Osipov what awaits us after death. What awaits us after death? Lecture by Professor Osipov
Man is mortal... And this is a guarantee that absolutely every person in his life thinks about his future death and decides for himself whether there is something waiting for him there - beyond the grave.
Often, the answers to the question that a person determines to be true for himself in relation to his future life determine how he will live the current period given to him by God.
Nine questions from Orthodox Christians about the phenomenon of death and the subsequent afterlife were answered very well by Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Alexey Ilyich Osipov, whose words we are publishing today:
- What is death?
Oh, if only someone could answer this! I remember from childhood, in our house above the door to the room there was a painting “No one can escape this,” which depicted her, bony with a scythe. It was both interesting and scary. But even then, this simple plot laid in the child’s subconscious the most important questions for a person: what is death, why do I live?
How does Christianity respond to them? It speaks of the two-component nature of man. Its most important part, subtly material, as our saints Ignatius (Brianchaninov) and Theophan the Recluse (who admitted this at the end of his life) write about it, is the soul, which has three levels. The highest level inherent only to man is the spirit (or mind), the bearer of self-awareness and personality. He is immortal. The other two levels - sentient and plant-nourishing - are common to the animal and plant worlds and are often referred to together with the body as the flesh, or spiritual body, as the Apostle Paul wrote: There is a natural body, there is a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:42-44) . This spiritual body, or flesh, dies and decomposes along with the biological body. Death is a gap between spirit and flesh, or more simply, between soul and body. And only belief in immortality gives a complete answer to the question: why do I live? Dostoevsky especially emphasized the importance of faith in immortality for a person: “Only with faith in his immortality does a person comprehend his entire rational goal on earth.”
- What happens to the human soul in the first forty days after death?
After the death of the flesh, the human soul passes into the world of eternity. But the category of eternity is indefinable in terms of time; it refers to those simple things about which the ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote that “simple things cannot be defined.” Therefore, church tradition is forced to answer this question in language in relation to our consciousness, immersed in the flow of time. In church tradition there is an interesting answer from the angel St. Macarius of Alexandria (IV century) about what is happening to the soul these days: “... for two days the soul, together with the angels who are with it, is allowed to walk on the earth wherever it wants... like a bird, looking for a nest for itself... On the third day... for every Christian soul to ascend to heaven to worship the God of all.
Then He is commanded to show the soul... the beauty of paradise. The soul considers all this for six days... Upon examination... it is again ascended by the angels to worship God.
After the secondary worship, the Lord of all commands to take the soul to hell and show it the places of torment located there... The soul rushes through these various places of torment for thirty days... On the fortieth day, it again ascends to worship God; and then the Judge determines the proper place for her according to her affairs.”
These days, the soul seems to be passing exams for good and evil. And they, naturally, can be delivered differently.
- Ordeals - what is it, and why are they called that?
The word “mytnya” means the place where duties were collected, taxes and fines were collected. In church language, the word “ordeal” expresses a kind of investigation into the matter of his earthly life that takes place from the ninth to the fortieth day after the death of a person.
Twenty ordeals are usually called twenty. They are distributed according to passions, each of which includes many corresponding sins.
In the life, for example, of St. Basil the New, Blessed Theodora talks about them in the following order:
1) idle talk and foul language,
3) condemnation and slander,
4) binge eating and drunkenness,
5) laziness,
6) theft,
7) love of money and stinginess,
8) extortion (bribery, flattery),
9) untruth and vanity,
10) envy,
11) pride,
13) rancor,
14) robbery (beatings, hitting, fighting...),
15) witchcraft (magic, occultism, spiritualism, fortune telling...),
17) adultery,
18) sodomy,
19) idolatry and heresy,
20) unmercifulness, cruelty.
All these ordeals are described in life in vivid images and expressions, which are often mistaken for reality itself, giving rise to distorted ideas not only about ordeals, but also about heaven and hell, about spiritual life and salvation, about God Himself. Therefore, schema-abbot John of Valaam wrote: “Although our Orthodox Church accepted the story of Theodora’s ordeal, this is a private human vision, and not Holy Scripture. Go deeper into the Holy Gospel and the Apostolic Epistles.” And Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) explains: “It is clear to everyone except children that the concept of “ordeal” cannot be taken in the literal sense; this is a metaphor that the Eastern Fathers found suitable to describe the reality that the soul faces after death... But the stories themselves are not “allegories” or “fables”, but true stories about personal experience, presented in the language most convenient for the storyteller... In the Orthodox in stories about ordeals there is no paganism, no occultism, no “eastern astrology”, no “purgatory”.
About the reason for such an inadequate description of that world by St. John Chrysostom notes that “it is said this way in order to bring the subject closer to the understanding of cruder people.”
In this regard, Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow (19th century) warns: “... we must firmly remember the instruction that the angel gave to the Monk Macarius of Alexandria... about ordeals: “Take earthly things here for the weakest image of heavenly ones.” It is necessary to imagine the ordeals not in a crude, sensual sense, but as much as is possible for us in the spiritual sense, and not become attached to particulars, which in different writers and in different legends of the Church itself, despite the unity of the basic thought about the ordeals, are presented as different.”
An interesting explanation of what happens at the ordeals is offered by Saint Theophan (Gorov): “... ordeals seem to be something terrible; but it is very possible that demons, instead of something terrible, represent something lovely. Seductively and charmingly, according to all types of passions, they present to the passing soul one after another. When passions are expelled from the heart during earthly life and virtues opposite to them are implanted, then whatever charming thing you imagine, the soul, which has no sympathy for it, passes it by, turning away from it with disgust. And when the heart is not cleansed, then for which passion it most sympathizes, that is why the soul rushes there. The demons take her as if they were friends, and then they know where to put her... the soul itself throws itself into hell.”
But ordeals are not something inevitable. The prudent thief passed them by (according to the word of Christ: today you will be with Me in Paradise - Luke 23:43), and the souls of the saints also ascended to heaven. And any Christian who lives according to his conscience and sincerely repents is freed, thanks to the Sacrifice of Christ, from this “exam.” For the Lord Himself said: He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me will not come into judgment (John 5:24).
- Why do we need to pray for the dead?
The Apostle Paul wrote amazing words: you are the body of Christ, and individually you are members. Therefore, if one member suffers, all members suffer with it; if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it (1 Cor. 12:27, 26). All believers, it turns out, constitute one living organism, and not a bag of peas in which the peas push each other and even hit each other painfully. Christians are cells (living, half-living, half-dead) in the Body of Christ. And all humanity is one body. But just as every change in the state of an individual organ or cell responds to the entire body and any of its cells, so it does in human society. This is the universal law of our existence, which opens the veil over the secret of prayers for the dead.
Prayer, in its action, is the door for the grace of Christ to enter the soul. Therefore, prayer performed with attention and reverence (and not meaningless reading), purifying the person praying, has a healing effect on the deceased. But one external form of commemoration, even liturgical, without the prayer of the person praying himself, without his life according to the commandments, is nothing more than self-deception, and leaves the deceased without help. Saint Theophan frankly wrote about this: “If no one [from those close to you] breathes from the soul, then the prayer service will crackle, but there will be no prayer for the sick person. The same is the proskomedia, the same is the mass... It doesn’t even occur to those serving the prayer service to hurt their souls before the Lord for those who are remembered at the prayer service... And where can they all get sick?!”
Prayer is especially effective when it is combined with feat. The Lord answered the disciples who were unable to cast out the demon: This generation is cast out only by prayer and fasting (Matthew 17:21). By this He pointed to the spiritual law, according to which the liberation of man from slavery to passions and demons requires not only prayer, but also fasting, that is, asceticism of both body and soul. Saint Isaac the Syrian wrote about this: “Every prayer in which the body did not tire and the heart did not grieve is counted as one with the premature fruit of the womb, because such prayer does not have a soul in it.” That is, the effectiveness of prayer for the deceased is directly determined by the degree of sacrifice and struggle with one’s own sins by the person praying, the degree of purity of his cell. Such a prayer can save a loved one. For this reason, in order to change the posthumous state of a person, it has been carried out by the Church from the very beginning of its existence!
- What is God's judgment, is it possible to justify oneself in it?
Are you asking about the Last Judgment, which is often called the Last Judgment?
This is the last act in the history of mankind, opening the beginning of its eternal life. It will follow the general resurrection, in which there will be a restoration of the entire spiritual-physical nature of man, including the fullness of will, and, consequently, the possibility of man’s final self-determination - to be with God or to leave Him forever. For this reason, the Last Judgment is called the Last Judgment.
But Christ at this trial will not turn out to be the Greek Themis - the blindfolded goddess of justice. On the contrary, the moral greatness of His deed on the cross, His unchanging love, will be revealed to every person in all its strength and obviousness. Therefore, having the sad experience of earthly life and its “happiness” without God, the experience of “exams” at the ordeals, it is difficult to imagine that all this did not touch, or rather, did not shake the hearts of resurrected people and did not determine the positive choice of fallen humanity. At least, many Church Fathers were convinced of this: Athanasius the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Epiphanius of Cyprus, Amphilochius of Iconium, Ephraim the Syrian, Isaac the Syrian and others. They wrote about the same thing we hear on Holy Saturday: “Hell reigns, but does not reign forever over the human race.” This idea is repeated in many liturgical tests of the Orthodox Church.
But perhaps there will be those whose bitterness will become the essence of their spirit, and the darkness of hell - the atmosphere of their life. God will not violate their freedom either. For hell, according to the thought of St. Macarius of Egypt, is “in the depths of the human heart.” Therefore, the doors of hell can only be locked from the inside by its inhabitants themselves, and not sealed by the Archangel Michael with seven seals so that no one can get out of there.
I write about this in some detail in my book “From Time to Eternity: The Afterlife of the Soul.”
- What is heaven in which those who are saved will be?
What would you answer to the question: what is seven-dimensional space? Picasso, for example, tried to draw a violin in four-dimensional space and the result was gibberish. Likewise, all attempts to depict heaven (and hell) will always be the same Picasso violin. About paradise, only one thing is truly known: eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and what God has prepared for those who love Him has not entered into the heart of man (1 Cor 2:9). But this is the most general characteristic of heaven in the transmission of our three-dimensional language. But in essence, all his descriptions are only the weakest images of heavenly things.
I can only add that it won’t be boring there. Just as lovers can endlessly communicate with each other, so to an immeasurably greater extent those saved in heaven will remain in eternal joy, pleasure, and happiness. For God is Love!
- What is hell that the lost go to?
Thank God, I don’t know him yet and I don’t want to know him, because in biblical language knowledge means unity with the knowable. But I heard that hell is very bad, and that it is also “in the depths of the human heart” if there is no heaven in it.
There is a serious question associated with hell: are the torments of hell finite or endless? Its complexity lies not only in the fact that that world is closed from us by an impenetrable curtain, but also in the impossibility of expressing in our language the concept of eternity. We know, of course, that eternity is not an infinite length of time. But how can we understand this?
The problem is further complicated by the fact that the Holy Scriptures, the Holy Fathers, and liturgical texts speak of both the eternity and finitude of the torment of unrepentant sinners. At the same time, the Church at its councils never condemned any of the Fathers of either one or the other point of view. Thus, she left this question open, pointing out its mystery.
Therefore, Berdyaev was right when he said that the problem of hell “is the ultimate mystery that cannot be rationalized.”
Of course, it is difficult not to pay attention to the thought of Saint Isaac the Syrian:
“If a person says that only in order for His long-suffering to be revealed, He makes peace with them [sinners] here in order to mercilessly torment them there - such a person thinks inexpressibly blasphemous about God... Such a... slanders Him.” But he also warns: “Let us beware in our souls, beloved, and understand that although Gehenna is subject to limitation, the taste of being in it is very terrible, and beyond the limits of our knowledge is the degree of suffering in it.”
But one thing is certain. Since God is love and wisdom, it is obvious that for every person eternity will correspond to his spiritual state, his free self-determination, that is, it will be the best for him.
- Can a person's posthumous fate change?
If it were impossible to change the spiritual state of the soul there, then the Church would not have called from the very beginning of its existence to pray for the dead.
- What is the general resurrection?
This is the resurrection of all humanity to eternal life. Following Matins on Good Friday we hear: “Deliver all from the bonds of death by Your resurrection.” The doctrine of this is the most important in the Christian religion, for only it justifies the meaning of a person’s life and all his activities. The Apostle Paul even writes this: If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen, and if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is also in vain. And if in this life only we hope in Christ, then we are the most miserable of all people (1 Cor 15:13-14, 19). He also tells us how it will happen: suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed (1 Cor 15:52).
And here is what Saint Isaac the Syrian writes in his famous “Words of the Ascetic” about the power of the resurrection: “The sinner is not able to imagine the grace of his resurrection. Where is Gehenna that could make us sad? Where is the torment that frightens us in various ways and conquers the joy of His love? And what is Gehenna before the grace of His resurrection, when He will raise us from hell, cause this corruptible to be clothed with incorruptibility, and raise up those who fell into hell in glory?... There is a reward for sinners, and instead of rewarding the righteous, He rewards them with resurrection; and instead of the corruption of bodies that have trampled upon His law, He clothes them with the perfect glory of incorruption. This mercy is to resurrect us after we have sinned, higher than mercy is to bring us into being when we did not exist.”
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When a person understands that the soul and life after death exist, he begins to think what awaits him in the afterlife? What tests? How to protect yourself and your family from eternal torment? In the video response A. Osipova about the soul in the afterlife and ordeals there is a lot of useful information for understanding the posthumous fate of a person.
Man sins and develops passions
There are many aspects to this. Some of them may be the most useful for us, there are some that are less useful for us: the problems of eternal torment, that is, theoretical things. And there is a very useful aspect. This is the aspect that is expressed in our not so much theological literature, but in church-pious lives. This is a question about ordeals.
I find this question very useful. It is especially useful because those figurative descriptions that are given to us do not reveal the essence of the matter. And it seems to me that the essence is this. Here we live, we sin, we do good, we do evil. We cultivate passions in ourselves, sometimes such that we begin to serve them, they guide us. Various feelings arise in us, very strong ones, but once we fall asleep, we no longer remember. Time passes - we have already forgotten about love, and about hatred, and about other things. This is how we do it here. Our body, the flesh, is a rather powerful buffer that smoothes out.
A. Osipov about the soul as the center of passions
The situation there is completely different. Why different? The fact is that all passions, even those that we call bodily passions, actually have the soul as their root, focus and center. All passions are rooted in the soul - such is the patristic teaching. For some passions the body is only an instrument of expression, an instrument of action, an instrument of suffering or pleasure. Passion itself is rooted in the soul.
And with death, when the body falls away, like the last stage of a rocket or satellite, this is where everything that is in us, all the good and all the evil, begins to act with full force. There is no buffer. Nothing delaying.
For example, there is wild envy. As Dante wrote: “My blood boiled so much with envy that if it was good for another, you would see how green I turn.” There is nothing green there anymore - there is no body. Passion rages, there is no buffer and the person finds himself in a tragic situation when no one can help him. And he can't do anything. Freedom of action is already taken away there, since there is no body. And passions act.
A. Osipov about the afterlife, eternal torment and joy
Now do you understand what eternal torment is? He [man] falls into the sphere of eternity, in contrast to the sphere of temporality in which we live now, and there begins an unquenchable fire and an unquenchable worm. No sleep, nothing, passion.
Each of us can form a picture of the action of passion that torments a person: some can - envy, some - anger, some - hatred, some - indignation. Here these are momentary things, there they are permanent. This is what begins after death.
Now we can understand why the Lord and the apostles insist with such force: man, while you are alive, while you have time, work on yourself. The person who made efforts and fought against this, initiated the process of eradicating passions, will be able to cope with it easily.
The one who not only did not initiate, but who cultivated these passions in himself, there he finds himself hostage to these tortures. At the same time, it is natural, since spirits exist, then we are united with the spirit by our spiritual state. For example, Anthony the Great writes about this superbly, that by doing evil, we unite with the spirits of evil, and on the contrary, by doing good, we again unite with God.
So what else is going on here? Not only do these passions act in us, but they also stick and ignite.
So there is still an amazing gain going on here. This is where posthumous suffering begins. Or joy. Depending on the general direction of my life. Where were my goals, what were my goals, what were my aspirations, what was my life? Here it begins, what ordeals are. On the one hand, God himself is revealed to us, on the other - wild passion. And here is the struggle: who will win in man? When a person surrendered to passion, passion here wins in the face of God himself. This is called breaking from such and such a stage of ordeal. This, it turns out, is what we are facing, this is what the afterlife is.
Prayers for the departed
From the very beginning of its existence, the Church has offered prayers for the dead. Consequently, these prayers are of great assistance to the individual. They can help. Like on a hike: someone sprains his ankle, we take his load and distribute it, help, take him by the arms, lead him. So this possibility still remains here.
But you need to keep the following in mind. Sometimes we are like this: well, through the prayers of the Church we will somehow be saved. Isaac the Syrian says wonderfully about this: although Gehenna is limited, the taste of being in it is terrible, and no one knows what suffering he will have to endure there.
Only a madman can agree: they promise me a kingdom and glory, but they say that if you go this way, you will have to fall into the hands of sadists who cannot even imagine what they can do to you. Is there some other way to get around them? Christianity offers this correct path to bypass this sadism of passions. That is why it is so important to know the path of salvation, the correct spiritual path, what delusion is, that is, delusion.
A. Osipov points out the importance of understanding the state of the soul in the afterlife, lifetime repentance and posthumous commemoration.
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What is eternal life in Paradise, and what is Gehenna and eternal torment? About this is the lecture “Life after death” by professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Alexei Ilyich Osipov, given at the ZIL Palace of Culture, May 12, 2004.
– Today is an unusual day: for the first time since Easter, commemoration is being made of those who are alive, of course, but live a different life - not the one we live, but the one to which we will come. Therefore, the question of that life, which is a step to eternal life, which we celebrate on Easter, the Resurrection of Christ, is a particularly close topic for us, relating not so much to our mind, but much more to our heart.
So today was the day of remembrance of the dead. A good word is “departed”, as it differs from the terminology we hear outside church walls. The question “what is there?” always interests everyone. If we turn to the history of pre-Christian religious consciousness, we can see many options; the ideas of the Egyptian religion are especially interesting. The representations of Greek mythology are of little interest, but very significant. But the ideas that Christianity offers are not found in any other religious and philosophical constructions; Christianity in this regard is a unique religion.
Even on this one question - about the posthumous fate of man and about the eschatological fate - it can be shown that Christianity is a religion that comes not from Earth, but from Heaven. This question is very big, I will name some aspects that, apparently, will be of interest to many.
First: what happens to a person when he dies, what happens? We know the usual ideas: 3 days, 9 days, 40 days, we know that a person goes through ordeals. But what is it? Clearly this is something different than what we can imagine.
The second question: who enters eternal life? Who is being saved? Only Christians? Only Orthodox? Of the Orthodox - only those who lived especially well? That is, 0, 000…….1 are saved, and all the others perish? The question is about those who for some reason could not accept Christianity: historical, psychological. The question is interesting and very important.
Another side: what is Gehenna and eternal torment? Are they truly eternal – infinite? And how to combine, on the one hand, the foreknowledge of God when He creates the world, and the love of God, which surpasses all human understanding, and on the other hand, the presence of eternal torment? How to combine this - after all, He foresaw that people would live this way and not otherwise? He foresaw our freedom - He is God.
This is how many important questions arise in connection with a seemingly simple topic - the deceased, their remembrance. The topics are very large, you can spend a day on each question, but you can also go through it at an accelerated pace, although when it’s fast, it’s not always good.
So, what happens to a person there? I know this topic well, I’ve been there more than once, I’ll tell you everything in plain sight. One note - there is a special department there for professors; if I’ve ever been, it’s only there. This department is located in the lowest part of that world: I can’t understand why. Everyone else is higher, but professors are humble people, they don’t raise their heads up, lest they think that they are proud, and their heads might break off.
We are touching on an issue for which there are simply no words in our language. No one can express what is happening there, not even a professor who has been there. The Apostle Paul said when he was caught up to the third heaven that he “heard verbs that cannot be spoken,” that is, it is impossible to convey. If someone spoke to us in ancient Ethiopian now, we would nod our heads, but said that we did not understand anything. There are no concepts to express that reality.
Somewhere in the 50s, one bishop of Smolensk and Dorogobuzh died, an old, pleasant man, nothing special about himself, but his death was
It’s interesting in this respect: just before his death, he looked around and said: “Everything is wrong, everything is wrong! Not like that at all!” Although we understand that everything is wrong there, we still imagine it in the image and likeness of this life. If hell or heaven, or ordeal, then in accordance with the pictures that we saw and looked at with interest. We cannot detach ourselves from these things.
In this regard, modern science gives us some useful things: researchers, nuclear physicists who study the world of elementary particles, directly say that in our macroworld there are no such concepts, words with the help of which we could express the reality of that microworld. We have to come up with new concepts that mean nothing to us, or, trying to express those realities with the help of our words, say things that are absurd to us. For example: time flows backwards. What nonsense. But one of the theories claims this, otherwise there is no way to explain what is happening there. Or even schoolchildren know the concept of “wave particle,” when an elementary particle behaves either like a wave or like a particle, depending on the situation. When something is more convenient, that’s how we think.
That world is inexpressible, reality is not the same. Therefore, when we read the “Ordeals” of Theodora, a student of Basil the New, on the basis of which entire iconographic scenes were created, we understand the words of the angel spoken on another occasion: “Everything that you saw here is only a weak semblance of what is happening there.” For a blind person, this or that color can be indicated using sounds: red - do, green - re, and so on. He seemed to understand, but in fact he didn’t understand anything. He has no idea about colors.
Let's try to translate the language of images into the language of concepts in order to try to understand what is happening to a person there. This is important for understanding the involvement of many people, especially non-Christians.
Let us turn to the concept of “passion”. Everyone understands what sin is: a man was walking, tripped, fell into the mud, broke his nose, got up, dried himself, and moved on. Passion is something else: one is drawn to it, and sometimes it is drawn so strongly that a person cannot cope with himself. He understands that this is bad, his conscience is about to speak, it is harmful not only for the soul, it is harmful for the body. But he cannot cope in the face of conscience, in the face of his own good. Passion is slavery. You need to remember this in order to understand what happens in a person when the soul is separated from the body.
The vast majority of our sins are ultimately related to the body. The big question is: can a person without a body sin even spiritual sins? We do not know the strength and mechanism of connection between the soul and the body, we only know that they are connected. We know the words: “he who suffers in the flesh ceases to sin.” Maybe someone who dies in the flesh completely stops sinning?.. But this is the tendency. But all the passions by which man lived remained, nothing was extinguished, because the roots of passions are not in the body, but in the soul. Even bodily, the crudest passions. Sometimes sets of the most disgusting pornographic postcards were found in people who, as they say, had already scattered.
What happens to a person who did not fight these passions, fulfilled their orders in every possible way, and cultivated them? A terrible thing begins for this poor soul. Imagine: a hungry man, and suddenly he is shown cooking food through the bars, he inhales all the delicious aromas - and cannot eat anything, an impenetrable wall. The soul is separated from the body; passions are fed through the body. There is no body - and what begins for a person?..
If this one thought took root in our soul, we would already understand with what strength, with what persistence we must prepare for death, so as not to find ourselves standing and seeing everything, but unable to do anything. This is why church tradition says: instant death is terrible. A person who has not had time to repent, to change, and who, with a whole set of inflamed passions, suddenly suddenly finds himself in the face of this glass lattice, through which he hears, sees, smells, but cannot do anything.
Great happiness for Christians and those who know about it - they can prepare for trials. And what a horror for those who don’t believe and don’t know.
It would be nice for us now to listen to a person who survived the Leningrad siege. I was told: there is a line, and suddenly a half-crazed woman shouts: “I’m from Leningrad!” - and the line parted, she was let through first. This is what hunger is - one passion, one disease. And when we have a whole bouquet – what does a person end up with?
I don’t say anything about the first three days - perhaps the soul at this time does not yet experience anything special, although, as the experience of many says, contact with that world already begins here, and this contact is of a nature that is completely consistent with the spirit of a person. What he breathed, what he was striving for. The Fathers say that they even approach the saints, testing their character, but in the first days according to our earthly reckoning. There is no time there, but we have it, so we can navigate, and only then the soul enters another world.
That world, without a doubt, has many different, fundamental steps, and entry there occurs in various ways. What happens in the next two stages, when, as we call it, the soul is first taken to the abodes of heaven, and then it is shown the places of hell.
The soul is tested both for good and then for evil. As the apostle writes: “Today we are, as it were, a mirror in fortune-telling, but then face to face,” - just as it is. The soul becomes capable of contemplating that world when, freed from the body, it itself becomes a particle of that world. The soul is spiritual, it enters the realm of spirits, begins to see and cognize. Cognition is not an act of external contemplation, it is a subjective-objective act, embracing the fullness of both internal experiences and involvement with the external, involvement in what a person knows.
A person is tested in the face of goodness and virtues. For example, he imagines meekness: is it good or bad? Does this attract me or repulse me? Chastity: laugh at it or is the soul attracted to it? All virtues are presented to a person for testing, to the extent that the soul thirsts and has thirsted for it. Sees in full the beauty of this virtue, for every virtue is beautiful. God is beauty indescribable. It is being tested: has the human soul, in conditions of earthly freedom, acquired at least some desire for this beauty?
The same thing happens in what we call ordeals, about which we usually talk more than about the first. A person is placed in the face of God, a shrine, and on the other hand, in the face of all the power of passion. What wins? Just as in earthly life passion overcomes us, despite the desire for good, the search for it, so there, in the face of the sacred, and not just conscience or my mental considerations, in the face of the revealed good - and passion is revealed in all its strength. Envy and love - where are you going, man?.. This is what ordeals are. Passion after passion is revealed with all its strength, depending on how much passion is present in the human soul, whether he fought or not.
Here, for the Christian, all the greatness of Christ’s sacrifice is revealed. If a person here struggled with his passion, then there this drop of good, this copper obol, according to the word of Barsanuphius the Great, this nothing becomes the guarantee that the Lord enters and wins, gives him the opportunity to defeat the evil that is present in him. This is the most important thing in ordeals.
What a huge significance is repentance and the fight against our passions in this life! This becomes a guarantee that a person will not fall into this passion, will not renounce God in the name of domination and slavery to this passion. This is what is called a fall at any stage of ordeal. We Christians know this, what a pity it is that non-Christians do not know this: here we have to fight, if a person has tried even a little, then the Lord frees him from passion, from slavery.
Why are we being tested? Because God has given us freedom, which He Himself does not dare to touch. He needs free individuals, not slaves. Why did God humble himself before
the end - to the cross? Could he have come down from the cross when they told Him? - Yes. Could he appear as an invincible king? - Yes. But He came not as a king, not as a patriarch, not as a theologian, not as a teacher, not as a Pharisee - He came as a nobody, without any external regalia. Because external things can captivate people; they will be carried away by external things, but not by the truth that He speaks.
The Lord showed that He is not only the greatest love, but also the greatest humility. Not the slightest pressure on human freedom. The Kingdom of God is acquired only through human freedom. Whoever responds with love to love becomes a god-like being. Therefore, the test tests human freedom as it was realized under earthly conditions. Why is this so important? – Here we are free: we see neither God nor the underworld, but we all have a conscience, we are free to do good or evil. And after death, the fruits of our life are revealed, with which a person enters the true world, when everything is revealed.
We don’t know each other: a person stands there - and what is in his soul? Good or evil? What's in his bag? Thank God we don't know. And there everything opens up - the world of real light. Therefore, it is not surprising that many will try to hide in the darkest hole so that no one can see. When everything is revealed in front of our acquaintances, friends, and relatives, we understand what it is.
Therefore, in the Church there is the greatest balm - repentance: in the soul, before the priest - changing oneself, one’s way of thinking, moods, aspirations. Repentance is hatred of the sin that I have committed. For example, Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov: he was ready to happily go to hard labor just to atone for his evil. Repentance is a means of salvation; the Lord makes sure that even after death we do not suffer, as much as possible. Every passion, sin, crime is revealed there and begins to torment a person. That’s why the Church warns: before it’s too late, take charge of yourself.
This is what happens in that life until the ninth and fortieth day. What's next? What does it mean to be judged before God? A certain initial result of a person’s life is summed up. 40 days is a kind of exam, like in school, only it is not God who judges the person, but the person himself, in the face of the shrine, falls or is saved. It depends on the nature of earthly life. God does not produce violence, He is the greatest love, man himself goes to God or leaves Him.
Then even more complex questions arise. Passions defeated a man - he didn’t know, he succumbed, but they won. Even in the face of God, the man could not stand it; passion overwhelmed him. What's next? According to the teachings of the Church, the fortieth day is not the final judgment; the final judgment is called the Last Judgment. Before the Last Judgment, some processes take place in the soul itself. Is it in vain that the Church prays for the dead? If nothing happened to the soul there, then why pray? The Church gives instructions on how to most correctly remember a person. If someone really wants to help their loved one – how can they help?
There are two pictures: one, when there is a formal relationship with sincere faith, the other - an essential relationship, also with sincere faith. It happens that people go to church, submit notes to proskomedia, to monasteries, but at the same time they forget the most important thing. We, the living, and our dead are not two separate beings. Those for whom we pray, who are close to us, are not spiritually separated from us. We have a real spiritual connection with them, and we can help them - how? The Lord told His disciples when they were unable to cast out the demon: “This generation can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.”
This is our problem: we limit ourselves to external donations, alms, but, it turns out, we can only help with prayer and fasting, i.e. righteous life. Like on a hike: one person sprains his ankle - we distribute his load, take him by the arm or take him ourselves. We take this burden upon ourselves. The more we want to help the deceased, the more we should try to live like a Christian, even for 40 days, let alone a year. We must repent, take communion more often, not only give alms, but not repay evil for evil, not condemn anyone, not envy. Otherwise, maybe I have millions - I’ll give them away left and right, but I myself remain the same as I was. No, you can’t buy God with handouts, you yourself need to change, at least
for a short time, for the sake of a deceased neighbor, take on the feat upon yourself. Then our prayer will gain power.
Why was our deceased defeated? Because with every passion we give way to the devil, we unite with him, and when we take upon ourselves the feat of Christian life, we help the deceased to get out of this difficult state. Why are our prayers powerless? We think: they brought it to the temple - someone will pray there. If you don’t pray, the one who loves the deceased, then who will pray? Why are we deceiving ourselves? Everyone needs to learn this and tell others: this is how we can really help, but with other things I don’t know how much we can. By fighting your spiritual passions: hypocrisy, deceit and others - this is how we will really help. In the name of the deceased, I will not return evil for the evil of my neighbor.
Very often we leave our deceased without help, unfortunately. Processes with the soul continue to take place beyond the grave. Let’s not guess how this happens, I don’t want to go into theological fantasies, what is important to us is the idea that these processes are happening and they need to be helped.
Now let us discuss the question regarding those who did not know Christ, non-Christians. This is a burning question that worries many. - Well, only Orthodox Christians are saved? And among the Orthodox there are only a handful of righteous people? Your God is good! And you say – love! Allah has even more love, I suppose.
Listen to such reproaches, and the psychology of people is clear. We give grounds for such conclusions, blasphemous from the point of view of Christianity, when they say that God is cruel. Did you know they would die? - I knew. Created? - Yes. Therefore?.. Calvin reasoned like this: God initially predestined some to destruction, others to salvation. Terrible.
How can you answer this question? We find various sayings among the holy fathers. There are fathers who say that only Orthodox Christians are saved, only within the bosom of the Orthodox Church is salvation possible, and outside the Orthodox Church there is no salvation. Right? - Right. I'll just explain how to do it correctly.
I flew to you on a plane, we arrived safely, they didn’t give us parachutes. But during the Second World War, they say, there were several cases (two or three are called reliable) when a plane was shot down, and the pilot fell without a parachute and remained not only alive, but also unharmed. For example, in winter, downhill, there was a thickness of snow - and he passed through this thickness of snow. What conclusion can we draw? Simple - why a parachute? And then there are healers who claim that salvation is only possible with a parachute.
Therefore, those fathers who said that salvation is only in the Orthodox Church are right. Orthodoxy gives the true path, says that salvation is achieved by changing one’s soul, becoming like God, repentance, and striving for what is sacred. They called the path spoken of in the Gospel, which was paved by the suffering feet of the ascetics, the optimal path. The others also show the way: try flying from Moscow to Tallinn via New York or via Australia. Or don’t fly, but sail across the Pacific Ocean on a lonely boat. Can? – It’s possible, but it’s very difficult.
Therefore, the fathers, speaking about salvation in Orthodoxy, do not claim that only the Orthodox will be saved, and of them only a handful of ascetics, and all the rest will perish. Now there are 6 billion people on Earth, and there are about 170 million Orthodox Christians. There's clearly something more serious here. I will express my point of view. Christ said: “Every sin and blasphemy against the Son of Man will be forgiven to men, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, neither in this age nor in the next.” Christ himself said this. The holy fathers have a single interpretation of this passage regarding blasphemy against the Holy Spirit: bitterness and deliberate deviation from the truth are not forgiven.
It’s not like a drunkard: his life turned out this way, he had such company, he acquired a destructive passion, and he can no longer help but drink. This is not what we are talking about. About conscious resistance to what is presented to human eyes as sacred, as good, as truth. When Christ raised four-day-old Lazarus, what did the Sanhedrin decide?
Kill Lazarus. It has already become clear who Christ is. There is no doubt, obviously. No? - Fine. Kill the witness too. Here is an example of bitterness.
But it is not just a person who comes to this state: it was the Pharisees, scribes and high priests who crucified, and we are not like that. How did they come to this? After all, sin is not committed just like that. A person approaches any serious sin, committing it countless times in thoughts, desires, and sympathy. How does a person come to blaspheme the Holy Spirit? Here the fathers say unequivocally: the essence of this blasphemy lies in human pride. This pride stems from a sense of self-righteousness.
Remember the parable of the publican and the Pharisee, how the Pharisee boasted. Whom did Christ set as an example? - Obvious sinners. But these sinners saw that they were indeed sinners. And they are set as an example. And the worst thing is when a person sees himself as a righteous person, when he justifies even his most obvious sins. Everyone is to blame, but not me, and if there are any sins, who doesn’t have them?.. This is the root from which grows the most terrible sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I am a good person, so I expect rewards from God: crowns, Metropolitan. Such opposition to God is born from an opinion about oneself, for such a person does not need any God the Savior. I don't need a Savior, I need a Rewarder. Who crucified Christ? - False righteous.
No wonder Macarius the Great said that pride is a copper wall that stands between man and God. The first to enter heaven was the thief, who realized that he was not who he should be. And the “righteous” passed by, nodded their heads and chuckled: “Come down from the Cross - we will believe in You!”
They come to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit in two ways: either a person already tramples on his conscience, the laws of truth, directly resists, falls into Satanism, or, as it seems to him, he lives according to God’s law, righteously, and grows his Self by leaps and bounds. Such people, according to the word of Christ, they do not have forgiveness, because they will never ask for it. They have no repentance, no change in this state. All sins can be forgiven because repentance is possible there. Even the outward denial of Christ can be forgiven if there is no blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
What does it mean - no blasphemy? We find many sayings: both in the apostolic epistles and in the fathers, who carry out the same thought: “Everyone who does righteousness is acceptable to God” (from the Acts of the Apostles), one who strives for truth, for righteousness, for God, who sees that he himself is not true, not righteous and not holy. And sometimes there are those who are ready to destroy everyone for the sake of fighting for the truth. No, only those who, in conscience, strive to live, who, due to objective conditions, could not find. Rus' was baptized a thousand years ago. And before that, a thousand years ago, everyone died?..
The Lord does not reject anyone who strives for Him. Descent into Hell, Holy Saturday. The Lord brings out all those whom we call the Old Testament righteous. Sometimes this formula is misleading: the righteous are supposedly those who believed that the Messiah-Savior would come. No, that's not what we're talking about. The righteous are those who sought to realize the truth, saw that they were unable to achieve this truth, saw the disastrous state of their souls and felt that they needed a Savior. This is the Orthodox faith - the one who sees that he needs God the Savior is saved. And when I simply believe that the Savior came two thousand years ago, then I can be no different from the demons who “believe and tremble.” Therefore, a righteous person is one who realizes: I am all in passions, and without God they will destroy me.
The Apostle Paul writes in his letter to Timothy: “Christ is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who are his own by faith,” i.e. Christians - no doubt, and also everyone else. This point of view sometimes raises objections: so what: it doesn’t matter how to believe? Can you be anyone then?
Salvation is accomplished only by Christ, His sacrifice. Before Christ, no righteous people were saved. They are saved by Christ, without Christ there is no salvation. Otherwise He would not have come.
The Apostle writes - albeit on a different occasion - that one can be saved, “but as if from fire.” Everything burned down, I saved myself, but was left with nothing. Christianity gives a person the opportunity to free his way to God through the struggle with passions and sin. Prepare yourself in such a way that you can achieve salvation painlessly. A person who did not know Christianity, i.e. I didn’t know the right life, I was infected with many things. Therefore, when he gets there, torture begins: passions, vices with which he did not fight, and did not even know how to fight them, begin to torment him. That world is hard for non-Christians. It is possible that if such a person did not blaspheme the Holy Spirit, then his path may lead him to salvation, but this path will be very difficult.
They invite us to a reception: one knows the way and comes unhindered, and the other either ends up in a swamp, or among robbers, and gets there all beaten up, dirty, through labor and suffering. A big difference. God is love, He warns, sends apostles, says: “Teach all nations by baptizing them,” so that they do not suffer.
Therefore, it seems to me that more people will be saved, and those who sought to live according to their conscience, who strove for truth, who saw their weakness in the fight against the evil that is present in us, will also be saved. But I feel sorry for non-Christians, they will have to suffer so much before they change enough to accept God, not to fall in the face of that evil, those passions that overwhelm our soul.
I was with the cosmonauts, one of them stood up and said: “Why are you telling us all sorts of things about this salvation - you’d better explain about the virgin birth of Jesus Christ! How is this according to the laws of physics and biology - answer!” There was a noise in the hall, there were a hundred people there, and I was sitting in a swivel chair, silent, waiting for them to calm down. Then I say: “Do you want me to answer?” - “We want!” - “So: if there is a God, then everything is possible: not only the whale will swallow Jonah, but Jonah will swallow the whale, if necessary. And if there is no God, then why are you asking me? Then there is nothing at all. Do you understand? - “Understood...”
As for eternal torment, this is a very difficult question. In my book in the latest edition, I decided to show how a number of our Russian thinkers and theologians look at this issue. Everyone is trying to resolve this antinomy: on the one hand, God is love, love to the Cross, on the other, eternal torment. Perhaps the ratio of those saved and those who perish will be the other way around, and not the one we initially outlined. If Christians believe the words of Christ, everyone will be saved except those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit. But it is difficult to measure by human standards.
One case is told as reliable: a village teacher saved a St. Petersburg aristocrat from death in winter: he had lost his way. The aristocrat, as a form of gratitude, invited the teacher to St. Petersburg and organized a real, most luxurious high society reception in his honor. The teacher sat down: to his right there were 5-6 types of knives, here plates, here forks - he didn’t know what to do. Either he takes a temptation in the wrong hand, or he doesn’t know how to handle it. He sits, poor thing, sweating profusely. And here there is an oval plate of water in front of him, and then he pours himself on it - and drinks it. Everyone looked at him and turned away. He looks: this is water to wash off greasy hands! He almost fainted. He left this reception, and for the rest of his life he jumped up at night in a cold sweat.
Do you understand what I'm saying? The Kingdom of God is not a very simple thing. The Kingdom of God is the acceptance of God, Who is the fullness of love, eternal love. And the whole Kingdom is love, meekness and humility. A person who throughout his earthly life cultivated the exact opposite: anger, hatred - what would happen to him if he found himself in this Kingdom of God? The same thing as an aristocratic reception for that teacher. Hell to hell. An evil being cannot exist in an atmosphere of love, in the Kingdom of God.
This is the greatest love of God, that for those who are unable to be with Him, He gives the opportunity to be outside of Himself. In pitch darkness. The Last Judgment does not consist in the fact that Christ will sit - one on a pitchfork, the other on the springs of paradise. The whole horror of the judgment lies not in this - He is not Allah, not an eastern despot - but in the fact that here
the final self-determination of the individual occurs: is he capable of being with God or not. Hypocrites, liars, those who think about themselves are incapable of being with God. It is not God who sends into darkness, but man himself who chooses it. The horror of judgment lies in the voluntary renunciation of God.
This is what Gehenna is. This is not violence, not a blindfolded Greek goddess who, like a computer, judges: one to the right, another to the left. Isaac the Syrian says: “Those who believe that the love of God leaves the sinner in hell think wrongly - it is this love that will be a kind of flame for those who rejected this love.” God does not take away human freedom, so a person leaves, this is the best for him, as for a teacher it is better to return to his village than to live among these aristocrats.
This is how we can theoretically explain the presence of Gehenna and God-Love. There will be no violence, human freedom is our highest quality, a person chooses for himself. But I believe that, after all, most people will be able to overcome the bad qualities in themselves and be saved. So I want to believe, especially now, when we remember the Holy Resurrection of Christ. Amen.
Answers on questions
– Isn’t it possible that when a person leaves God, he is placed in darkness, in a place where he feels good?..
– The state of a person who has rejected God is a state of dominance of passions. Who is in terrible anger - is it good for him? Burning passions: a man is furious, knowing that he will be convicted, he will be shot, but he is still ready to kill. This is an unquenchable fire and a never-quenching worm.
– You mentioned that pitch darkness is besides God, outside of God. U o. Georgy Florovsky, I came across the idea of one of the fathers that the human soul is relatively immortal, immortal insofar as this life is given to it by God. And how can we compare this with the pitch darkness, where there is no Giver of life?
– This is a question that cannot be resolved by us due to the fact that we do not know what eternity is and what Gehenna is. We operate with concepts about which we have almost no idea. Let me remind you that Isaac the Syrian said that God’s love overtakes the sinner in hell. Therefore, nothing can exist without God; some form of God's presence takes place.
Our questions are anthropomorphic, we only know that there “they don’t get married and don’t get married” - the categories of relationships change there. It all depends on the relationship: if we see that a person is fiercely fighting against the truth, against the truth of God, then what does this mean? Let us remember the words of Christ: “If anyone does not hate father, mother or his neighbors for my sake...” Does Christianity promote hatred? No, we are talking about the fact that truth and holiness are above all else for man. If there is a war going on all around, and a mother says to her son: “Sit in the basement, otherwise they will kill you. Let others be killed, and you sit.” How is this?.. I.e. a person can love partiality rather than truth.
What does love for another often turn into? – This is egoism in disguise. I love another person as long as he gives me pleasure. And as soon as he pressed on my sore spot: oh, you are so!.. Yesterday we declared our love, and today we share the last plastic bag.
Unites the spirit, not flesh and blood. Unanimity makes spouses and friends united, and when these spirits are completely different, then the two worlds cannot even come into contact with each other. The kingdom of God and the world cannot come into contact with hatred. Spiritual rejection occurs, like a gangrenous member being cut off. The righteous do not suffer for sinners; there is a schism and division. There would be no Kingdom of God if some suffered for others.
There is such a persistent church thought that if the Lord allows someone to die on Easter, then this is a sign. But not that he was forgiven because he died on Easter, but that he died
on Easter because he was forgiven. God allowed him to die this way because he repented, lived accordingly, perhaps was a righteous thief.
– Why is suffering sent to a person?
Why is a drug addict or drunkard suffering? Is this God sending? He jumped from the fourth floor - is this God sending?.. All God’s commandments for man are not demands, not orders, but a warning, even a humiliating request: “Don’t jump from the fourth floor - you will feel bad!” Don't be jealous - your liver will become bad. The Apostle James writes: “God tempts no one, but everyone is tempted by his own lusts and passions.” Few of us see our soul, even a small part of it. And if we saw her, what would happen?..
In the 6th century, a revolution took place in the Byzantine Empire. The commander-in-chief of the army carried it out. The man was terribly cruel: in front of the emperor’s eyes he executed several of his sons - they stripped them naked and drove them into the fire with spears. And the emperor's head was cut off and hung on a stake.
One high-life monk prayed all night: “Lord, why did you send us such punishment?” In the morning, a clear voice: “I was looking for the worst, but I didn’t find it.” The ascetic understood that this was the least that should have already happened, given our state of mind. If we saw the state of our souls and other souls, we would say: how else does the Earth exist!
And it’s easy to see yourself: I’m a good person, but don’t touch me in any way. Otherwise you will find out how good I am. And I will find out why suffering is sent.
– How to determine: for punishment or correction?..
– God has no punishments, all commandments are requests. Everything that is sent to us is so that we can see what we really are. The trouble is that we look for the reason around us. My mother told me when I was a child: “Leshenka, under no circumstances should you lick the iron door handle in the cold!” The first thing Lyoshenka did when mommy turned away was to lick this hand. There was a terrible cry - since then Lyoshenka has never licked a hand.
We need to remember the thought of Abbot Nikon: “All our so-called enemies, those who bring us trouble, are precious free teachers to whom we should always be grateful.”
– How can you explain a passage from the Gospel when you came to Him and said: “Lord, open to us. Is it not in Your Name that we..."
– Even the creation of miracles is not necessarily a state that we would call salutary. Judas performed miracles as one of the twelve. This is not what saves a person. People can receive some gifts of God, we know this from the history of the Church. But if things were not done right, they committed suicide. And this is after miracles: healings, insights.
Therefore, the state of salvation lies in the examples that the Lord gave: the state of the publican, the robber, that woman who shed tears and wiped her hair with her hair - this is the state that makes a person capable of accepting God. The Lord says: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. Whoever opens it to Me, I will come in.” He knocks like the last beggar - with the voice of conscience, circumstances, the right word that we will hear. We have no time - but He is knocking there, standing with His conscience.
Many will come to Him and say: “Didn’t they perform miracles and prophesy in Your name?..” And He will answer: “Get away from Me.” Only those who understand that they cannot cope with their passions without God are saved.
– Can the souls of the dead come?
– There are cases when, by God’s special permission, when they are very close, family. But here you need to be very careful. The Holy Fathers warn, firstly, regarding dreams, and even more so when outside of sleep: it is better not to trust. Sometimes there are coincidences, and a person gets used to these coincidences, begins to trust - and then he
they will imagine that he is climbing into a noose. This is dangerous. We must be cautious and distrustful. You need to live correctly, and not trust mystical phenomena.
After all, this is a disaster: 42% of Americans have had contact with the dead, two-thirds of Americans have had experience of extrasensory perception. There is a craze for this mysticism. Therefore, we Orthodox Christians need to be sober. Live the Gospel and repent. The saints even refused various visions, and we, sinners, need to be even more careful.
When God planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in paradise and introduced a ban on eating its fruit, didn’t He initially provoke evil by this, because this ban most of all attracted to its violation?
– Regarding provocation, we proceed from our current state, when Lyoshenka was told not to lick the iron handle in the cold. I believe that the condition of the first people was different. I think that there is no need to portray the story of the Fall as something unexpected, amazing, accidental (which is strongly visible in the writings of Western theologians). Like, a failed creation of God.
The Lord knew what he was creating man for. This tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a means of human self-determination. Man is called to be a god-like being; in order to achieve this god-likeness, he had to establish himself in goodness. And how to do it? – Only in the face of trials. Everyone is fine while they sleep. The condition in which the first man was was much lower than the condition to which man was called. This first state is called the falling state. The state of salvation to which we are all called is a state that does not fall. When a person is no longer freely able to fall away.
St. Augustine has an interesting expression: “Great is the freedom of not being able to sin, but the greatest freedom is not being able to sin.” A decent person can reach such a state that he will die of hunger, but he will not steal. A person will not be able to do evil, having learned how destructive it is for him.
Adam did not yet know evil, he did not know what it was like to be without God, what a misfortune it was to be separated from Him. Through the path of testing, he returns to the path of perfection. The Lord foresaw all this: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the means through which people return as sons of God by grace, and not as the naive child that Adam was in his original state.
– You spoke about three characters: God, man and human freedom, but did not say anything about Satan...
“Satan cannot touch us even one iota without our permission.” Isaac the Syrian has a wonderful word about this: “It cannot happen without our permission, only when we extend our hand with our lawless thoughts, feelings, desires, and deeds.” Macarius the Great says: “The demon sits down with every sin, then spiritually unites with us.” Philokalia, first volume, paragraph 150, instruction of Anthony the Great: “God himself cannot save me, much less Satan can destroy me.”
Who is Satan? - A creature, and a fallen one at that. The Holy Fathers definitely say: do not give your hand to the devil.
– The Lord allowed bodily demons...
– Bodily possession is a disease. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes very clearly about this: “The Lord allowed even the saints to become physically possessed, to possess the body, but not the soul of a person.” He even believes that this sometimes speaks of special mercy towards a person. This is one of the easiest paths to salvation. “Bodily possession is nothing compared to spiritual possession,” said the saint.
– God sees everything and allows it. Why, at the present stage, does He allow the youth to fall away, when they are not aware of their actions, and their loved ones and parents cannot help them, and their soul perishes?..
– We often ask questions that are in a chain with other problems. If we take the question from the middle, we will not find an answer to it.
75 percent of youth problems are problems of parents. In Scotland, one pastor came to me for advice: he has two sons - they don’t go to church, they chase balls, play around, he doesn’t know what to do. We got talking, I asked: “What about your television? Good? Do the programs have a beneficial effect on children? He says: “What are you talking about: how fruitful it is there! What are you talking about!” - “So, maybe you should throw away the TV for about five years?” His face changed: “No, I can’t do that.” Although he immediately described to me how harmful television affects children.
I live in Posad. I look: it’s midnight, girls about 15 years old, dressed to the nines, are wandering around. The car stopped, full of guys, they didn’t even pay attention to the girls - and they went to them... Where are the parents?.. Therefore, when they ask me what to do with the children, I say: “Why don’t you ask what to do with the parents? » Three-quarters depends on the parents, of course, the environment and the school also influence, but our time, more than ever, raises the question: who will win - the family or the school? And when a father covers his son with a three-story layer so that he doesn’t dare to swear?..
There is the spirit of man, and there is the spirit of society. Parents do not pay attention to themselves, so the matter is much deeper. General spiritual discouragement, negligence - the general atmosphere is bad, and children are like sponges - they absorb everything, and then express in naked form those passions that parents would like to hide. Parents must set an example: children are brought up with pictures and examples.
– Suicide is a terrible sin, but what to do when the person who committed it was a completely righteous person during his lifetime?
– What does it mean “perfectly righteous”? If he had been a proper righteous man, he would never have done this. Wrong righteous man - what is this? “He goes to church, fasts, does everything, but inside him a worm of opinion about himself grows. This righteousness is false and can lead to the most serious anomalies, including suicide.
– Why do so many people turn to psychologists, to various trainings, and not to the Gospel?
– This trend prevails in the West. At one time, Freud gave a powerful impetus, then Jung, their teachings gained great popularity. The West is essentially irreligious, the best minds spoke about this back in the 19th century, for example Slavophiles, especially Khomyakov - read his letters. But nature does not tolerate a vacuum: if there is no religion, let’s replace it with psychology. And now we are under great pressure from Western influence, so don’t be surprised that all these fashions and trends are coming to us.
– What is the fate of a soldier who at the moment of death felt hatred for the enemy?
“I can’t speak about the fate of a single person.” We operate with concepts that we cannot understand: hatred, love - they can have different degrees and spread. We can never properly judge a person's spiritual and mental state. Therefore we say: God is a judge.
But there are other things that we can judge. If we turn to the history of Christianity, we will learn that in matters of war and peace it is guided by the following principle: “Greater love has no one than someone who lays down his life for his friends.” Warriors are people who are the first to risk death for those behind them, to sacrifice themselves.
You cannot confuse two concepts: there is righteous anger, and there is unrighteous anger. Christ said: “Learn from Me meekness and humility,” but what did He do in the Temple? Knut made, knocked over the benches, scattered the coins. This is righteous anger. But whoever has unrighteous anger sins and kills his soul, no matter who he is.
– Dear Alexey Ilyich, tell me something about Abbot Nikon (Vorobyov).
- Fine. We are talking about a man who was born in 1894 and died in 1963. His life can be edifying for us. He is from a peasant family, but when he went
to school, and then to a real school, then there he completely lost faith, completely, and deeply believed that science could answer all the questions of his life and give him a complete worldview. Now we can’t even imagine how strong this idea – science versus religion – was already at the beginning of the twentieth century.
He became interested in science, but then realized that science does not concern worldview issues at all. Science is not interested in the problems of the soul, eternity; it deals with the wrong questions. Then he completely immersed himself in the study of the history of philosophy. Here he achieved great success, he was a talented person. I slept very little, read a lot, bought books with my last money, walking in low shoes in winter, in the very Russian frosts. He achieved decent knowledge, so much so that some teachers came to him to consult on some issue in the history of philosophy. He also gets acquainted with Eastern philosophical thought, but does not engage in practice.
What did he come to by studying philosophy? “I saw,” he said, “that every philosopher is philosophy. Where is the truth? After this, disillusioned with both science and philosophy, he enters a psychoneurological institute - he becomes disillusioned there too. According to him, “they deal with the skin, not the soul.” His spiritual quest became so dramatic that, as he said, “I was on the verge of suicide.” Everyone dies - and I will die. And why then live?..
And then one day, in 1915, in the summer, at about 12 o’clock at night, when he was in a terrible experience and thinking about all this, he remembered the faith that he was taught in childhood, and turned to God: “Lord, if You exist – open up to me! I’m not doing this for the sake of curiosity, not for the sake of seeking some kind of strength or benefit.” It was a cry from the soul on the brink of a life situation.
And here something happened that turned his whole life upside down. He says: “I was overcome by such a state of joy, such an indescribable state of the closeness of God, the existence of God, that I exclaimed: “Lord, I am ready to undergo any torment, just so as not to lose what You have just revealed to me!” God revealed himself to me in full force.” How consonant is this with what happened in the first centuries of Christianity? Let us remember the martyrs: how could Christianity survive in the face of the cruel law: “Christians are to the lions!”? – Here’s how it could be: if a person received such a notification in his soul, then he was ready to face any death.
“After that, when I came to my senses a little,” he continued, “I heard the measured and powerful strikes of the bell. At first I thought that they were ringing at the local church, in Vyshny Volochyok, then I remembered: 12 o’clock at night, what kind of ringing? But the ringing continued, like a big bell.” But it was not in vain that he studied philosophy; he thought: is this not psychologism, i.e. Isn't it a hallucination? He was embarrassed by these doubts for a long time, but then he was so glad and so consoled when he remembered Turgenev’s story “Living Relics”, when Lukerya heard a bell ringing before her death, out of humility she did not say that the ringing was from Heaven, she said that it was ringing from above.
Later he bought S. Bulgakov’s book “The Never-Evening Light” and found the same thing from him. Sergei Nikolaevich had a similar situation when, after the death of his son, he was extremely worried, and he also heard this bell ringing - measured and powerful.
And he says: “Then I realized that these internal contacts of God with the human soul are sometimes expressed in these external church phenomena.” Please note: when the revolution began, what was the first thing they did? - The bells were torn down. They touch the soul the most. The bell appeals to conscience, so they were thrown down - the hated bells.
This is how his conversion took place. After this, he entered the Moscow Theological Academy as a volunteer student, where he especially diligently attended lectures on apologetics, given by Pavel Florensky. According to him, “they explained a lot to me,” because there were too many doubts in the previous period of his life. "At school, at
In real school, no one answered our questions. The priest came and read the Law of God, but when we asked questions, he said “leave me alone!” or he didn’t answer, he read mournfully and that’s it. And we really came out as atheists.”
By the way, why did Sergei Bulgakov leave the seminary? – I became convinced that there is no God. This is a sad picture of that time, but not only that: in theological schools, unfortunately, this scholasticism, the dead study of theology, without a corresponding life, is present to too great a degree, and it can kill the soul.
He spent some time at the academy, and in 1931, during the most terrible time of persecution, he became a monk. At that time, to accept monasticism was one to one: to become a Christian when the law “Christians to the lions!” came out. He was arrested 2 years later on the day of the Annunciation, already as a hieromonk, and sent to the camps. There was a special sadism in this: priests and monks were put together with the most notorious punks. He later said: “It wasn’t even hunger or cold, but the most terrible thing that happened here was being together in the same barracks with punks.”
When Solzhenitsyn wrote “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” he read it and said: “Oh, if only it were like this with us!” This is almost a resort, ideal conditions, they apparently put him in some special camp.” The hardships he suffered were very difficult. He completely broke my heart. He said that a miracle happened to him: he was released from the camp three days before the shot at Kirov: after that no one was released, they were given prison sentences again.
He was also saved by the fact that one respected doctor in Vyshny Volochok took him on as a universal servant. The doctor had a house, a garden, a vegetable garden, and he did everything there. “Here,” he said, “there was another school, not external, but internal. Of course, I was well-fed and clothed, but what happened here was no easier than in prison in any other respect.” The family was completely atheistic; they knew him even earlier. There were two sisters who mocked and mocked him, especially one of the sisters. Psychologically it was very difficult for him. But an episode occurred that deserves serious attention.
One of the sisters became seriously ill, it seems, with cancer. He often had to look after her, and she had a bad character. He arranged a call for her, and she was terribly nervous, angry, insulted, cursed - it was extremely difficult. But one day this sister sees a dream: some, in her words, “elders” appear to her, who said that in their house there is a priest who will bring her salvation. Moreover, this dream repeated itself. She was extremely perplexed, she never thought that he was a priest, she thought he was just some kind of servant, but then she remembered that it was Nikon. After that, she asked him for a confession - Father Nikon said that her confession was a continuous sob.
After confession, she changed so much that everyone in the house could not understand anything: from a fury and a demon, she turned into a meek angel. Everyone was simply shocked. She died as a Christian. The second sister also converted to Christianity, then became a monk, and when she died, the whole city buried her, but no one knew that she had a monastic vestment under her pillow. As Abbot Nikon himself said, his life there was “the highest school of humility,” which had such an impact on the people around him.
Even in the camp, the bishop gave him a reference, and he took care of it. When churches began to open in 1944, thanks to this characteristic, he was given the opportunity to serve in the city of Kozelsk. In Kozelsk, he lived in an apartment with the nuns of the Shamordin monastery; the monastery itself was closed. And from that time on I became acquainted with him, I remember what he was like there. It was skin and bones, a living skeleton. There were years of hunger, the nuns also ate very poorly: for a pot of soup (for four nuns and Nikon) one tablespoon of vegetable oil, and then the eldest lamented: “Oh, pour a little!”
He lived like a true ascetic. I was little, we invited him to visit, and I had great sorrow: the cat gave birth, but did not want to accept kittens. Therefore, when the priest came to visit us, the first thing I did was ask him: this is what the trouble is.
Then we sit at the table, drink tea, and such a scene is just for show: the cat is stretched out, and all the kittens are sucking on it! I will remember this episode for the rest of my life.
Then there were many other amazing cases. One day, when we lived in Gzhatsk (now Gagarin), somewhere in May or early June, he called me: “Leshenka, come here.” He takes me to the door, takes a ruler and a pencil and marks it out. The next day again: “Look - the ruler is already higher!” And so every day he called and crossed out. I look: “How interesting – the line is getting higher and higher!” Around August he stopped calling me.
I realized what was going on and said: “Father, try me on!” He says: “Why?” Then he finally tried it on and said: “That’s it, the ruler is in place. Do you want to be higher than the Lord God? He was the same height." In two months I grew so much that when I came to class, all the girls screamed: “What Alik has become!” I blushed and ran. I grew more than a head in two months.
For us it seemed natural, self-evident. There were many facts of this kind. My aunt also lived here. When she died, she was in terrible pain. At five o’clock in the morning her eldest daughter came running: “Father, what should I do?..” He gives her a teaspoon (or two) of Cahors at the bottom of the glass: “Take it to her.” She fell asleep, woke up: as if nothing had happened - everything stopped. And all these miracles happened behind the scenes, without any effect, as if by themselves.
One day a woman asked my mother: “When are you moving to Zagorsk?” She was surprised, why would they move? And she says: “So the priest said that you will live in Zagorsk!”
I can testify that when the priest came out in the morning after prayer, I could not look at him: it was not the sunlight, of course, it was different, but it was impossible to look at him. We cannot lead such a lifestyle.
If there was a service, he got up at five o’clock, if there was no service, at six o’clock. He prayed either before the liturgy, or until 9-10 o’clock in the morning. Sometimes he invited everyone to perform Pentecentenary: when 500 Jesus prayers are read in a special way. He read the Holy Fathers and especially bequeathed to us all to study and have as our guide the works of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov). We try our best to comply with this - it must be studied.
http://tv-soyuz.ru/ Lecture "Life after death." Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy and Seminary Alexei Ilyich Osipov. http://www.aosipov.ru/ What will be the human condition? What happens to him in death, after death? What will happen in eternal life? These questions have always, throughout history, troubled humanity. Christianity does not at all set as its goal to reveal the secrets of the future century. Because it is impossible to convey. “A man shall not let them say” (Apostle Paul). How Bishop Sergius of Smolensk and Dorogobuzh died (Smirnov, †1957). Before death, “that world” opens up to many people while maintaining full consciousness and orientation in this world. "Ordeal" means torture. There is no strict doctrine about ordeals. "The Ordeal of the Soul of Blessed Theodora." and so on. - not a statement of the dogmatic teaching of the church. The angel’s instruction to St. Macarius of Alexandria about the ordeal: “Take earthly things here as the weakest image of heavenly things.” However, there are things that Christianity speaks about with great certainty. The revelation of God does not give us the revelation of the secrets of the future age. It is entirely aimed at giving us the keys to entering “there”, i.e. give the correct principles of spiritual and moral life. For only under this condition is the correct picture of the vision of “that” world revealed to a person. A person’s transition from this life is usually associated with certain temptations. A person can be attacked by states of despondency, disbelief, even despair. These heavy passions, “evil despondency.” It’s a disaster if a person doesn’t prepare for this in advance. How to prepare? It is important here, while they are still small, to learn how to deal with them. The human soul, after being separated from the body during our earthly 3 days, still remains here. Until the 40th day they feel the presence of a person. Within 6 days the soul is awarded a vision of the heavenly world. And then for 30 days she finds herself in the face of what is outside of God, i.e. hell. Time and eternity are incomparable categories, they are simply different, like km and kg. There is no longer time, there comes eternity. Eternity is not a static something. There is no time, but there is also no stagnation, no dying. Abbess Arsenia (†1905): “When a person lives an earthly life, he cannot recognize how enslaved his spirit is, depending on another spirit, he cannot fully recognize this because he has a will with which he acts, as whenever he wants. But when the will is taken away with death, then the soul will see to whose power it is enslaved. The Spirit of God brings the righteous into eternal abodes.... The same souls that had fellowship with the devil will be possessed by him.” There is no repentance after death. The will is taken away with the death of the body. The soul unites either with the Spirit of God or with tormenting demons due to its condition. “Whatever I find, that’s what I judge”...