Голос из вечности (дума на могиле)

In the twilight of a quiet summer evening I stood, thoughtful and lonely, at the grave of my friend. On that day he was commemorated; that day his family stayed at the grave for a long time. Almost no words were heard between those present: only sobs were heard. The sobs were interrupted by deep silence; the silence was interrupted by sobs. And for a long time the sobs were replaced by silence, the silence by sobs. I stood, pensive and lonely, at the grave; stood overshadowed by the impressions of the day. Suddenly, an unexpected, wonderful inspiration took possession of me. It was as if I heard the voice of the deceased! - His funeral speech, the mysterious conversation, the wonderful sermon, as it was depicted in my soul, I hasten to write with a trembling hand. “My father! my mother! My wife! My sisters! In black robes, clothed in deep sadness both in body and soul, you flocked to my lonely grave - with drooping heads, you surrounded it. Silently, with only thoughts and feelings, you talk with the silent inhabitant of the tomb. Your hearts are vials of incurable sadness. Streams of tears flow from your eyes; after the streams that have spilled, new streams of tears are born: there is no bottom to sadness, there is no end to tears.” “Babies are my children! and you are here at the gravestone, at the tombstone! And tears welled up in your eyes, but your heart does not know what your eyes are crying about, imitating the eyes of my father, the eyes of my mother. You admire a gravestone, a luminous stone, a mirrored granite; you admire the inscription made of golden letters; and they – this granite and this inscription – are the harbingers of your early orphanhood.” “My father! my mother! My wife! my family and friends! Why are you standing for so long over my grave, over the cold stone, coldly standing guard over the grave? My lifeless body has long since cooled; by the verdict of the almighty Creator, it returns to its land and crumbles into dust. What heavy thoughts surround you, keep you at my grave?... The altar servants brought her a prayer for my repose, proclaimed to me eternal memory in God, who saves and rests me. They departed from the grave silent: leave you too. You need peace after the exploits of your soul and body, exhausted and tormented by grief.” “You are not coming!... you are here!... you are chained to the place of my burial! In a silence that says more than the most magnificent eloquence can say, with a soul for which there is no explanation, with a heart in which the definiteness of feelings is absorbed by the abundance of feelings, you do not retreat from the grave, imprinted for many centuries, from the stone - a monument to the insensible. What do you need?... Are you not expecting my voice from under the stone, from the depths of the gloomy grave?” “This voice is gone! I speak in silence. Silence, unbreakable silence is the property of the cemetery until the trumpet of resurrection. The ashes of the dead speak without the sounds that the earthly word needs: through corruption accomplished, they proclaim a loud sermon, a most convincing exhortation to the restless seekers of corruption rustling on the earth’s surface.” “And I also have a voice! And I speak to you and answer your inexpressible thoughts, your unspoken and inexpressible questions. Listen to me! Distinguish my voice from the general voice with which eternity speaks to time! – The voice of eternity is one, unchangeable, immutable. There is no inconstancy or changeability in it: in it there is one day, one heart, one thought. The one who unites everything into one is Christ. There is only one voice from there.” “In this voice with which eternity speaks, in this voice that is silent and at the same time like thunder, distinguish my voice! Don't you, my dear ones, recognize my voice? My voice in the general, single voice of eternity, has its own separate sound, like the voice of a string in the general chord of a multi-string piano.” “The voice of eternity spoke to all of us, it spoke from the time of our appearance into existence. He spoke to us when we were still unable to listen to him; He spoke to us even in our adulthood, when we could and should have listened to him and understood him. The voice of eternity!... alas!... there are few who listen to you in a noisy earthly hotel! That is why our infancy prevents you from listening; then the cares and distractions of life prevent you from listening. But you don't stop talking. You speak and speak, and finally, through the formidable messenger - death, you demand both an attentive and an inattentive listener to account for their attention and obedience to the great verbs of eternity. “So that the voice of eternity has a special echo for you, especially capable of penetrating your heart, attracting your mind to the word of salvation, God has counted me among those speaking from eternity. My voice merged into harmonious harmony with the general voice of the vast invisible world. For all the wanderers of the earth, I am dead, voiceless, like all the dead, but for you I am alive, and, dead, I speak the word of salvation more openly, more powerfully than I would say it, remaining among you and chasing with you the ghosts of blessings with which corruption deceives and destroys exiles from paradise, who are placed for a short time in an earthly inn for reconciliation with the God who has angered them.” “God is merciful, infinitely merciful. If it were necessary and useful, suddenly from the darkness of the grave, from under a heavy stone, I would respond to you!... Heaven recognized a private voice from eternity as superfluous... And what a voice from eternity is no longer superfluous, when God was pleased that not only equal angelic people, but His Only Begotten Son Himself would proclaim His will to the universe, proclaim the holy and strict statutes - blessed for the obedient, terrible for rebellious - eternity? “They shall have Moses and the prophets, and let them hear them” (Luke 16:29), the answer was from Heaven to him who asked for the voice of the dead to preach to those living on earth in a carnal life, mortified by spiritual eternal death. “Unless they listen to Moses and the prophets, and unless someone rises from the dead, they do not have faith” (Luke 16:31). “My comrade is a dead man, but still with a living word in his mouth! Accept the order from me and fulfill it. Here is my father! Here is my mother! Here is my wife! Here are my relatives! I cannot speak to them except in the common voice of eternity. In this voice they hear the sound of my voice... yes, they hear it!... but I don’t have a separate, private, my word... My comrade! be my word; from our common treasury, from sacred eternity, tell them for me a short, most necessary word for them: “Earthly life is an instantaneous deceptive dream. Eternity is inevitable. There is also a disastrous eternity!... Acquire a blessed eternity by attention and obedience to the all-holy law of the all-holy God - and come to me for sure, never-ending pleasure, each at his own time, appointed by God alone!” 1848, Sergiev Hermitage. The Duma was written on the death of K. F. O-on, who from a young age had a close relationship with Archimandrite Ignatius Brianchaninov. You might be interested in: