Beauty of Orthodoxy

,,Let each of us not forget the benefit that fasting brings. It is the physician of our souls. For one, it humbles the body. For another, it calms anger. For another, it drives away sleep. For another, it plants the desire to do good deeds. For another, it cleanses the mind and frees it from wicked thoughts. For another, it binds the loose and unrestrained tongue, so that it does not utter superfluous and irreverent words. For another, it prevents the eyes from looking hither and thither and from searching out vain and harmful things."

,,Fasting, little by little, thins the thick layer of sin that covers the soul and drives away the darkness from it, just as the sun drives away the mist, cleanses our spiritual eyes, and reveals to us the sun of righteousness, Jesus Christ."

Icon of the Banishment of Adam and Eve from Paradise

,,Regarding the very nature of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, most Church Teachers believe that it was true, as were the other trees in Paradise, because Holy Scripture says: “And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every kind of tree, pleasant to the sight, and good for food; and in the midst of Paradise was the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” It is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because, tasting of it, man discovered the good of obedience and the evil of resistance to the will of God.

The tree of knowledge in Paradise was a kind of test, a trial, an exercise of human obedience or disobedience. That is why it was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Perhaps this name was given to it because it gave those who ate its fruit the power to know their own nature. This knowledge is good for those who are perfect and strengthened in the contemplation of God [ἐν τῇ θείᾳ θεωρίᾳ] and for those who are not afraid of falling. Because they, striving persistently in this contemplation, have acquired a certain habit. However, it is not good for those who are untried and ruled by passionate desires, since they are not established in good and are insufficiently strengthened in their attachment to only what is good. By its nature, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not the one that brought death. On the contrary, it was good, like all the others made by God, only that He chose this one to be the medium through which man’s obedience to Him would be proven. In the little commandment was expressed the whole will of God regarding the existence of man in Paradise, “and the will of God is the most perfect constitution and law.”