Ambrose sees in the pre-fall condition of Adam, not a fullness of life per se, but the shadow of it; an “umbra vitae” (In Paradiso, 5.29). Adam was made by God to grow “from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3.18); from the umbra and “coolness of morning” (cf. Gen. 3.8), to solidity and brightness of broad noon day; from Garden paradise to the Civic paradise “whose builder and maker is the Lord” (Heb. 11.10).
In the fall, then, Adam exchanged living in the shadow of life, for living in the shadow of death.
In this exchange Giorgio Agamben identifies “the process that will lead paradise to become, from a place of delight and originary justice, nothing but the ambiguous backdrop of sin and corruption” (14). Since the Fall it is precisely the place of Pleasure and Delight and Longing that we, the children of Adam, most clearly see the result of our rebellion. Things have been “subject to frustration” (Rom. 8.20). And nowhere is this frustration more evident than in our relationship to things intended for our pleasure.
Christ’s First Coming carried with it the freedom from the shadow of death, and an unyoking of pleasure from the corruption of the Fall. His Second Coming promises not so much a return to the pre-Fall garden, a return to the shadow of life, but our welcome into the mature and glorified City of God. No longer embryonic in form, but Life Eternal. Not a return to the grape juice of Eden, but a reception into the vintage of Zion. It is more real, not less so. Behind us is the shadow, before us the brightness and the Body.
To pick up on a theme from yesterday’s homily, a joy we have as Christians waiting for the Fulfillment, is that we are not the only ones waiting, we are not the only ones “making ready” or “preparing the way”. Our Lord told us when he departed that he was leaving to “prepare a place for us” (John 14.3). And while this did have immediate reference to the Cross, it also carried future implications. Our Lord waits for us. And his Spirit is at work among us to build us up into the full measure of the stature of Christ (cf. Eph. 4.13). He is also making ready and preparing.
The gladness inside of Christian hope is that we are the ones being waited for, and eagerly expected. And that it is not merely our desires for Him that will find solidity in the Second Coming, will no longer be mere anticipatory umbrae. It is rather that His great desire will be fulfilled, as Jesus prayed on the night of his betrayal: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am” (John 17.24).
You, my friend, are waited for, and gladly expected.
To conclude it is not without meaning that Jesus prays this prayer of desire in a garden, at night (the beginning of the Jewish Day). For he is the true and greater Adam, in a Garden, in the cold of the (very early) morning. And just as the umbra vitae of Adam’s beginning looked forward to its divine satisfaction in the purposes of God, so also the prayers and longings poured-out by the Son in the shadows of Olivet, will find satisfaction in the restoration of all things.
In that day they will say, "Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation." (Is. 25.9)