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.
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THE SOUL AFTER DEATH
By Father Serpaphim Rose of blessed memory.
Summary of the Orthodox Teaching 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.
LIFE AFTER DEATH
By Saint John Maximovitch
"I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come" (Nicene Creed).
"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 I 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" (Hebrews 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...
"...Saint Abba (Father) Dorotheos, the 6th-monastic Father of Gaza, summarizes the teaching of the early Holy Fathers on this subject: "For as the Holy 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" (Psalm 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 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 earthiness of the body."
The great 5th-century monastic Holy Father, Saint John Cassian, sets forth quite clearly the active state of the soul after death of the body, in answer to the early heretics who believed the soul was unconscious after death:
"Souls after the separation from this body are not idle, do not remain without consciousness; this is proved by the Gospel Parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:22-28)...The souls of the dead not only do not lose their consciousness, they do not even lose their dispositions--that is, hope and fear, joy and grief, and something of that which they expect for themselves at the Universal Judgment they begin already to foretaste....They become yet more alive and more zealously cling to the glorification of God. And truly, if we were to reason on the basis of the testimony of Sacred Scripture concerning the nature of the soul, in the measure of our understanding, would it not be, I will not say extreme stupidity, but at least folly, to suspect even in the least that the most precious part of man (that is, the soul), in which, according to the blessed Apostle, the image and likeness of God is contained (1 Corinthians 11:7; Col. 3:10), after putting off this fleshly coarseness in which it finds itself in the present life, should become unconscious--that part which, containing in itself the whole power of reason, makes sensitive by its presence even the dumb and unconscious matter of the flesh? Therefore it follows, and the nature of reason itself demands, that the spirit after casting off this fleshy coarseness by which now it is weakened, should bring its mental powers into a better condition, should restore them as pure and more refined, but should not be deprived of them."
"But when it leaves the body, the soul finds itself among other spirits, good and evil. Usually it inclines toward those which are more akin to it in spirit, and if while in the body it was under the influence of certain ones, it will remain in dependence upon them when it leaves the body, however unpleasant they may turn out to be upon encountering them."
The First Two Days after Death
"For the course of two days the soul enjoys relative freedom and can visit places on earth which were dear to it, but on the third day it moves into other spheres."
Here Saint John simply repeats the teaching known to the Church since the 4th century, when the Angel who accompanied Saint Macarius of Alexandria in the desert told him, in explaining the Church's commemoration of the dead on the third day after death" "When an offering is made in church on the third day after death, the soul of the departed receives from its Guardian Angel relief from the sorrow it feels as a result of the separation from the body...In the course of the two days the soul is permitted to roam the earth, wherever it wills, in the company of the Angels that are with it. Therefore the soul, loving the body, sometimes wanders about the house in which its body had been laid out, and thus spends two days like a bird seeking its nest. But the virtuous soul goes about those places in which it was wont to do good deeds. On the third, He Who Himself rose from the dead on the third day commands the Christian's soul, in imitation of His Resurrection, to ascend to the heavens to worship the god of all."
The Ninth Day after Death
Saint Macarius of Alexandria, the Church's special commemoration of the departed on the ninth day after death (apart from the general symbolism of the nine ranks of Angels) occurs because up to then the soul is shown the beauties of Paradise, and only after this, for the remainder of the forty days, is it shown the torments and horrors of hell, before being assigned on the fortieth day to the place where it will await the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment. These numbers, once again, constitute a general rule, or "model" of after-death reality, and undoubtedly not all the departed complete their course precisely according to the "rule." We do know that Theodora, in fact, completed her "tour of hell" just on the 40th day--as a time is measured on earth" (Eternal Mysteries, pp. 83-84).
The State of Souls until the Last Judgment
"Some souls find themselves (after the 40 days) in a condition of foretasting eternal joy and blessedness, and others in fear of the eternal tortures which will come in full after the Last Judgment. Until then changes are still possible in the condition of souls, especially through offering for the bloodless sacrifice (commemoration at the Divine Liturgy), and likewise by other prayers."
The Church's teaching on the state of souls in heaven and hell before the Last Judgment is set forth in detail in the words of Saint Mark of Ephesus.
The benefits of prayer, both public and private, for the souls in hell have been described in many Lives of Saints and ascetics and in Patristic writings. In the life of the third-century Martyr Perpetua, for example, the fate of her brother Dimocrates was revealed to her in the image of a cistern filled with water which was too high for him to reach in the filthy, intensely hot place where he was confined. Through her intense prayer for a whole day and night the cistern was made accessible to him and she saw him in a bright place. By this she understood that he had been released from punishment.
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Please note: I am bringing this to your attention because recently some of our parishioners who lost loved ones wanted to know what happens to the souls of our departed brothers and sisters after death according to our Holy Orthodox Church.
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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 (Ministry)
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George