the present day devoutly unless we regard it as the last of our whole life” (Step 6:4, 24). The Scripture well states: In all you do, remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin (Sirach 7:36). The great St. Barsanuphius of Gaza gave as his advice to a brother: “Let your thoughts be strengthened with the remembrance of death, the hour of which is not known to any man. Let us strive to do good before we depart from this life — for we do not know on what day we shall be called — lest we turn out to be unprepared and remain outside the bridal chamber with the five foolish virgins” (St. Barsanuphius, Answer 799).
The great Abba Pimen, when he heard of the death of St. Arsenius the Great of Egypt, said: “Blessed is Arsenius! You wept over yourself for the course of earthly life! If we do not weep over ourselves here, we shall weep eternally. It is not possible to escape weeping: either here, voluntarily, or there, in torments, involuntarily” (Patericon of Scetis, in Bishop Ignatius, vol. III, p. 108).
Only a person with this sober Christian outlook on life can dare to say, with the Apostle Paul, that he has a desire to depart, and to be with Christ (Phil. 1:23). Only he who has lived the Christian life of struggle, repentance, and weeping over one’s sins, can say with St. Ambrose of Milan: “The foolish are afraid of death as the greatest of evils, but wise men seek it as a rest after their toils and as the end of evils.”62
Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov concludes his celebrated “Homily on Death” with words that can stand for us also, a hundred years later, as a call to return to the one and only true Christian attitude towards death, putting away all rosy illusions of our present spiritual state as well as all false hopes for the future life:
“Let us arouse in ourselves the remembrance of death by visiting cemeteries, visiting the sick, being present at the death and burial of our close ones, by frequently examining and renewing in our memories various contemporary deaths which we have heard of or seen.... Having understood the shortness of our earthly life and the vanity of all earthly acquisitions and advantages; having understood the frightful future that awaits those who have disdained the Redeemer and redemption and have offered themselves entirely as a sacrifice to sin and corruption — let us turn our mental eyes away from their steady gazing at the deceptive and enchanting beauty of the world which easily catches the weak human heart and forces it to love and serve it; let us turn them to the fearful but saving spectacle of the death that awaits us. Let us weep over ourselves while there is time; let us wash, let us cleanse with tears and confession our sins which are written in the books of the Sovereign of the world. Let us acquire the grace of the Holy Spirit — this seal, this sign of election and salvation; it is indispensable for a free passage through the spaces of the air and for entrance into the heavenly gates and mansions.... O ye who have been banished from Paradise! It is not for enjoyments, not for festivity, not for playing that we find ourselves on earth — but in order that by faith, repentance, and the Cross we might kill the death which has killed us and restore to ourselves the lost Paradise! May the merciful Lord grant the readers of this Homily, and him who has composed it, to remember death during this earthly life, and by the remembrance of it, by the mortification of oneself to everything vain, and by a life lived for eternity, to banish from oneself the fierceness of death when its hour shall come, and through it to enter into the blessed, eternal, true life. Amen” (Vol. III, pp. 181-83).
CHAPTER TEN
Summary of the Orthodox Teaching on the Fate of the Soul After Death
In the first nine chapters of this book we have tried to set forth some of the basic aspects of the Orthodox Christian view of life after death, contrasting them with the widespread contemporary view as well as with older Western views which in a number of respects have departed from the ancient Christian teaching. In the West the authentic Orthodox doctrines of angels, of the aerial realm of fallen spirits, of the nature of human contacts with spirits, of heaven and hell, have been lost or distorted, with the result that an entirely misleading interpretation is being given to “after-death” experiences that are now occurring. The only adequate answer to this false interpretation is the Orthodox Christian doctrine.
This book has been too limited in compass to present the entire Orthodox teaching on the other world and life after death; our attempt has been the more limited one of presenting enough of this teaching to answer the questions raised by today’s “after-death” experiences, and of pointing readers to the Orthodox texts which contain this teaching. Here, in conclusion, we present a final summary of the Orthodox teaching specifically on the fate of the soul after death. This summary consists of an article written a year before his death by one of the last great Russian Orthodox theologians of our times, Archbishop John Maximovitch. His words are printed here in italics, and explanatory titles, comments, and comparisons, together with quotes from various Holy Fathers, have been inserted between the paragraphs in regular Roman type.
LIFE AFTER DEATH By Archbishop John Maximovitch
I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come.
Limitless and without consolation would have been our sorrow for close ones who are dying, if the Lord had not given us eternal life. Our life would be pointless if it ended with death. What benefit would there then be from virtue and good deeds ? Then they would be correct who say: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!” But man was created for immortality, and by His resurrection Christ opened the gates of the Heavenly Kingdom, of eternal blessedness for those who have believed in Him and have lived righteously. Our earthly life is a preparation for the future life, and this preparation ends with our death. “It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Then a man leaves all his earthly cares; the body disintegrates, in order to rise anew at the General Resurrection.
But his soul continues to live, and not for an instant does it cease its existence. By many manifestations of the dead it has been given us to know in part what occurs to the soul when it leaves the body. When the vision of its bodily eyes ceases, its spiritual vision begins.
Bishop Theophan the Recluse, in a message to a dying woman, writes: “You will not die. Your body will die, but you will go over into a different world, being alive, remembering yourself and recognizing the whole world that surrounds you.”63
After death the soul is more, not less, alive and aware than before death. St. Ambrose of Milan teaches: “Since the life of the soul remains after death, there remains a good which is not lost by death but is increased. The soul is not held back by any obstacle placed by death, but is more active, because it is active in its own sphere without any association with the body, which is more of a burden than a benefit to it.”64
St. Abba Dorotheus, the 6th-century monastic Father of Gaza, summarizes the teaching of the early Fathers on this subject: “For as the Fathers tell us, the souls of the dead remember everything that happened here — thoughts, words, desires — and nothing can be forgotten. But, as it says in the Psalm, In that day all their thoughts shall perish (Ps. 145:4). The thoughts he speaks of are those of this world, about houses and possessions, parents and children, and business transactions. All these things are destroyed immediately when the soul passes out of the body.... But what he did against virtue or against his evil passions, he remembers, and nothing of this is lost.... In fact, the soul loses nothing that it did in this world but remembers everything at its exit from this body more clearly and distinctly once freed from the earthliness of the body.”65
62
St. Ambrose, “Death as a Good,” 8:32, in
64
St. Ambrose, “Death as a Good” (