January: Day 21: Teaching 1: Holy Martyr Agnes

January: Day 21: Teaching 1:
Holy Martyr Agnes
 
(On the Immortality of the Soul and the Resurrection of the Dead)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. When the Holy Martyr Agnes, whose memory is celebrated today, died, her parents were constantly at her grave, where they wept bitterly for their beloved daughter. But one night they saw maidens walking past them, brightly adorned with gold-embroidered garments and shining with heavenly glory. Among them was also Saint Agnes, in the same glory as her companions, and at her right hand was a Lamb, whiter than snow. And behold, Agnes, having asked the maidens to wait for her, said to her parents: “Do not weep for me as for one dead; but rejoice for me and rejoice with me, for I have entered the heavenly habitations with these maidens, and with Him Whom I loved on earth with all my heart, with Him I now live in heaven.” After these words the holy virgin became invisible.

II. The Holy Martyr Agnes, by her appearance from the afterlife, by her assurance that she did not die, but lives in the heavenly habitations with our Lord Jesus Christ, with this heavenly Lamb, slain for the sins of the world, proves to us the truth of the immortality of the human soul and the future resurrection of our bodies on the day of the General Judgment of God before the coming of the eternal kingdom of glory.

a) The best and largest part of the human race, and entire nations, from the most enlightened to the least educated, can be cited as witnesses of the immortality of the human soul. However sensual the notions of the future life may be among the followers of Muhammad; however crude the stories about it among the pagans, yet even in this transformation and confusion of notions and feelings, and in this predominance of bestial and animal properties over human ones, the truth has not yet, like a spark in a heap of ashes, completely died out that after the present there is a future life for man. If the ancient or modern Sadducees, who rejected the immortality of the soul, strive to reject this truth, it is only because it prevents them from being Sadducees, that is, from carelessly enjoying sensual pleasures, because the thought of immortality requires a mortal life in conformity with the future immortal one.

b) Even speechless and lifeless nature can be made to speak in order to prove the future life of man. For in the whole world no example, no sign, no proof of the destruction of any insignificant thing can be found; there is no past that does not prepare for the future; there is no end that does not lead to a beginning. The sun sets in order to rise again; the stars die for the earthly spectator in the morning, and are resurrected in the evening; times end and begin; dying sounds are resurrected in echoes; rivers are buried in the sea, and are resurrected in springs; the whole world of earthly vegetation dies in autumn, and revives in spring; the seed dies in the earth, and the grass or tree is resurrected; the creeping worm dies, the winged butterfly is resurrected; the life of a bird is buried in a soulless egg, and again rises from it. If the creatures of the lower degrees are destroyed in order to be recreated, die for a new life, will man, the crown of the earth and the mirror of heaven, fall into the grave only to crumble into dust, more hopeless than a worm, worse than a mustard seed?

c) But for Christians the future resurrection does not require any research or verification, as a matter of true, attested, recognized experience. “For if we believe,” says the Apostle Paul, “that Jesus died and rose again, even so God also will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus” (I Thessalonians 4:14). “Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of them that sleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). If anyone, having this experience of the resurrection, should think to trouble himself with doubts as to how it can be accomplished, when the image of the destruction of many dead bodies apparently leaves no room for the thought of their renewal, the same Apostle resolves this difficulty by reasoning based on the nature of known things: “Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain — perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body” (36-39).

III. O man, who is certainly immortal, even if you do not think about it, even if you do not want it! Beware of forgetting your immortality, lest the oblivion of immortality become a deadly poison for your mortal life, and lest the immortality you forget kill you forever, if it suddenly appears to you, not expecting it and not ready for it.

Do not say desperately: “In the morning we shall die,” so as to rush all the more unbridled after the pleasures of mortal life. Say with hope and fear: In the morning we shall die on earth, and we shall be born either in heaven or in hell; and so we must hasten to lay down, we must strive to nourish and strengthen in ourselves the beginning for a heavenly, and not for a hellish birth. 

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.