...the Church convicts sin though her thanksgiving. Through it she recognizes the "vital essence" of evil, the source of sin as unthankfulness, as man's falling away from the "hymning, blessing, praising, giving thanks and worshiping" through which he lives--for man, and in him all creation, knows God and has communion with him. Not giving thanks is the root and the driving force of that pride in which all teachers of the spiritual life, that "art of arts," without exception see the sin that tore man away from God. For the subtlest spiritual essence of pride, properly distinguishable only in the spiritual effort of "discernment of spirits," lies precisely in the fact that, as opposed to all other causes ascribed to the fall, it alone is not from below but from above: it is not from imperfection but from completion, not from deficiency but from an overabundance of gifts, and not from some unexplainable "evil" of an unknown origin, but from enticement and temptation of the divine "very good" of creation and man. Pride is opposed to thanksgiving precisely as unthanksgiving because it arose from the same causes as thanksgiving. It is another, opposite answer to the same gift; it is temptation by the same gift.

We know that, according to the testimony of all who follow the path of struggle with sin, temptation is not yet sin. Christ himself was tempted, and precisely by the gifts he possessed: power, authority, miracle-working. In fact, every gift of God to man, his divine image and perfection itself, is a temptation--and above all the gift to man of his I, the miracle of his absolutely unique, eternal, unrepeatable and indivisible personality, which renders each man "like a king of creation." Temptation is inherent to the personality because out of all creation only man is called by God to love himself, i.e., to be conscious of his divine gift and the miracle of his I. It is actually only through this love for himself that man comprehends God as the Life of his life, as the absolutely desired Thou, in which he finds himself, his fulness, his happiness, his human I, created in the image and likeness of God, who is love. The human personality is love for oneself and thus love for oneself as a bearer of the divine gift of knowledge and ascent into the fulness of life. And here it is innate to convert this love for himself that is implicit in man into love of oneself, into self-love, which constitutes the essence of pride.

No, man is not enticed by "evil" but by himself, by his own divine image, by the divine miracle of his I. He heard the serpent's whisper "you will be like gods" not from outside, but from within, in the blessed fulness of paradise, and wanted to have life in himself and for himself. He wanted all of God's gifts as his own and for himself: "I looked upon the beauty of the garden and my mind was deceived..." (Canon of St Andrew of Crete, ode 2,1)

The fall of man occurred here, at these heights and from these heights: "you will be like gods." But these words were in fact stolen from God. God created us and called us into "his wonderful light" so that we would become "like gods" and have abundant life. What then transformed these words into a lie, into the beginning of the fall, into the source of sin, decay and death? The answer to this question is given precisely by the eucharist, by the thanksgiving that returns us to the throne of the kingdom, grants us to see the face of God and his creation, heaven and earth, the fulfilment of his glory. The eucharist answers not with definitions, words about words, but with its own light and power. For thanksgiving is the power that transforms desire and satisfaction, love and possession, into life, that fulfils everything in the world, given to us by God, into knowledge of God and communion with him. And thus only thanksgiving convicts, i.e., exposes, sin as the falling away of love from thanksgiving, as unthankfulness. Created in the image and likeness of God, who is love, man cannot cease to be love, he "admires" all the same gifts. But it is a love that has ceased to be thanksgiving, i.e., the knowledge of the gift of life and everything in life as not only God's, from God, but as the revelation of God's love to man, as a call to man to transform all gifts and life itself into partaking of the divine life, into knowledge of God.

Life in oneself... But only the Father has "life in himself" (Jn 5:26), only God is Life and therefore the life of any life. The horror and finality of the fall lies in this: wanting life in himself and for himself, man fell away from life. Through sin death entered the world (Rm 5:12) and the world itself became "darkness and the shadow of death." Not transformed by thanksgiving into the "food of immortality," into communion unto life, it became communion unto death, and love for the world. Not transformed by thanksgiving into knowledge of God, it became a dim and self-devouring "lust of the flesh and lust of the eyes and pride of life" (1 Jn 2:16). "Man is a passion, but a useless passion." In saying this Jean-Paul Sartre did not of course know what happened in the falling away of man, in that "original sin," in which ceasing to be a sacrament of thanksgiving, the world died, and life became dying.

We know that all of this, the terrible lawlessness and untruth of sin, the bottomless sorrow and death-dealing power of our fall from God, the power of evil, had once reigned in the world each time that, from the heavenly heights to which Christ's thanksgiving had raised us, these two expressions come forth: "when we had fallen away Thou didst raise us up again..." But we know it because we have been restored, because we have access to the Father and have been made partakers of the kingdom which is to come: "and Thou didst not cease to do all things until Thou hadst brought us up to heaven, and hadst endowed us with Thy Kingdom which is to come."

In Christ human nature is lifted up to heaven, sanctified, deified. "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him, God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God" (1 Cor 2:9).

Paradise was on earth, but we have ascended to heaven, and even now our life "is hid with Christ in God" (Col 3:3). The revelation of this last and highest gift, its endowment, is precisely the Church. And this endowment is accomplished in the sacrament of thanksgiving, in which the Church fulfils herself as heaven on earth.

Blessed Father Alexander Schmemann, "The Eucharist" pp 187-190