Life beyond the grave

Life beyond the grave, the life of the next century, is clothed in mystery, and all attempts of our mind to understand death and penetrate its kingdom remain in vain. Only the wings of faith help us rise to these inaccessible boundaries, and only spiritual experience makes it possible to talk about the afterlife, but even then only “guessily, and as if through a dark glass.” Only death itself can open the door to this area. The revelation about life beyond the grave is given to some of us while still here on earth, but few people manage to tell others about it. However, our soul longs for this revelation and cannot come to terms with death, understood only as the end of life. As a result, it seemed appropriate and necessary for us to bring closer to universal understanding the spiritual experience of a man who was at the same time a thinker, a priest, a shepherd, and a teacher. Father Sergius Bulgakov was truly a minister and contemplator of the Mysteries of God: his wisdom was nourished by his faith, and he drew his faith from standing at the altar. But, regarding the mystery of death and life beyond the grave, he was given another special revelation. Twice he was on the verge of death, almost beyond life. But illness and physical suffering did not extinguish the power of thought in him, and, upon his recovery, he realized and thought through this spiritual experience in a number of theological chapters; the latter are, however, something more than just reflections: for they are living evidence that death is the beginning of a new life and, as such, carries great consolation. “Whoever was given the will of God to approach this edge of the abyss,” he later wrote, “let him be a messenger from there, which for everyone will one day become there and there.” For everyone! For we all lose our loved ones and we all follow them. Therefore, Father Sergius’ sermon about life after death should be addressed to everyone, should be accessible to everyone. This publication serves this purpose. For the theological works of Father Sergius are difficult and inaccessible. Therefore, we have isolated from them everything that concerns this topic, without changing anything in his thought, but only by shortening and releasing obscure theological terminology and concentrating all the quotations around one theme of the gospel of death. May the Lord Jesus Christ send His consolation to all those who thirst for Him - through the mouth of His faithful servant, Archpriest Sergius. The people of this century, completely captivated by its life with its vanity, can be sincerely perplexed by the belief in immortality; For those who have already had a meeting with God in the life of their spirit, for those who have experienced the revelation of death, immortality becomes obvious. The Word of God gives us guiding thoughts here, which must be revealed in their meaning. The most incomprehensible is the statement of unbelief, according to which death is the complete destruction of life. This destruction is confessed not only as the destruction of visible forms of bodily life, but also of conscious life - spiritual, heartfelt, creative. Into this “utter darkness” the unbelieving thought is saved in order not to accept the problematic of death... But this makes it once again obvious that death can only be understood as a part of life, and not vice versa - life cannot be immersed in the non-existence of mortality. Death is in this sense, although a parasite of existence, but an act of life. That “nothing” from which God created the world, in fact, as such, does not exist for itself. His positive being begins only with peace. God, creating the world out of nothing, thereby gives place not only to being, but also to non-existence. Original non-existence, “utter darkness,” does not exist at all. “God did not create death... for He created everything for being” (Wis. Sol. 1:13: 14). Death does not exist in the plan of God’s creation; it “entered the world” through the envy of the devil (Wis. Sol. 2:24), for “God created man for incorruptibility and made him the image of His eternal being” (Wis. Sol. 2:23). Therefore, death can only be understood as a state of life. The mortality of life is only its disease, ineradicable, but not invincible. There was no death, and there will be no death. Initially, man was not created for death; the possibility of immortality was invested in him. A person had to spiritually and creatively affirm this possibility in himself, but he could also abolish it, which is what happened in original sin. This abolition was sealed by God’s sentence, which testified to the change that had taken place: “You will return to the land from which you were taken, for you are earth and to earth you will go” (Gen. 3:19). “And the dust will return to the earth what it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7). Death consists in the separation of the human spirit (which came from God) from the “earth” to which its created nature belongs - a body animated by a soul. The human spirit, in its spirituality, has the potential for immortality and imparts this ability to its entire complex nature. Original sin represents man's departure from his path of unity with God and the beginning of death entering the human spirit through sin. This retreat, of course, could not lead to the death of the immortal human spirit that came from God (just as the world of fallen spirits did not lead to it), but it was such a weakening of its power, in particular, the power over its mental-physical nature, that the balance, which had not yet achieved stability, shook in the opposite direction. What was destined for unity in the tripartite composition of man: spirit, soul and body - in death undergoes temporary separation. The spirit lost the ability to maintain a constant connection with its body, and to that extent its power became limited - mortality became the state of life of fallen man. Although death itself occurs only at a predetermined hour of life, in essence, it extends to the entire human life from its very beginning. This is expressed in the fact that it is common for a person to die at all ages, and all cases of death are only partial applications of the single principle of mortality. Everything living - that is, a person, and with him all living creatures, begins to die simultaneously with the beginning of life, and the entire duration of life is accompanied by an increase in mortal exhaustion, until it finally conquers life. But, despite this, death in no way means the failure of the Creator in creation, due to which He, as it were, destroys it himself. True, it might not have existed in human life, since God did not create death. However, its very possibility lies in the mortal composition of man, which is still completely uncertain precisely in this complexity. Such complexity does not exist for disembodied spirits, which is why even in the fall they were not touched by death. Man is open to the danger of death due to his wealth, which is at the same time complexity. Like all creation, man is a fusion of being and non-being, the latter raising its head as soon as the balance is shaken. Original sin is an imbalance in all humanity, as well as in each of the people, which is restored only in Christ. Therefore, God’s sentence in relation to each person is not an externally imposed punishment, but expresses the consequence of a disturbed balance and exposed creatureliness: “you are earth.” In the Fall, there was not a complete severance of the connection between the spirit and the earth, which would have been the destruction of man himself, but only a certain, and, moreover, incomplete, breakdown of it. The image of God's man is preserved, the Divine plan of creation cannot fail to be realized, but a painful break appears in the paths of human life with a temporary separation of soul and body, or death, however, not as the last, final state, that is, the accomplished failure of man's creation, but as an inevitable stage of his life. Death is only allowed by God, and, therefore, providentially included in life, as a necessary expression of human mortality. It matures throughout life, but is accomplished in the instant of the “hour of death.” In this sense, death is natural in a pattern, and yet it is unnatural, since it entered the world through sin. Connected with this is the irresistible horror of death, inseparable from human nature, even in the God-Man himself: “My soul is sorrowful even to death,” “My God, He has forsaken Me.” Extreme mortal sorrow, a feeling of being abandoned by God (which, however, is wonderfully combined with unity with Christ in His dying with us) accompanies death, like a black shadow, and the Church, in funeral hymns, does not diminish the power of mortal sorrow. This is the spiritual side of death. The same is true of the body, since death is a disease of disease, a suffering of suffering. However, this horror, naturally insurmountable, has already been overcome supernaturally, by grace, for the path of death has been traversed by Christ. Death must be understood in connection with the coming resurrection, restoring an interrupted life, and in connection with that undying principle in a person that lives in the afterlife (and suicide does not save from it). The dividing scythe of death in the tripartite composition of man passes between the spirit and soul. on the one hand, and the body. on the other. It is very important to establish this inseparability of spirit and soul in death. The soul is an intermediate principle that connects the spirit with the created world. The soul is created, but its superphysical energy of life is preserved. For this reason alone, it is impossible to talk about the completeness of death in the sense of the victory of non-existence. The complete triumph of death would take place only if it were the separation of the spirit from the soul and body, that is, disincarnation. This would mean the destruction of man himself. Is it possible to think of such disembodiment in relation to the human spirit? Does the spirit have its own power of being and immortality apart from the body, and is it not imprisoned in the body, as it were? The personal spirit of man was created by God. This means that the personal principle in him is called to existence, as a kind of reflection in the non-existence of the Personality of God. But the human personality does not know a spiritual existence independent of incarnation. The human spirit is not an incorporeal spirit by creation, like angels. Such a human spirit, independent of the world of existence, does not exist at all. The existence of the human spirit, and therefore immortality, is inextricably linked with the world and in its implementation it also includes death. and resurrection. Both, accomplished in Christ, and in Him and through Him in all humanity, have a place for themselves in human nature, perceived in full by the Lord at the Incarnation. And therefore, the division that occurs in death would be impossible if it separated the spirit from all human nature, that is, soul and body, and thereby completely destroyed a person, dehumanizing him. On the contrary, this separation of death separates the human spirit, which remains united with the soul, only from the human body, that is, from the entire natural world. By this, human energy (soul) loses the fullness of life, however, by the power of God, revealed in the resurrection of the God-man, it is able to recover, recreate its body, and, to that extent, realize its resurrection: “all live,” each in his own order: the firstborn Christ, and then those of Christ (1 Cor. 15:23). And this also applies to the image of grain. containing in itself all the potency of life: “When you sow, you do not sow the future body, but a naked grain, whatever happens, wheat or some other kind. But God gives him a body as he wills, and to each seed his own body” (1 Cor 15:37–38). The human spirit exists as the potency of an integral person who has a body, the energy of which is the soul. In death this energy is paralyzed, but not destroyed. It remains inherent in the personal spirit as its quality. That is why it is so important to understand human death not as destruction, but as dormition, that is, a temporary cessation of the action of the soul in relation to the body. In this sense, we can talk “about the dead.” And the death of Christ, as an act of life of His human nature, in its nature does not differ from universal death. His three-day stay in the coffin corresponds to the entire afterlife of a person. But the power of Christ’s death was limited: it was not internally inevitable, but voluntarily accepted by Him. Communication with the souls of the departed, which was the “sermon in hell,” testifies that after death the Lord remains in a state accessible to communication with the departed. This connection of the souls of the departed with the world, as well as with each other, is confirmed by some parables, for example, about the rich man and Lazarus, where their souls mutually recognize each other in their earthly individuality: the rich man “lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham and Lazarus in the distance” (Luke 16:23). Usually, in church writing - in lives and prologues, as well as in the works of the fathers (St. Macarius the Great, Cyril Alexander) and in some church hymns, death is described in extremely specific terms. According to these descriptions, it consists in separating from the body a certain transparent shell that has its image and preserves its vitality. The same character is also adopted in various cases of posthumous appearances of the deceased in their transparent image. Combining all these features, we can consider, if not a dogma, then at least the dominant tradition of the Church, that a person in his death is separated only from his body, and not from his soul, which continues to live in the “afterlife,” that is, in new conditions of existence. The soul residing in such a shell, in a supercorporeal form, maintains a connection with the spirit. Compared to the fullness of life in the body, which is predetermined for a person as corresponding to his nature, this damaged life is the “dormition” of bodily life, but by no means its interruption. Life continues beyond the grave. This life, due to its condition, remains unknown to us (which is why excessive curiosity about it is spiritually unhealthy, transferring Christian thought onto the rails of occultism). However, certain basic features here can be established as deriving from the fundamental tenets of our faith. And above all, death, as the release of the soul from the bonds of the body, is a great revelation of the spiritual world. The Fall, which has clothed us in the leather garments of impenetrable sensual corporeality, deprives us of spiritual clairvoyance. It is restored only in Christ: “from now on you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51). We can say that while in the body, a person passes through only one area of ​​life, yet he is destined for its entirety. This makes his earthly experience limited. And if a person had remained forever imprisoned in the leather vestments of his own body, then he, one might say, would not have become a man in his entirety, for he was created as a citizen of both worlds, for heaven and for earth. The love and wisdom of God have found a way to replenish human existence, introducing man to the spiritual world. And this happens through a tragic, catastrophic event in a person’s life, which is death. Temporarily tearing a person away from the flesh, she opens for him the gates of the spiritual world. In church writing there is abundant evidence that beings of the spiritual world, angels and demons, become visible to the dying person; The souls of the departed also approach him, and in further revelation, heaven itself with the One who lives in it becomes accessible to him. What remains inaccessible to direct experience for us becomes reality, in front of which the deceased is placed; in it he must live and find himself. This revelation of the spiritual world in death is the greatest joy and indescribable triumph for all who languished in this life about it, being separated from it, but it is also an inexpressible horror and burden and torment for those who did not want this spiritual world, did not know it, rejected it. He who was flesh is now forced to directly verify the existence of his spiritual nature. And here he finds himself faced with this greatest test, which makes his rebirth from a physical to a spiritual being inevitable. Human life is divided by death, as it were, into two halves: mental-physical and spiritual-soul existence, before death and after death. Both halves are inseparably linked, both belong to the life of the same person. But to complete his humanization, a person must outlive himself not only in mortal life, but also in the afterlife in order to achieve the maturity in which he is able to accept resurrection to eternal life. And understood in this way as an essential necessary part of human life, death is truly an act of ongoing, albeit damaged by the “dormition” of life. This raises a new question: what is happening and can anything happen in life beyond the mortal border, which is usually understood as the end? What could this end of life mean? Is this just a break, or is it also a result? Obviously, both. In death and after death, a person sees his past life as a whole. This whole is already a judgment in itself, since it reveals the general connection, content and meaning in the light of God’s truth. This is the court of “conscience,” that is, our own court, before the face of God who knows us. This is not yet a final judgment, which is possible only in connection with the entire history of all mankind, but limited and individual. It is usually called in theology “preliminary judgment.” Its preliminary character refers both to its only individual character and to its non-finality, since incorporeal existence in the afterlife does not yet express the fullness of human existence. The preliminary judgment (“going through ordeals”) is afterlife self-knowledge and the self-determination resulting from it. Of course, this ultimately determines the difference and individuality of a person’s destinies in all its diversity. Moreover, much remains unknown to us in this century. It is important here to state as an undoubted and self-evident truth that in the afterlife, individuals in their freedom also find different fates and go through different paths of life, as in this world, with the only difference that, instead of false light and penumbra, in the afterlife everything is illuminated by the light of the sun of truth, standing in the heights of heaven and with its rays piercing the depths of souls and hearts. The secrets of the afterlife are generally only sparingly revealed by Revelation and, obviously, not in order to satisfy our inquisitiveness, but in order to awaken in our consciousness the seriousness of responsibility for all the affairs of our lives. It is necessary to understand the afterlife fate of man and the preliminary judgment also in connection with this continuation of life beyond the grave, which souls have in an incorporeal state. What is this continuation and is there one? Of course, when a person is separated from the body, he is deprived of the opportunity for such “deeds” or “merits” that were possible in this world, which is why a preliminary judgment over the past part of life, namely the earthly one, becomes possible. However, it does not follow from this that this judgment is exhaustive and final. He cannot become such because each person will still be judged in connection with all of humanity, and moreover, his life does not end and is not exhausted by earthly existence, but continues beyond its borders, albeit in a different, flawed way. It is generally accepted that the dead remain in a passive state, suffering their fate. But such a concept equally contradicts both the nature of the spirit and the data of church tradition and revelation. The idea of ​​the passivity of the afterlife is correct in relation to the incompleteness of a person’s afterlife and the impossibility for him of direct participation in the life of the world, which he contemplates only as a spectator, although distinguishing in it the light and darkness of his own past life, its deeds and sins. However, beyond the grave, the life of the human spirit continues, invested, although no longer with a body, but only with a soul. The spirit lives beyond the grave by the power of its immortality, and it is characterized by freedom, and therefore creative self-determination. In relation to the spirit, the idea of ​​immobility and, consequently, some kind of fainting behind the coffin is inapplicable and contradictory. Moreover, new sources and new knowledge open up for the life of the spirit, which were inaccessible to it in the earthly shell. This is precisely communication with the spiritual world of incorporeal beings. The highest spiritual gift of the afterlife is a different, new knowledge of God, which is characteristic of the world of incorporeal spirits; The existence of God is obvious to them, just as the sun in the sky is to us. Of course, this communication with the spiritual world also represents an inexhaustible variety, for the soul attracts to itself and opens itself only to what it itself is worthy of or akin to. But the important thing is that this communication with the world of disembodied spirits, in any case, represents an inexhaustible source of new life, new knowledge, which is why the spiritual state of those who have departed cannot in any way be allowed to remain unchanged. They accommodate this new life to the extent and quality in which they are able to accommodate. It is also necessary to recognize that this afterlife of a person in communication with the spiritual world is in its own way no less important for his final state than earthly life, and, in any case, forms a necessary part of the path, the passage of which leads to the general resurrection. Each person must mature spiritually in his own way and finally decide on both good and evil. From this we have to conclude that in resurrection a person, although he remains identical to himself in everything he acquired in earthly life, however, becomes different in the afterlife even in relation to the state in which his hour of death finds him: the afterlife state is not only a “reward” or “punishment,” but also a new experience of life, which does not remain without a trace, but enriches and changes the spiritual image of a person. To what extent and how, we do not know, but it is only important to establish that the human soul, even beyond the grave, experiences and gains something new, each in its own way, in its own freedom. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus can serve as confirmation of this. The rich, so insensitive and selfish in the days of earthly life, there turns out to be capable of the love that he shows for his neighbors. The story about this movement of his soul serves to confirm the truth that even after the grave a person spiritually continues his earthly life and bears his destiny. However, this same parable can also be applied in another, completely opposite sense, namely, that beyond the grave there is repentance and its fruits, consisting in that change in spiritual state that begins in the rich. But love is not powerless and repentance is not ineffective. If earthly affairs have become inaccessible, then spiritual ones remain possible: repentance and prayer, which have effective power. We believe in the effectiveness of the prayers of the saints for us here and there, and - with trembling hearts - we entrust our lives to the care of the love and prayer of our loved ones. It can be considered an established teaching of the Church, quite sufficiently based on the testimony of the Word of God, that saints act in the world, both by the power of their prayer and generally grace-filled help, and in other, still unknown ways. Hence, a more general conclusion necessarily follows about the changeability, development and growth of the human spirit in the afterlife, despite temporary separation from the world, although it also has different degrees and forms. What this measure may be is shown to us by church teaching, attested by St. Peter (1 Peter 3:19), about preaching to the spirits in prison. This preaching of Christ, addressed to human freedom, obviously implies the possibility of accepting or rejecting new self-definitions. The same can be said regarding church teaching about the effectiveness of prayer for the dead. In this teaching we have, on the one hand, evidence of the incompleteness of the life of the deceased in comparison with the living, as a result of which they need the prayer of the living and, in particular, the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice, and the living and the dead are united in it (symbolically this is expressed in the immersion of particles taken out of the living and the dead into the honorable blood of Christ). Just as in the sacrament of repentance the objective moment of forgiveness of sin is inextricably linked with the internal activity of repentance, so in the effectiveness of church prayer for the departed a certain reciprocal activity of the deceased themselves is assumed. Accepting the gift of church prayer also means the active assimilation of this help to the Church, moreover, to the entire Church, without limitation, that is, to the Church both living and dead. The latter are by no means excluded from the possibility of prayerful help to the living, who themselves constantly turn to it. To this we must also add the judgment expressed by some spiritual writers (for example, Arch. Nicholas Kavasila) that the deceased, who are worthy of it, in connection with the Divine Liturgy, have a kind of spiritual communion, and this also presupposes, of course, the presence of a certain spiritual activity in them. From all this we conclude that the afterlife cannot be considered as forever given and unchangeable. It is a continuation of spiritual life, which does not end beyond the threshold of death, and it is its own special part of the path leading to resurrection. Resurrection is not only the action of God over man, by the power of Christ’s resurrection, but also presupposes spiritual maturity, man’s readiness to accept it. The Revelation of John is full of examples of the participation of the departed in the life of the world. Examples: Ch. 5:8–12; Ch. 6:9–11; Ch. 7:13–17; Ch. 14:1–5; Ch. 15:1-3: “And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.” And this is the new song of Moses, sung by them in the afterlife, as an expression of the grateful feelings of “all nations”: 19, 1–6 (“and I heard, as it were, the voice of a large people”); 20.4–6. In biblical language, mainly Old Testament language, the entire diversity of individual destinies is encompassed by the double scheme of “hell” and “paradise.” Catholics also include purgatory here. In Orthodoxy, along with the traditional dual scheme of heaven and hell, there is a saving uncertainty in the very delineation of both due to the fact that the line between them is by no means impassable, for it can be overcome through the prayers of the Church (this idea is especially clearly expressed in the 3rd prayer at Vespers on Pentecost). The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the God of the living, not the dead, and the torments of hell are states of ongoing life, which not only endures them, but also creatively overcomes them. Although expressions about pay and reward are also used in the Word of God and even come from the mouth of the Lord himself, we must understand them not as an external legal law, contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, but as an internal necessity, according to which everything that is inconsistent with a person’s calling is suffered, but accomplished by him in earthly life: although he himself is saved, it is “as if from fire” (1 Cor. 3:15). The doctrine of the afterlife as a reward can be consistently applied only to a limited extent, namely only to Christians who are capable of being responsible for the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the commandments of Christ. But it already arouses hopeless bewilderment where this condition is absent. Meanwhile, this is the case with respect to the huge, numerically overwhelming majority of humanity, namely, children dying at an early age, and non-Christians: pagans and representatives of different religions. The fate of those who died in early childhood has been a painful question in theology since ancient times; especially – unbaptized children. Of course, there can be no talk of their personal guilt or responsibility here. But in general there is no definite church doctrine on this issue. Yet all the hopelessness of this question disappears if we understand the afterlife not only as reward, but also as a continuing earthly life, starting from the moment at which it was interrupted by death. The duration of life, like the hour of death, belongs to the vision of God and, obviously, is in common connection with the individuality of each person and his destinies associated with it. We have to accept that in order of Divine expediency, for the fullness of life, which is given by God to every person coming into the world, it is common for dying children in earthly life, like a bird touching the surface of the water with its wing, to join life and enter the world only for immediate departure from it. The life of such children proceeds mainly in the afterlife state, which, quite clearly, is not a state of bribery, but a replenishment of ongoing life. The same is even more obvious regarding the children who received St. Baptism and confirmation of those who entered the body of Christ, but died in speechlessness. Obviously, the doctrine of retribution is even less applicable to their afterlife, both in the sense of original sin, from which they are freed by baptism, and personal sins, which turned out to be unusual for them due to their childhood. Their afterlife, to the extent that it is not a direct absence of consciousness, can only be the fulfillment and continuation of an individual life that has barely begun on earth. If this existence is compared with the angelic, then this is still only a comparison that does not destroy the difference that exists between babies and angels. In any case, the destiny of deceased infants is defined by the Church as “blessed” according to the “unfalse promise of the Lord Himself.” But a similar problem exists for the doctrine of afterlife retribution regarding the fate of the weak-minded, freaks, idiots - all those whose lives represent the doom of heredity and unconsciousness. They can be humanized, enter into the fullness of their human existence, only by freeing themselves from the bonds and shackles of earthly existence. This should also include, at least to a certain extent, the mentally ill. Their evangelical understanding sees in them a victim of satanic violence: the Gadarene demoniac, after a legion of demons was expelled from him, finds himself at the feet of Jesus and wants to follow him. Here again we have the secret of individual destinies: in the afterlife, in an appropriate individual way, the true content of the life here of those deprived of it will be replenished and fulfilled. In the face of this whole series of questions, the words of the Savior sound like a revelation: “in My Father’s house are many mansions. But if it were not so, I would say to you: I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). In the afterlife, non-Christians who go there recognize Christ, listen to His preaching and accept it in accordance with the freedom of self-determination of everyone in their earthly life. They will see themselves and comprehend their lives in the light of Christ, “enlightening all,” and their religious beliefs as a vague mirror of Christian truth that will judge them. For there is no judgment except the judgment of truth, except the Truth of Christ. The Resurrection of Christ shone in hell with victory over death. Beyond the grave there is no longer room for non-Christianity, even for non-Christians. The constipations of hell are powerless to block the path of the “stormy breath” of Pentecost; The gracious action of the Holy Spirit also penetrates the rivets of hell. Isn’t the help that is provided to the souls of the departed through the prayers of the Church a direct action of the grace of the Holy Spirit beyond the grave? Of course, the ways and images of this beneficial influence are unknown to us, and only the general promise remains in force that “God does not give the spirit by measure.” The general resurrection, which lies in the power of God, takes place in connection with the historical maturation of the world and man. Behind the grave, the story also continues in connection with what is happening here on earth, and both are intertwined. The path to the general resurrection runs through the valley of death and the afterlife, or their equivalent “change”: “we will not all die, but we will all be changed,” “for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorruptible, and we will be changed” (1 Cor. 15: 51–52). Each of both parts of life, earthly and afterlife, is something independent, but both of them only express the fullness of each person’s life in mutual connection. Of course, if there had been no original sin and its consequence - death, this same fullness would have been achieved in a different way, without that painful separation of the soul from the body that takes place in death. That revelation of the spiritual world, which becomes the lot of those departing to the afterlife, would be accomplished in a direct way, and the bodily shell would not be a barrier to this, as it is now, but would be transparent to the phenomena of the spiritual world. But what is lost through sin is restored through mortal separation. Death is not unconditional and not omnipotent. It only tears, breaks the tree, but it is not insurmountable, for it has already been defeated by the resurrection of Christ. If Christ honored human nature with perception, then He honored it through the perception of human mortality, because without it this perception would be incomplete. And if Christ redeems and resurrects every person, it is only because He dies with him and in him. This fullness of death, or rather the co-death of Christ, includes the death of every person and all humanity. Human death is also the death of Christ, and we must partake of the fullness of this death, just as He partook of our death by becoming incarnate and becoming man. By his death, Christ conquered human death on the path to resurrection. He is the Resurreator, liberating His humanity from death, but for the completeness of this liberation, He must fulfill the fullness of the mortal cup. And if humanity is resurrected in Christ and with Christ, then for this and before this it dies with Christ and in Christ. Earthly life faces death, but the terrible hour of death is also a joyful hour of new revelation, the fulfillment of “the desire to be resolved and to be with Christ.” And, unlike this world, in the afterlife, the spiritual sky burns with the hope of resurrection and the prayer “Come Lord Jesus!” has an unknown power there for us. And if in dying death becomes the most terrifying reality for us, then beyond its threshold it loses its power. St. speaks about this. John Chrysostom in the Easter sermon: “let no one fear death, if Savior’s death would set us free... Christ is risen, and life lives on”...