God planted a beautiful garden in Eden in the East and there he put the man he had fashioned (Genesis 2.4-8).
This is the beginning of the story of the creatures in heaven and on earth. In the middle of that garden, God caused two trees to grow: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2.9). God gave the man this command, ‘You are free to eat of all the trees in the garden, except of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat of it, you are doomed to die.’ (2.17).
The man, instead of eating the fruit of the tree of life, chose to eat of the forbidden tree, offended by the prohibition as if it were an insult to his free will. With his disdain and contempt towards the divine command to eat from the fruit of the tree of life, the man preferred the slavery of death. Man might have thought that through the power of his free will, by eating the fruit of the tree of life he would have remedied his death. But he encountered the free will of God, who banned man from His kingdom, and commanded the Cherubim and the flaming sword to guard all roads leading to the tree of life (3.24).
We read this biblical account of the Book of Creation during the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday, and come face to face with the astounding arrogance of people when they find out they are generously given a lavish power.
Yet, we are sitting facing the rock-hewn tomb of Jesus, the entrance blocked with a huge stone, sealed and guarded by the chief priests and Pharisees. (Matthew 27.66). They wanted to make sure the Son of God whom they killed would stay buried (Matthew 27.63–65).
There are many instances in our own lives when we find ourselves with the Apostles not believing that the Lord truly has risen (Mark 16.11). But when we sit down at the table of the Lord to eat his Body and drink his Blood, our physical and spiritual eyes are opened and we see Jesus of Nazareth, the prophet powerful in action and speech before God and the whole people (Luke 24.19), commanding the Cherubim and the flaming sword to open the access to Himself, the tree of eternal life.
We must eat the fruit of that life-giving tree in order to be in communion with the immortality of our Lord, to give life to our new nature to which the Heavenly Father called us as His children. Indeed, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem points out that “God predestined us to His adoption and made us conform to the glorious Body of Christ; therefore, you who are in communion with Christ truly are Christs.” (Mystagogical Catechesis, 3.1).
God made us worthy to dare in all confidence to call Him Father, not only to declare holy His Name, but to sanctify that Name, that is through our works and behavior call all men to praise and honor God, to take part in the immortality of Christ.
We need unbounded humility to validate our calling to such ineffable grace. We must empty our arrogant pretentiousness and be buried with Christ in His tomb, asking Him to give us His faith, to give us His life so that we may sprout, grow and bear fruit. Through our good deeds we should be witnesses of having truly eaten not only the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but through the power of divine adoption, to have extended our arm (Genesis 3.22) and eaten the fruit of eternal immortality from the tree of life.
