Great and Holy Lent: Where Do the Souls Live After Death?

My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE. Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ.

GREAT AND HOLY LENT: WHERE DO THE SOULS LIVE AFTER DEATH?

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One wonders where the souls, which have been separated by death from the body, live? To a similar question, the pillar of Orthodoxy, Saint Athanasius, gives the following answer:

"This question is "a strange and fearful one and hidden from mankind". For God has not permitted someone to return from there to tell us where and how the souls live after they have departed. But, the Holy Father continues, we are informed by the Holy Scripture, "that the souls of the sinners are in Hades", and according to the Psalmist, they are "in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep" (Psalm 88:6). And according to Job, they are in "the land of gloom and chaos, where light is as darkness" (Job 10:22), where there is no light at all; where no one can see the life which mortals live on earth. But the souls of the righteous, still according to the same Father, as we learn from the thief on the cross, "are in paradise after the Parousia (The Second Coming) of Christ" (cf. St. Luke 23:43). For "Christ Our God opened Paradise", not only for "the soul of the holy thief, but also for all the souls of later Saints" (St. Athanasios the Great, To Antiochos the Ruler, Question 19).

Those who have died have gone "Thither? But where is [thither], how, in what place, in what way?" To these questions no one has been able to give adequate answers! The only thing we know is that after death the souls go "there were the only eternal and only immortal, where the only good and the only loving Creator of the souls and the bodies, God Himself, is present" (Saint John Chrysostom, On Patience and On Not Weeping Bitterly Over the Dead, PG 60, 724). The souls, writes, elsewhere, the same Father, "after their departure from earth, are led to a particular place". But from this "place" they cannot return. They live there "anticipating that dreadful day" of the Universal Judgment" (St. John Chrysostom, On St. Matthew, Homily 28, 3). How wise indeed are the Holy Fathers and with what reverence they stand and express themselves before the mystery of God! They do not dare to express opinions of their own, in spite of the abundant enlightenment which they have received from the abundant enlightenment which they have received from the Triune God. Saint Athanasius confesses that the mystery of death "is strange and dreadful and hidden from mankind". Saint John Chrysostom adds that "no one has been able to explain it". What more can we say? Let us also add simply what Saint Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain writes on the same subject:

"The souls of both the righteous and the sinners, when they depart from the body, do not remain any longer upon earth and upon present things here, but directly go to the place where they are by God ordained to be". In order to support this opinion Saint Nikodimos refers to the comments of Saint John Chrysostom, which we noted above, and again to what the same Father writes when he interprets the Parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Moreover, he refers to the words of Saint John of Sinai who teaches: "Upon separation, those who desired heavenly things go upward in part, while those again who desired earthly things go downward; no one of those who is separated remains any longer in the middle" (St. John of Sinai, Κλίμαξ (The Ladder), Homily 26, On the Discrimination of Thoughts and Passions and Virtues, Part I). These words, which Saint Nikodimos comments on, following an anonymous interpreter, have the following meaning: "separation" is death. When people die, some will go upward to heaven with their soul only, leaving the body below. But those who thought and loved only the earthly things, descent to Hades after death. After death no one remains "in the middle", that is upon this earth. After these comments Saint Nikodimos concludes: "It is to be concluded from these words of the Saints that those who speak leisurely and say that the departed souls of the righteous and of the sinners wander around the earth for forty days and visit those places where they lived" give air to mere vanities and myths. For such things "are improbable and no one should consider them to be true" (Saint Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain, Νέα Κλίμαξ, (The New Ladder: Interpretation of the Seventy Five Aanvathmoi of the Octoechos, compiled from various ecclesiastical writers), Constantinople 1844, p. 3000-301.)

After death, therefore, the souls leave this world and journey to some "place". But this place must be understood in a spiritual, and not a material sense. Saint John of Damascus, speaking about the "place" of God, refers to it as spiritual. There, he writes, one understands the existence of the spiritual and incorporeal nature; it is a nature that exists of the spiritual and incorporeal nature; it is a nature that exists and is active and contained not in a bodily or material manner, but in a spiritual manner. For this nature does not have "a shape" to be contained in bodily dimensions. Furthermore, an immaterial Angel is "not contained bodily in a place". It is said, rather, that an Angel is either here or there, or someplace else because where he is active is described in a spiritual manner. Only the infinite and uncircumscribed God can be active "in every place and in the same manner and at every moment as one who is everywhere present and fills all things". The Angels, as immaterial spirits, simply act quickly and move fast from one place to another with readiness and great ease (St. John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 1, 13, PG 94.). We must understand something similar in the case of the soul. The souls as spirits are not contained "bodily" but "spiritually" in a "spiritual place." However, and we underline this in particular, they do not move from place to place, nor do they wander here and there, as some people want to believe; and they certainly do not wander here on earth! (Saint John Chrysostom, On Matthew, Homily 28, 3). They remain in that spiritual realm where they await the common resurrection of the bodies and the Final Judgment. (Source: The Mystery of Death by Nikolaos P. Vassiliadis)

(To be continued)

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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!"--Saint John Chrysostom

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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia,
The sinner and unworthy servant of God

+Father George