Another Father of the Philokalia, St. Peter Damascene, speaks of “the time of death, when the demons will surround my poor soul, holding the records of all the evil I have committed” (in his Works, Kiev Caves Lavra, 1905, p. 68).
In the Divine services, as has already been noted, there are many prayers, especially addressed to the Mother of God, which imply or directly state the ascetic teaching regarding the toll-houses. A number of these have been quoted in the course of this book. Bishop Ignatius, in quoting many more of them (from the Octoechos, the Euchologion, from prayers on the departure of the soul, from Akathists and canons to the Mother of God and various saints), concludes that “the teaching of the toll-houses is encountered as a generally known and accepted teaching throughout the Divine services of the Orthodox Church. The Church declares and reminds its children of it in order to sow in their hearts a soul-saving fear and to prepare them for a safe transition from temporal life to eternal” (vol. III, p. 149).
Typical of the references to the toll-houses in the Orthodox Menaia (the twelve volumes of daily services to the saints) is this troparion from the service to St. John Chrysostom (Jan. 27); it occurs in the Canon to the Most Holy Theotokos (Canticle 5), written by “John” (evidently St. John Damascene):
Grant me to pass through the noetic satraps and the tormenting aerial legions without sorrow at the time of my departure, that I may cry joyfully to Thee, O Theotokos, Who heard the cry “Hail”: Rejoice, O unashamed hope of all.
But there is no point in simply multiplying citations in Orthodox literature which show how clearly this teaching has been set forth in the Church over the centuries; Bishop Ignatius gives twenty pages of such citations, and many more could be found. But for those who do not like this teaching, it will always be possible somehow to “reinterpret” it or subject it to caricature. Still, even our critic is forced to admit the existence of at least a few of the Orthodox texts that indicate the demonic testing at death, and he defends his position that the toll-houses are “imaginary” by saying that “such visions are avoidable if we struggle in this life and repent of our sins and acquire virtues” (6:12, p. 24). But this is the very meaning of the teaching of the toll-houses which he has caricatured and denied! The teaching of the toll-houses is given to us precisely so that we might labor now , might struggle against the demons of the air in this life — and then our meeting with them after death will be a victory and not a defeat for us! How many ascetic strugglers has it inspired to do precisely this! But who among us can say that he has won this battle already and need not fear the demonic testing after death?
The present writer remembers well the solemn services for the repose of Archbishop John Maximovitch in 1966, culminating in the day of his funeral. All present felt they were witnessing the burial of a saint; the sadness at parting from him was swallowed up by the joy of acquiring a new heavenly intercessor. And yet several of the hierarchs present, and especially Bishop Savva of Edmonton, inspired the more fervent prayer of the people by citing the “fearful toll-houses” through which even this holy man, this miracle of God’s grace in our times, had to pass. No one present thought that our prayers alone would save him from the “tests” of the demons, and no one pictured in his mind an exchange of “tolls” at some “houses” in the sky; but these appeals helped to inspire the fervent piety of the faithful, and doubtless this helped him to get through these toll-houses. The holy man’s own life of good deeds and almsgiving, the intercession of the saints whom he glorified on earth, the prayer of the faithful which was actually another product of his love for them — doubtless all this, in a way known to God, and which we need not search out, helped him to repel the assaults of the dark spirits of the air. And when Bishop Savva made a special trip to San Francisco to be present at the services for the fortieth day after Archbishop John’s repose, and told the faithfuclass="underline" “I have come to pray together with you for the repose of his soul on this significant and decisive fortieth day, the day when the place is determined where his soul will dwell until the general and terrible Judgment of God” (Blessed John, The Chronicle of the Veneration of Archbishop John Maximovitch, St. Herman Brotherhood, 1979, p. 20) — he was again inspiring the prayer of the faithful by citing another belief of the Orthodox teaching on life after death. Such things are seldom heard by Orthodox Christians nowadays, and therefore we should all the more treasure the contact we still have with such representatives of the Orthodox ascetic tradition.
Among Russian Orthodox Church writers, opposition to the teaching of the toll-houses has long been recognized as one of the signs of ecclesiastical “modernism.” Thus, Bishop Ignatius devoted a large part of his volume on life after death to the defense of this teaching, which was already under attack in mid-19th century Russia; and incidentally, contrary to the unfounded opinion of the critic that the toll-houses themselves are accepted only by those under “Western influence,” the Roman Catholic and Protestant West has no notion whatever of the toll-houses, which exist only in the Orthodox ascetic teaching, and the attack against them in the Church today is precisely from those (as in the modernist Orthodox seminaries) who are strongly “Western” in mentality and have little respect for traditional Orthodox piety.
Quite recently Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, perhaps the greatest living theologian of the Orthodox Church, has written an article in defense of the toll-houses, written in part as an answer to the present critic (Orthodox Russia, 1979, no. 7; English translation in Nikodemos, Summer, 1979). In this article he warns that in our contemporary non-Orthodox society there are often “questions of our Faith (which are) raised and treated from an un-Orthodox point of view by persons of other confessions, and sometimes by Orthodox Christians who no longer have a firm Orthodox foundation under their feet.... In recent years a critical approach to a whole series of our Church views has become more noticeable; these views are accused of being ‘primitive,’ the result of a ‘naive’ world view or piety, and they are characterized by such words as ‘myths,’ ‘magic,’ and the like. It is our duty to respond to such views.”
And Bishop Theophan the Recluse gives perhaps the soberest and most down-to-earth answer to those who are unwilling to accept the Orthodox ascetic teaching: “No matter how absurd the idea of the toll-houses may seem to our ‘wise men,’ they will not escape passing through them” (see above, p. 86).
The toll-houses are not a “moral fable” made up for “simple people,” as the critic believes (5:6, p. 26), they are not a “myth” or “imaginary” or a “wild tale,” as he says — but a true account, handed down in the Orthodox ascetic tradition from the earliest centuries, of what awaits each of us at death.
Conclusion
The preservation of the age-old tradition of Orthodox piety in the contemporary world has become a battle against overwhelming odds. The Orthodox flocks for the most part have become so worldly that an Orthodox priest who wishes to hand down and teach this tradition is tempted to despair over the very possibility of such a task. Most priests and bishops end by following their flocks and “adapting” the tradition to the worldliness of the flocks; and thus the tradition fades and dies....