Saint Nicholas Velimirovich
‘Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my laws, and you will live safely in the land. Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety’ (Lev.25, 18; cf. ibid. 26, 5).
What’s the reason why all peoples live in fear? What do they fear on earth? What do individual people fear on earth?
One people fears another, one people trembles before another. One person fears somebody else. Another person trembles before a different one. And the forefather of all of us, Adam, was afraid of paradise. Fear dominated Adam in paradise, so how could his descendants not be overcome with fear, now that we’re exiled from paradise.
When Adam and his wife disobeyed God’s commandment, when they broke the law of obedience, they hid themselves from the face of God (Gen. 3, 8). They hid among the trees of paradise, hid in the forest, just as an ostrich hides its head in the sand when it feels endangered by a hunter.
‘I heard…
