By St. Fotius Great
Question 14: What do the words mean: “Their eyes opened” (Gen. 3: 7), and how did the crime have the power to open their eyes?
The words “opened their eyes” do not mean that the crime has opened their eyes – not to be such a thought! Nor is it written that in the act of the crime itself, their eyes will open, and after it. Because it is said, “And when he took the woman from the fetus, he ate, and gave her husband, and ate, and the eyes of both of them opened” (Gen. 3: 7), which means the following:
Awareness of sin usually comes with the very committing sin, and it is then that one begins to grasp the size of the audacity he has committed. That is, when the passion pushes forward, when the inner impulse enters sin, it is only after the lawless act, after the passion subsides and calms down, then the mind, as it rises from this dense fog, and when it acquires its sobriety again, begins to see what has done and in what condition it has been. Then one acquires a clearer awareness of what has been done, and with the remorse of the conscience that eats it and tortures it, begins to clearly see what before, under the influence of passion, he could not see.
Anyway, everyone proceeds to sin under the influence of what the cunning excites us, luring us, weakens us, intoxicates us, and casts us in turmoil, giving us relaxed and blurred thoughts, and paralyzing our ability to recognize and distinguish good from evil. But after the case is committed, he faces us with our own madness, and gloomlessly reveals what he has previously concealed with all sorts of tricks. And it is with the means by which the whole burden of the crime reveals to us that he strives to despair the one who has sinned.
Therefore, the words “opened their eyes” should not be understood as a previous time, nor before the breach of the order. Rather, it was then that their eyes were open-they were not yet deceived by the whispers of the snake, and their mind was awake, capable of distinguishing what they should do.
Therefore, not that they did not have vision before, and that they acquire it at the moment of sin, on the contrary: it is during sin that they are blinded, and as soon as they commit it and calm down, then they only regain their vision.
So the wicked, who from the very beginning is the evil and enemy of our nature, though he himself knows from his own experience that the awareness of sin comes only after evil work, has not repented or changed. Although he knows from what he has experienced that the sharp sting of conscience comes after sin, he still undertakes to introduce others to the crime. Because, he tells them, “On the day you eat from it, your eyes will open” (Gen. 3: 5).
Then, the one who, from the beginning, has made evil and is the father of the lie (John 8:44), mixes with the spark of truth the whole darkness of lies and says, “You will be like gods knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3: 5). Not in the sense that they really knew good and evil, as if they had received a divine eye; And rather-because they were blind to sin, blinded by the passionate attraction to crime, after they sinned, only then did they realize their audacity and “awakened” by the delusion.
And why, after their eyes open, then for the first time they are aware of the nakedness of their genitals and are ashamed? Because: the passion of lust is worse than anyone else, it cannot be easily curled even by the laws of chastity, and more: when the lustful attraction is awakened in a living being, the other passions are usually awakened with it.
In addition, from that moment on, all other sins are subjected to a conscious assessment and condemnation, because before that moment the spiritual law and the civil law usually attribute the sin of ignorance or mental immaturity.
Illustrative photo: Jesus healing, fresco.
