Heaven, hell, death, and Lent
In Orthodox theology we believe that heaven and hell are actually the same place. We all go to be with God after death. For some of us this is pure heavenly bliss and for others this is eternal hell and torment. Though there are many unknowns about what eternal life is actually like, we know that Christ is risen and death is conquered. According to the last line of St. John Chrysostom’s Paschal homily, “Christ is risen and the demons shutter, Christ is risen and no one is in the grave. Christ is risen and life reins.” Those dead to us are alive in Christ.
My grandmother died recently and her death has left me a lot to ponder. She was Christian, but she was not Orthodox. In fact, only my immediate family is Orthodox. I have been to my share of funerals and have now grieved the loss of all of my grandparents. The more people profess Christ during their lifetime, the more those left on Earth feel certain that they went to heaven. All grieving family members want to have certainty that their loved one is experiencing heaven. We console ourselves that the deceased’s suffering is now over. We would like to think that we too will go to heaven some day to be with God and our departed loved ones. We are all going to the same place, but the unknown is if we will experience it as heaven or hell. The death of a loved one makes us ponder our own mortality. This is also timely to ponder as Lent approaches.
As we start Lent, it is helpful to ponder our sins and make a contrite repentance. The gospel reading for the past Sunday was Matthew 25- The Sheep and the Goats at the Last Judgment. We all want to be sheep. In Matthew 25 we are given three parables that help us to understand the preparations we must make to experience heaven. Reread them while you ponder the coming celebration of Christ’s resurrection and your mortality. Please comment with your thoughts!
-Olivia
Chelsea and I were somewhat discussing this a day or two before your post. We were considering why so many modern day Christians seem very removed from the concept of Church and worship being tied into the totality of life as an essential. I think this is what Father Alexander Schmemann would tie to a secularized culture, where Christianity gets put into one of many boxes. Personally, I thought that it began with a weak rememberance of death and a skewed understanding of the consequences of this life once we fall asleep. Many Christians assume they are heaven-bound, prejudging Christ in their confidence; there are different reasons for this–differing dogmas, mere ignorance or vainglory. But we fight and fight and fight to remove ourselves from situations of death, to the point that we creamate our family members or stuff their bodies with enough chemicals to make them appear only to be asleep. The tragedy of death is lost in this; nowadays, Saint Lazarus surely would not have begun to stink and rot after only four days–he would still look and smell fine.
I don’t think masking what is the wages of sin behind chemicals and closed coffins will do Christians any favors–we come from a long line of grave-digging, relic-venerating Saints. If we can’t deal with a man or woman who has died peacefully in his or her sleep, how will we ever be able to deal with the agonizing remains of martyrs ever again?
03.18.13 at 12:38pm
I agree. We desensitize ourselves from the reality of death. In the same vain, it irks me when people don’t like talking about the reality that their end can come at any moment and we need to be constantly repentant and ready to face the judgement. Heaven is not a sure thing, but death is.
03.18.13 at 7:53pm