It is not accidental, therefore, that the biblical story of the Fall is centered again on food. Man ate the forbidden fruit. The fruit of that one tree, whatever else it may signify, was unlike every other fruit in the Garden: it was not offered as a gift to man. Not given, not blessed by God, it was food whose eating was condemned to be communion with itself alone, and not with God. It is the image of the world loved for itself, and eating it is the image of life understood as an end in itself.
To love is not easy, and mankind has chosen not to return God’s love. Man has loved the world, but as an end in itself and not as transparent to God. He has done it so consistently that it has become something that is “in the air.” It seems natural for man to experience the world as opaque, and not shot through with the presence of God. It seems natural not to live a life of thanksgiving for God’s gift of a world. It seems natural not to be eucharistic.
The world is a fallen world because it has fallen away from the awareness that God is all in all. The accumulation of this disregard for God is the original sin that blights the world. And even the religion of this fallen world cannot heal or redeem it, for it has accepted the reduction of God to an area called “sacred” (“spiritual,” “supernatural”)—as opposed to the world as “profane.” It has accepted the all-embracing secularism with attempts to steal the world away from God….
When we see the world as an end in itself, everything becomes itself a value and consequently loses all value, because only in God is found the meaning (value) of everything, and the world is meaningful only when it is the ‘sacrament’ of God’s presence.”
–Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (New York: Saint Vladimir’s Press, 1970), p.16 (cited in the Sunday sermon by yours truly)
Today we commemorate the 34th anniversary of the repose of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, Dean of St Vladimir’s Seminary and a leading 20th century Orthodox Christian theologian.https://t.co/UWiIBmB4uf#svots #FrAlexanderSchmemann pic.twitter.com/TLMdigNp4S
— St Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary (@stvlads) December 13, 2017