become for you a cause of glory and honour. 

Be careful, my brother. As he deceived our first mother Eve, similarly he is seeking to deceive also us. And as he entrapped in disgrace the protoplasts similarly he will also shame ourselves the children and the descendants of them, when we obey to him. 

May God keep us safe! 

The protoplasts are ashamed. And they seek how to cover their nakedness, in order not to experience this uncomfortable feeling of shame. 

They sewed therefore fig tree leaves, because these are wide and big, and they fabricated with these «apruns», wide belts, and with these they wrapped up and covered their nakedness. 

But if now Adam and Eve are experiencing the first fruit of the sin, that is the shame, after a while they will taste also the other, the more bitter and poisonous, the fear and the horror, that is. God is about after a while to appear to them and to ask them the reason for their action. 

Let us follow, my reader, the narration of the Bible in order to see what happened to them after that transgression of them. «And they heard, it says, the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden of Paradise in the cool of the day». 

They don't hear thunders and lightnings. They don't see far away some cloud and tumult. No. God doesn't come to them in the multitude of His power and of His greatness. He comes as their intimate, as a person, who does not wish to frighten them and to discourage them. 

The protoplasts hear His footsteps walking in the Paradise at sunset. Oh! if He would come at night, how great would their terror be. Oh! If He would choose the darkness of the night in order to present Himself to these culprits and transgressors the righteous Lord, how would they turn to stone and how they would literally freeze out of the unrestrained shivering of fear! 

They hear His footsteps. He presents Himself to them therefore, as before. In a human shape and form, since He walks as one of us and the sound is heard of His footsteps. And He therefore shows to them the same familiarity, which He also showed before their transgression, whenever He appeared to them in order to teach them and guide them as a Master and affectionate Father. 

But Adam and Eve do not have the courage now to stand and stare at Him, as they were staring at Him before. And immediately as they heard the sound of the footsteps of the Creator «they hid themselves both Adam and his wife from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden». 

What difference between now and then! Once, when Adam was hearing his Creator approaching, he would jump out of joy, exactly like you rejoice as well, my reader, when some person beloved and dear, with great influence, with reputation and glory, comes to visit you. 

When Eve was perceiving, that the Lord was coming, she would raise as if she had wings and she would run to meet Him, as she runs every virtuous and benevolent dame to the welcoming of a honorable visitation, and nice and modest. 

But now? Ah! now. How does the fugitive hide in the face of the agents of the law? And how two persons escape who have been caught performing indecencies in some hidden place, where they thought, that no one was seeing them? This is how they are hiding the poor Adam with his miserable wife! 

Now you are hiding, Eve! I would like now that it would present to you one more time that cursed serpent. What did it promise to you, oh you wretched, and what happened to you? 

It told you, that when you would eat the forbidden fruit, you would become more powerful and stronger, since you would also climb to a throne as a god. 

And now behold, that you are templing; you are scared, because you can see, that your person is not in security. This therefore was the greatness that it promised to you that cunning and wily serpent? 

The serpent had told you, that is, the evil one, that when you would taste that poisonous fruit, you would not die. And here now, you wretched Adam, you run to hide, because you fear for your life. 

What is that fear, which you are feeling? And that anguish, which both you and Eve are experiencing, doesn't it resemble to that anguish, which overpowers the convict, when he thinks about the image of the horrible guillotine? 

It told you, that you would progress, that you would grow, that you would rise even higher than what you were. And now behold, that you have lessen even more; you have weakened even more and you run like the defeated soldier, which the enemy is hunting down, in order to hide yourselves. 

At whose unscrupulous liar's the mouth have you paid attention! And what words misleading and disastrous ones have you taken for life-saving counsels! 

The cunning one has promised you knowledge and wisdom. And how silly and ignorants you appear now, oh wretched protoplasts! 

You run to hide. And therefore you imagine, that it is possible to hide from the eye of Him, Who is called «Father of the lights» and is omnipresent? 

And you think, that you will be able within that creation, which He created and knows better than anyone else, to hide yourselves, so that He will not be able to find you? How foolish you are oh wretched ones! 

Fear however makes you like this. Fear confuses you, and for this, you don't know, what you are doing. The fear, which is the everlasting companion of the sin. The fear, which is born by the conscience at the depths of every guilty one. The fear of punishment, which the Justice of the Great Judge reserves for the transgressor. 

Ah, cursed sin! You are embarrassing us, and you are disgracing us. You are frightening us and you are intimidating us. And yet we stick upon you like the flyes on the honey, which find their death. You drag us and you keep us magnetized and captivated, exactly like some poisonous snakes, which by utilizing their magnetism they magnetize their victims, which they afterwards devour! 

Adam doesn't run now in order to encounter God. And as a natural consequence then God invites him. Where are you, Adam? He tells him. 

And of course God knew very well, where Adam was and in what condition he was found. 

But as a most merciful Educator, Who aimed in inciting Adam to confess on his own his error in order to accept afterwards the punishment for rectification and repentance, God presents Himself to Adam as if He didn't know, where he was and what he was doing. 

«Adam, where are you?». Where are you Adam? The most merciful God is seeking His lamb, which went astray. And He runs to find it and to save it from the certain loss, towards which it is walking by itself. 

God is calling for it. Likewise, my reader, God is calling every sinner as well. He seeks to save him. He aims to guide him to repentance and to restitution. 

And all these thoughts and the exhortations for repentance, which are heard at the depths of our souls after our sin, all the reprehensions of our conscience and all its reproaches is the voice of God, the invitation, which He is sending to us, as He did back then to Adam as well. 

«Adam, where are you?». God is calling him. And this is one manifestation of compassion and sympathy of the Judge towards the transgressor. 

Oh poor Adam! He had drifted towards evil. He hadn't invented it by himself, as Lucifer did in other times. If he had invented it on his own, there would not be anymore any hope of recovery and salvation for him. 

But now the snake deluded him; he represented the evil to him as good; the cunning one deceived him through the intermediation of his beloved Eva. 

And barely before he could even realize it, he was found against God and an enemy of God. For this reason now the love of God restrains His justice and does not let it smash and deliver to the eternal psychic death the guilty and transgressor. 

And for this reason God comes now to punish, yes, Adam, but also to give him at the same time also the hope, that will come for him and for his descendants days of joy and true happiness. 

«Adam, where are you?». Adam is leaving. Adam is hiding. And if God would not look for him, he would continue fleeting and hiding. If the good Shepherd would not seek in order to find His lost lamb, it would continue to run astray and to be at loss. 

And thus, therefore, my brother, if the Father of mercy and of compassion will not come to look for us, if He does not inspire in us feelings of repentance and thoughts of devotion, it is impossible to repent and to be saved. 

The work of salvation of our souls He initiates it and He brings it to an end the benevolent God. And as for us, in this work we don't do anything else other than responding with our weak and feeble strengths of ours, showing ourselves willing to receive of this divine energy the impact and in cooperating ourselves too, as far as it depends on us, to the favorable of this life-saving work completion. 

God is calling Adam, as it was said in the previous narration, and Adam responds. And what does he say? 

«I heard your voice walking in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself». I heard, he says, the sound of your feet. I heard your footsteps walking in the garden and fear came upon me, because I am naked. For this reason I ran and hid myself. 

He hears God coming. But he is naked. He is naked not only in the body, but also in the soul. He is naked, he is guilty and for this he is afraid. 

And yet God still comes to Adam as a Father, Whom Adam indeed despised through his disobedience, but a Father Who cares and sympathizes and is concerned for His lamb gone astray. 

I say this, my reader, for you to contemplate and consider the fear and the terror that they will feel, all those who died in their sins, during that terrible day of the fair retribution. 

Then God will not come as a Father. He will come as an implacable Judge, not any more in order to discipline and to look for the sinners, but in order to punish and condemn them to the eternity. 

He will not come as one of us walking in paradise and stepping as if He was some man. He will come sitting on the clouds of Heaven. He will be accompanied by all the troops of His angels and He will be surrounded by all the magnificence of His power. Oh! what formidable time and what terrible day! 

«And then shall mourn all the tribes of the earth». These tribes, which despised in this life the judgement of the Fair Judge; which did not take into account that great judgment day, they will beat their breasts in mourning. They will rip and will pull in agony the cheeks of their face. Then they will uselessly lament and without any benefit. 

And what a terrible thing! You will see then kings and magnates and tribunes and powerful men, where in only the hearing of their name in other times the people of the earth were trembling and moaned, you will now see them naked. 

Naked of their glory and of their influence; naked of their wealth and of their escorts; naked of every apology and justification; naked and convicts in front of that terrible judgement, where as judge will not sit any man, but the great and eternal God Himself. 

Others trembled in front of them once. And now they tremble themselves. Once their subordinates were hiding at the time of their anger, and now they are hiding themselves. «And they say to the mountains and to the rocks; Come and fall upon us and hide us from the face of the One seated on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb». 

It probably scares you, my reader this image and this representation. Do not be afraid. Do not be confused. But just take care now, while there is still time, to prepare a bright and shining dress, with which you shall find yourself covered during that terrible day. 

Try not to be found naked. And in order not be found naked, you will not, of course, need these luxuriant and warm clothes, which out of wool or out of silk they fabricate in this world the descendants of Adam. And neither will be of use to you those heavy fur coats which during the winter time they seek to protect themselves from the frost the people. 

One and only is the dress that is useful to everyone and necessary, and for everyone the same. Do you know, which one it is? The justice of Jesus Christ. All of you who have been baptised in Christ, our Church is chanting, you have been dressed the Christ. 

Get dressed the virtue of Christ, the sanctity of Christ, the new way of living, which He showed to us and which Himself first lived, the Christ. 

Get dressed, oh Christian. Get dressed with the virtues, which Christ asks you to get dressed with. Strip your soul off from the defects and the evils and decorate it with the perfection of the virtues, which Christ had. And only then you will be dressed. You shall not be naked. And since you will not be naked, you shall not be overwhelmed by that terror, from which got overwhelmed the naked Adam. 

I am naked, says Adam, in his response towards God. But then who has informed you and has made it known to you that you are naked? This is the question, which He puts to our forefather the Creator. 

Being embarrassed, Adam, the fact of feeling and of understanding, that you are naked, is the result of a pernicious cause and a disastrous one. Something else happened first and afterwards followed the shame, which you are now experiencing. 

And because you hesitate and your tongue is tied out of shame and fear and you are having a hard time to confess the wrong, which happened, I will help you in doing this confession of yours I, your Moulder and your Creator. 

Since you are feeling that you are naked and since you are experiencing that fear and that shame I ask you; have you eaten «of the tree whereof I commanded you that you should not eat?». 

Have you then eaten from that tree, from which I, your Moulder, your Creator, your Benefactor, I forbade you to eat? Have you eaten from the fruit of this tree, the only one from which I ordered you to stay away? 

And you abrogated therefore My own commandment, a not so rigorous commandment, since from the so many trees that Paradise has, from one only I have set to you a prohibition to come close to it? «Who has announced to you, that you are naked, if not the very tree, which I commanded you from this only not to eat, and from this tree you have eaten?». 

And Adam does not dare to refuse. Who can hide himself from the omniscience of God, for Adam to manage to hide? And who could fool God for Adam to fool Him too? 

But Adam seeks to protect himself with a nonsensical excuse. He doesn't deny his act, as its cause however he considers his own wife, that woman, which God had given him as companion and assistant in life. 

«The woman, says Adam, which you gave to me, she gave to me from that tree, and I ate». 

In other words Adam the transgression of the commandment he considers it as an act, for which that very God is not completely irresponsible. 

It is as if Adam would say: Eve seduced me. And how was Eve found? You, the Moulder and Creator gave her to me. Why would you give her to me? 

Oh wretched Adam! God gave you Eve, in order to not be alone. He gave her to you, in order to make your days more pleasant and more cheerful. 

He gave her to you, in order to have her assistant in your life. He gave her to you, and when He was giving her to you, yourself also felt the benevolence, that He made to you and with gratitude you cried out: «This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh». 

Who told you now, that you ought to be taught by Eve and then concess to her the privilege of leadership, that God had given to you over her? And who taught you to prefer the suggestion of Eve than the commandment of God? 

And whose fault is it, if you, who, as older that you were and as the head of Eve you ought to be also her teacher and her guide, you have forgotten your place and have let yourself be misled by you woman to the abrogation of the commandment by God? 

After the examination and the interrogation, which God made to Adam, He turns towards Eve. He asks her: «Why did you do this?». Why did you do this? And she replies: «The serpent deceived me». 

The serpent deceived you, that is, the cunning One! He deceived you, because you gave more attention to the words of the serpent than to the words of your Creator. And thus on your own you fooled yourself. Why are you now trying to throw the weight of your sin to the serpent? 

Ah! you poor sinner! You like to experience and to enjoy the delight of sin and the deceptive pleasure. And with all your strength you suck the glass the sin offers to you. And you tighten your lips in order not to escape from you not even a drop from that deadly honey. 

But afterwards? Afterwards you seek to shake off from you the responsibility. The delight and the pleasure you want it and you look for it. The infamy, the shame, the blasphemy the sin carries with it, you try to shake it off. 

Likewise here also Eve with Adam. They first ate the fruit. They tried its lethal sweetness. And now they try to avoid and to remove the responsibility from their shoulders. Vain effort and useless care! 

And take notice, my reader, of how the sinner takes refuge to silly excuses. Adam throws the responsibility to Eve and Eve throws the weight to the serpent. 

And even until today, when it happens someone to nag us, us the children of Adam, for some deviation of ours and for some defect of ours, immediately we seek to excuse ourselves, to find some mitigation, some pretext under which to cover up our error. A really bad heritage has left to us our forefather Adam. 

How much better it would be, Adam, and how much more benefited you would be, oh Eve, if at that moment, that your Creator was speaking to you, you would bow down to Him and with a humbled heart you would take the blame for the whole weight of the sin, you had committed and you would ask for His mercy. 

Of course you would leave from Paradise. Because once you had offended the greatness of God, it was fair that you would be punished. Your punishment nevertheless would be lighter. 

What is there for you to gain, my brother and sinner as I am, with the silly excuses for your sin? It serves you better if you drop down your head and without any obstinacy say the «I have sinned». 

You should say it from inside your heart. You should say it honestly. You should say it being convinced, that you have all the weight of the guilt and all the responsibility for your deviation. 

This way there is a greater certainty, that the correction will be safer and brief and that the mercy of God will come generous upon your sinner soul in order to whiten and to sanctify it. 

End of chapter 4