Word before the funeral service by Rev. A. V. Martynova

An unexpected event, brethren, convened a crowded meeting of people of different classes of society, occupations and beliefs in this all-honorable church: the difference is great, but the motive that unites everyone is the same, the same mood. The irresistible inspiration of conscience to pay the last debt to the deceased is the motive that unites us all, making us all related. An oppressive feeling of sorrow and despondency, evoked by an unforeseen catastrophe that befell one untimely - this is our general mood. The personality of the deceased is so dear, so attractive, so connecting and so binding! We abandoned our usual activities, our worries and hurried here, perhaps with more zeal than we would have hurried to a task that was personally useful to us; we left everything we had to come here and say: forgive and farewell, our good shepherd, forgive, teacher, father, friend, brother, forgive, good man!.. But in moments of such general grief there is, however, something lofty and sacred, which forces one to restrain natural impulses towards joyless tears and hopeless despondency. A person who has acquired the unanimous grief of others at his death somehow inevitably grows above the common lot of death and corruption for all living things, and grows in our imagination with even more vividness than during life. Yes, precisely now, when the opportunity to talk with the deceased has ceased, with what certainty does his living image appear and how desirable it is to imagine the entire life path he has traversed! With what clarity his image appears before me at the moment of our first meeting on the path of life! Here is a wonderful and handsome young man. Looking at him, one cannot think that he is a native of a poor village in the northern region, who was early deprived of his mother’s affections, and an orphan who went through the harsh lower and middle schools of upbringing. Marked by outstanding talents, like a spark from God, he could easily become, under the pressure of external circumstances, a callous person, subordinating everything to his egoism. But this is not how his peers, students of the Academy, knew him: he is an affectionate, sociable, good-natured comrade. He displays the same characteristics in his official career at the Theological Academy: he is a zealous professor, steadfast in his convictions, strict with himself, but kind, affectionate, humane with everyone, no matter how different they may be in their convictions, in their mood; and these properties inspired sincere respect and love for him. What paralyzed him in the severity of orphanhood and school education? – His deep religiosity. This was the most zealous admirer of St. Sergius, and his monastery still remembers Alexander Vasilyevich. This religiosity is the source of his love, humanity, tolerance, compassion for any misfortune of his neighbor; here is an explanation of the banner with which until the last minute of his life he walked his further path of serving his duty. And God blessed him: while serving at the Academy, Alexander Vasilyevich became related to a most beautiful family, and his happy family life began, which should not have ended so soon... A student of the Academy, crowned with an academic theological degree by it, he never interrupted communication with her and until the last minutes of his life carried the banner of faith and knowledge, which she handed him, releasing him to another field of public church service. His service to duty did not follow a broad and smooth path, but a narrow and laborious one. Outside the office and the family hearth, he could only be seen at his official post: that’s the whole breadth of his life’s path. And he was always busy, and he always had “no time!” In response to friendly advice: “take it easy, take it easy, rest A. V-ch”, I had to hear one thing: “you can’t, it’s necessary, I have to!”... Such people are always a minority; everyone else lives well with them, but their loss is all the more painful. That is why, at the moment of death, they grow in the consciousness of their contemporaries forever as clearly defined types. Death is the inevitable fate of every living creature, not excluding humans, as inhabitants of the earth. And there is no reason for a person to grumble that the end of his earthly existence is death. But the death that befalls people is profoundly different. One dies a hero at his post, and his death evokes tears of dear loss and reverence for the deceased; another dies shamefully, causing grief for human dignity. Our deceased good shepherd was struck down by death, which did not have time to snatch from him the banner of his entire life. What banner is this? – Banner of faith and knowledge. With what deep respect, with what love the late Theologian treated both natural science and classicism, the modern impulse for knowledge and culture - I cannot only, but I am obliged to testify to this. With what deep respect, love and gratitude in conversations with me he spoke about you, highly respected representatives of natural science! How his soul burned with the desire to bring the light and warmth of the faith of Christ into your scientific works and studies! What deep sadness his heart was consumed by the enmity that the power of darkness has always sought and seeks to introduce between the light of faith and knowledge, between the vitality and warmth of Christian love for God and neighbor and the sympathy of natural humanism and altruism! He treated you with the same deep respect and love, highly respected representatives of classicism, being himself a student of Christian classicism. This respect for you as faithful and strict servants of duty was inspired in him by his religiosity and love of knowledge. Is faith the enemy of knowledge? Oh no and no! Faith illuminates and inspires, faith strengthens the energy of work, helps to overcome obstacles in equal measure for the naturalist, philologist, and theologian. This is only the section and types of gifts of the One God's Spirit, the Creator, the Ever-flowing Source of divine light. Here, without a doubt, is the reason for the respect that the deceased earned for himself in a circle of people of different views, beliefs, and directions. Such people, people of duty, bind individuals into moral communication and create a sphere of grateful remembrance that remains long after their death. They are recorded in the annals of the institutions they served, and their names live with them, constituting their spiritual wealth and decoration, and their physical death is the beginning of their historical life. But you are not reliable, you are not durable, human memory! How often it is to encounter phenomena of this kind that one generation of people erects monuments and columns to their favorites and heroes, and the next generation destroys them. And what is gratifying in these earthly structures for the deceased and those closest to his heart? Death took away from him the means of grossly sensual communication with us and the world of phenomena. These structures, these consolidations of the memory of people of duty are needed by contemporaries and future generations in order to evoke imitation in them: for people of duty are the salt of the earth, according to the expression of the Word of God, the movers of the prosperity of life and its progress, without which or with a noticeable diminishment of which, vacillation, fermentation, the struggle of personal interests, sterility and degeneration begin. But death has no power to deprive a Christian, and especially a servant of Christ, of the immortal spirit contemplating the beauty of the divine universe without those sensory-materialistic means through which the most refined genius of a scientist - an inhabitant of the planet - is forced to contemplate the wonders of divine creativity. According to the teachings of the Holy Church, the death of a Christian is a great sacrament - a transition from the transitory, always changeable world of phenomena into a new heaven and a new earth, a change from dilapidated flesh, tormented by labor and disease, like an old church, to a new shell - an eternal, heavenly church. And so, where earthly, experienced knowledge, at the sight of the coffin, refuses to say anything about the further fate of the spirit that has shed its old shell, being lost and embarrassed by its helplessness, faith with unshakable firmness says: I will not die, but sleep - and instead of inconsolable tears and silent despondency, it invites to a quiet and fiery prayer: God, Righteous and Merciful! Cleanse the soul of the deceased: forgive his voluntary and involuntary sins and accept him, Your faithful standard-bearer, into Your heavenly villages! This prayer instills the gracious hope that the one who has died in the flesh will not cease his spiritual communication with those remaining close to his heart, invisibly for them he will instruct them, intercede for them, blessing them with heavenly blessing and praying to the One, the Life-Giving God of all, to Him be glory forever and ever. Amen. You might be interested in: