Remember death, and you will never sin

Tuesday of the Third Week of Matthew

Today’s reading from the Holy Gospel is Matthew 10: 9 – 15.

The Lord said to His disciples: Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence. And when ye come into an house, salute it. And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it: but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.

St. Theophan the Recluse takes the Lord’s condemnation of the unrepentant cities as a starting point to address two false teachings on man’s eternal destiny, teachings that are popular today, tempting even baptized Orthodox Christians to doubt the Church’s teaching on death and God’s judgment:

The Lord also said to the apostles that if a city does not receive them, and will not hear their words, then It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city. And what will happen to us for our not hearing the words of Divine Revelation? It will be immeasurably intolerable be for us. To disbelieve the truth of God after so many tangible proofs is the same as reviling the Holy Spirit, and blaspheming. And yet we have no fear. The spiritists [and Hindus] say, “What judgment! We just have to be born a few more times.” The scientists say, “Who is there to judge? Everything is made of atoms; they will fly apart and that will be the end.” But, my friends, the hour of death will come; these dreams will fly away like phantoms, and we will all be faced with inevitable reality. What then?… What wretched times we live in! The enemy has contrived to destroy our souls. He knows that fear of death and judgment is the strongest means for sobering up a soul—and so he makes every attempt to drive this away; and he succeeds. But extinguish the fear of death and fear of God will disappear; and without the fear of God the conscience becomes mute. The soul becomes empty, it becomes a waterless cloud, carried by any wind of teachings and various fits of passions. – from Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 128 – 129

The devil offers various tasty dishes to unsuspecting sinners, according to their various sinful appetites. He creates the appropriate moral temptations, of course, corresponding to the characteristic passions of those whom he attacks, but he also creates heresies, false teachings that correspond to the various kinds of curiosity, mental weakness, and upbringing of his intended victims.

To religious people who believe in an afterlife, the devil offers the sickly sweet, delicious prospect of universal salvation, the doctrine that, in the end, God will forgive everybody, even Satan, and that everyone will be saved, whether they really want to be saved or not. Every human being shall, willy-nilly, go through a number of reincarnations to work out his karma, and, finally, all will be well. In other words, if you do not get it right in this life, do not worry: You will have an indefinite number of chances to straighten things out, or, rather, to be straightened out. That is your fate, and it is everyone’s fate. This idea is simply in the air today; no one has to study seriously the teachings of the eastern religions on the subject to have breathed in a vague belief in this error without noticing it. And, sad to say, in the officially Orthodox world, we are even witnessing an attempt by some arrogant academicians to rehabilitate the heresy of Origen, who taught a version of universalism with his heresy of the apokatastasis, which was condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Truly the enemy is within the gates.

To those who still believe in the 19th century religion of scientism and its variants, like Darwinism, the devil offers the error of dogmatic materialism, the teaching that there is no God and no soul, and that we are all just atoms that fly apart at the end of life, as St. Theophan puts it. It is difficult to justify such a belief philosophically; it actually requires much more blind faith than does traditional religious belief, and therefore only a few people with high IQs are deluded enough, clever enough, overeducated enough, and determined enough to defend such a silly and crude proposition. But if we are honest, we must admit that most men live as if the dogma of materialism were true; they are practical atheists. When King David wrote “The fool says in his heart that there is no God,” he was not talking about the official doctrines of Marxism or Darwinism, but about formally religious men who live as if God did not exist, regardless of their supposed beliefs.

We are Orthodox Christians and, of course, we reject both errors. Most of us must admit, however, that we do not have death always before our eyes, and that we can go hours or days or weeks – or longer – utterly consumed by temporal cares and dangerously oblivious to our eternal destiny. We must resolve to struggle against this forgetfulness and acquire the continual remembrance of death, if we wish to practice true repentance and obtain a firm hope of our salvation. There are various ways to do this:

One is to pray faithfully and daily for our departed relatives, friends, and benefactors, as well as frequently offering their names for commemoration at the Divine Liturgy, sponsoring memorials for their salvation, and giving alms in their names.

Another is to visit cemeteries and say soberly, “Here my dead body will lie one day also!”

Another is to visit the elderly and gravely ill, which not only grants the grace pertaining to a blessed work of mercy commanded by the Gospel but also rebukes our illusion of perpetual youth and health, which is a lie of the devil.

Another is to read the edifying accounts in the Lives of the Saints and the teachings of Scripture and the Fathers about what happens at the hour of death

Another is to read our night prayers faithfully and pay careful attention to the texts that speak of going to sleep as a foreshadowing of the hour of death.

Today the world tempts us to dwell in anger over the malicious actions of the globalist cabal of government united to big business, which are causing so much death among the young and healthy by unjust wars and by genocidal assaults on whole populations through the abuse of medicine and technology. Certainly we should recognize what is going on and not delude ourselves, but simply to be angry is to be worldly; there is no spiritual benefit in such a state of mind. Let us recognize the great blessing in all this, for God always uses evil to bring about our salvation, if only we will to live in repentance. We can turn this evil to good through using these admittedly terrifying circumstances to humble ourselves with the remembrance of death and God’s judgment, and to acquire peace of soul through cleansing the conscience and entrusting ourselves to God’s all wise Providence, which is always directed towards our eternal happiness.

Life is short, death is certain, judgment is eternal. Let us seek the blessed relief that comes when we no longer cling to this passing life and instead rejoice in the prospect of the age to come, where there will be no more death, but only life everlasting and endless joy in the intimate presence of our beloved Lord.