A LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH
Inok Vsevolod (Filipiev)
As members of the Orthodox Church, we accept as our duty the established church tradition of remembering all the Orthodox Christians departed this life, our fathers, brothers, and sisters from ages past. In fact, this given sacred tradition is a great gift of God's love towards us sinners. Let us recall, by way of comparison, the pagan attitude towards the dead. We should note that even today pagans comprise the majority of humanity: among them are Hindus, Buddhists, fire-worshippers, and members of numerous cults of Africa and South America. Usually pagans either fear their dead or they deify them. Some burn their dead, others leave them on the roofs of special towers as food for the birds; some dry their skulls and then treat these as idols. Truly, the pagan attitude towards their dead is loathsome [abhorrent].
And what does atheism have to offer in this regard? With characteristic indifference to the fate of the dead beyond the grave, it offers cremation. That is, the same burning of corpses that is found among pagans.
Those who have been present at the ceremony preceding a cremation (in the former Soviet Union, for example), know what a chilling feeling it invokes. A large, empty and sterile hall, grey walls, a dim light. The coffin stands in the middle of the hall. A woman enters and, in a dry voice, asks the relatives if they would like to take their leave of the departed. Everyone is weeping inconsolably, their souls heavy with the awful weight of grief. Then the coffin is placed onto an automatic conveyer, metal doors in the wall open mechanically, and the coffin with the corpse slowly moves away to be burned. The doors clang shut... The believer is reminded involuntarily of the gates of hell, behind which burns the fire of gehenna. Frightful. This is the manifestation of an atheist's love for his dearly departed. One can only lament the wretched state of the millions of people who exist in the darkness of paganism, of heterodoxy, and of atheism, and who thereby deprive themselves of the salvific care of the Orthodox Church for their souls, that care which does not cease with the death of the body but which stretches out to the life of the soul beyond the grave.
What a striking difference there is between the care shown to departed Christians by the Church and the treatment of the deceased on the part of the heterodox world. Within the bosom of the Orthodox Church, a priest arrayed in ecclesiastical vestments accompanies the departed on his journey [v puts' vseya zemli]. The bell tolls, summoning the faithful to pray for the soul of the deceased. The choir chants movingly. The Christians pray that the Lord pardon the sins of the newly-departed and grant him rest with the saints. After the funeral, the coffin with the body is given over to the earth.
In accordance with our faith, from this same earth the bodies of the departed will arise in response to the archangels' trump, to stand at the Last Judgment. At that moment the bodies of the dead will be joined once again to their souls.
Until this time, where are the souls of the deceased? At death they are separated from the body and enter another world. At the same time, the conscious life of the human soul does not cease for an instant. People sometimes wonder: "How can one believe in a conscious life after death if, as sometimes happens while still in this life, people fall into a state of unconsciousness or become retarded?" This is not surprising. The fact of the matter is, the soul, which is joined to the body during life, relates to the surrounding world primarily through the aid of the physical senses of this body. For this reason, the manner in which a person relates to those around him, as well as his perception of his self, can be complicated due to injury or the aging of the organism's brain or nerve centers, which cause the sensory organs to malfunction.
However, when the soul is separated from the body, the soul is no longer bound by the parameters of the physical, sensory organs, and its self-consciousness becomes fully evident.
In its life after death, the soul follows one of two paths: one-into the realm of Light, where "there is neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor sighing"; the other-into the gloomy realm of darkness. Only the prayers of the Church for the departed can free the soul from this prison of hell.
With rare exceptions, we are not given to know the fate of our relatives beyond the grave. For this reason, we must never cease to pray that the Lord have mercy upon them. Even if we were absolutely convinced of the righteousness of this or that person, we can and should pray for him, for if he is in heaven he will respond by praying for us, that the Lord pardon our sins.
In praying for the dead, we give evidence of our sincere, genuine, and disinterested love towards them. For when we do good for our relatives who are still living, they can still repay us, whereas we will receive no more material reward from those who have departed. Nevertheless, we continue to remember them and pray for them, thereby benefiting them spiritually and thus confirming our love for them. And this Christian love overcomes death itself, for it is more powerful than death.
Contrariwise, he who does not pray for his relatives after their death shows that even while they were still alive he very likely loved them with a selfish love, a carnal love, certainly not a spiritual love. This gives at least some of us something to think about.
Let us, therefore, love our departed with a spiritual love, let us remember them in prayer, thereby giving a good example to our children, so that after our death there will be someone to pray for us.
Translated from Vestnik, Diocese of Germany, 3/1999
Nikodemos Orthodox Pub. Soc.
Richfield Springs, NY