On Mortality

For he who serves God, who, placed in the heavenly camp, now hopes for divine reward, ought to recognize, brethren most beloved, that there should be no trembling in us, no disturbance, at the storms and tempests of the world, since the Lord foretold these things to come, instructing and teaching and preparing and strengthening the people of his Church with the provident encouragement of his voice to endure all future things; he foretold and proclaimed that wars and famines and earthquakes and pestilences would arise in individual places. And lest an unexpected and novel dread of threatening events should shake us, he warned us beforehand that adversities would increase more and more in the last times. Behold, the things that were spoken are coming to pass; and when the things that were foretold come to pass, all things that were promised will follow as well, the Lord himself pledging and saying: But when you shall see all these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God is at hand.

The kingdom of God, most beloved brethren, has begun to be at hand. The reward of life and the joy of eternal salvation, and perpetual security, and the possession of paradise lately lost, are now coming as the world passes away; now heavenly things succeed earthly, and great things succeed small, and eternal things succeed transitory. What place is there here for anxiety and solicitude? Who among these things is fearful and sorrowful, except one who lacks hope and faith? For it belongs to him to fear death who is unwilling to go to Christ. It belongs to him to be unwilling to go to Christ who does not believe that he will begin to reign with Christ.

For it is written that the just man lives by faith. If you are just and live by faith, if you truly believe in Christ, why do you not embrace with joy the fact that you are called to Christ and will be with him in the future, being secure in the Lord's promise, and why do you not rejoice that you are free from the devil? That just man Simeon, finally, who was truly just, who kept the commandments of God with full faith, when it had been divinely revealed to him that he would not die before he had seen Christ, and when Christ as an infant came into the temple with his mother, recognized in the Spirit that Christ had now been born, of whom it had been foretold to him; having seen him, he knew that he would soon die.

Joyful therefore at death now near, and secure in the approaching summons, he received the child in his arms, and blessing the Lord cried out and said: Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace, because my eyes have seen thy salvation; proving and testifying, that is, that then there is peace for the servants of God, then free and tranquil rest, when, drawn out from these storms of the world, we seek the harbor of eternal abode and security, when, this death being cancelled, we come to immortality. For that is true peace, that is faithful tranquility, that is stable and firm and perpetual security.

But otherwise, what else is daily carried on in the world than battle against the devil, than combat with his darts and weapons in continual conflicts? We have an encounter with avarice, with immodesty, with anger, with ambition, with carnal vices, with worldly enticements a constant and wearisome struggle. The mind of man, besieged and hemmed in on all sides by the devil's assault, scarcely meets each attack, scarcely resists. If avarice is laid low, lust rises up; if lust is suppressed, ambition succeeds; if ambition is despised, anger inflames, pride puffs up, wine-drinking invites, envy breaks concord, jealousy severs friendship. You are compelled to speak evil, which the divine law forbids; you are driven to swear, which is not lawful.

So many persecutions does the spirit suffer daily, with so many dangers is the breast pressed; and does it please one to stand long here amid the swords of the devil, when it is rather to be desired and wished to hasten to Christ, with death coming more swiftly to our aid, he himself instructing us and saying: Amen amen I say to you that you shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. Who would not wish to be free from sorrow? Who would not hasten to come to joy? But when our sorrow shall come into joy the Lord himself again declares, saying: I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man shall take from you.

Since therefore to see Christ is to rejoice, and our joy cannot exist unless when we shall have seen Christ, what blindness of mind or what madness is it to love the pressures and pains and tears of the world, and not rather to hasten to the joy that can never be taken away?

But this happens, most beloved brethren, because faith is lacking, because no one believes to be true the things which God promises, who is truthful, whose word is eternal and firm for those who believe. If some grave and praiseworthy man were to promise you something, you would certainly have faith in the one making the promise, and would not believe yourself to be deceived or misled by one whom you knew to be steadfast in his words and in his deeds. Now God speaks with you; and you, faithless in your unbelieving mind, waver! God promises you immortality and eternity as you depart from this world; and you doubt! This is to know God not at all; this is to offend Christ, the Lord and master of believers, with the sin of unbelief; this is, being established in the Church, to have no faith in the house of faith.

How profitable it is to depart from the world, Christ himself, the teacher of our salvation and benefit, shows; who, when his disciples were saddened because he said he was now about to depart, spoke to them saying: If you loved me, you would indeed rejoice, because I go to the Father, teaching and showing, that is, that when those dear ones whom we love depart from the world, we ought rather to rejoice than to grieve. Mindful of this, the blessed apostle Paul sets down in his Epistle and says: For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain; reckoning it the greatest gain to be no longer held by the snares of the world, to be no longer made subject to sins and vices of the flesh, to be freed from pressing afflictions and delivered from the poisonous jaws of the devil, and to set out, called by Christ, to the joy of eternal salvation.

But some are troubled that the force of this disease seizes our people equally with the gentiles; as though a Christian had believed to this end, that, immune from contact with evils, he might happily enjoy the world and the age, and not rather, having endured all adversities here, be reserved for future joy. Some are troubled that this mortality is common to us with the rest. For what in this world is not common to us with the rest, so long as, according to the law of the first birth, this common flesh remains? As long as we are here in the world, we are joined to the human race by the equality of flesh, and separated by the spirit. Therefore, until this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall receive immortality, and Christ shall bring us to God the Father, whatever inconveniences belong to the flesh are common to us with the human race. Thus, when the barren earth is lean with unfruitful soil, famine separates no one.

Thus, when a city has been seized by a hostile incursion, captivity lays waste to all alike. And when clear skies withhold the rain, there is one drought for all. And when jagged rocks hem in a ship, shipwreck is common without exception to those sailing. And pain of the eyes, and the onset of fevers, and the ailment of all the members is common to us with the rest, so long as this common flesh is carried in the world.

Indeed, if a Christian knows and holds to the condition and law under which he has believed, he will know that he must labor more than others in the world, since he must struggle more against the assault of the devil. The divine Scripture teaches and forewarns, saying: Son, when thou comest to the service of God, stand in justice and in fear, and prepare thy soul for temptation. And again: In sorrow endure, and in thy humiliation keep patience, for gold and silver are tried in the fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation.

Thus Job, after the loss of his possessions, after the death of his children, grievously afflicted also with wounds and worms, was not overcome but proved; who, showing in those very conflicts and pains the patience of a devout mind, said: Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I go under the earth. The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away. As it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And when his wife also urged him, impatient under the force of pain, to speak something against God with a querulous and resentful voice, he answered and said: Thou hast spoken like one of the foolish women. If we have received good things at the hand of the Lord, why should we not receive evil? In all these things that happened to him, Job sinned not with his lips in the sight of the Lord. And so the Lord God bears testimony to him, saying: Hast thou considered my servant Job?

For there is none like him in the earth, a man without complaint, a true worshipper of God. And Tobias, after magnificent works, after many and glorious testimonies of his mercy, having suffered blindness of his eyes, fearing and blessing God in adversity, grew in praise through that very affliction of his body; whom also his wife attempted to corrupt, saying: Where is thy justice? Behold what thou sufferest. But he, steadfast and firm in the fear of God, and armed with the faith of religion for all endurance of suffering, did not yield in his pain to the temptation of his weak wife, but rather merited God's favor with greater patience. Whom afterward the angel Raphael praises and says: It is honorable to reveal and confess the works of God. For when thou didst pray, and Sara thy daughter-in-law, I offered the remembrance of your prayer in the sight of the glory of God.

And when thou didst bury the dead simply, and because thou didst not delay to rise up and leave thy dinner, and wentest and didst bury the dead, I was sent to try thee, and God hath sent me to heal thee and Sara thy daughter-in-law. For I am Raphael, one of the seven holy Angels who stand and go in and out before the glory of God.

The just have always had this endurance, the Apostles held to this discipline from the Lord's law, not to murmur in adversity, but to receive whatever befalls in the world with fortitude and patience, since the people of the Jews always gave offense on this account, that they murmured against God more frequently, as the Lord God testifies in Numbers, saying: Let their murmuring cease from me, and they shall not die. We must not murmur in adversity, most beloved brethren, but whatever happens must be endured patiently and bravely, since it is written: A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God doth not despise; and in Deuteronomy the Holy Spirit also admonishes through Moses and says: The Lord thy God will afflict thee, and will bring famine upon thee, and it shall be known in thy heart whether thou hast well kept his commandments, or not.

And again: The Lord your God trieth you, that it may appear whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

Thus Abraham pleased God, who, that he might please God, neither feared to lose his son nor refused to commit the act of a father's slaying. You who cannot lose a son by the law and lot of mortality, what would you do if you were commanded to slay your son? The fear of God and faith ought to make us ready for all things. Let there be loss of family property, let there be continual and bloody torment of the limbs from attacking diseases, let there be a mournful and grievous tearing away of wife, of children, of dear ones departing—let these things not be scandals to you, but battles; nor let them weaken or break the faith of a Christian, but rather let them display virtue in the struggle, since every injury of present evils is to be despised in confidence of future goods. Unless the fight has gone before, there can be no victory; when victory has been won in the clash of battle, then a crown is given to the victors.

A ship's pilot is known in a storm, a soldier is proved in the line of battle. It is a soft boasting when there is no danger. Conflict in adversity is the proof of truth. A tree that is founded with a deep root is not moved when winds press upon it; and a ship that is solid with a strong frame is beaten by waves and not pierced; and when the threshing-floor grinds the grain, the strong and robust kernels scorn the winds, while the empty chaff is swept away by the carrying blast.

So also the apostle Paul, after shipwrecks, after scourgings, after many and grievous torments of flesh and body, says that he is not vexed but improved by adversities, so that, while he is more heavily bound, he might be more truly proved: There was given to me, he says, a thorn in my flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted. For this I besought the Lord three times that it might depart from me, and he said to me: My grace is sufficient for thee. For virtue is perfected in weakness. When therefore weakness and feebleness and some devastation rages, then our virtue is perfected, then faith, if it has stood firm when tested, is crowned, as it is written: The furnace proves the potter's vessels, and the trial of tribulation proves just men. This finally is the difference between us and the rest who know not God: that they complain and murmur in adversity, whereas adversities do not call us away from the truth of virtue and faith, but strengthen us in pain.

This—that the bowels loosened into flux disembowel the strength of the body, that fire conceived deep in the marrow blazes out in wounds of the throat, that the intestines are shaken by continual vomiting, that the eyes are inflamed by the force of blood, that in some cases the feet or certain parts of the limbs are cut off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction, that as the sickness bursts forth through the losses and damages of the body, either the gait is weakened, or the hearing is blocked, or the sight is blinded—all this works to the profit of faith. To engage with the virtues of an unshaken mind against so many onslaughts of devastation and death—how great a greatness of heart is this! How great a sublimity, to stand erect amid the ruins of the human race, and not to lie prostrate with those who have no hope in God!

We ought rather to rejoice and embrace the gift of this time, in that, while we boldly bring forth our faith and, bearing the toil, press on toward Christ by the narrow way of Christ, we may receive, by his own judgment, the reward of his life and faith. Let him truly fear to die who, not reborn of water and the Spirit, is handed over to the fires of Gehenna. Let him fear to die who is not reckoned by the cross and passion of Christ; let him fear to die who will pass from this death to the second death; let him fear to die whom, as he departs from this world, the eternal flame will torment with everlasting punishments; let him fear to die for whom a longer delay confers only this: that his torment and groaning be deferred for a time.

Many of our people die in this mortality—that is, many of our people are freed from this world. This mortality, which is a plague to Jews and Gentiles and enemies of Christ, is a saving departure for the servants of God. As to the fact that, without any distinction of the human race, the just die together with the unjust, you should not think that destruction is common to the good and the evil: the just are called to refreshment, the unjust are snatched away to punishment; protection is given more swiftly to the faithful, punishment to the faithless. We are improvident and ungrateful, dearly beloved brethren, toward the divine benefits, and we do not acknowledge what is being conferred upon us.

Behold, virgins depart in peace, safe with their glory, fearing not the threats and corruptions and brothels of the coming antichrist; boys escape the peril of a slippery age and happily attain the reward of continence and innocence; the delicate matron now fears no torments, having gained by the swiftness of death freedom from the fear of persecution and the hands and tortures of the executioner. By the dread of mortality and of the times the lukewarm are kindled, the slack are restrained, the slothful are roused, deserters are compelled to return, Gentiles are forced to believe, the old people of the faithful are called to rest, a fresh and numerous army is gathered with stronger strength for the battle line—an army that, having entered military service in the time of mortality, will fight without fear of death when battle comes.

What then of this, dearly beloved brethren—how fitting it is, how pertinent, how necessary, that this pestilence and plague, which appears horrible and deadly, searches out the righteousness of each individual and examines the minds of the human race: whether the healthy serve the sick, whether kinsmen love their relatives with dutiful affection, whether masters take pity on their ailing servants, whether physicians do not abandon those who implore them when sick, whether the fierce restrain their violence, whether the rapacious quench, even in fear of death, the insatiable and ever-burning ardor of their raging greed, whether the proud bow their neck, whether the wicked soften their boldness, whether the rich, when their dear ones are perishing, even so bestow and give something to the needy—they who are to die without an heir! Even if this mortality had conferred nothing else, it has rendered this very great service to Christians and servants of God: that we have begun willingly to seek martyrdom, since we learn not to fear death. These things are exercises for us, not funerals.

They give the soul the glory of fortitude; by contempt of death they prepare us for the crown.

But perhaps someone may object and say: This is what grieves me in the present mortality—that I, who was prepared for confession and had devoted myself with my whole heart and full strength to the endurance of suffering, am deprived of my martyrdom by being forestalled by death. In the first place, martyrdom is not in your power but in God's gracious will, nor can you say you have lost what you do not know whether you have merited to receive. Then furthermore, God, the searcher of reins and heart, the beholder and knower of hidden things, sees you and praises and approves you, and he who perceives that the virtue was ready in you will render the reward in return for the virtue. Did not Cain, when he was offering a gift to God, already slay his brother? And yet God in his foreknowledge condemned beforehand the parricide conceived in the mind.

As there the evil and destructive thought was foreseen by God's foreknowledge, so also in the servants of God, in whom confession is pondered and martyrdom is conceived in the mind, the soul devoted to good is crowned by God as judge. It is one thing for the soul to be lacking to martyrdom, another for martyrdom to have been lacking to the soul. The Lord judges you such as he finds you when he calls you, since he himself testifies and says: And all the churches shall know that I am the searcher of reins and hearts. For God does not desire our blood, but seeks our faith. For neither Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob were slain, and yet, honored by the merits of faith and righteousness, they merited to be first among the Patriarchs; and whoever is found faithful and just and praiseworthy is gathered to their banquet.

We ought to remember that we must do not our own will but God's, according to what the Lord commanded us to pray daily. How preposterous and how perverse it is that, while we ask that his will be done, when God summons and calls us from this world, we do not at once obey the command of his will. We struggle and resist, and, after the manner of obstinate servants, we are led into the presence of the Lord with sadness and grief, departing from here by the bond of necessity, not by the obedience of will; and we wish to be honored by him with heavenly rewards—him to whom we come unwillingly! Why then do we pray and ask that the kingdom of heaven come, if earthly captivity delights us? Why do we repeatedly ask and beg in frequent prayers that the day of the kingdom be hastened, if our greater desires and stronger wishes are to serve the devil here rather than to reign with Christ?

Finally, that the signs of divine providence might shine forth more plainly—that the Lord, foreknowing the future, consults for the true salvation of his own—when one of our colleagues and fellow-priests, worn out by illness and anxious about death now drawing near, was praying for a respite for himself, there stood by him as he prayed and was now nearly dying a youth venerable in honor and majesty, tall in stature and bright in appearance, whom the human gaze could scarcely behold with fleshly eyes as he stood there, except that one who was about to depart from this world could already see such a one. And he, with a certain indignation of spirit and voice, thundered and said: "You fear to suffer, you are unwilling to depart—what am I to do with you?" It is the voice of one rebuking and admonishing, who, not agreeing with the present desire of one anxious about persecution but secure about being summoned, consults for the future.

Our dying brother and colleague heard what he would say to the rest. For he who was about to die heard it in order that he might tell it to others. He heard it not for himself but for us. For what would he learn for himself who was already departing? He learned it rather for us who remain, so that, when we learned that the priest who had sought a respite was rebuked, we might know what is expedient for all.

To us also, the least and last, how often has it been revealed, how frequently and plainly has it been enjoined by God's gracious will, that I should earnestly testify and publicly proclaim that our brethren freed from this world by the Lord's summons are not to be mourned, since we know that they are not lost but sent before, that those who depart go ahead—that they, like those who set out on a journey, like those who sail, ought to be longed for, not lamented; that dark garments are not to be put on here, since they have already put on white robes there; that occasion is not to be given to the Gentiles to reproach us deservedly and rightly because we mourn as extinct and lost those whom we say live with God, and because we do not prove by the testimony of heart and breast the faith which we set forth in word and voice. We are transgressors of our hope and faith; what we say appears to be pretended, feigned, and counterfeit.

It profits nothing to profess virtue in words and to destroy truth in deeds.

The apostle Paul finally rebukes and chides and blames those who are saddened at the departure of their own: We would not have you ignorant, he says, brethren, concerning those who sleep, that you be not sorrowful as also the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also God will bring with him those who have slept in Jesus. He says that those who have no hope are saddened at the departure of their own. But we who live in hope and believe in God and trust that Christ suffered for us and rose again, abiding in Christ and rising through him and in him—why do we either refuse to depart from this world ourselves, or mourn and grieve for our own who depart as though they were lost, when Christ himself our Lord and God admonishes and says: I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, shall live; and everyone who lives and believes in me shall not die for ever?

If we believe in Christ, if we have faith in his words and promises, and we do not die for ever, let us come with glad confidence to Christ, with whom we are always to live and reign.

That we die in the meantime is a passing through death to immortality; nor can eternal life succeed unless it has come to pass that we depart from here. This departure is not an end, but a transit, and, the temporal journey having been run, a crossing over to eternal things. Who would not hasten to come to better things? Who would not wish to be changed and transformed into the likeness of Christ and to come more quickly to the dignity of heavenly glory, with the apostle Paul proclaiming and saying: Our citizenship, he says, is in heaven, from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our lowliness, conformed to the body of his glory?

That we shall be such, Christ the Lord also promises, when, that we may be with him and live with him in eternal dwellings and rejoice in the heavenly kingdoms, he prays to the Father for us, saying: Father, those whom thou hast given me, I will that where I am they also may be with me, and that they may see the glory which thou hast given me before the world was made. One who is about to come to the seat of Christ, to the glory of the heavenly kingdoms, ought not to mourn or lament, but rather, according to the promise of the Lord, according to the faith of truth, to rejoice in this his setting forth and translation.

Thus finally we find that Enoch also was translated, who pleased God, as the divine Scripture attests and declares in Genesis: And Enoch pleased God, and was not found afterwards, because God translated him. This was what it meant to have pleased in the sight of God, to have merited being transferred away from this contagion of the world. But also through Solomon the Holy Spirit teaches that those who please God are taken away from here more swiftly and freed more quickly, lest, while they linger longer in this world, they be polluted by the world's contacts. He was taken away, it says, lest wickedness should alter his understanding. For his soul was pleasing to God. Therefore He hastened to bring him out from the midst of iniquity. So also in the Psalms a soul devoted to God hastens to the Lord with spiritual faith, saying to its God: How beloved are thy tabernacles, O God of hosts! My soul desires and hastens to the courts of God.

It belongs to one whom the world delights, whom the age flatters and deceives and invites with the enticements of earthly pleasure, to wish to remain long in the world. But since the world hates the Christian, why do you love one who hates you, and not rather follow Christ, who both redeemed you and loves you? John cries out and speaks in his Epistle, and exhorts us not to love the world, pursuing carnal desires: Do not, he says, love the world nor the things that are in the world. If anyone has loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him; because everything that is in the world is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of the age, which is not from the Father, but from the lust of the world. And the world will pass away and its lust: but he who does the will of God abides forever, even as God abides forever.

Rather, most beloved brethren, with mind whole, faith firm, virtue strong, let us be prepared for every will of God, with the fear of death cast out, let us think upon the immortality that follows. Let us show ourselves to be what we believe, so that we neither mourn the departure of our dear ones, and when the day of our own summons shall come, we may come to the Lord without hesitation and willingly, at His own calling.

Although this ought always to be done by the servants of God, now it ought to be done much more, with the world already crumbling and beset by the turbulences of assailing evils; so that we who see that grievous things have already begun and know that more grievous things are at hand may count it the greatest gain if we depart from here more swiftly. If in your dwelling the walls were tottering with age, the roof above were trembling, the house already weary, already worn out, threatening imminent ruin with the collapse of the building through old age, would you not move away with all speed? If, while you were sailing, a stormy and tempestuous weather, with violent waves stirred up, were foretelling future shipwreck, would you not seek port swiftly?

Behold, the world totters and falls, and bears witness to its own ruin not now by the old age of things but by its end; and do you not give thanks to God, do you not congratulate yourself that, withdrawn by a timelier departure, you are freed from the ruins and shipwrecks and plagues that threaten?

It must be considered, most beloved brethren, and thought upon again and again, that we have renounced the world, and dwell here for the time being as guests and strangers. Let us embrace the day which assigns each one to his own dwelling, which snatches us away from here and, loosing us from the snares of the age, restores us to paradise and to the kingdom. Who, being in a foreign land, would not hasten to return to his homeland? Who, eager to sail home to his own, would not more eagerly desire a favorable wind, so that it might be permitted to embrace his dear ones swiftly? We count paradise as our homeland: we have already begun to have the Patriarchs as our fathers. Why do we not hasten and run so that we may be able to see our homeland, to greet our fathers? A great number of dear ones awaits us there, a thronging and abundant multitude of parents, brothers, children desires us, already secure in their own safety, and still anxious for our salvation.

To come to the sight and embrace of these—what great joy is that for them and for us alike? What pleasure of the heavenly kingdoms is there, without fear of dying, and with the highest and perpetual happiness of living in eternity! There the glorious choir of Apostles, there the company of exulting Prophets, there the innumerable people of Martyrs crowned for the victory of their contest and passion, there the Virgins triumphant, who subdued the lust of the flesh and body by the strength of continence; the merciful rewarded, who by feeding and giving generously to the poor performed works of righteousness, who keeping the commandments of the Lord transferred their earthly estates to heavenly treasuries. To these, most beloved brethren, let us hasten with eager longing, that we may desire it to be our lot to be with them soon, to come to Christ soon.

May God see this thought of ours, may the Lord Christ look upon this purpose of mind and faith, He who will give greater rewards of His glory to those whose desires toward Him shall have been greater.