Have we found paradise?.Archimandrite Aimilianos Simonopetra.

On Thursday, May 9, Archimandrite Aimilianos, the former Hegumen of Simonopetra Monastery, and spiritual father of many monks, nuns and lay people, reposed in the Lord, at the Monastery of the Annunciation in Ormylia (Chalkidiki) at the age of 85, after a long illness. Memory Eternal!.

“the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Delight to cultivate and keep it” (Gen 2.15).

Archimandrite Aimilianos
 Simonopetra.

 Those plants were like a robe of divine beauty, forming a natural world, a natural expression, of God's majestic holiness. The nat­ural world was a reflection of God's grandeur, and through nature God was visible to the eyes of our first ancestors. In tending the garden they were attending to the glory and majesty of God, care­fully tilling and cultivating the living things around them.

In the first place, then, comes work. We can never experience God without work. People who don't work bard and succeed at their earthly labors are not likely to find much Success in their spir­itual lives. We have to work.

After placing Adam and Eve in the garden, God said to them: “you may eat of any of the trees in paradise” (Gen 2.16). Don't be sur­prised by this. Eating is also a spiritual task, because paradise is a place that relates both to the senses of the body and to those of the intellect. Adam communed with God by means of the fruit of the trees, which was a figure of the food of heaven, about which Christ says: Take, eat, and drink (Mt 26.26-27). By eating of the food of the garden, Adam wasn't merely nourishing his body, but also his soul. It was a way for him to participate in God. And thus when we hear the words: Take, eat, drink, we hear the voice of God calling us to the communion of paradise. But whereas Adam's food was the fruit of the garden, we eat of the bread which came down from heaven (Tn 6.32-35).

For Adam, the act of eating and drinking was an ascent toward God. And so it is with us: we are nourished by the divine teach­ings, and by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Mt 4.4). The words of the Fathers are also food and drink, as are the lives of the saints, and all the prayers and hymns of the Church. And this is our garden of delights, our Eden, a divine banquet, an enjoyment of, and inebriation with, God. This is how the kingdom of God is made palatable to us, digestible, and thus able to offer it­self to us as spiritual nourishment.

Of course, there was one tree, as you know, the fruit of which Adam was forbidden to eat, because he wasn't yet ready, he hadn't matured enough. In order for someone to receive a great spiritual gift, or the revelation of a great mystery, he must grow and mature in obedience, in order to show, over a long period of time, that this is what he wanted. This is why your spiritual father may give you a rule: "For two years you'll do this or that," so that you can show in those two years, or two months, or whatever the time is, that there's been a change for the better, with your obedience being the sign of your commitment. That is what God did with Adam.

That God sought to bring Adam to knowledge by degrees can be seen by the introduction of animals into the garden. Before pre­senting him with Eve, God presented Adam with the animals, and told him to name them (Gen 2.19). He gave him no other orders or instructions. He wanted Adam to realize that he was the king of creation, able to impose names on all the creatures. But what did Adam feel? Exactly what God wanted him to feel: that he was alone. All the animals approached him in pairs, and all the pairs lived col­lectively in herds, flocks, and various kinds of social arrangements. Adam, however, was unique among creatures in being alone. He thus perceived the need for a helper, for human community and society.

"Let us make him a helper 

of his own kind" (Gen 2.1S).

It was then that God said: Let us make him a helper of his own kind (Gen 2.1S). So God made woman. And yet this was not be­cause of any moral problem, or because of anything biological or physical, because marriage isn't a physical relationship, even though the body participates in it. Thus the creation of Eve was a sacred rite, a mystical act, a rite of initiation, because marriage is a pas­sage to the fullness of the life: Christ. To marry is to enter the kingdom, to enter paradise.

And this becomes clear when we recall the words of the Prophet Malachi: “She is your partner and the wife of your covenant” (Mal 2.14) . You and your wife, in other words, are one, and together you have signed God's covenant. Marriage, then, is an oath taken before God, the establishment of a covenant. And this covenant is not signed with blood, in the way that Christ signed the New Covenant, but is signed by the cohabitation and communion of the husband and the wife.

And the prophet goes on to ask the following: “Has not one God created and sustained for you the spirit of life?” (Mal 2 .14). This means that it was not one God who created you and another who made your wife, but one and the same God who created you both and brought you together in marriage. It's as if God is saying: "I am one God, and thus I place upon the two of you a single stamp, a single sign; My imprint makes you Mine, and at the same time makes you one."

And then the prophet says: “And there was a remainder of His spirit” (MaI2.Is) . We know that God breathed into Adam the breath of life (Gen 2.7). But when He did, He held back some of His breath, a remainder of His spirit, so that it might be breathed into the woman, so that she too might become a living soul (Gen 2.7). And thus God says to the husband: "Do you see? I gave some of my breath to you, and some of it to your wife. But my Spirit is one, and so now you and she are one person." And all of this is but a foreshadowing, a prelude, to the unity of all mankind in the body of the Church.

The prophet continues: “What does God seek but godly offspring?” (Mal 2.15). Those who marry are to have children. Certainly, so that the children can also make their way to heaven, where God has inscribed their names in the book of life. But this is not simply a matter of biological reproduction. God wants you to feel His life ­giving, productive presence in your union, so that your commu­nion and your home may be filled with life.

Therefore guard yourselves in your spirit and do not forsake the wife of your youth (Mal 2.15). Don't abandon your wife. Marriage is indissoluble. Why? For the same reason that God and the Church are indissoluble. If the Church could be broken up and made into many churches, if God could be divided and broken up into parts, only then would it be possible for marriage to be broken, since hus­band and wife together are the Church. That's how high God has exalted the state of marriage: it is the mystery of Christ and His Church (Eph 5.32).

It was in paradise that Adam learned how to live in commu­nity, and this is why all community and all communal forms of life look back to paradise as the place of their origin. The archetype for society first appeared in paradise, and this was itself a revelation to human beings of the form of God's eternal kingdom.

But there can be no true community without a voluntary, self­ offering of one's freedom to God. The co-existence of isolated indi­viduals each bent on the pursuit of his or her own private interests and desires, may perhaps be termed a kind of society, but it cannot be called a community. God has given me the gift of my freedom for no other reason than that I should return it to Him. But if I seek in­stead to retain my freedom in a selfish, egotistical way, I shall be­come a slave of mindless impulse and desire. My need for love and companionship is essentially a longing for God, and not even my marriage will be of any help to me if I do not have the Church for my spouse. Marriage, then, like monasticism, is a longing for the in­finite; it is not the satisfaction of a biological drive, but an orienta­tion of the self toward the eschaton. Marriage is a journey, an ascent toward the perfection of paradise, which is, as we've said, a place that we've already entered and into which we continue to progress.

Father Aimilianos in Pascha

sharing the Holy light.

This is why Solomon says: “Drink waters from your own vessels and from the wells of your own springs” (Prov 5.15). What does he mean by this? It means you are to have only one wife. You are not to go running to other wells, to other women, where you have no business to be. You are not to partake of enjoyments that are not meant for you. At the same time, monogamy has a deeper mean­ing: we are the bride of one God, and each of us is barred from drinking at other wells, from seeking to refresh ourselves at alien sources. We must drink, in other words, only from the rivers of paradise, only from the cup of life given to us within the Church.

As the Psalmist says, we've been espoused to the beauty of God (cf. Ps 46.5), which is the Church, the heavenly paradise. To her we must be faithful, and from her our eyes must not wander, and we must never forget the vows we've made to her, so as never to fall away. We must be entranced and absorbed by her beauty. It is she who brings us God, and without her we cannot live. When we have the well, we also have the wall, along with the foundation; then we have everything.

How does a monk live day and night for God? He can only do this to the extent that he is already living in paradise. And this is the proper aim of every human life. As much as we can, let us try to do in spirit, in a spiritual sense, what monks do every day in their monasteries. Let us feel that we are separate from the world. That means that we are living in the world, but are not of the world (cf. In 15.19). My salvation will be worked out in the monastery. Yours will take place in your home, the place of your daily existence, and in your social life, and through your church. Wherever we are, we will drink from our own wells, and if we remain faithful to the Church, our cups will be brimming with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The first paradise and its first occupants are now gone. The sec­ond paradise, which is the place of communion with God, is the Church. It is the spiritual paradise in which dwells Christ, the sec­ond Adam. And Christ, having clothed himself in my human na­ture, has entered into the depths of my being, so that now paradise is within us, for we are filled with the presence of God. Wherever I am, wherever you are, my dear friends, wherever we happen to be, and despite the fact that we are sinners, that is where you will find paradise. Have we then found paradise? We have, and it is within us.

Reference:

The Way of the Spirit. Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra.(2009)