Homily on the Fall
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
After the Fall, Adam attempts to deceive God; he desires to become a god himself. When a man begins to sin, it becomes exceedingly difficult for him to stop. Therefore one must never say: “I will sin now and repent later.” For it is by no means certain that repentance will follow. Sin carries a man away, as it carried Adam away.
And do you know how far Adam was carried?
To the very depths of hades itself, where Christ found him after His saving death upon the Cross.
God said to Adam:
“Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree whereof I commanded you that you should not eat?” (Gen. 3:11).
Thus Adam already regards God as an enemy; he is ashamed before God and fears Him. Even now many people perceive God in the same way — as some distant and terrible force: something exists, yet it would be better if that Something remained far away. For men fear God because they do not wish to repent. This disposition comes from that very moment of the Fall.
We are now like distorted copies — like a corrupted matrix. The first image became damaged, and from it proceed damaged copies: human beings are born bearing an inner corruption.
Then God, as it were, says plainly: “Repent — I already know everything.”
But Adam, who had been ready to sin for the sake of his wife, immediately shifts the blame onto her. So it always happens: the man who departs from God inevitably betrays the very one for whose sake he sinned.
Adam spoke words outwardly beautiful:
“The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat” (Gen. 3:12).
The wife is guilty — the one You gave to be with me — while I myself am entirely innocent.
Have you noticed how we likewise seek someone to blame for everything?
God sees that in such a state man is incapable of repentance.
Then God turns to the woman — perhaps she will repent. But the woman answers:
“The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat” (Gen. 3:13).
“I was deceived; I am not guilty.”
Again the blame is cast upon another — upon the devil, the serpent.
God sees that man has rendered himself spiritually incurable, for he refuses repentance. Had Adam repented then, history itself would have taken another course; God would have forgiven him. Evil had only begun, yet from that moment the descent unfolds.
God knows to what extent evil will grow, and therefore He acts to restrain it.
The first thing He does is to limit the devil himself — the source of evil. He says to the serpent:
“You are cursed above all animals. You will crawl on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers; He will strike your head, and you will strike His heel” (Gen. 3:14–15).
You wanted to be equal to Me — now you will crawl upon the earth, feeding on corruption and human sin. You will never achieve lasting union with humanity, because I will break that alliance. In the end, you will even hate those who serve you.
And One will come who will be born from a Woman without the participation of a man. The Seed of the Woman will crush your head, though you will wound Him in the heel.
This refers to Jesus Christ. He destroyed the devil’s plans, even though the devil wounded Him by leading Him to the Cross and to death. Thus the ancient prophecy was fulfilled — the prophecy known as the Protoevangelium, the First Gospel.
Then God addressed the woman:
“Because you have done this, I will greatly increase your suffering in pregnancy; you will give birth in pain. Your desire will be toward your husband, and he will rule over you” (Gen. 3:16).
An instinctive and irrational attraction toward the husband now becomes part of human nature. Pregnancy and childbirth become accompanied by suffering. Because she attempted to overturn the order established by God and place herself above her husband, a corrective medicine is given — a healing of pride.
Finally, God speaks to Adam:
“Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree I commanded you not to eat from, the ground is cursed because of you. It will produce thorns and thistles for you” (Gen. 3:17–18).
The earth itself becomes resistant. The whole world becomes like a vast hospital in which humanity must be healed. Healing is painful and unpleasant, but necessary.
“You will eat bread by the sweat of your face all the days of your life.”
Work will no longer be pure joy as it was when humanity lived in harmony with God. Labor now becomes burdened with struggle. And the body, taken from the earth, begins to produce passions and illnesses — the inner “thorns and thistles” growing within us.
As Gregory the Theologian said, we have become bearers of a corpse. Our body — destined for death — weighs down the soul. We want to pray, but become sleepy; we try to think deeply, and fatigue appears; we desire goodness, yet bodily needs interfere. In this way the body humbles us and restrains our pride.
Yet the Lord comforts us, saying that this condition is temporary — until we return to the earth from which we were taken:
“You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19).
The body returns to the earth and decays, while the soul descends into hades.
What is hades?
Before Christ’s coming, all people — even the righteous — went there. Ancient descriptions of hades, found among Christians, Jews, and pagans alike, speak of gates that function mainly in one direction: everyone may enter, but no one leaves.
Hades is a realm of darkness where immortal souls remain conscious but powerless, like a person in a dream. In dreams we experience things but cannot change them. So it is there: a person exists in a terrible reality that cannot be altered, because after death repentance is no longer possible; only what a person has become remains.
Even the saints before Christ descended there. This continued until Christ’s descent into hades, when He led the righteous out. Humanity had become so weakened that only the hand of God could raise them to life.
The difference between the righteous and sinners in hades was this: the righteous possessed hope. During earthly life they had encountered God, and the memory of communion with Him filled them with light. The Bosom of Abraham was therefore a place of hope within hades.
Sinful souls, however, remained in torment — and remain there still. What kind of torment? For example, a drunkard who lived for drinking but now has no body and no mouth — he remains forever in craving and deprivation. Hell is precisely this: a condition a person creates for himself.
May God’s mercy be with you. May the Lord remember you.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
